Should I have gone with a different CPU?

[greatromances]

Hey everyone. I'm not sure if this is "good" performance for the price, but I feel a bit dissapointed with my new setup. I think I might have gone with the wrong CPU setup for my gaming rig...

Right now I have my PD805 running at 3.66ghz w/ 1gb of 667 DDR-2 and an ATI Radeon X1800XT@660/775. I've never played on an A64, so I don't really know what to compair this to as I upgraded from a XP2500+ w/ an X850Pro. It seriously beats my old system to the ground, but I really was expecting to run F.E.A.R A little better than it actually has. It sometimes gets choppy even at 1024x768/no soft shadows and low light detail, everything else set to high and 2x/2x AA/Anyso. Should I have gone with an AMD chip for the games, or does this sound about right for a sub $1,000 setup?

 

[hardwareking]

dude for fea,u need 2gigs of system memory to get rid of chopiness at any resolution.
And an overclocked pentium d 805 is as good or better than any athlon out there.Make sure ur cpu has good cooling and is fed power properly.
Cause at those speeds,for proper functioning the 2 things i mentioned are necessary.

 

[greatromances]

okay, so I just need to pop in another gig of mem and that'll solve my choppy problem? I've got an antec truepower 450, I would think that's sufficient power.

 

[Duvie]

While even at 3.66ghz it doesn't beat most X2's modestly overclocked (unlike hardwareking's assertion), I do agree that with that fast of a modern cpu and a very nice vid card you should not have very many limits at this time...

Are you sure at 3.66ghz it is fully stable??? What are the temps like??? No throttling occurring?

 

[Duvie]

The P-D is power hungry as well as that vid card which are both oc'd....It may be fine but that is on the edge in my opinion for power...

 

[hardwareking]

okay maybe i exagurated(spelling)but if u can get it up to 4,then what i said is true.
And romance dude all u need to do is pop in another gig and poof all chopineess has vanished.
And make sure ur pentium d is adequately cooled as improper cooling can also cause artifacting and chopiness.

 

[greatromances]

Well, i'm not sure if it's throttling cuz I don't have any way of telling during in-game play. But, temps under load are ~58-60 max at 3.66ghz. Whenever I exit the game and run cpu-z, the CPU is still displaying 3.66 ghz so I would think it's not throttling. What I will do is downclock to ~3.3ghz just to double check on the ingame performance. If it is a throttling issue, it shouldn't throttle at that speed with the lower temps. I really should invest in a more powerful PSU as soon as I run into some $$$ though.

But, with these system specs, I theoretically should be able to run F.E.A.R at higher than 1024x768 with better performance than this correct? I've never been sure as this is my first intel system build, and i've heard bad things about gaming under intel chips. Just double checking.

 

[Duvie]

Iwould think so....

 

[dguy6789]

Fear uses more than 1GB of ram. I don't care if you have a 10Ghz Athlon 64 with 4 video cards, you will not run Fear well on only 1GB of ram at max settings. Upgrade your memory and all will be well.

 

[greatromances]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Fear uses more than 1GB of ram. I don't care if you have a 10Ghz Athlon 64 with 4 video cards, you will not run Fear well on only 1GB of ram at max settings. Upgrade your memory and all will be well.

I will consider upgrading to 2gb of ram, the only problem is this... I have 2 sticks of 512mb pqi ddr2 in dual channel mode. If i get 2 more sticks of 512, it will take it out of dual channel. Will the increase in ram amount counter out the non-dual channel memory? I would think so, just not sure?

 

[m1ldslide1]

I went from 2x512 to 2x1GB and it made a HUGE difference in FEAR. I'd get rid of your 2x512, or stick them in your desk or something, and upgrade asap. You'll have to start over with your overclock to a large extent, but even at stock speeds I bet it'll be a lot less choppy.

 

[greatromances]

meh... I won't be able to do a 2x1gb setup, as my funds are limited at the moment. Should I go with the 4x512 or just hold out for 2x1gb? Would it be that big of a difference to justify the wait though?

 

[Noubourne]

A P4 can't do 4x512MB of DDR2 in dual channel mode?

Seriously? What chipset is that?

 

[dguy6789]

I have never heard of 4x512 not running in dual channel. 4x512 should work just fine in dual channel. Could you show us where it says your mainboard cannot run 4x512 in dual channel?

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: greatromances

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Fear uses more than 1GB of ram. I don't care if you have a 10Ghz Athlon 64 with 4 video cards, you will not run Fear well on only 1GB of ram at max settings. Upgrade your memory and all will be well.

I will consider upgrading to 2gb of ram, the only problem is this... I have 2 sticks of 512mb pqi ddr2 in dual channel mode. If i get 2 more sticks of 512, it will take it out of dual channel. Will the increase in ram amount counter out the non-dual channel memory? I would think so, just not sure?

4 sticks will still run in dual channel mode, and like the others have said, F.E.A.R. is a ram hog.

You can verify that the lack of ram is the issue. Restart the computer. Start up F.E.A.R. and run it till it starts stuttering. Exit out of the game, open up task manager, go to the performance tab and look under the commit charge section. If the peak is higher than the total ram, you are hitting the page file, and thats causing the stuttering.

 

[Captante]

I'd have to agree that RAM is the most likely culprit because your CPU is plenty-fast & at 1024x768 I got decent performance in FEAR with a 6800GT & 3200+ A64 at stock speeds, however I had 2 gb's.

 

[greatromances]

okay, ran through the games performance test and here's my commit charge results - Total is 253464 and my peak was 650916.. so i guess that means i need more ram to run this game eh? Damn

 

[cubeless]

u could get one 1gb stick to add to your 512's... then get the other later... a lot of posts here on at show that dual channel doesn't make that big of a difference (5%ish) and only in some apps... ( i am running this config on a dfi ultra and my kid isn't screaming or anything...)

but buying 2 more 512's doesn't make much financial sense...

 

[Maximilian]

Or save up for 2x1GB and leave the 512 sticks in there, ending with 3GB of ram

 

[robertk2012]

Id rather have the 2x 1gb than 3 gb unless you need the large amount of ram and at this time I doubt you do.

 

[robertk2012]

Also buy one 1 gb and then get another later. The boost from staying off the page file will more than make up for not running dual channel.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: cubeless
u could get one 1gb stick to add to your 512's... then get the other later... a lot of posts here on at show that dual channel doesn't make that big of a difference (5%ish) and only in some apps... ( i am running this config on a dfi ultra and my kid isn't screaming or anything...)

but buying 2 more 512's doesn't make much financial sense...

Dual channel makes a much larger differance with netburst chips, more like 15-20%..so not using dual channel would not be a good idea..

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: stevty2889

Originally posted by: cubeless
u could get one 1gb stick to add to your 512's... then get the other later... a lot of posts here on at show that dual channel doesn't make that big of a difference (5%ish) and only in some apps... ( i am running this config on a dfi ultra and my kid isn't screaming or anything...)

but buying 2 more 512's doesn't make much financial sense...

Dual channel makes a much larger differance with netburst chips, more like 15-20%..so not using dual channel would not be a good idea..

QFT... This ain't your brothers AMD chip....INtel netburst chips quad pumped fsb needs to feed the bandwidth....dual channel is a big diff..