Memory upgrade advice

[imported_marky1124]

Hi,

I have a gaming computer which I feel needs a 'tide me over' upgrade until Q1 next year when I can buy a new one. At the moment I have the following:

A64 3500+
MSI Neo 2 Platinum Rev 2
1GB OCZ PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR Rev 2 (CL 2-2-2-5)
Nvidia Geforce 6800 GT
120GB 8MB cache Western Digital IDE drive for boot

Obviously there are lots of things that I could change. I want to hold of on most things until early next year since I'd like to wait to buy an Intel Core 2 Quadro and Nvidia Geforce 8800GTX based system.

So I'm limiting my options. I feel I need another GB of RAM. So I was thinking of buying a 2nd matched pair of my existing memory. That'll cost me £154.

Then I thought perhaps I might be better spending £170 on 2GB of Corsair TwinX DDR PC4000 CL 3-4-4-8.

I'm not a heavy overclocker but I like to use Nvidia Ntune to try and get the best out of my Nvidia Nforce 3 ultra chipset and components.

So my questions concern advice/recommendations regarding what's going to do the best for me:

1) Buy another GB of CL 2-2-2-5 memory
vs
2) Replace my existing memory with 2GB of PC4000 CL 3-4-4-8 memory and then drop the CPU multiplier and overclock the FSB? If I understand how things are done properly. I don't suppose that Ntune is capable of changing the CPU multiplier?


My goal is the highest FPS I can get in the last FPS games. I generally play at a moderate 1024x768 and without FSAA. I bought the really expensive CL 2-2-2-5 memory based on the Anandtech review at the time that raved about it, but I'm unsure how much it's worth paying a premium for PC3200 CL 2-2-2-5 versus PC4000 CL 3-4-4-8.

<ramble over>

Any help/pointers most welcome,
Thanks very much,
All the best,
Mark

P.S. I hope I put this in the right forum, if not please advise which one would be better.

 

[Rommel44]

Dont buy that RAM if you want buy nw rig in 1.Q/07. In FPS you are much more limited by your CPU and GPU.

 

[imported_marky1124]

Ok, so I guess you are saying that if I want to limit my spend to around £150-£200 on a temporary upgrade I'd be better off getting a nVidia 7800 (since I'm limited to AGP).

 

[myocardia]

A 7800GS wouldn't make that much of a difference. You've already got a 6800GT, which is about as fast. And since you game at 1024x768, you aren't going to notice any difference. What exactly is it that you're trying to improve? Having 2GB of RAM will only improve your loading times, especially at 1024.

If I were you, I'd probably just overclock that 3500, although if you've got one of the "old" ones, then it probably doesn't get very far. You could always buy a 3800, which is 200 Mhz faster, and usually will overclock to a minimum of 2.6 Ghz. The 3800's are only $100 here, so they'd have to be less than £150 there, I would think. Whoa, I just checked. I'd definitely get the 3800 Venice from here: 3800 for £77.54 Including VAT At that price, you could also get one 1GB stick of 2-3-2-5 RAM, and have a faster, better overclocking cpu, and 2 GB's of RAM.

 

[imported_marky1124]

Hi,

Ooooo now you've got me thinking. Mine is a 90nm Winchester A64 3500+. I can't remember how far nTune overclocked it but it wasn't a huge amount. The 3800+ Venice is cheaper than I'd expected, wow recent AMD price cuts are really coming through. The next chip down on that page is a 4000+ San Diego core which has 1MB L2 for £94 inc. VAT which also looks like a great option. I was always gutted that I missed out on the 1MB L2 3500+.

The main thing that is making me want to improve performance is currently the game F.E.A.R. I find that I notice it if the frame rate drops below about 40 fps. Obviously I could drop some of the in-game graphics options. I'm playing it on the auto detected graphics levels which are a mixture of Medium and Maximum quality.

A thing I particularly notice is occasional tiny little hangs in game which appear to coincide with a new sound effect being loaded. Something like that. I have an Audigy 2 ZS. I've looked at game memory usage and F.E.A.R seems to hit the 500-800MB region and DarkStar One is at least 800MB. So that amount of memory along with what appear, to me, to be inconvenient sound data loads mid-action, is what led me originally down the path of thinking that I should add another GB of memory to the machine.

What with work and a wife I don't want to spend huge amounts of timing playing with timings and overclocking. I want to stick to fairly safe/simple overclocking without too much time wasted trying to achieve stability. I've been down that path before and hours/days of time can be spent - which is all wasted game time.

Thanks for your help and suggestions,

Cheers,
Mark

 

[myocardia]

It sounds to me like FEAR just has soft shadows enabled, which will bring any video card to it's knees. I'm willing to bet that you'd get very good framerates with your current setup, with soft shadows turned off. Your 6800GT is faster than my AGP X1600 Pro, yet these are the framerates that I get with it: @ 1024x768 and 4x AF, @ 1152x864 and 4x AF and then it finally starts falling off a bit @ 1280x960 and 4x AF.

 

[imported_marky1124]

Thanks very much for posting up your results. I've done quite a few F.E.A.R benchmarks and I've noticed something odd. I find that the test performance gets worse steadily the more times you run it, until you restart the game and then the first run is faster again. All I'm doing is setting the options, hitting test, writing down the results and hitting test again.

The soft shadows is off by default. Here's my results for F.E.A.R v1.6, nVidia driver v91.31 (I know there's newer but I've not bothered with it yet)

Based on it's autodetect which was a mix of maximum & medium:
(Physics: med/med, sounds med, effects: med/on/med/med)
(Effects: max/max/med/max/on/med)
(Graphics: Off/max/on/max/off/ansitropic 4x/med/med/off/off/1024x768/max)
FPS: 37 min, 66 average, 151 max : 0% < 25fps, 4%, 96% > 40fps - Run 1.1
FPS: 36 min, 67 average, 152 max : 0% < 25fps, 6%, 94% > 40fps - Run 1.2
FPS: 37 min, 68 average, 153 max : 0% < 25fps, 2%, 98% > 40fps - Run 1.3
FPS: 31 min, 63 average, 151 max : 0% < 25fps, 17%, 83% > 40fps - Run 1.4
FPS: 25 min, 41 average, 104 max : 0% < 25fps, 69%, 31% > 40fps - Run 1.5
FPS: 23 min, 41 average, 101 max : 3% < 25fps, 68%, 29% > 40fps - Run 1.6
FPS: 24 min, 41 average, 104 max : 3% < 25fps, 60%, 37% > 40fps - Run 1.7
FPS: 21 min, 41 average, 104 max : 7% < 25fps, 66%, 27% > 40fps - Run 1.8
- restart F.E.A.R
FPS: 38 min, 67 average, 151 max : 0% < 25fps, 4%, 96% > 40fps - Run 2.1


If you look at the minimum FPS and the percentages you'll see that the test progressively gets worse, until I restart F.E.A.R. That seems very odd to me.

I did some runs with everything at MAX and got the following results:

FPS: 17 min, 31 average, 65 max : 25% < 25fps, 59%, 16% > 40fps - Run 1.1
FPS: 12 min, 24 average, 63 max : 74% < 25fps, 14%, 12% > 40fps - Run 1.2
FPS: 12 min, 25 average, 63 max : 69% < 25fps, 18%, 13% > 40fps - Run 1.3
FPS: 14 min, 25 average, 63 max : 66% < 25fps, 22%, 12% > 40fps - Run 1.4
FPS: 14 min, 30 average, 66 max : 35% < 25fps, 47%, 18% > 40fps - Run 1.5
-restarted game and did this run
FPS: 13 min, 25 average, 65 max : 66% < 25fps, 23%, 11% > 40fps - Run 1.6


I guess it would be useful to know which graphics options have the biggest affect on the frame rate. My first run (auto detect) frame rate seems fine (FPS: 37 min, 66 average, 151 max : 0% < 25fps, 4%, 96% > 40fps) but I find that in game I still get occasional hiccups and I also see framerates that drop to 20. I'm using FRAPS to see that.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[myocardia]

Your "hiccups" are most likely caused by the game having to having to access the hard drive, because of too little RAM. RAM has absolutely nothing to do with framerates, however. But, here's your problem: the only cores that allow using 4 sticks of RAM are Venice and newer. That means that you can't use 4 sticks of RAM.

If you bought the video card at the same time that you bought the processor, chances are very good that you've got a Winchester core, so you won't be able to use more than two sticks of RAM. Well, using more than two sticks will force your RAM to run at 166 Mhz, and will severely limit any and all attempts at overclocking. If you were to buy either a San Diego cored 3700 or 4000, you'd be able to use up to three sticks. And having a Venice core like that 3800 that I linked you to, or newer, allows using 4 sticks. Although, even with the new cores, using 4 sticks requires running at a 2T command rate, and still limits overclocking to some extent.

If I were you, I'd definitely grab one of those 3800's, and see if you can find a single 1GB stick of 2-3-2-5 RAM (the lowest for any 1GB stick). It wouldn't be as good as having 2x1GB sticks, but it would be MUCH better than having 4x512MB sticks. The Venices overclock nicely with 3 sticks, and without having to use a 2T command rate.

 

[imported_marky1124]

Wow - I certainly came to the right place for quality information. That's amazing I wouldn't have realised all about those differences in the A64 cores.

I think I'll take your advice and get myself a new 3800 Venice processor. The prices have dropped a lot. Taking a quick look around I don't see a 1GB stick of 2-3-2-5 memory in my usual haunts so I might go with my original thought of replacing my memory with 2GB of Corsair TwinX PC4000 3-4-4-8 @ £170. Obviously the timings are much less but the throughput is more. I still find it hard to judge the outcome performance wise. I see what you mean that FPS is unaffected by Framerate so I guess it's just down to level loading times?

BTW - Regarding FEAR test benchmark. Did you see a similar change in numbers with multiple runs?

Cheers,
Mark