Would my X3 435 be bottlenecking a 5850?

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Bill Brasky

Diamond Member
May 18, 2006
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You'll want to punch yourself in the balls if you buy that 5770. And if a 5850 is truly bottlenecked by a Phenom II processor, then you haven't turned up the eyecandy high enough.

edit: I just saw your last post. Since you have a decent card at the moment, waiting is a great idea.
 

Apocalypse23

Golden Member
Jul 14, 2003
1,467
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I am surprised you dont get lower than mid 30s at times with that dual core in BF2. there was a graph someone had in another forum showing the Phenom X2 hitting the 20s quite often while the X4 at the same mhz was nearly twice as fast at times.

that being said yeah his Athlon 2 X3 would hold back the 5850 but not enough to really matter. at 1920x1080 he would do better to go for the 5850 over the 5770 at this point.

Ran the tests many times, the lowest fps is 35 ish and only for a few seconds. Average fps seems 50 ish. I notice that for about a fraction of a second very rarely my fps drops to 10-12 and then catches up, it's as if the CPU is burping....None the less, overall it's game able.
 

Headfoot

Diamond Member
Feb 28, 2008
4,444
641
126
Dont get the 5770, just go to the 5850. The 5770 will be an upgrade yes, but it wont be that large and you'll probably feel like you wasted the money. Hopefully in a weeks time the Fermi release will drop prices, but they might not.

Worst case scenario: get a 5850 used off the forums for less money and get a shway good card.
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,118
34
91
Dont get the 5770, just go to the 5850. The 5770 will be an upgrade yes, but it wont be that large and you'll probably feel like you wasted the money. Hopefully in a weeks time the Fermi release will drop prices, but they might not.

Worst case scenario: get a 5850 used off the forums for less money and get a shway good card.

I would do that but I have yet to find someone who would ship in QC, Canada...
 

WildW

Senior member
Oct 3, 2008
984
20
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evilpicard.com
5850 is still a worthwhile bump with that sort of processor. As for bottlenecking, it will depend on the game. In general everything should be fine - a few new things like BF Bad Company 2 may be a bit limited, but that one in particular seems to just want more cores rather than fast duals. An X3 should be fine.

I have a 5850 with a cheap "fast" dual core - sure I'm bottlenecked at times - Far Cry 2 runs around 60 to 70fps instead of 80 to 90 I might get with an i7. But there's a world of difference between bottlenecked at 40 to 50fps and bottlenecked at 60 to 70.
 

JACKDRUID

Senior member
Nov 28, 2007
729
0
0
YOU HAVE SB710!!!!
*******************************************

UNLOCK THE 4TH CORE for godsake!!

*******************************************
go to bios
disable overclock
enable acc
save and restart

you have a 90% chance of unlocking. good luck
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,118
34
91
YOU HAVE SB710!!!!
*******************************************

UNLOCK THE 4TH CORE for godsake!!

*******************************************
go to bios
disable overclock
enable acc
save and restart

you have a 90% chance of unlocking. good luck

Hahahah already tried that with no succes.
What I might try is increasing the vcore by 0.05V, disabling Cool & Quiet and try to unlock one last time...if it doesn't work, i'll be happey with the 3-core OCed.

Thanks for the enthousiasm JACKDRUID!
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,118
34
91
It's a little off topic but at first I simply overclocked the X3 435 to 3.19GHz (10% preset ASUS BIOS) on stock cooler and stock voltage.

Now I OCed it to 3.48 (240x14.5) with the Xigmatek Cobra D984, which is HUGE, but really nice, quiet and efficient cooler. OCed and stable on stock voltage too!

I know I could get more but the performance boost is noticeable at least, love it!

Do you think I could push it to 3.6-3.7 with that cooler and a litte more voltage?
 

nomagic

Member
Dec 28, 2005
143
0
0
I just upgraded my PC with an HD5850. See my signature below. I also game at 1920*1080 with a 22 inch monitor.

After overclocking my E8400 further to 3.85GHz, I dont think my 5850 is bottlenecked too much. However, this is my objective opinion. I haven't got the chance to compare benchmarks yet.
 

heyheybooboo

Diamond Member
Jun 29, 2007
6,278
0
0
It's a little off topic but at first I simply overclocked the X3 435 to 3.19GHz (10% preset ASUS BIOS) on stock cooler and stock voltage.

Now I OCed it to 3.48 (240x14.5) with the Xigmatek Cobra D984, which is HUGE, but really nice, quiet and efficient cooler. OCed and stable on stock voltage too!

I know I could get more but the performance boost is noticeable at least, love it!

Do you think I could push it to 3.6-3.7 with that cooler and a litte more voltage?


Woo Hoo !!! Good job! :thumbsup: That's impressive on stock voltage.

I'm thinking your NB/IMC is now 2400MHz (240x10). You may want to try bumping the NB multi to x11 for a little extra kick to 2640MHHz - might take a slight bump in the NB vid.

For each 10% you OC the NB/IMC, memory bandwidth is increased 3-4% and latency is reduced 3-4%. This should get you a little boost in frame rates, too.

As noted earlier, moving beyond 240MHz/333 would raise you RAMs speed over spec 800MHz. A slight OC above 240MHz would not be so bad but otherwise you would need to go 333--->266 with your ratio.




--
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,118
34
91
Woo Hoo !!! Good job! :thumbsup: That's impressive on stock voltage.

I'm thinking your NB/IMC is now 2400MHz (240x10). You may want to try bumping the NB multi to x11 for a little extra kick to 2640MHHz - might take a slight bump in the NB vid.

For each 10% you OC the NB/IMC, memory bandwidth is increased 3-4% and latency is reduced 3-4%. This should get you a little boost in frame rates, too.

As noted earlier, moving beyond 240MHz/333 would raise you RAMs speed over spec 800MHz. A slight OC above 240MHz would not be so bad but otherwise you would need to go 333--->266 with your ratio.

--

Thanks heyheybooboo!

Yeah I follow your advice and lowered the RAM to 333 and set the CPU to 14.5x240 and it's working great so far. With the new cooler, I played Age of Conan yesterday most of my evening and the CPU cores never got hotter than 41C, which is quite cool I think!

I'll try to set the HT to x11, like you say, to get a little extra edge! But with this current setup, it's quite nice the boost I have in performance, i'm really impressed and start to love this OC thing!

I'm waiting for my Xigmatek Cuirassier RAM heatsinks to come in and gonna try to go 14.5x250-255 on the CPU so the RAM will follow with a little oomph too.

I'm fairly comfortable with CPU OC now, but RAM is another thing with the freq but timings and voltage...not gonna try playing with those yet heheh!

Thanks all, don't hesitate to throw some more infos/advices!
 

JACKDRUID

Senior member
Nov 28, 2007
729
0
0
It's a little off topic but at first I simply overclocked the X3 435 to 3.19GHz (10% preset ASUS BIOS) on stock cooler and stock voltage.

Now I OCed it to 3.48 (240x14.5) with the Xigmatek Cobra D984, which is HUGE, but really nice, quiet and efficient cooler. OCed and stable on stock voltage too!

I know I could get more but the performance boost is noticeable at least, love it!

Do you think I could push it to 3.6-3.7 with that cooler and a litte more voltage?

too bad about not able to unlock... have you tried it on another board? sometimes a bio update might do the trick... and be sure to turn off all OC first. but seriously, you would be so luckily unlucky to get an unlockable... (i'm 2 for 2...).

However, 3.48 pretty good OC, good job!

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

make sure your bios is at least version 3.3 which "Improve ACC unleashing mode function. "
earlier versions had it locked.
 
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Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,118
34
91
So I just updated my BIOS from 0506 to 0701.

I'll try to unlock tonight maybe...

Few questions:

- In the ASUS BIOS, the HT max multi is x10, I guess i'm out of luck on this one?
- If I want to increase the vcore, there's no options specifically called "VCORE" but there's: CPU overvoltage, VDDNB overvoltage and CPU VDDA voltage. I guess I have to use CPU overvoltage and set it to maybe 1.4V to get 3.6-3.7GHz?

Other thing, when I flashed the BIOS everything went well. On reboot I loaded the default settings and when Win7 tried to boot I got a BSOD but didn't had tme to read. When Windows finally loaded properly, I got a window detailing the problem and it was:

Error: Blue screen
Code: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
Region: can't recall

But now it's working so I don't think it's a serious issue?!
BSOD is generally driver conflicts if i'm right?
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,118
34
91
I finally managed to unlock the X3 435, which now shows as a Phenom II X4 B35!!!!

Wow, now it's time to overclock it a bit!
Damn I love fooling with OC!

By the way, is there a way to see the temp in Windows since HWMonitor and CoreTemp won't show it anymore?

Thanks all for your help!!

EDIT: Same OC of 3.48GHz working so far. Played some Just Cause 2 and it's running smooth. Tomorrow maybe i'll test it with OCCT for an hour. For 79CAD it's worth every penny!
Is it possible to unlock L3 cache too?
 
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JACKDRUID

Senior member
Nov 28, 2007
729
0
0
I finally managed to unlock the X3 435, which now shows as a Phenom II X4 B35!!!!

Wow, now it's time to overclock it a bit!
Damn I love fooling with OC!

By the way, is there a way to see the temp in Windows since HWMonitor and CoreTemp won't show it anymore?

Thanks all for your help!!

EDIT: Same OC of 3.48GHz working so far. Played some Just Cause 2 and it's running smooth. Tomorrow maybe i'll test it with OCCT for an hour. For 79CAD it's worth every penny!
Is it possible to unlock L3 cache too?

ah ha!! gratz! i knew you could do it!

unfortunately, L3 cache simply isn't there :(

only a few early athlon x4 620s have unlockable cache...

usually unlocked cores doesn't OC as well, make sure you run prime95 to ensure system stablity, or back down a bit.

How can HWmonitor not working? is it after OC or after unlock?
 

Rhezuss

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2006
4,118
34
91
ah ha!! gratz! i knew you could do it!

unfortunately, L3 cache simply isn't there :(

only a few early athlon x4 620s have unlockable cache...

usually unlocked cores doesn't OC as well, make sure you run prime95 to ensure system stablity, or back down a bit.

How can HWmonitor not working? is it after OC or after unlock?

It's after the unlock and after reading a lot about it, seems to be common.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1499697

I have yet to find an app that could monitor it, the only way is in the BIOS.