New Builder Seeks Gaming PC <$2000

[lehtv]

MSI Afterburner is your friend for both GPU overclocking and in-game monitoring of framerates, GPU temperatures, volts, clocks, fan speed etc. HWMonitor for monitoring all other fans and temperatures. Check out overclocking stability testing guidelines.

Where do you see the 700MHz ram clock reported? In CPU-Z? CPU-Z should report DRAM Frequency 800MHz for DDR3-1600. What are your memory settings in BIOS?

 

[mfenn]

So I ran a stress test (Prime95) to get a feel for it and how my system responds. The average idle temp for the CPU is around 30C and once the test started it got to around 50C quickly. But around 10-15 minutes later it was at 60C and stayed there for another 10 minutes without going any higher.

Those temps are pretty decent, you've got plenty of room to OC.

Once I get my replacement RAM in I'm going to delve into the BIOS settings and OC everything. I'm shooting for anywhere between 4.2-4.4Ghz OC, getting my RAM to post the 1600 value instead of the 700 value that its currently doing for some reason, and overclock my GPU too. But I need to find more information for that.

DDR stands for double data rate, which means that data is transferred twice per clock cycle. So DDR3 1600 only runs at 800Mhz, DDR3 1333 at 667MHz, etc.

PS: Finally got Civ5 to play in 3D mode automatically. It does look really good and actually 3D while playing. So props to Nvidia for doing it right. That being said, you don't need 3D and I'm relatively certain it reduces frame rates... should probably get a frame rate analyzer tool.

The way 3D works is that it renders each frame twice, once for the left eye and once for the right eye. It offsets the camera ever so slightly for each eye in order to fool your brain into seeing a 3-dimensional effect. Since each eye only sees half the frames, you perceive that as a halving of the frame rate.

 

[boricua132]

Oh I see. Yeah it actually reports 666/667Mhz so I'm running at DDR3-1333 right now then. But thanks for the clarification on that. That should be an easier fix than I thought.

And gotcha for everything else. Cool, I should be good to go then once I get my replacement RAM in and install it.

 

[boricua132]

Update:

got my new RAM stick. Now have 8GB RAM operating at the DDR3-1600 instead of 4GB at DDR3-1333.

Overclocked to 4Ghz. I could probably go higher without raising temps too much, but I had peak temps of around 80C with an average of 75C at load. So I'm comfortable with this for now. Maybe during winter I'll see if I can go any higher without upping temps too much.

As for OCing the GPU, I think I'm not going to bother. I see 1150MHz core clock and 3000MHz Memory Clock speeds (that's reported by MSI, but GPU-Z reports 1500MHz. Don't know what's up with that) with a default boost and the games I play run smoothly at this resolution even with max settings.

So thank you everyone for your help. Much appreciated 😀

 

[lehtv]

I see 1150MHz core clock and 3000MHz Memory Clock speeds (that's reported by MSI, but GPU-Z reports 1500MHz. Don't know what's up with that)

Just like system memory, graphics memory is Double Data Rate. Some programs report the clock speed "before it's doubled", other's report the doubled clock speed.

 

[mfenn]

So thank you everyone for your help. Much appreciated 😀

Glad you're happy with it! 🙂