Suggested Tweaks to Max My System

[mhouck]

Here is my system.

Vista Home Premium x64
C2D E6400
MSI-P6N SLI-FI
4 Gb DDR2 800 Mushkin 5-5-5-12
EVGA 8800 GTS 512
Hanns·G HG-281DPB Black 28" 3ms
APEVIA ATX-CW500WP4- 500 Watt

This is all stock. I was showing off Crysis to a friend last week and he mentioned that I might be bottlenecked by my processor and should look at a quadcore. I don't have any lag playing Crysis on all High settings at 1900 x 1080 with out AA on but 16xAF in DX9 mode. I would like to run enable AA or run in DX10 at playable FPS but I end up with severely slowed FPS. I can forsee most of my gaming being at this resolution as well.

I have played with overclocking my cpu and memory before Crysis but didn't really see any tangible improvements in my gaming.

My question is this. If I overclock my fsb to 1333 and get my processor to 2.66 as opposed to stock at 2.13 and fsb 1066 will I see improvement in gaming performance? Can I overclock beyond this on air cooling (not intel stock). Should I look to upgrade my CPU? Money isn't really the issue detering me from a new purchase, its just I would rather not upgrade a 1 and 1/4 year old CPU on principle; especially when there is a new generation of CPUs coming out in the next quarter.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Your CPU is fine... If you want you can OC it up to 400FSB or so... Look at the E6750 overclocks...

I don't think you would see major improvements, if any.
Your GPU is the bottleneck on Crysis, doesn't matter which one. DX10 always runs crappy anyway.

 

[mhouck]

So the best suggestion is just to go with an overlock on the GPU?
Any suggestions on which tuners to go with? I've read a thread that where the OP says he's having issues with RivaTuner on the 8800GTS with 169.25 drivers(same as me). Is ATItool any more compatible or any other program for that matter?

 

[terencek]

Yeah, go for RivaTuner to do the OverClocking and to set some fan profiles, and use ATITools to check for Artifacts. Or just play graphics-intensive games for about an hour at each jump of your OC.

Here is a good guide to use RivaTuner and it'll show you how to OC and set the fan profiles (important!) and just Google ATITools, that one's pretty simple.

Hope it helps

 

[happy medium]

Overclock them both is my vote. What do you have to lose? Should get to 2.9 easy.

 

[DSF]

1) Your friend's advice to get a quad-core to increase your framerates is misguided. That won't help very much, if at all. Certainly not enough to justify the expense.

2) Overclocking your CPU might help, but again, probably not much at all.

3) Overclocking your GPU may or may not help. If it does, the difference isn't going to be earth-shattering. But hey, it's worth a shot.