Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Puma44 on February 24, 2017, 01:09:17 PM
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Hi Gents!
I have "legacy" computer with dual cross fired graphics cards that would constantly run 60 fps in any arena of AH2. It now runs in that range when I'm away from the big crowds of action. In the big crowds, its anywhere from 20 to 40ish fps with occasional screen stutters.
I am aware of the need for a minimum of 2G graphics cards with AH3. I have done a check on all of my drivers and get the "You have the latest drivers" message. I recently did a fresh reload of W10.
Additionally, I have an event the occurs sporadically. After a random time of game play (sometimes a few minutes, sometimes and hour or more, and sometimes not at all after 2 to 3 hours of play), out of my speakers comes a slow motion, metallic, garbled sound. I've been advised by other players during this that my transmission are pretty much unreadable. I've tested and reset all of the available windows sound settings. The only way I've found to eliminate this is to log out and restart the computer. After logging out of the game and still on the PC desktop any sound still has the same issue as in game. So, its a restart and log in. Most of the time the sound issue doesn't occur again. Although, a few times it has reoccurred after a restart. I did ask about this issue in a previous thread but, am asking again in an overall context of my "legacy" computer. Any ideas as to what the root cause may be?
All of that being said, I would appreciate any expert opinions about either upgrading the graphics card(s) and anything else obvious from the attached DXDIAG or just upgrading to a new system. My preference is to upgrade the graphics card(s). if that's the solution, what do you recommend for a new card(s) with an eye on future game improvements?
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a computer enthusiast not an expert. Therefore, I don't know what I don't know. :D
I look forward to your expert opinions and recommendations. Thanks gents! :salute
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As for the frame rates, the culprit is/are your video card(s). The AMD HD 4800 series are more than a bit outdated. Despite Crossfire giving you a good amount of video memory, the performance level is what it is. The frame rates look like they should be for that hardware. For dual card systems you might like to know that there's no official profiles for AH, you'd have to code them by yourself which isn't a task for an average Joe.
The rest of your system seems quite capable, there's many happy LGA775 motherboard/processor users here including myself. Based on Kanth's experience I'm looking forward to upgrading my HD 6970 to a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. He got very promising FPS with a dual core version of your processor.
As for the sound issue I can't give you any exact answer. It might be your power supply slowly failing, or at least struggling with the crossfired cards. They can take quite an amount of juice!
BTW the new GeForce cards are much friendlier to your power supply than previous video cards so if your sound problem is power related that might go away with a new single card.
Oh, and please get rid of that flickering of your avatar. It makes me feel like I were about to get an epileptic seizure and I can't afford getting another one.
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I happen to wonder if your sound problems are an HDMI conflict. If you are not using the monitor's speakers, then disable the HDMI sound. Many have reported issues there.
Description: Digital Audio (HDMI) (Creative SB X-Fi)
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: No
Hardware ID: PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_000B&SUBSYS_00441102&REV_03
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Type: WDM
Driver Name: ctaud2k.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.1348 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
Date and Size: 7/7/2010 12:00:00 AM, 697816 bytes
Other Files:
Driver Provider: Creative
HW Accel Level: Basic
Cap Flags: 0xF1F
Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000
Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0
Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0
HW Memory: 0
Voice Management: No
EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No
I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No
Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No
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You are not going to like this.
Windows 10 does not support older hardware very well at all. If Creative has not released an updated driver for Windows 10, then you are probably going to have problems with audio. According to your DXDIAG output, your Creative driver is dated 2010. Long before Windows 10 was a gleam in the eye of Microsoft and the sound API did change (again) for Windows 10.
Microsoft has stated that legacy hardware may not work well, if at all, with Windows 10.
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Thanks Gents!
Skuzzy, yeah I was afraid that would be the answer. I will explore further for a better Creative driver.
Easycor, thanks! My monitor speakers HDMI were enabled. I've disabled them.
Bizman, yeah, the graphics cards are stone and chisel compared to the current day cards. You mention the GTX 1060. Where on the spectrum of performance would that put my current system. Should that be the one I look at? Or, should I look at a higher performance card in anticipation of future game improvements? The flickering you mention is not showing up on my computer nor did it get set up that way intentionally. Anyone else seeing the same thing?
Here again, I don't know what I don't know. So, I would certainly appreciate recommendations from you three gentlemen and anyone else who may have experience in my predicament. I'm trying to avoid a whole new system at his point and want to extend my systems usefulness out a bit more. So, I'm looking at a balancing act and what the most effective options might be at this time.
Thanks again guys! Very helpful! :aok
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Puma I just got an MSI 6GB 1060 GamingX and love it so far. If you can drop north of 200 bucks on a video card I'd highly recommend that one.
That said it hardly breaks a sweat in AH3 on my win7/64 i2600-k system circa 2011. You could probably spend less on another 1060 and be fine.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
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Puma I just got an MSI 6GB 1060 GamingX and love it so far. If you can drop north of 200 bucks on a video card I'd highly recommend that one.
That said it hardly breaks a sweat in AH3 on my win7/64 i2600-k system circa 2011. You could probably spend less on another 1060 and be fine.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
Thanks Drano! Good input. I appreciate it.
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Puma, I'm using the EVGA 6GB 1060 (P/N: 06G-P4-6161-KR) in a system older than yours. I can maintain 60fps, on a 42" 1080p tv with most settings favoring detail and environment mapping at 1. It's physically smaller than the GTX 480 it replaced, and it uses less power.
:salute
Sik
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Thanks SIK1! Great input. :aok
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Yeah that's the thing about these 1060s. They use a fraction of the power my older 6950 did. I have a 1000w PSU that I bought with the idea I'd get another 6950 at some point. It's way overkill now.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
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That brings up another question. I've not done any serious shopping yet, but do the graphics card have a specified minimum required power unit?
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That brings up another question. I've not done any serious shopping yet, but do the graphics card have a specified minimum required power unit?
Yes, all cards have a minimum recommended power. The GTX 1060 reccommends 400W.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/10series/geforce-gtx-1060/ (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/10series/geforce-gtx-1060/)
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Thanks BowHTR! I've got 750W in my current rig.
I've started looking at the 1060/70/80 cards and different manufacturers. Any of the manufacturers more reliable than others?
My desire is to run AH3 with all the bells and whistles full up. With that in mind, is the 1060 the best card for full up with my legacy system?
Thanks!
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IIRC it was Kanth who said he got some 150 FPS on his LGA775 system, Core2Duo E8400 using a 1060.
If you're not going to invest on a tighter resolution than 1920x1080 or a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz, and/or if you're not planning to get VR goggles, the 1060 will be more than sufficient. The Environment Map slider is the only setting to be cautious with, but that's a killer for any card. I'm trying to convince myself to get one, calculating my gaming hours versus the 300€ price tag they have here.
Some manufacturers build better than others, and there's also variations within a single brand. Stick with the big names and choose a model with a back plate and improved cooling.
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Thanks BowHTR! I've got 750W in my current rig.
I've started looking at the 1060/70/80 cards and different manufacturers. Any of the manufacturers more reliable than others?
My desire is to run AH3 with all the bells and whistles full up. With that in mind, is the 1060 the best card for full up with my legacy system?
Thanks!
I would say if you want to run everything maxed a 1070 would be your best bet, and best bang for the buck, like the 970 was. That being said, nvidia definitely made a great card with the 1060. Get something with aftermarket cooling (not founders edition, basically anything with 2-3 fans). Some brands to check: Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, EVGA...more of a personal preference. I've got a Gigabyte G1 970 that has been great, one of my friends has a Gigabyte 1070 he just put in his new PC I built for him, it has been flawless. Great overclocking potential.
A few people have 1060's that are happy, but if you get a 1060 make sure it is the 6GB VRAM one. It's all about how much you want to spend.
The thing I'd watch for is your CPU bottleneck as it is older. I used to have a Q9550, it is a beast. Do you know what kind of motherboard you have? It might be overclockable that would help with the longevity of the system (in terms of performance). There's usually a motherboard model number somewhere on it to check.
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IIRC it was Kanth who said she got some 150 FPS on her LGA775 system, Core2Duo E8400 using a 1060.
If you're not going to invest on a tighter resolution than 1920x1080 or a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz, and/or if you're not planning to get VR goggles, the 1060 will be more than sufficient. The Environment Map slider is the only setting to be cautious with, but that's a killer for any card. I'm trying to convince myself to get one, calculating my gaming hours versus the 300€ price tag they have here.
Some manufacturers build better than others, and there's also variations within a single brand. Stick with the big names and choose a model with a back plate and improved cooling.
Fixed
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Thanks gents! Checking my build sheet, it lists an Intel 2 Quad CPU Q9650@ 3.00 Hz. I don't know if it's overclockable.
At this point, I'm not leaning toward VR. That's probably for a follow on system.
As far as manufacturers, I've seen all those listed in your post while browsing. Are there any know bad actors to stay away from?
It seems the 1070 or higher would satisfy my desire to run with everything full up and still get the steady 60 fps I used to get in AH2. Any other limiting factors I should be aware of?
Skuzzy's initial reply was not a surprise to me considering the age of my system. I just want to squeeze some more time out of the current rig.
I sincerely appreciate everyone's input and suggestions. I'm learning a lot and still don't know more of what I don't know. :salute
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The Q9650 is overclockable, but your motherboard needs to have the necessary options in the bios as not all motherboards support overclocking.
I don't think there should be any limiting factors, the 1070 is PCIe 3.0 while your motherboard is more than likely 2.0, but the card is backwards compatible. That said, it'll be great for when you do an upgrade, you can carry the card over.
I'm not too sure on any bad mfg's. EVGA had an issue where cards were catching on fire on their 1070(?)/1080s but that problem has since been fixed, but they have good support. Asus tends to have terrible customer support if there is ever an issue. An example from another forum is someone was on their chat support and had some issue with a component completely dead, Asus' response was literally: "Ok, thanks for contacting us about this! Have a great day!"
A lot of the new cards have a "feature" where if the card isn't working hard, the fans don't spin up until it does something (ie fire up a video game). This is generally dependent on temperatures, however I disabled this (just set the card's fans to spin at all temps) because my friend was having an issue with the card not spinning up while in games, causing some FR drops. I doubt this is a huge problem as I haven't heard too many other instances.
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Thanks Spikes, great info!
When you say is needs to have the necessary options in the bios, do you mean the options are there and just need to be enabled? Or, is something else required?
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I have high doubts about your bios providing the overclocking option. It's a Dell, and the <brand> systems usually have very limited overclocking facilities. This article might tell you the possibilities: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/80318-hacking-dell-overclocking-the-xps-630 (https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/80318-hacking-dell-overclocking-the-xps-630)
About your avatar, are you really sure it isn't flashing on and off several times a second?
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I have high doubts about your bios providing the overclocking option. It's a Dell, and the <brand> systems usually have very limited overclocking facilities. This article might tell you the possibilities: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/80318-hacking-dell-overclocking-the-xps-630 (https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/80318-hacking-dell-overclocking-the-xps-630)
About your avatar, are you really sure it isn't flashing on and off several times a second?
Bizman, I don't see any flashing from Puma's avatar.
:salute
Sik
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Thanks, SIK1. Neither do I as of now, but it was very obvious earlier. No matter what I did, it did the same on his profile page, too. I power cycled my router a couple of hours ago, maybe that fixed it? I've been having issues with another forum lately, too, and having booted from a USB Linux stick I can tell for sure it's not something in my computer. Rebooting the router didn't fix that, maybe I should reset it back to defaults. It is possible that the router has got a virus, I've seen that happen for a couple of customers.
[Edit] I just finished resetting the router, no changes in the issues on the other forum. But Puma's avatar doesn't flicker any more.
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Thanks guys! I've done some reading on overclocking and understand it better.
With an appropriate graphics card that will allow me to run the game options full up, is there any significant advantage to overclocking, if available? Just trying get a feel for the risk vs payoff of overclocking since I've got no previous experience with it.
:salute
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Well you should be able to plug and play the card in fine, I'm just saying if there is any bottleneck (ie performance hit while playing a game) it more than likely wouldn't be the card, but the CPU showing its age. This can be combated by overclocking to squeeze some extra performance out, but wouldn't be necessary.
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Understand Spikes. Thanks!
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Puma, your CPU already is on the magical 3 GHz line Skuzzy once recommended for AH3 back during the alpha/beta testing.
That said, I've managed to raise the bus speed of my E8500 of the same era to 800 MHz, raising the clock speed from 3.16 to 3.8 with the cost of occasional stability issues which cause the motherboard revert to standard settings.
Here's some good looking reading about what to expect: http://www.techradar.com/how-to/computing/how-to-overclock-your-cpu-1306573 (http://www.techradar.com/how-to/computing/how-to-overclock-your-cpu-1306573). The introduction chapter pretty much sums up the issues involved, the rest telling you that it's not a simple set-and-forget task.
Also notice, that according to studies a regular user won't notice performance boosts lower than 20%.
If I were you, I'd start by seeing how much a better video card can do. If you get a solid 60 FPS in all situations without major hiccups, overclocking won't improve that.
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Excellent Bizman! I'm hoping that a new card will give me the 60 fps without overclocking. I'm all about keeping it simple if at all possible. But, if needed, you've answered the question of how much to overclocking. Is it common for those who over clock to have hardware failures as a result?
Thanks for the link. I've read a couple others also that give similar instruction on the process.
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When someone runs into stability issues in the game, Skuzzy has often asked about overclocking as it can provoke instability. As they say in the Techradar article, "You might get lucky with your [processor], or you might not."
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Overclocking can be fun for tinkerer types like me. Ya gotta have patience because you should be testing in baby steps to find the limits of your hardware. And those limits are gonna be different between identically equipped systems. It's just the nature of the components. So there isn't a set this here and that there that would be good between similar rigs. Takes a bit of time to get right. My i7 2600k likes it at 4.7 on air. Think I got a good chip.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
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Bizman has it right. I didn't mean to make it sound like you'd need it, it is more of a last ditch effort. However, the Q9XXX series are monsters at OC'ing so the option is there, but I didn't realize it was a prebuilt Dell mobo, probably can't do much with that. but you shouldn't need to.
There are fail safes with overclocking, which basically just causes the computer to crash and sometimes revert back to default settings.
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Thanks guys. I appreciate the info. With some luck, a new card will solve my current issue and not require over clocking. :salute
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I'm running Win7 64 on one of the first generation ASUS MBs for the i2600k without overclocking. I added an EVGA 1070 and run with everything maxed out on a 1920x1080 Viewsonic monitor. I can't see any difference with the Envirnmental slider so I dialed it back to 1 but either way I am getting the max, 60 fps everywhere all the time. Like everyone else, the game stumbles but it isn't our hardware.
This is a PCIe2 chip/MB handicap, and PCIe3.x will take a new processor and MB. I see no need to upgrade further.
As you've been warned, the same card by any of the manufactures can be wildly different with less memory, backplate or fans. Avoid the Founder's editions, the tech has moved on.
For general info on card comparisons, see http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
Suppose you buy a 1060. You might find out that it has half the GDR5 memory for models withing the same manufacture. It might not have a backplate, or be under clocked relative to newer models. This has happened and it's a hard lesson when $30.xx more might buy the top card in someone else's line.
That link went to the CPU page, here's the Video Card page: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
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Thanks Easy! I'm starting the search. I appreciate the tips. :aok
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I have a older I7-3.3ghz processor with 970gtx and I get 58-60fps all the time. all I did was upgrade my card.
my machine has 18gigs of ram and I never want for smoothness in the game. my machine does anything easy's does!! :neener:
mostly what it comes down to is this: upgrade video card? or upgrade whole machine and video cards.
if you upgraded your card, and the machine still doesn't perform, then you probably need a machine upgrade.
if you upgrade your card, and it looks good and your fps is steady.... then you're good to go.
cards are cheap, compared to building a machine. go with a better card. if that doesn't work, keep the card and build a machine around it. hope this helps--Gary
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Thanks Gary! Great way of looking at it. I'm looking at the 1070 or 1080 cards. With the age of my rig, I'm thinking one of these may be the answer my frame rate/bells and whistles issue. You and several others have provided solid guidance on the direction to go. Any opinions on either of theses cards considering the rest of my rig's hardware? :salute
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Based on your DxDiag output, your monitor is "Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)" which means the 1070 will be more than enough. Even a 1060 would most likely do.
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Based on your DxDiag output, your monitor is "Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)" which means the 1070 will be more than enough. Even a 1060 would most likely do.
Unless you plan on getting a VR headset, then I would not go lower than a 1070, for best performance.
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Thanks Skuzzy and Bizman! Do you think a 1070 allow me to run with all the bells and whistles full up and at 60fps? No plans for VR until a new rig is acquired. I'm inclined to go little above minimum required.
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1070 will do it all. Might still have to crank down the "Environment" slider/setting though.
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1070 will do it all. Might still have to crank down the "Environment" slider/setting though.
Thanks Skuzzy!