The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

Re: E8x00 vs Qxxx0 for gaming....

Received GTA IV last Thursday, then got a Q9550 and another 2gb RAM on the Saturday! Seems multi-threads are really here! Lol (Please dis-regard all previous comments about E8400s for gaming!)
It is a monster of a game, now runs 'smooth enough' on the quad at 3.4, but you need 1Gb+ of Vram to put the textures into high and get the view distance any higher than 50!
My bro's 1Gb HD4870 can do the high textures but his 3.4Gig E6750 struggles to keep up and he lags quite often!
Seems now you really need to go higher than 2 cores, even for gaming...

 

To update on this, it seems all bar the texture detail is CPU rendered in GTA4, so the CPU usage of the game is very high. Maxing out all but the textures (as the game doesn't allow maximum due to its graphics memory requirement) in the benchmark, my CPU usage average was a high 67%. 67% of an overclocked quad core is a lot. I worked it out, that equals all of a 2.45Ghz Quad core.

 

or a 2.7 kentsfeild.....

 

Hiya. I've got a Nvidia 8400gs with 512 memory. I bought Call Of Duty 5 the other week, and, to be honest, it doesn't run all that smoothly. What I want to know is, what would be the optimal overclock settings for that graphics card to make the game run a bit better?

Thanks and merry Christmas.

 

Hi aferg. Unfortunately you probably won't ever run COD5 well with that card! It is not a gaming card, it is super-low budget card which essentially just covers Vista operation and provides much lower performance than the majority of the 7 series cards.
Take a look at this chart:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/chart...all-of-Duty-4-v1-6,Marque_fbrandx876,741.html

That is COD4 (uses same graphics engine as COD5) at 1280x1024 without filters. The 8400GS 256Mb variant scores around 15fps, maybe the 512Mb buffer on your card is good for another frame or two, but even if you managed a 20% overclock, 20% of 16Fps is 3.2, and that gives a new Fps of 19.2, no-where near the 30+ you need to make the game playable.
In short, buy a new graphics card!

 

aferg01

If you want a good budget card that will handle cod5 go for an ati 4830, the performance is not far behind a 4850 at stock speeds, but the core overclocks well, and it gives nigh on the same performance as the 4850 when overclocked. the drop from 800 shaders to 640 shaders doesnt seem to make much difference.

 

theonejrs


some signs of phenom 2`s hitting over 4ghz

http://www.gameware.ir/phenom2/benchmarks/

)

 

The 8400GS is a terrible graphics card for games. To get a smooth frame rate at anything above minimum graphics settings, Call of Duty World at War requires something like an 8600GT or 9500GT. However, your best bet now is to find an HD4650 or HD4670, the former will beat the 9500GT and will certainly play COD:WAW at reduced settings, the latter can actually run the game at pretty much maximum and get a relatively smooth frame rate at 1280x1024, and only costs $80, plus will fit in any case and run on pretty much any power supply.
The HD4830 mentioned before will run even better, but needs a strong power supply, and costs over 100 dollars.

ck: Interesting that the motherboards proved very problematic for them to get to a good overclock, and that they only found a testable setting at 3.8Ghz. One wonders how they backup their claim of it being stable at 4Ghz if they couldn't even install an OS.
Overall, in the games that matter, that's a 40% performance boost on the stock 9950, which isn't bad, but puts the overclocked Phenom II about the same as a stock Q9650. Impressive as that is, the Q8200 is probably the only Core 2 Quad that would have any difficulty matching that.

 

Sam

Yeh lack of the needed bios update seems to have been the biggest issue, by the way the motherboard fried it seems like a newer bios might handle the voltages better, and maybe even make it run cooler.
still a vast improvement on the old phenoms. just nice to see that they do have a little fight left lol.

4830's are worth upgrading powersupply for. I get a solid 90+ fps in cod 4 1680 x 1050 full everything. thats with core @ 700 mem @ 925 not much give in the mem with stock cooling, getting a zalman so that should help it

 

If you can upgrade the power supply. For all we know this guy may have a prebuilt system, or he may have a 17-19" monitor. If he does, there's not much need to get anything better than a 4670 for anything bar maybe Crysis, and he may not be able to upgrade his PSU for one anyway. I'm well aware of how much better the 4830 is, but not everybody can have, or needs one.

 

What's a good card to run GTA4?

 

Sam,
I was wondering about that 4GHz myself. If you can't load an OS, how do you know it's stable? Still, it bodes well for the coming of the low wattage HKMG Metal Gate Transistors for the Phenom IIs. That will raise AMD fan's excitement level considerably! I do know this, Intel is worried, very worried!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

The 2.7Ghz Phenom IIs look like they'll be about 10% behind the 2.66Ghz Core 2 Quad. On that basis, a 4Ghz Phenom II will do very well indeed, in arithmetics it certainly won't catch the i7s at any clock above stock, but it'll be a good competitor for Core 2 Quads, if anything that powers/cools that 200+ Watt monster can stay the course.

 

Sam,
What 200+ Watt monster are you referring to?

Russ

 

The one a Phenom II will become by the time it reaches 4Ghz...

 

Sam,
That's where the Acc and Overdrive come in!
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=612&pid=2

Phenom II will consume even less power and when the HKMG is ready, even less than that!

Russ

 

All that is though, is overclocking without voltage addition, or undervolting, which is what all CPUs can do, it's just an automated process. They've got an extra 200mhz out of the CPU like that. Core 2 Quads often gain 500-600mhz before needing extra voltage.

 

Sam,
It's a bit more than that, but AMD is being very vague about all that it actually does do! They tested a 9850 Phenom and overclocked it to 3.0, which was as far as they could get it to go. After they enabled the ACC and turned on the overdrive they were able to get it to 3.4GHz stable with the same voltage. The CPU is directly connected to the SB, but again AMD is being very vague about what all of that does.

Overall they were able to overclock it 900MHz without using any more power than it required to overclock it 500MHz.

Russ

 

Which basically, is a bit of a catch-up move. A welcome one certainly, but a catch-up nonetheless.

 

Anything around a 9800GT or HD4850 and up, ideally with 1Gb Vram. Think the game requires 1.5Gb for full textures and view distance! Although 850Mb+ (I.e GTX260) will let you max the textures but with about 1/2 view distance. A 512Mb frame buffer will mean medium textures and view distance <40/100.
Edit: worth bearing in mind though that the console versions apparantly have view distance of 25/100 and detail distance of 20, so it should still look as good/better than the console versions with a good 512Mb card.