The Official OC (OverClocking) Thread!

I generally keep most aspects of a dvd. Menus, gag reels, trailers (when good), and deleted scenes. I run CCE 3 pass(helps a lot with bitrates under 3,000Kbs). And my average job time is 35-40 minutes. Not bad for keeping almost everything and running an extra CCE pass As long as the main title is 3500+ Kbs, the main title won't suffer much. Not much at all. Really depends on action sequences. I definitely prefer 4,000+!

 

Been a long time since I've had a film not in high-def, typically with HD stuff, if it's 720p I like it to be at least 8000Kbps, and for 1080p, 15000kbps. TV isn't usually as good for source, so 720p TV is OK at 4000-4500Kbps and animated 720p TV is OK as low as 3000Kbps.
Standard DVD stuff I can live with about 2500Kbps. Much lower and quality definitely starts to degrade.

 

hope thats okay, not too clued up about amd mobos, tbh.

660 before rebates, which are $50 worth.

ofc you could ditch the 955 and go with a 635 X4 and jump to a 5830/GTX 460 instead.

no hdd or odd as i assume you would use your old ones. mobo is ready for thuban and has usb3/ sata6

 

Sam, believe me I'd rather make the switch to FULL HD, but it's just not doable I have my reasons...

 

Man, Photobucket is ghastly. Can't directly link to the image properly, and whenever you click on someone else's picture, an advert with sound plays and no mute button. Can manually mute my browser in Win7, but I feel sorry for XP users. Dear god, Imageshack is vastly superior to all that tat!


The build itself looks flawless, though admittedly my price ranges stated above were for complete systems, so if you omit storage, you'll get a cheaper deal. That system will play most new games pretty well, but I'd advise either a GTX460 or HD5830 to ensure you can run everything on top settings well, both of those two are substantially faster than the 5770.

 

Generally agreed with everyone on this thread. For a budget gaming machine AMD is by far your best bet. Sure Intel offers faster CPUs but for low-cost horsepower they can't touch AMD.

Sort of wishing I had gone i5 for the money I spent on my rig though. For what I paid, I could have had Sam's CPU and motherboard easily. But eh, not hurting yet so I have yet to pass my final judgment on Phenom II. They certainly hold their own for the kind of video power and resolution I game at.

I would strongly suggest looking into an Athlon II X4 630 or similar. A quad core will be way more important for gaming FPS before actual speed will be an issue. The actual games that have a CPU limitation get much better even from the fastest dual core to a budget range quad.

The Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition can also be a very potent gaming chip for a budget system. It's a full Phenom II so it has higher performance per individual core than the Athlon II X4. But the extra third core means it still offers many of the same advantages of a quad core, just less so. Also it has 6MB of L3 Cache while the Athlon II X4 has none. Many CPU intensive games benefit greatly from L3 Cache, especially that much.

Namely Battlefield Bad Company 2 runs way faster on the Athlon II X4 than it does on the dual core Intel i3, even though the i3 is way way faster per core. Simply because the number of cores is a limit before the speed of the cores. Any other game that doesn't need a quad, but is CPU intensive, will usually run fine on the budget Athlon II X4 anyway.

Just a few suggestions. Full quad core Phenom IIs are reasonable as well but don't leave a lot of breathing room for the rest of the PC.

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/07/05/how-many-cpu-cores-do-games-need/5

intresting article on the ammount of cores a game needs. and how threaded it is.

surprising results.

right now i wish i had a new PC. its bloody hard to wait till sandybridge/bulldozer. any idea when their mid/high end parts will be out anyone? and when they are, are we getting new GPUs?

 

M1986,
Here's a pretty good deal I just spotted at Newegg. This is a fast Dual Core on a decent enough motherboard for $88.98. $78.98 after $10 MIR. I don't know if they have an MIR in Canada. Again, something you can learn with and still be able to cheaply upgrade. HD 4000 Graphics too! Sale is for 48 hours only! No Promo code needed!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Combo...-_-EMC-081810-Index-_-Combo-_-Combo478069-L0E

Here's the Motherboard. Download the manual and check it out. It would be a good board to learn with. It also has preset overclocking V6, V8, V10 and V12. You can also overclock manually!

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/content.php?S_ID=451

Russ

 

The X3 720 is quite fast per-core, but not a great deal beyond the X4 630, which is really cheap for a quad. For me, most of the advantages of having a quad core are in having four cores, not three, so I would always take the 630 instead.
As for quad core games, it's only going to get more common for games to use them, so for futureproofing sake, even if nothing else, if you can afford a quad, no reason not to get one.
As for new GPUs, HD6 is set for around a christmas launch, though it could end up being Jan/Feb time. No word on what nvidia are doing, other than a GTX485 (512sp of the 480) in a few months' time. As for sandy bridge/bulldozer, no idea I'm afraid. I suppose it's out when it's out...

 

Well depending on your uses the Phenom II X3 can be quite a bit faster than an Athlon II X4. The 6MB of L3 Cache vs absolutely none makes a difference. Only if you are strictly using multithreaded apps will the X4 be faster. And as Shaff's article shows, many games are just as happy to run on a tri as a quad, even with a higher end video card. If the system will be used mostly for gaming the Phenom II 720BE still has a bit more physical "grunt" than the Athlon II X4. Remember, games are very responsive to more cache. Also, the 720 is a Black Edition processor unlike the 630 so it will OC much better and easier right out of the box, making it very nice for budget-ish motherboards with a low FSB limit. I know I always push the 720BE but it is for these reasons. IMO it is a better overall chip than the Athlon II X4 630. Only if you are specifically multi-threading will the Athlon II be anywhere near the raw speed or horsepower.

For gaming I say get the 720BE. But if encoding times and heavy multitasking are important, the X4 630 is easily the better choice, having the fourth core.

Of course, availability is an issue as well. The 720BE is limited in quantity so my argument might well be moot.

 

also there's a high chance on unlocking that 4th core no? But i think im with sam, uless the tri core can be had for under $100, i wouldn't get it.

sam are they making a better card with more "cuda cores" based on the 65106 core?

 

Hmm possibly, but I thought that was going to be a Tesla product. I've certainly not heard much about it.

 

Q2 2011 is my guess. Low end SB might be here by the end of the year, but that isn't the stuff we want lol.

 

excellent advice guys. thanks. Hey Russ I checked out that combo deal unfortunately there are two problems with it. First I do not think it is available on the .ca newegg site only on the .com site. Second I have never been a big fan of BioStar mobo's they are not reliable. I am more of a Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte, fan. But thanks for looking =) I was wondering what you guys think about Asus boards? personally I love them. 7 out of 10 mobos I have owned were Asus boards and I never had any problems with them. All my tech buddies talk about Asus mobo's like they are the best things since sliced bread. What do you guys think of them? The reason I am asking is because since I do not have enough money to upgrade my entire system I thought I would buy a New mobo that supports everything I own at the moment that I could upgrade little by little. Any affordable decent Asus boards you guys could recommend? Preferably one that supports 16GB of ram and different types of AMD CPU's. AM2, AM3 etc etc...

 

Biostar boards never used to be any good, but their modern stuff is actually really quite good. Not sure if it's up to the standard of Gigabyte or MSI, but it's better.
Asus stuff on the other hand is absolutely awful. I will try and prevent someone from treading that path of endless misery wherever I can.
I've had 6 Asus products, every single one of them failed in less than 18 months, some of them as little as 5 months. There are plenty of other people with similar experiences as well. Since your PC is quite old, however, and you are using an MSI board, I imagine the last products from Asus you bought predated that, in which case that was back in the era when Asus actually made stuff properly, which is where they earned their reputation. Around 2005, they cut their product quality to the absolute rock bottom (in line with the 'extra value' dirt cheap boards such as PC Chips, Jetway and ECS) and kept their prices high, and have been getting away with it simply on the sheer fanboyism their old products created.
I would say get a Gigabyte, or another MSI.

Unfortunately I don't think there are any boards that support 16GB of RAM and first generation AM2 processors. All AMD stuff has moved to AM2+/AM3 now which allows for the use of higher-end memory and DDR3.
Since you only have 1GB of DDR2, I wouldn't waste money on more, DDR2 is more expensive than DDR3 now by comparison, since it's old and rarely produced. You're better off getting a new CPU, board and RAM together.

 

id take asus over any brand aswell (ironic that i have a dfi ) but most here prefer Gigabyte, so i included that instead of getting berated.

 

Sam,
I think some of the Gigabyte boards support 16GB. I know this one does! Great motherboard, with a lot of goodies for the Buck!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128394

I guess you would have to be running Vista or Win 7 to access 16GB, but I don't think very many people would be using an AM2 CPU for Vista or Win 7 anyway! I went to the website and couldn't find anything mentioned about it there. It just says up to 16GB there.

Russ

 

Well spotted. I started out looking at 785G boards but I couldn't find any that had support for first gen CPUs.
Thing is, 4GB memory modules were still stupidly priced the last time I checked. With the advent of SSDs, I think memory has usurped storage as the 'joke' industry of PC hardware.
Four years ago I paid £160 for 2GB of the standard memory type. Now you can get 4GB for £100. Twice the storage for 2/3 the price, in 4 years.
Four years ago I paid £330 for an X1900XT. £230 buys you an HD5850 now. Six times the performance for 2/3 of the price, in 3 years - since they cost that much when they were launched in September 2009. The graphics industry has advanced four times as fast as the memory industry.
Even mechanical storage, you can buy a 2TB drive for 20% less than I paid for a 400GB drive in November 2006.

 

Sam,
I remember the first 40MB IDE drive I ever bought, back in the early 90s. It was $1100 marked down from $1350 at Fry's! Memory at one time, was almost $100 a MB! You paid $400-$650 for a 1024x768 CRT Monitor. A 16 bit Sound Blaster Pro with a 1x Creative CD Rom drive would set you back about $399. I used to do a lot of buying through "Computer Shopper"! The "Shopper" was like the Bible of the fledgling computer industry. There was no Internet so people interested in computers and computer parts read the Shopper to see what was new! For all the whining that some people do over the cost of a modern computers, prices are much lower today than they were in the early 90s, and you get a hell of a lot more for your money today, than you did back then!

Oh, before I forget, Avoid ZoneAlarm for your Anti virus! I just fixed an HP Vista Laptop that was doing all sorts of strange things when I tried to take ZoneAlarm out and install AVG. Once you uninstall it, you can't install any AV on that computer at all! It denies you access to System Restore, so you can't go back to yesterday It did some real weird crap too, with windows popping up every now and again, suddenly going into Sleep or Hibernate mode or closing while you were doing something important. 7 hidden locked files in the registry, all compliments of ZoneAlarm!

I did some googling and found hundreds of people that had the exact same complaint about the same problem. The only thing I couldn't do was replace the System Recovery software on the D: drive. Someone erased it, so there's nothing that I can do. He'll have to try and get a Recovery CD from HP for about $15 I got everything removed, but it wasn't easy, and it was very time consuming. I spent most of last night and a good part of today figuring it out. Runs good now! I hate losing to a machine! It's a matter of Pride! LOL!!

Russ

 

I wasn't saying technology hasn't advanced, I'm just saying memory seems by far to be the worst at it of the performance-related parts at the moment.
Well aware of the problems with ZoneAlarm, it's also responsible for a large number of bizarre BSODs.