Author Topic: For anyone considering dual cpu upgrade... (Read 411 times)

eagl · « **on:** September 28, 2006, 04:07:35 AM »

For anyone considering dual core cpu upgrade, I strongly recommend it.

My system is based on this:
MSI Nforce3 socket 939 mobo with AGP slot
nvidia 6800GT mildly overclocked
2 gig PC3200 memory
Soundblaster audigy2

I had an A64 3700 San Diego, 2.2ghz with 1 meg cpu cache.
New cpu is A64 X2 4400, 2.2ghz, 2x 1 meg cpu cache.

Because of my RL flying, Andy Hollis' old saying "framerate is god" is a true statement for me. Stuttering totally ruins the gameplay experience for me. I run a 60hz refresh rate LCD monitor, and any framerate below about 40 fps is noticeable and unacceptable to me. Primarily, the problem I have is that objects and the horizon seem to stutter when rolling whenever the framerate gets below about 40.

My old settings - 512 textures, 1280x1024, sliders around midpoint, 2x or 2XQ FSAA. This would get me maxed 60 fps most of the time, with drops to around 40 in furballs or near burning fields. Tower FPS between 35 and 45.

After dual core cpu upgrade, I run 1024 textures, same 1280x1024 resolution, I've upped the sliders another 1/4 of the way towards max, and even better I now can run 4X FSAA. I wish I had a 7xxx vid card so I could run transparency FSAA and get rid of even more shimmering in AH trees, antennas, etc, but I don't have one.

Keeping in mind that the new X2 cpu has the exact same clock speed as the old cpu, this is a HUGE increase in performance playing AH. I simply never expected this to be the result and didn't buy the upgrade to help out AH, but the results were amazingly good in AH for some reason.

The only downside to the upgrade was that my old USB webcam seems to crash my computer now, so I need a new webcam. Everything else seems work better/faster. Given the very very low cost of AMD socket 939 X2 cpus now, I STRONGLY recommend this upgrade for anyone looking for a little more oomph out of their A64 system. Make sure you apply the patches, use a recent bios, and don't expect a miracle with single threaded apps unless you also increase the clock speed, but for me it was a great upgrade.

straffo · « **Reply #1 on:** September 28, 2006, 03:02:35 PM »

I'll follow your path

Krusty · « **Reply #2 on:** September 28, 2006, 03:43:46 PM »

Nice testimonial to upgrading. I'm on a 533MHz FSB P4 2.66GHz. It's pretty good for most things. My video card is slowing me down at the moment (new on in the mail!).

As soon as I can save up $180 I'm going for the lowest priced Conroe I can. Actually I have that much now but I just bought a video card so the politics of my family dictate that I wait a while before spending that much.

Anyways, dual core is the way to go in the future, as all Windows products for the next 5 years are going to max out the one core just running the OS. You'll need the second just to play Minesweeper!

Hopefully by the time I can get a dual core, they'll have the second generation of Conroe out, and the first generation will be dirt cheap(er!).

Skuzzy · « **Reply #3 on:** September 28, 2006, 04:10:37 PM »

Aces High II is multi-threaded eagl, hence the performance boost.

By the way, I am almost done with that POVRay file. I should be running some tests this weekend. Hopefully have a file everyone can use to test CPU performance early next week. I am trying to keep the render times to something less than 24 hours.

Sancho · « **Reply #4 on:** September 28, 2006, 06:22:34 PM »

Yeah, I'm digging the dual core performance too. I got the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard and an Intel E6600 Core 2 Duo CPU. This upgrade allowed me to keep my existing AGP video card and DDR memory with the option of upgrading to PCI-E and DDR2 later. So far, I haven't seen any FPS below 60 in Aces High at my default 1024x768 resolution, and GTR2 runs great as well. Coming from a 1st generation Athlon 64 3000+ this is was an awesome upgrade for around $375.

ramzey · « **Reply #5 on:** September 28, 2006, 08:02:06 PM »

damm, i miss the deal
last weekend at Frys we had E6300 with dual slots agp/pci-e, DDR400-DDR2 mainboard for 170$

dam , dam , dam

Wardog · « **Reply #6 on:** September 28, 2006, 08:09:58 PM »

I have 2 systems running on the Intel CPU, 1st is a test system with Intel 630 3.0ghz running WinXP Pro 64x the 2nd is a D930 3.0 dual core running WinXP Pro. I am very happy with the D930, and am now setting up an SLI system E6400.

Nice to see AH being able to use both cores

Dog out.

Shamus · « **Reply #7 on:** September 29, 2006, 12:41:24 AM »

Does the 1 meg cpu cache perform much better in the game than the 512k?

shamus

eagl · « **Reply #8 on:** September 29, 2006, 05:44:43 AM »

I have not tested AH with both 1 meg cache and 512k cache cpus, but to be honest I don't think there would be much of a difference. The performance increase from larger cache sizes really drops off rapidly as the cache size increases. I'm not sure where the cutoff is right now, but I haven't seen any benchmarks that show more than a percent or two benefit from the larger cache.

On the other hand, the larger cache is less likely to overclock well because more cache = more circuits/transistors/switches/etc that could go bad, and more generated heat.

I like the bigger cache 'cause I'm a computer geek and it somehow makes my enoodle seem larger. Caring about cache size is one of the very few truly stupid things I do when making hardware purchases, because the price/performance ratio for a mere cache upgrade is very poor and the money is probably better spent elsewhere. But one of my college courses was on cpu design and I got to SEE with my own eyes how cache size can effect performance, so now although I KNOW that it doesn't make that big of a difference, I still want the larger cache cpu for some reason.

It's like comfort food, knowing that I've done everything in my power to give my cpu the greatest chance of a cache hit... Being able to track down this particular hangup to the week spent tracing a single instruction fetch/decode/execute cycle through an 8086 cpu doesn't make it any more logical.