Bohemianbeatle

Hey guys! I've been thinking of upgrading my PC for this christmas but I need some advice when it comes to the CPU

My current system rig:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz
Asus P5B Deluxe
4x1Gb 667 RAM Kingston
Nvidia 9800 GX2
Creative Sound Blaster Fatal1ty
LG W2452V 24" Monitor
Windows XP

Ok the thing is I've been trying to play games such as Far Cry 2 or Crysis at the highest resolution but they're laggin just a bit, not as smooth as I'd like the game to run. On the other hand I want to upgrade my CPU, I've been thinking about getting a E9600 or a Q9550, but I finally decided to go for the quad core.

My question is.. will I notice such an improvement when gaming? I was thinking maybe my current CPU was bottlenecking the 9800GX2 cuz I don't really see the RAM or the video card being the problem here.

Btw I just got this 24" Monitor and I want to play at 1920x1200 and I'm also planning to get Vista 64 bits to take advantage of the full 4gb RAM support and DX10.

Thanx for your help! and sorry for my English ;)


John

wrench97

E9600? E8600 maybe it will be faster then the Q6600 but I think your current set up should do alright in Farcry what PSU are you running and do you have any overclock in the set up?

Bohemianbeatle

Sorry, I meant E8600 :P

No, no overclock atm, but I might think about it. I can't remember the PSU, its a 750w one so I think it should be fine. That's my current rig, so the PSU can take the 9800GX2, I'm only upgrading the E6600.

wrench97

I think I would put a good heat sink on it if you don't have one already and clock the cpu up to 3.0. I would wait another 6 months in your position and see what the new socket 1366 i7 cores do they will be out next week.
Don't underestimate the role a good PSU plays with a x2 card they are power hungry and if your starving the card your going to lose performance and have lag for x2 cards I like to see 800-850w so when you get a chance have a look at the psu label and let us know the brand and model.

Bohemianbeatle

So you are saying that if I don't have a proper PSU then the video card is going slower than it should? mmm i just checked the PSU, it's a Thermaltake Toughpower 700W.

magnethead

I have a P965-DS3 with E6750 and 9800 GTX with toughpower 650.

Does all i ever need it to do.

With your rig having a GX2, a 8xx PSU would be preferred, but i think you're in the same boat as me. My GTX is drawing the life out of my 650, i know within 2 to 3 years i'll have no choice to put a 750 or 850 in there. You just the same might be good for another year or two before your PSU gets overdrawn.

I have my 6750 OC'd to 3.0, and did it on the stock cooler. I know have an arctic cooler pro 7 on it, which brought my temps down, but the CPU gets unstable past 3.0. You might try bumping yours to 2.6 or 2.8 (400x7 or 350x8) land. Mines at 375x8 i believe.

what are your CPU and GPU scores in 3Dmark?

Bohemianbeatle

pff I can't remember, i need to install that program again and run 3Dmark, then I'll let you know. If I upgrade my PSU and get a 850+ would I notice the difference? would it be any major improvement? thanx again ;)

magnethead

that's why i'd like to hear 3D marks. If your GX2 is slower than my GTX, then there's a problem. However, I would expect your CPU to be slower than mine..the difference would dictate where you would need to go for optimization.

Bohemianbeatle

mm I see your point... alright, what 3Dmark version should I run?

magnethead

I use 06...should be the latest they have for free use i think.

Bohemianbeatle

Alright, when I get back home (I'm working atm) I'll run it and I'll let you know the score. Should I run it with all maxed out? should I disable AA or something like that?

linderman

the E6600 which is stock at 2.4ghz and 1066mhz FSB will struggle very hard to hit 3.0ghz....... they can but it really takes some darn good tweaking patience and good air cooler ........ you will also need to kick things up significantly on the cpu voltage .....definetly not going to happen with the stock cooler

I would check to see if your motherboard has a bios update to bring it to the E8500 or E8600 and 1333mhz FSB those will overclock to 4.0ghz and you dont have to be a wizard to get there either!

IMHO >>>>>> its your cpu that cant run with your 9800 GX2

if you have a high rpm 120mm case fan bring air in and a high rpm case fan exausting air out ........ I think your PSU can take the punishment for awhile longer ........ but NOT if you have a hot interior case temp ............ remember a power supply fan suck its "fresh" cooling air from within the computer box ........therefore if that 9800 GX2 is cooking the air in your box ....... then your giving your power supply the old "hot box" test .......... that is a bad senario

in your shoes ...... I would be looking for the E8500 or E8600

two x 120mm thermaltake smart fan-2 case fans .............. when gaming turn those fans on high ............... they are loud because they are 2800 rpm's

but they will save you from spending $175.00 or more on a high quality 850 watt power supply........................ that I would aim for and budget next summer ........before the summer heat hits again

BTW: the quad core eats alot more power then does the E8600 ....... in gaming the E8600 is plenty fast enough and equally as good for 1/2 the cost !!


the E8500 / E8600 at 4.0ghz would be almost doubling your cpu speed over your currently stock 2.4ghz 1066mhz cpu >>>>>>. that 9800 GX2 would surely know you put your spurs on then

linderman

BTW: my collegues are 100% correct ........ If you were doing a complete upgrade I would be yelling for the 850 watt ....... but after using and abusing the toughpower units for almost two yeats now...... they have proven themselves to me as being able to take a pounding ................. I am very confident it will pull the wagon for another 6-7 months as long as your increase your ventilation

Bohemianbeatle

Are you sure? I know maybe for gaming the E8600 will do better, but I don't think I'll get that much of an improvement in comparison with the Q9550, and i don't mind buying a Zalman or some kind of cooler to lower the temp. I mean, I'm thinking of the games to come that will probably be quad core optimized and I might do some multitasking as well so thats why I'm not going for the E8X00.

Btw, the PSU is 5 months old so it can take it for a while.

I'm about to run 3dmark, let's see what the results are.

linderman

The Q9550 are $100.00 more than the E8500 !!


games arent using more than two threads at this time ....... there are a few which are playing "tricks" right now that make it look like four cores are working ........ but one core will be a t 70% then another at 20% and then 10% and 10% ........ those are tricks

in order to make a game quad threaded the software programmer has to discard all their existing single threaded and dual threaded code and start from scratch ....... and true quad threaded programs will not run on less than a quad core .............. so please tell me ....... how long do you think it will be before we see true dedicated quad core games ? how long from now will it be before a game title can turn its back on all the single core cpu users and dual core cpu users ............... a game cant be ALL for ALL

you will see dual threaded games for a long time to come yet ........ at least 4 years IMHO ...... especially with the soft economy ....... you must realize ...... most high end gaming companies only have 5-7 high paid programmers ....... the others they employ are part time beginners (leafs they are called) that help write the mundande code ...... but they are cutting down on payroll big time ....... dont look for any big splash until the economy allows them to bloat the payroll again !

in reality the E8500 will game better than the Q9550 ...... that quad is at 2.8ghz stock the E8500 is at 3.1 ghz ............. even crysis which is the most hoggish; unoptmized game to come down the pike in a long time only uses 75% on core 1 and 25% on core 2 in most real life play action ????

linderman

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20...konen_04.shtml




everyone wants faster games, of course ........ but sales right now are soft and there are way too many dual core and single core machines still in existence ....... a game programmer can not turn their back and exclude the dual & single core cpu users ....... you will have to wait until the majority of the market the gamer is trying to sell to ALL have quads

linderman

However, the problem with multi-threading AI computation compared to other approaches is the following:

There are restrictions in the order of the computations, imposed by data dependencies that need to be passed from one task to another. This rules out straightforward solutions based on data parallelism.

The structure of these dependencies are only fully known at runtime while the AI is reasoning. This also rules out solutions crafted manually by programmers development time.



in plain english: most video tasks like rendering have to be caried out in an order ...... step 1,2,3 its not just a matter of having core 1 on rendering core 2 doing the action movement core 3 decision making ............. in reality tasks have to be completed in an order ............. thus the cores are waiting for a job to do !

Bohemianbeatle

Lol this is so confusing... I'm running 3dmark atm, i just got something around 9k at 1280x1024, I'll let you know once I finish the 1920x1200 test.

So are you saying I should go for a EX00? I had this same conversation with a guy from another forum, he said this to convice me to go with the quad core.

"Quad core is the best possible choice at the minute because more developers are factoring quad core support into their games, so physics ect. can be processed on another core to keep the GPU chuggin along nicely. in short, better frame rates down the line if you go quad core now

don't get confused or convinced that GHZ means everything. it's only a very VERY small factor in the entire equation.

Would you get more FPS playing crysis (horribly coded game imo) with the quad core or dual core that you've listed? You've probably get 3-5% more FPS on the dual core, but in another game you could likely get as much as 100% more FPS on the quad core if that game made good use of quad core and was cpu limited on the dual core.

So ask yourself this:

Do i only want to play current (AKA as of november 2008) or older games with about a 5% give or take, advantage over a quad core.... With the fact that in the extremely VERY NEAR future, my dual core will be unable to cope well with those newer games giving me roughly -25 to -100% performance vs the quad core.

OR

Do i want to play my games these current or older games with a -5% hit for the time being but be able to have 25-100% more performance then the dual core in the up and coming games.

Really it's an apples to oranges comparison. The 2 cores will never be able to ever compete with something that is nearly identical but with twice as many cores.

And to top it off, at same clock for clock settings, the quad core will always win out. Even a slightly slower quad core will usually always win as while a game may only take advantage of 2 cores, that means the rest of background tasks or other devices will have thier resources shifted and moved over to the cores that aren't being used giving the game exclusive access to 2 of the cores."

thats what conviced me

linderman

he hasnt listened to any programmers talking whatsoever ! LOL thats all idealogic reasoning

kind of like ........ 2 men can get more work done than one man

when in fact .......... the current games that can do anything with 4 cores arent really shining becasue there are a very small percentage of action that can be done which is not "dependant" on another being completed first !

this other fellas thoughts are based upon the incorrect assumption that most all game action can be carried out simulantously without dependancy on ORDER of execution


to put it more simple ........ its like a fire ....... how many people can go down the stairs at once ?

Bohemianbeatle

Mmm I see your point... it's very reasonable. Maybe I should save the money and go with the E8400.. or maybe a E8600? Then I could spend the money trying to lower the case temp.

btw, 3dmark test, highest settings at 1280x1024 --- 9714