Improve Frame Rate - Best Option?

[Foz]

Hi all

I have been playing for a couple of months now and just recently discovered the advanced tab under graphics detail in AH.

Turning on any of the settings in the advanced area drops my frame-rate to what I would consider unplayable levels (~30 FPS).

Therefore I am wondering what the best bang for the buck upgrade would be to increase my FPS on my current machine?

I am currently running a

Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 @ 2.4ghz
4 GB RAM
Nvidia 8800GT 1 GB
MSI p35 NEO MB
1 TB WD Black HD
Win XP

I would appreciate any recommendations for possible upgrade paths (upgrade vid car?, cpu?, hopeless?)

Thanks for the help.

Foz

[BaldEagl]

First of all the machine you're running should be able to run everything at max including the high res pack but not self shadows or soft shadows.  Soft shadows are a real frame killer.

Since you're running XP I assume it's the 32 bit version.  If so that 1 Gb of RAM on the video card is eating into the system RAM and you're probably only using around 2.5 Gb of the system RAM.

Finally, your quad core CPU is probably only utilizing two cores as most games aren't optimized for quad cores.

All that said the biggest bang for the buck would be to clean up your machine.  Run cleanup and defrag, go to blackviper.com and turn off all unessesary Windows services, make sure any and all automatic updaters are turned off and make sure you don't have any applications running in the background while gaming including your security package although you can leave the firewall on if you're not behind a router.

The next thing to do, if you are comfortable with it and have sufficient cooling, would be to overclock the CPU to get a little more out of it.

If all that doesn't do it for you then a new Core2Duo CPU and a 512 Mb video card would do wonders.

[AirFlyer]

First of all the machine you're running should be able to run everything at max including the high res pack but not self shadows or soft shadows.  Soft shadows are a real frame killer.

Since you're running XP I assume it's the 32 bit version.  If so that 1 Gb of RAM on the video card is eating into the system RAM and you're probably only using around 2.5 Gb of the system RAM.

Finally, your quad core CPU is probably only utilizing two cores as most games aren't optimized for quad cores.

All that said the biggest bang for the buck would be to clean up your machine.  Run cleanup and defrag, go to blackviper.com and turn off all unessesary Windows services, make sure any and all automatic updaters are turned off and make sure you don't have any applications running in the background while gaming including your security package although you can leave the firewall on if you're not behind a router.

The next thing to do, if you are comfortable with it and have sufficient cooling, would be to overclock the CPU to get a little more out of it.

If all that doesn't do it for you then a new Core2Duo CPU and a 512 Mb video card would do wonders.

This ^^^

I've got a comp with almost the same specs(512mb version of the GPU though) and it can run the game maxed and with self shadows on(2mb flavor) at a nice 60 fps. If your comp is having trouble I can only imagine it's heat(8800GTs seem to be real good at that) or you need to clean up your Operating System some like Bald Eagle said.

[TequilaChaser]

after you have defragged and cleaned up your system,

you will want to be some where around 24 processes or less running at Boot Up...... ( hit CTRL-ALT-DEL  to launch Task Manager )

even better would be in the 18 to 20 processes running  ( example: on  my WinXP pro 32 bit OS, I have 17 processes running idle at Boot Up )

next, you may want to think about setting your PageFile manually to a set amount for both the minimum & maximum, instead of letting Windows manage your Virtual Memory for you ( example: I set mine manually to 4990 MB, this is what Windows says is recommended so I set both Max & Min to this amount, and it keeps the pagefile set to a specific place on my HD, instead of all over the place )

make sure your Video Driver and your Sound Driver is the most optimal Driver for your specific PC setup

hope this helps  /  Good Luck

[guncrasher]

another option would be to upgrade to win7 64bit.  cheaper than having to buy another processor and vc.  also can you list your power supply?  it might not be sufficient.

semp

[cattb]

I have a AMD 8750 2.4 overclocked to 3.0 with a 8800gt g92 processor and 4 gb RAM with 3 GB registered in a 32 bit system..I have VMWare and other application software installed on my PC. I can run a good 59 frame rate most of the time with over 50 processes and my antivrus and firewall on. On a occasion my frame rate drops but I am guessing its my anti virus updating. My frame rate never drops enough to bother me.
You should follow the others suggestions before investing.

[Boozeman]

I think you need to focus on the processor. It's a low clocked quad core, and since AH will utilize 2 cores best (the other 2 not that much) you need clockspeed.

1. Option: Overclock your CPU. I see a lot of Q6600s running at 3,2 GHz witout any sweat. 3.0 Ghz should be a piece of quake. But only if your motherboard supports overclocking, and you probably need to upgrade your CPU-cooler too, maybe even the PSU. But you loose your warranty, if you still have one. Overall, this option is only viable if you have the right surroundings.

2. CPU change. An E8400 C2D should give you plenty of power in AH (a fast dual core) but will eventually cost you performance in other applications. Depends on what kind of software you run. If it's web browsing, office, multimedia and AH, a fast dual core is the right choice. But if you do more professional stuff like rendering, video editing, number crunching etc. a quad core is a better CPU for that. In that case, a faster quadcore would be the way to go.   

[Spikes]

You can definitely overclock that sucker for sure. Those Q6600s overclock very well, actually all of the Q6-9's OC well. Just need a good CPU cooler.

[Krusty]

Overclocking in this situation is like saying "the car is stuck, quick, get me 10 guys to push it!"

when a single guy can easily push it if you shift it to neutral first.


the problem should not be solved by brute force because your system is more than capable of running AH. If it is horribly bogged down and you simply overclock it (rather than remedying the bog) it can become more and more bogged until even your overclock is nullified.

Don't overclock until it's does what it should on "stock" settings first. Chances are once you get to that point you'll be more than happy and won't want to bother anyway.

[TequilaChaser]

Overclocking in this situation is like saying "the car is stuck, quick, get me 10 guys to push it!"

when a single guy can easily push it if you shift it to neutral first.


the problem should not be solved by brute force because your system is more than capable of running AH. If it is horribly bogged down and you simply overclock it (rather than remedying the bog) it can become more and more bogged until even your overclock is nullified.

Don't overclock until it's does what it should on "stock" settings first. Chances are once you get to that point you'll be more than happy and won't want to bother anyway.

Excellent Post, Krusty 

[Boozeman]

Well Krusty, what is your recommendation then?
 

[Krusty]

All that said the biggest bang for the buck would be to clean up your machine.  Run cleanup and defrag, go to blackviper.com and turn off all unessesary Windows services, make sure any and all automatic updaters are turned off and make sure you don't have any applications running in the background while gaming including your security package although you can leave the firewall on if you're not behind a router.

Bald summed it up.

Go through, turn off things like EA game loader, or webshots desktop rotation, or all those little programs that load.

Second would be to remove extra "on start" programs. things like QuickTime's annoying plugin, as well as Adobe PDF reader's, and that MS Office quick launch thing that sits in memory, and all that other junk.

Third would be to go into your windows services and disable some of the junk you really don't want or need. This is the hardest part -- finding out what you need and what you don't. Google is your friend, but don't take it all at face value, check several websites until you start recognizing which ones are more reputable than others. Some just try and say everything is spyware, a virus, or a horrible threat in order to get you to buy their software/service/whatever.

These 3 suggestions all fall under bald's "clean up your system" comment.

That will help more folks than you might think. Vista is craptacular about this. I don't know about win7 but it's much more bloated than XP. Then there are the OEM installs of XP from HP, Dell, and other places that load on 70-80 processes running in the background and really kill any machine.

[Boozeman]

Well, the OP runs XP, so a bloated Vista is already out of the equation.

A system clean up will not help much. His system is strong enough to run 50+ background processes without a sweat.
His bottleneck is most likely the CPU. AH can utillize dual cores best, and thus the more GHz, the merrier.
This means a 2,4 GHz quad is not an ideal processor for AH - and a cleanup will not change this.
Sure, it will not hurt either, but the results will be very minor, if noticeable at all. 

[TequilaChaser]

Foz, would you mind posting the 1st 1/2 to 2/3rds of your DXDIAG info

this will help everyone alot in offering you advice, also let us know how many processes you have running at idle would be helpful


it is crazy to have 1/2 of your resources and CPU being used up with running 45 to 60 processes / services while idle......

some people can run as low as 13 processes/services using winXP OS and still be able to do everything on a computer as everyone else that has 50+ running at idle..... the only difference is the ones with the lower processes/services is able to maximize their computer CPU  & memory performance...for their systems are not bogged down at the get go.........

[Krusty]

A system clean up will not help much. His system is strong enough to run 50+ background processes without a sweat.

That depends entirely on what processes they are, don't you think? Some of the default installed things are really resource hogs. Even goin from a "mere" 40 processes down to 28 can make loads of noticable change on a fast system.

His bottleneck is most likely the CPU. AH can utillize dual cores best, and thus the more GHz, the merrier.
This means a 2,4 GHz quad is not an ideal processor for AH - and a cleanup will not change this.
Sure, it will not hurt either, but the results will be very minor, if noticeable at all. 

Wrong. He is not bottlenecked by his CPU. His CPU is more than fast enough to run everything he throws at it. It's not the CPUs fault if the software is being slowed down. Don't forget you're not just sending raw data to the CPU. You're sending commands to an OS, and if that OS is bogged down and trying to compute stuff it doesn't need, it's inefficient in how it sends individual bits of data to the CPU.

Would you rather run a dust buster with a clean air filter or a dirty one? Clean air filter sucks things up nice and fast, but a dirty filter takes almost all the suction out of it.

In this case, running 50 processes is a severely gunked up filter, and no matter what horsepower you got behind it, the filter (the OS, the processes running) is going to slow down what goes in and what comes out.


P.S. You do realize that the core2duos redid the basic performance and efficiency of Intel processors, right? For any given GhZ rating, even a Core2Duo running on a single core will outstrip a P4 of the same GHz.

A P4 3.0 GHz can be outperformed by a C2D E6400 running at 2.13GhZ, probably. And that's a low-level C2D chip compared to a high level P4. They only get (much) better as you go up the ranks. His 6600 quad may "only" run at 2.4 GHz, but it's way better than a P4 3.2 GHz overall.