Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: RELIC on February 26, 2005, 04:27:56 PM
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I just got my new MB, CPU, RAM and PSU installed last night and WOW what a HUGE difference! I would encourage those of you who are having framerate issues to be aware that an upgrade to your CPU and RAM might make all the difference.
Old System:
Pent 4 1.5
512 133 RAM (I think that 133 RAM was really holding things down)
170 watt PSU
New system:
AMD 64 3000+ (socket 939)
Epox MB (Nforce 3 ultra)
One stick of Crucial Ballistix 512 RAM (gonna get another stick when the wallet gets fat again)
480 Watt PSU
The difference in gameplay is amazing. Even though my framerates will drop as low as 27 in a smoking furball mess, that is MUCH better than the 5 to 10 FR's I was getting previously. Since my vidcard is a 9600 Pro I assume upgrading later to would help even more - but I'm pretty happy with how it looks now. Flying and looking straight up gives FR's of a tad over 300.
The question I have is on setting the RAM in bios. I have read that it should be set at "1T" instead of "2T" but I have NO idea what this means. I currently am running the MB bios at the default "safe" settings. Would it help if I ran it at 1T? Can you set it at 1T with only one stick of RAM?
Hope those aren't stupid questions - still learning here.
THX
RELIC
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Let the mobo autodetect the memory settings. It should detect at 200mhz fsb, and cas settings of 2,2,2,6 with 1T command rate. That memory is very good so you should be able to use the fastest memory setting if it doesn't autodetect.
Without going into the ugly details, lower is faster for most memory settings except FSB speed. 1T is faster than 2T, cas 2 is faster than cas 3, etc.
The second stick of memory will just let you run the memory in dual channel mode, meaning it accesses both sticks of memory at the same time which theoretically doubles your transfer rates.
In another thread, skuzzy mentioned that at a certain point, you don't get better framerates with newer generations of vid cards because if you have a better vid card, AH automatically switches to a different rendering path that improves vid quality to take advantage of the better vid card. That means that a newer vid card may only get you improved quality, not better framerates. Obviously he couldn't list any details of what exactly changes, however he said that within limits, AH will abuse the heck out of the vid card which is why 2 people, one with a 9600 and one with an x800, can set their ah graphics sliders to the same spot and get very similiar framerates - the guy with the x800 is apparently going to get better image quality at any given framerate.
I could be misquoting skuzzy, but that's what I understood from his post.
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You also have to consider that MOBO is designed for the 64 CPU and has a much faster FSB than your old one. You are comparing apples to oranges. Your new system bears as much resemblance to your old one as your old one does to a calculator. Well, maybe a scientific calculator. :)
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i would definitly try running the 1t command rate , i see a nice boost in my system 64 3400+ . I run my timings at 2.3.3.10 1T . you should have no problems running that . <
> 38
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Thanks for the info.
I went into bios and noticed the auto timing settings were 2-2-2-8, changed them to 2-2-2-6. When I tried to do a mild overclock on the system it wouldn't boot up. Apparently there is a feature on the MB called safeboot that prevented me from booting and if I hit F1 to continue it reset all the bios settings to safe mode.
Can anyone give me some tips on what I need to input into bios to get an overclock? Clearly I am doing something wrong.
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You may not be doing anything wrong, the memory just may not want to go any lower on the latency settings.
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losen the timings up say 2.3.3.8 and try to clock it . even 2.5 .3.3.10 . i have the same problem if i try to clock at too low a latency it wont boot
38
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OK I will give that a shot when I get home.
Thanks again for everyone's input!
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I think most experts will agree that memory timings make a very small difference. I tried tweaking mine and got various stability problems. Remember to change ONE thing at a time so you know which is causing the problem.
Better still, leave the timings at SPD and enjoy your games ;)
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Heh heh yes I SHOULD be playing but hell why pass up a perfectly good chance to blow something up in real life?
Anyway I changed the timings to 2.5-3-3-8 and got up to 2.4 on the cpu before I chickened out. Ran 3dmark03 and the cpu temp only got to 43 c on the stock AMD cooler. I tuned the thing down to 2.3 and reset ram at 2.5-3-3-7 timings.
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Yep, AMD's 64's are sweet. Stock cooler runs a full 12* cooler
than my old XP, and overclocked to boot. Just cant be beat for
gaming.
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using only 1 stick of ram with a 939 system means you are only running in single channel DDR mode...which will be quiet a bit slower.... :(
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Originally posted by RELIC
yes I SHOULD be playing but hell why pass up a perfectly good chance to blow something up in real life?
Mind if I add this to my "massive list of ultimate quotes" in my signature? :D
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Sure, I'd be honored ;)
Incidentally I got the system all nice and stable overclocked from 1.8 to 2.5.
BIOS:
RAM dialed down from 200 to 166, 2.5-3-3-8
HT at 3X
vcore bumped from 1.3 to 1.4
CPU multiplier set at 8
CPU overclock at 313
Temps max out at 45c with stock cooling so it looks like nothing is gonna blow up after all! I'm wondering what kind of difference I will see when I get the second stick of Ballistix.