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HalloKitty posted:Q9550 is a far from throw from Conroe. The only reason I upgraded from a Q9550 to a 2500K was because I was having weird mystery problems. (Unrelated to the actual CPU, it turns out). It's great to read your post. My main PC has a Q9400 and I can't seem to find a reason to upgrade because everything still runs fine. I should probably stop reading the PC Upgrading thread because everyone seems to have the need to upgrade their i3-i5s and I keep thinking I must be missing something. TimeWaster fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Apr 4, 2016 |
# ? Apr 4, 2016 04:39 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:38 |
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mobby_6kl posted:I have an unexplainable itch to upgrade the sandy dual core i7 in my laptop to a proper quad i7. Does anyone know what's the fastest one that can be crammed into a Lenovo T520? It's a socket 988B rPGA and using the QM67 chipset. Do you have any reason other than the itch to proceed?
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 04:40 |
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TimeWaster posted:It's great to read your post. My main PC has a Q9400 and I can't seem to find a reason to upgrade because everything still runs fine. I should probably stop reading the PC Upgrading thread because everyone seems to have the need to upgrade their i3-i5s and I keep thinking I must be missing something. Q9550 @ 3.6ghz here and yeah, these old quads still hold up strong. I'm only on a 560ti and I've noticed cpu bottleneck on games that are cpu intensive but most stuff runs fine. Not sure how well it would run with a modern graphics card fitted though, I'm pretty certain it would be more noticeable. Also the was a major pain to get the overclock stable, whereas my nephews 6600k skylake for example was effortless to overclock. And of course being on ddr2 will slow things down somewhat, I'm on 8gb of 1066mhz which I got waaaay back when I was on a core2duo and was amazed to find 8gb still the standard all these years later. Iirc I used to use the same 8gb of ram as a ram - drive, which I guess was kinda like having ssd speeds before ssd s existed. Was interesting times.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 13:35 |
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Captain Hair posted:And of course being on ddr2 will slow things down somewhat, I'm on 8gb of 1066mhz which I got waaaay back when I was on a core2duo and was amazed to find 8gb still the standard all these years later. Iirc I used to use the same 8gb of ram as a ram - drive, which I guess was kinda like having ssd speeds before ssd s existed. Was interesting times. I can remember gawking at Microsoft's recommended 4GB of ram for Vista. At the time, I was on a 256MB orange Apple clamshell and a hackintosh xserver with 2GB. I don't know if I could characterize 8GB as the standard back with C2D. Perhaps for hyper enthusiasts, much like how 32GB is a goal for a lot of ultraenthusiasts now?
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 13:40 |
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Potato Salad posted:I can remember gawking at Microsoft's recommended 4GB of ram for Vista. At the time, I was on a 256MB orange Apple clamshell and a hackintosh xserver with 2GB. I don't know if I could characterize 8GB as the standard back with C2D. Perhaps for hyper enthusiasts, much like how 32GB is a goal for a lot of ultraenthusiasts now? I certainly can't imagine more than 4GB being usual before Vista, because XP being 32-bit couldn't use more than that (there was briefly I think a 64 bit Windows XP but basically noone actually used it).
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 13:47 |
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TimeWaster posted:It's great to read your post. My main PC has a Q9400 and I can't seem to find a reason to upgrade because everything still runs fine. I should probably stop reading the PC Upgrading thread because everyone seems to have the need to upgrade their i3-i5s and I keep thinking I must be missing something. That's not to say I'm not glad now to have that 2500K, however. That Q9550 went to a good home, in the end.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 13:49 |
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I need to look at market share stats, but I think xp pro 64 was and is pretty popular.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 13:50 |
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Captain Hair posted:Q9550 @ 3.6ghz here and yeah, these old quads still hold up strong. I'm only on a 560ti and I've noticed cpu bottleneck on games that are cpu intensive but most stuff runs fine. Not sure how well it would run with a modern graphics card fitted though, I'm pretty certain it would be more noticeable. While marginally newer I'm running an i7-920 (stock 2.66GHz, overclocked to 3.6GHz) with a 560ti and I'm still amazed that it's able to hold its own 6 years on. I keep thinking about upgrading it (and lurk this and the GPU thread) but there seems to be very little performance payoff compared to the investment of a new CPU, motherboard and RAM. I've also thought about just upgrading the graphics card, but again it still handles everything I throw at it. I guess it helps that I'm not into fast FPS games, and I only game at 1920x1200. Is there anything I'm missing out on by running older hardware, other than speedier boot times from EFI/M2 SSDs? The big thing seems to be the TDP dropping over the years, where a more performant modern CPU would kick out far less heat (and the 920 seems a monster in comparison), but right now I'm able to run an aftermarket cooler at 10% speed for near-silence at the desktop.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 14:02 |
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Potato Salad posted:I need to look at market share stats, but I think xp pro 64 was and is pretty popular. It was primarily only used in workstation situations. Drivers were a MAJOR problem because a lot devices just didn't support it.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 14:11 |
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Potato Salad posted:I need to look at market share stats, but I think xp pro 64 was and is pretty popular. Potato Salad posted:I can remember gawking at Microsoft's recommended 4GB of ram for Vista. At the time, I was on a 256MB orange Apple clamshell and a hackintosh xserver with 2GB. I don't know if I could characterize 8GB as the standard back with C2D. Perhaps for hyper enthusiasts, much like how 32GB is a goal for a lot of ultraenthusiasts now? Potato Salad posted:Do you have any reason other than the itch to proceed? The reasoning is basically that laptop is already huge and heavy, might as well get it up to some serious performance, and the Sandy quads are still very competitive. I think I might be in HK later and pick something up for cheap there. Mr Chips posted:There's a bloke claiming to have put in an i7-2630qm quad core into a T520 here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/upgrading-a-thinkpad-t520i-with-an-i7-2630qm.771352/
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 14:11 |
Froist posted:While marginally newer I'm running an i7-920 (stock 2.66GHz, overclocked to 3.6GHz) with a 560ti and I'm still amazed that it's able to hold its own 6 years on. I keep thinking about upgrading it (and lurk this and the GPU thread) but there seems to be very little performance payoff compared to the investment of a new CPU, motherboard and RAM. The CPU should be fine for now but I'm surprised that you are getting decent performance out of that 560Ti still. I upgraded from a HD6970 to a GTX 970 about a year ago and it made a huge difference, the 6970 is about equal to a 560Ti too and I'm also playing at 1920x1200. I don't play fast FPSes either and that upgrade made my entire experience in most games vastly better, so if you were to do any upgrades in the near future I would go with a new GPU, probably one of the new ones AMD or Nvidia are bringing out in the next few months.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 14:24 |
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feedmegin posted:I certainly can't imagine more than 4GB being usual before Vista, because XP being 32-bit couldn't use more than that (there was briefly I think a 64 bit Windows XP but basically noone actually used it). 64 bit Windows XP was basically a hastily rebadged Windows Server 2003 SKU, which many programs couldn't run on either because they still relied on 32 bit only drivers or because they detected a server OS and thus demanded a different license. There was also the original 64 bit XP, which even fewer people used - because it was Itanium only.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 16:17 |
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Gets out checkbook
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 16:25 |
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Don Lapre posted:
There's the E5-2687W at a 1000$ discount!!!!
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 16:41 |
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Don Lapre posted:
I don't know what I'd do with all that cache but I want it
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 17:09 |
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Panty Saluter posted:I don't know what I'd do with all that cache but I want it Can we make a ram drive out of l2 cache
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 17:11 |
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If they drop a desktop Skylake/Kabby with 128MB eDRAM...yeah, let's talk.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 17:47 |
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Skylake-C is officially not happening, so we'll be waiting a while for more of that, if it ever comes at all.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 17:50 |
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HMS Boromir posted:Skylake-C is officially not happening, so we'll be waiting a while for more of that, if it ever comes at all. Is lots of cache helping much in Vr gaming min fps workloads? If so I really, really hope Intel jump on that idea. I like to keep vomiting to a minimum.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 18:26 |
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wipeout posted:Is lots of cache helping much in Vr gaming min fps workloads? If so I really, really hope Intel jump on that idea. I like to keep vomiting to a minimum. Well, not sure about VR specifically but one of the largest advantages of the Broadwell based i7-5775c (Broadwell with 128mb eDRAM/L4 cache) over Haswell/Sandy Bridge/etc was much better minimum framerates. So maybe?
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 18:44 |
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Don Lapre posted:
Yes..... Do I need it? No.. Do I want it? Yes.. Also Captain Hair posted:Q9550 @ 3.6ghz here and yeah, these old quads still hold up strong. I'm only on a 560ti and I've noticed cpu bottleneck on games that are cpu intensive but most stuff runs fine. Not sure how well it would run with a modern graphics card fitted though, I'm pretty certain it would be more noticeable. Getting that Q9550 to OC properly was a bit tricky, you have to tackle the Math that handles the DDR2 in the overclock to get everything working dandy or else you're pushing voltages needlessly in some areas and leaving a lot of performance on the table with improper settings because lower ones appear less stable, when instead you're just breaking the formula somewhere causing it to crash. I dug up the old OC guide that went over it all on overclock.net. Man once I dialed in my Mushkin Blackline to 1081Mhz on a 1:1 OC, the system oc'ed to 3.84ghz easier than 3.6 and at 1.25vcore to boot (It vDroops from the setting I have listed in that post a bit, but I think the 1.25v happens when idle and 1.325 when loaded). It runs fantastic.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 19:10 |
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wipeout posted:Is lots of cache helping much in Vr gaming min fps workloads? If so I really, really hope Intel jump on that idea. I like to keep vomiting to a minimum. I'd imagine so. The i7-5775C, even with a large stock clock deficit, did extremely well in frame time and minimum frame rate metrics in benchmarks. I want to see it done again. All the cache.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 19:14 |
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HalloKitty posted:I want to see it done again. All the cache. I do too. Is there anything on the cards for it? I really want a big cache chip, with full speed pcie and ultra m2 for a little Vr box.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 20:40 |
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I've been fooling around with some craigslist Core 2 Duo machines. If the machine is new enough to support Penryn chips (45nm, 1333 MHz bus), chances are it will accept a similar Xeon chip with some simple modifications. You have to put a sticker on the bottom of the CPU, cut the little orientation tabs off the LGA 775 socket, and put the new CPU in a different orientation (gold triangle facing same direction). This tiny bit of work nets you mad street cred, plus the abililty to pick up the equivalent (X5450) of a Q9450 for like $20 shipped. If you have a low-end C2D or Pentium, this could buy you another year. The best chips are quad core, near 3 GHz, and have 12MB on chip cache. The socket modification is pretty easy and safe if you use another LGA 775 chip as a protector. I used a Core 2 Duo e6300 as a guide. If you are afraid and don't have any extra 775 CPUs around, you can get an LGA 775 Pentium Dual Core for $3 shipped. The sticker is easy to apply. Just apply one end and then use the blunt part of a razor blade to nudge it into place. I forgot some stuff between reading about the mod and ordering parts; I rotated the chip so the tabs aligned instead of the triangle. The machines I tried this on wouldn't boot, but there was no permanent damage. After rotating the chip, and systems worked. If you have an old LGA 1156 system, there are 4C/8T Xeon chips for less than $35 shipped. This could buy some extra time for a dual core machine. I sold my i5-750 (4C/4T, same clockspeed) for more money than it cost to get a Xeon X3450. Plus Xeon bragging rights.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 20:59 |
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PBCrunch posted:I've been fooling around with some craigslist Core 2 Duo machines. If the machine is new enough to support Penryn chips (45nm, 1333 MHz bus), chances are it will accept a similar Xeon chip with some simple modifications. You have to put a sticker on the bottom of the CPU, cut the little orientation tabs off the LGA 775 socket, and put the new CPU in a different orientation (gold triangle facing same direction). This tiny bit of work nets you mad street cred, plus the abililty to pick up the equivalent (X5450) of a Q9450 for like $20 shipped. If you have a low-end C2D or Pentium, this could buy you another year. The best chips are quad core, near 3 GHz, and have 12MB on chip cache. That's neato. Hows the OC headroom on those Xeon chips as those old platforms allowed it quite easily?
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 21:31 |
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Panty Saluter posted:I don't know what I'd do with all that cache but I want it Have your system crash from cache bitflips most likely. I wonder how long it will be before ECC pushes down to the consumer space since the cost difference is fairly small these days and the large cache/dimm sizes are just asking for problems.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 21:45 |
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Isn't CPU cache ECC already, anyway?
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 21:53 |
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I thought only on the Xeon line, but I could be wrong on that.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 21:57 |
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Combat Pretzel posted:Isn't CPU cache ECC already, anyway? Not always. Recent Xeons varied from single-bit error correction to parity to full ECC for L1. L2 and LLC had different strengths of ECC. I think Haswell had ECC on L2 and nothing on L1?
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 22:00 |
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Subjunctive posted:Not always. Recent Xeons varied from single-bit error correction to parity to full ECC for L1. L2 and LLC had different strengths of ECC. I think Haswell had ECC on L2 and nothing on L1? I say "theoretically" because even on ECC-enabled systems getting the error to actually bubble up from hardware to the OS has proven difficult.
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 23:16 |
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JawnV6 posted:What's 'recent' in this context? 2011, if I'm reading this correctly: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/xeon-e7-8800-4800-2800-families-vol-2-datasheet.pdf quote:• 32 KB Level 1 instruction cache with single bit error correction, and L1 Data cache: 32-KB Level 1 data cache with parity protection, or 16 KB Level 1 with ECC error correction and detection on data and on TAG
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 23:22 |
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EdEddnEddy posted:That's neato. Hows the OC headroom on those Xeon chips as those old platforms allowed it quite easily?
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# ? Apr 4, 2016 23:43 |
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HalloKitty posted:That's not to say I'm not glad now to have that 2500K, however. That Q9550 went to a good home, in the end. For sure, I would upgrade too if I had tonnes of disposable income (read: low priority at the moment). I was interested that you identified that the CPU upgrade wasn't the solution to your "mystery" problem. I've had a couple of hard freezes lately that got me thinking it might be time to upgrade (prioritise) the CPU but I'm still not convinced. Captain Hair posted:Q9550 @ 3.6ghz here and yeah, these old quads still hold up strong. I'm only on a 560ti and I've noticed cpu bottleneck on games that are cpu intensive but most stuff runs fine. Not sure how well it would run with a modern graphics card fitted though, I'm pretty certain it would be more noticeable. I kept reading in other threads/internet that you need to balance the CPU with the GPU but I recently upgraded my HD4870 to a R9 270 and haven't noticed anything. Again, I didn't really see any need to do this upgrade (performance seemed fine on games like Civ 5, Skyrim, Torchlight 2, XCOM: Enemy Within, Diablo III at 1080p with the HD4870 as well as stuff like light video editing) but AMD put the HD4870 into it's legacy driver stage and I started having driver problems with Windows 8.1. I always wonder what I should be noticing if the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU or visa versa? I guess the point of my posts is that I feel like hardware has some forced redundancy by companies for most PC tasks. I'm not discounting the fact that people need newer hardware for intensive tasks. TimeWaster fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Apr 5, 2016 |
# ? Apr 5, 2016 01:03 |
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Subjunctive posted:2011, if I'm reading this correctly: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/xeon-e7-8800-4800-2800-families-vol-2-datasheet.pdf Feature descriptions like that are hard to parse out, the entire line gets re-pasted if 1 bit changes, e.g. for the first one if the half-width ECC mode was changed to also cover the TAG the entire line would be repeated. But caches have had better protections further back than Broadwell. The only visible documentation where I'm able to suss it out is in the PRM, chapter 15, relevant stuff starts in 15.4. Even then it's "oh, if you wanted to detect when HW silently fixed something for you," without really talking about what's being fixed. The further I read the more convinced I am nobody outside has actually used this, there's a lot of goopy APIC setup. You'd be tempted to read Chapter 16 where error codes have friendlier names, but the whole thing splits into each model family and stretches more towards incomprehensibility. Any chapter that has both "FSB" and "QPI" is Too Much.
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# ? Apr 5, 2016 01:36 |
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TimeWaster posted:I kept reading in other threads/internet that you need to balance the CPU with the GPU but I recently upgraded my HD4870 to a R9 270 and haven't noticed anything. Again, I didn't really see any need to do this upgrade (performance seemed fine on games like Civ 5, Skyrim, Torchlight 2, XCOM: Enemy Within, Diablo III at 1080p with the HD4870 It really seems to depend on the game. Here's what I've noticed in mine. Kerbal space program: Cpu major bottleneck, but then until recently it was a 32bit 2-core supporting program Iirc? Wreckfest: Cpu bottleneck when playing online, I believe thus is due to the physics calculations going on and only happens when there's a lot going on such as pile ups of 5+ cars. Xcom 2: cpu bottleneck when doing anything cpu related, pretty sure this entirely the games fault. Mad max: perfect for the vast majority of the game, only a few times did the cpu bottleneck throughout my entire pkaythrough. Now, cpu bottleneck to me is when my fps drops more than say 5fps when the cpu is at full load and graphics card is only at say 70%. Theoretically a faster cpu would not suffer as badly. However notice every game on my list with problems is essentially still in development including Xcom 2. What I'm getting at is I feel like it's more the games being inefficient in the way they deal with cpu related matters. I've noticed on my nephews 6600k that he gets spikes of cpu usage but not the frame drops usually, I'm assuming it's extra performance is enough to keep the minimum fps to a higher number. For standard gamer type stuff though, I think pretty much any quad core at 3ghz as someone else mention is a good place to be. I would be curious to see how my system would hold up with a 970 gtx fitted though. Do games ever pass stuff to cpu if the gpu is maxed out? Just a thought as that would flip the whole situation on its head really but I'm not sure any games actually do that? Edit: oh yeah, the only reason I had 8gb even way back when is because of OCZ bless their rma service. Sent in 4 x 1gb sticks of Platinum and got back 4 x 2gb Reaper with the heat pipes and massive heatsinks. They had a really good rma service! Captain Hair fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Apr 5, 2016 |
# ? Apr 5, 2016 13:08 |
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TimeWaster posted:For sure, I would upgrade too if I had tonnes of disposable income (read: low priority at the moment). I was interested that you identified that the CPU upgrade wasn't the solution to your "mystery" problem. I've had a couple of hard freezes lately that got me thinking it might be time to upgrade (prioritise) the CPU but I'm still not convinced. If you've been playing on a Q9400 and an HD4870 until recently, even with the games you mentioned being relatively low impact ones, you have been missing out on a ton of performance and probably just not noticing it. Civ5 can bog down with turn times even on modern CPUs in late game or in just plain max player games, and XCOM likes to be quirky as well (Although moreso with Long War and larger alien packs than in base). If your GPU isn't at 99% usage while playing then odds are you are CPU bottlenecked. An R9 270 is still a pretty modest card in the end, and is going to be lucky to run about 45 fps at 1080 for most games. Really lightweight ones or low settings should get you to 60 though, especially in something like torchlight. A lot of people just don't give a poo poo if they play games at 30 fps though, or they just don't notice it because "It's always looked like that."
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# ? Apr 5, 2016 14:58 |
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Captain Hair posted:I would be curious to see how my system would hold up with a 970 gtx fitted though. Do games ever pass stuff to cpu if the gpu is maxed out? Just a thought as that would flip the whole situation on its head really but I'm not sure any games actually do that? There are some game engines that, when you take the graphics settings down to low, certain things that would have been done on the GPU are pulled back to a CPU thread which can actually result in reduced performance. Don't have a comprehensive list, but it absolutely is a thing that exists in certain situations.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 01:50 |
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BangersInMyKnickers posted:There are some game engines that, when you take the graphics settings down to low, certain things that would have been done on the GPU are pulled back to a CPU thread which can actually result in reduced performance. Don't have a comprehensive list, but it absolutely is a thing that exists in certain situations. Oooh yeah! Iirc that's usually done when graphics settings are at minimum. Even on my aging 560ti I don't need minimum settings quite yet. Does remind me though that when messing around in a certain game recently minimum graphics did bottleneck my cpu completely, I think it could have been Wreckfest. And yeah dialing in overclock on q9550 is an odd duck. My core2duo was simple but not the quad. My bios supports 2 overclock setting profiles so handily I can have 3.6ghz on one of them for games that ran stable at that speed (ksp, mad max) and one at 3.0ghz for the ones that need more stability (Wreckfest, Xcom 2, Skyrim etc) along with different graphics card overclock profiles and now things are reasonable. Oddly ksp loooves my cpu overclock but hates any kinda graphics oc, Skyrim hates cpu overclock but loves gpu oc! Or maybe those were the other way around... either way both games appear to use cpu/gpu to %100 at times so who knows.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 14:58 |
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Captain Hair posted:Oooh yeah! Iirc that's usually done when graphics settings are at minimum. Even on my aging 560ti I don't need minimum settings quite yet. Does remind me though that when messing around in a certain game recently minimum graphics did bottleneck my cpu completely, I think it could have been Wreckfest. Follow my OC guide I posted a bit earlier. If your motherboard supports most of the same options, you could have a perfect and faster overclock possible and you just had a setting or two set incorrectly the whole time.
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 17:35 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:38 |
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You know what, thanks very much because I forgot to reply to your post and had been having some luck with altering setting I didn't even know I had! I can't remember the name but I think the bios describes them as "changing this number may result in improved stability" and a quick test in mad max where I could consistently make it crash now doesn't crash immediately. What happens is when I drive to a certain area in the game the cpu gets a sudden workload, frames drop as cpu bottleneck happens and the game ctds. However now all I'm getting is a stutter for a couple of seconds and if I stop moving it actually doesn't crash. I'll keep experimenting
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# ? Apr 6, 2016 17:56 |