Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Fencer51 on April 04, 2012, 07:32:38 PM
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Cheers Lads,
Looks like I need to update my system to get the best frame rates.
I have the following system..
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System Information
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Time of this report: 4/4/2012, 20:27:26
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.101209-1647)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 08/18/08 Ver: 08.00.14
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5400+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz (Black Edition)
Memory: 3072MB RAM
Page File: 747MB used, 4204MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode
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Display Devices
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Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTS 250
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0615&SUBSYS_0593196E&REV_A2
Display Memory: 1024.0 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0011.8208 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
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Sound Devices
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Description: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [E800]
Motherboard - ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD
1000 watts power supply..
What can I do to this system to upgrade it to run AH better? I used to be able to run full out, but with the new graphics updates I cannot any longer.
Thanks!
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Had a similar processor in my Laptop (got it three years ago). You could do a video card, but then unless you OC the processor you would have a bottleneck there. Assuming your supply is still good, 1,000 watts is not going to be any issue. if your looking for speed, I would look Intel. I had an AMD Phenom II X6 1055 running at 2.8 ghz I believe, Under load it did better then my i7, but same amount of cores and my i7 is .4 ghz faster. nothing amazing, but under load I would rather my AMD. I havent used nVidia cards so I cant comment there, but if you swap to Radeon a 6850 or 6870 should do you just fine.
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I believe the # of Memory Slots being used Fencer, might be sapping some speed from your system and not running in "Dual Channel Mode".
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Your graphics card is very limited and the CPu is not the fastest.
I'd start with the graphics card ,Nvidia GTX460/560 or Ati 6850/6870 should be fine
With a Bios update your motherboard is able to handle even the most recent Phenom II six-core.
Another bottleneck may be a small/slow or fragmented hard drive.
Why the hell do you have a 1000w PSU in this computer - ever heard of low efficiency at low PSU loads, system should barely require more than 250W max to run ?
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I believe the # of Memory Slots being used Fencer, might be sapping some speed from your system and not running in "Dual Channel Mode".
Karaya, could you explain what I can do to fix that?
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Karaya, could you explain what I can do to fix that?
What model Motherboard do you have bro?
Found it.
ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe. My guess is you have 3x1GB Ram sticks. The problem with some MB's, is by using 3 of 4 slots, you are running Single Channel. Whereas, using 2x1GB sticks in your Gold/Yellow Slots, you'd be running Dual Channel.
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Your graphics card is very limited and the CPu is not the fastest.
I'd start with the graphics card ,Nvidia GTX460/560 or Ati 6850/6870 should be fine
With a Bios update your motherboard is able to handle even the most recent Phenom II six-core.
Another bottleneck may be a small/slow or fragmented hard drive.
Why the hell do you have a 1000w PSU in this computer - ever heard of low efficiency at low PSU loads, system should barely require more than 250W max to run ?
A 460 wont help with this processor. I had the same one before my new build with a 460 and the 250 performed better because of the bottlenecked CPU. I'd just do a rebuild.
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Make sure the MB you have will support 125 watt Phenom and you could stick a black edition Phenom and a 460,560 or 6850,6870 as mentioned before. As long as MB bios will support you could goto the 6 core. The update as mentioned above will give your board some longer life, probably around 275 to 300 cost.
I don't know the use of your puter or how long you intend to use it if you upgrade. If you did go this route with this MB it would be the last upgrade because you are at the end of the road.
I also have 790 AMD board like yours, but a gigabyte. I upgraded my PSU and GPU over winter with christmas sales.Sometime in the next year or two I will upgrade the rest with new board, cpu, and memory. My computer fits my needs for now and don't see any hurry in upgrading the rest of the computer at this time or anytime soon.
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Fencer,
you could gain a good bit of performance by cleaning up your processes/services being used
your pagefile numbers are: Page File: 747MB used, 4204MB available
a good clean / tweaked windowsXP system should be around 200 MB used or less and at startup & sitting idle you should have around 18 to 21 processes running
Karaya also had a good point on either removing 1 of the 3 1 GB sticks or adding a 4th 1 GB stick of Memory, so you could run in Dual Channel mode.....
I recently threw together an AMD system that had an ASUS AMD board with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6400+, 3.2GHz (Black Edition)
and 4 GB of memory running an ATI HD3870 with 750 watt PSU........ it could damn near run the game maxed out using hirez pkg screen res was 1280x1024 and texture shadows was 2048
but I used Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate for the OS ( most of the parts were used....... just bought a new MB so the person could upgrade to an AMD AM3 processor if they ever wanted to
so either clean up and tweak the windowsXP and work out the RAM issue and possible upgrade your video card............. and just going from experience, I would use an ATI videocard since both your northbridge & southbridge are AMD/ATI chipsets.... instead of nvidia(nforce) bridge chipsets....... you might gain some performance there as well.....
and you might could gain even more if you upgrade the OS to Win 7 Pro 64 bit ( just my personal preference but I would not use the home/home premium versions......... I always recommend the Pro if not the Ultimate 64 bit, for the RAM allowed/accepted quantity gets a significant increase going from the home version to the Pro or better Win 7 OS'es )
I did tests back then when I first was testing Windows 7 64 bit over WindowsXP Pro 32 bit on a similar build as I posted above... the windows 7 outperformed the windowsXPPRO by 15 to 20 fps....... and I had my processes tweaked to 18 on the winxp os ( the system was setup for dual boot ) think I even posted about it here in this hardware forum....... back in 2009
edit: your monitor settings look strange to me:
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
current says you running at 1920x1080 but Monitor Max Res says it should only be 1600 x 1200......... if you are "forcing" either the monitor or the video that could cause you some performance possibly........ just assuming here......
hope this helps...... best of luck to ya
TC
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TC 18 to 21 processes is for people who are pretty knowledgeable in windows and can pretty much fix anything that goes with it. for the rest of us who know nothing about windows having that few processes will basically kill our system sooner or later as we need windows to trouble shoot and fix most minor problems basically because we cant do it or dont know how.
I once tweaked my system down to 25 processes and lost connection to the internet. I was basically screwed as I didnt know how to fixed it as I always had relied on windows troubleshooting it for me. and that process was disabled. for two days i couldnt figure out how to connect.
around 35 processes in windows xp is good for those of us who dont know crap and even if we google we still dont know what other processes may be affected by whatever we disable.
I have relied on blackvipers website to help decide which processes i totally understand I dont need. http://www.blackviper.com/
a pagefile of around 700 isnt too bad either for us who know nothing about nothing.
:salute
semp
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A lot of combinations may result in a display of 3GB of memory, even if 4GB is installed but only 3GB usable.
The page file value shown is a combination of both usable RAM + the actual page file. A fragmented page file of variable size has often been a source of some system slowdowns, it was always best to disable the page file and reinstall it with a fixed size (min = max size) after reboot.
And yes, the monitor/display information is a bit irritating unless it's some kind of virtual desktop mode.
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I recently threw together an AMD system that had an ASUS AMD board with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6400+, 3.2GHz (Black Edition)
and 4 GB of memory running an ATI HD3870 with 750 watt PSU........ it could damn near run the game maxed out using hirez pkg screen res was 1280x1024 and texture shadows was 2048
Why did you use a 750W PSU into this system - a quality/brand 450W PSU is more than enough for this system and has even reserves for a stronger graphics requiring more power. Especially if this 750W PSU is one of these dirt cheap ones only claiming to deliver 750W but already desintegrating/exploding at 500W or less.
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I have dual monitors.
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When I used XP Pro, I kept my machine to SP1 and had 14 processes running, including AH. SP2 brought it up to 23.
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Why did you use a 750W PSU into this system - a quality/brand 450W PSU is more than enough for this system and has even reserves for a stronger graphics requiring more power. Especially if this 750W PSU is one of these dirt cheap ones only claiming to deliver 750W but already desintegrating/exploding at 500W or less.
it was an old PC Power & Cooling PSU........ and I used it because it worked good and I had it laying around........ I built the PC for a friend and gave it to them ( the original MB had (4) HD3870's AMD spider system , which back then was still overkill for AH, also a beoch to make work properly........ so hardly used it for anything )
understand regarding dual monitors, Fencer
I agree, I have always set a maximum and minimum pagefile size when using windows98 or WindowsXP so it stayed in a dedicated location on the Hard Drive , caused less fragmenting, etc.....
I simply disagree that 700 MB used in the pagefile is acceptable for playing Aces high using the WindowsXP OS..... it is 3.5 times to high......... a clean system will be 200 MB used or less
I disagree that "The page file value shown is a combination of both usable RAM + the actual page file" in Windows XP ...... it is a swapfile location on the HardDrive, that is used once the Physical Memory (DIMMS) are in full use, to where WindowsXP has to use the pagefile system
hope this helps
TC
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No, the page file in this dxdiag report is indeed both usable RAM (available for the OS) + pagefile and what's shown as used is the amount of memory issued/assigned to programs, regardless of whether it's real RAM or in the page file.
This behaviour is the same on Win7 - I have 8 GiB RAM, pagefile disabled yet dxdiag shows a pagefile with 1462 MiB in use and 6726 available.
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No, the page file in this dxdiag report is indeed both usable RAM (available for the OS) + pagefile and what's shown as used is the amount of memory issued/assigned to programs, regardless of whether it's real RAM or in the page file.
I agree on the pagefile that the "***MB used" portion of the pagefile is and can be both physical ram &/or hard drive space together if/when needed...... I disagree that "available" portion of the pagefile is a combination of both......
If I disabled my pagefile on my OS, I too... would also only show my RAM whether it is 4 GB, 8 GB, 12 GB, 16 GB etc......
although normally the pagefile system is enabled, when set manually it will show what ever parameters that have been chosen which most times would be 1.5 times the amount of RAM total on the MotherBoard if set manually & correctly.... NOTE: More times than not though for most PC Users, windows will be set to adjust it automatically as needed, then it would be continously changing its available space.....
the directx report has always read them seperate, unless one disables the pagefile system, if they do then it falls back on using the physical ram amount
I have never seen the pagefile in a directx report add the physical ram and the alloted harddrive space together, when the pagefile was enabled
regarding pagefile system ( Virtual Memory ) regardless if it is Win 3.0 thru Windows7 if you go look at it (in Win7: the popup window in control panel/advanced system settings/advanced/performance options tab)
it clearly tells you what the pagefile is and what it is used for.... and it is exactly what I explained it was: a paging file is an area on the harddisk that windows uses as if it were RAM
TC