New Build GA-EP45-DS3 + Q9550

[NimrodAUS]

Well there you go. I will give it a try after the 500+ gig of stuff finishes copying over. saying 1 day remaining. lol Hope not. SATA to SATA both on the Yellow ports

[NimrodAUS]

Well my second build for the week is complete. See Signature. GA-EP45-DS3 + E8500.
I was basically waiting till I coppied everything off the other HDD before firing it up. So far it been running Prime 95 on Manually stock settings for a couple of hours with a max CPU temp of 40C I will try it @ 400X9.5 tommorrow and see if it will work. Keep ya all posted.

[NimrodAUS]

Well The EP45-DS3 + E8500 work well together. I cranked up the FSB to 400 X9.5 @1.25v and it been running prime for hours. I'll leave it going overnight to see how it goes. Still cant get the X48-DS5 + Q9550 off stock 333X8.5

[NimrodAUS]

Well Both systems are running well. I use the Quad system as my Daily usage/gaming and the other well not much really. I bought a new Game today ARMA 2. I loved the last ARMA: Armed Assault it was awesome. So all was going well untill I cranked up the Graphics and played a level. Started off ok but when multiply explosions and stuff happened the frame rate suffered badly. So this game alone, as with my first Graphics card upgrade 7300LE to 8800GT (arma1) I will now be upgrading my graphics card. Boy this cheap upgrade I was doing is now turned into a complete kick ass system build. I was thinking HD4890? Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X 100269VXL Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards Sapphire Radeon HD4890 Vapor-X Sapphire Radeon HD4890 Vapor-X [VGASAP1G048F] - $335.00 : PC Case Gear, Quality case accessories and components What are peoples opinions?

[Psycho101]

A move from a 4850 to a 4890 will only give you around a 30% edge, depending on the resolution you game at. If you run 1920x1200 then a 4890 may be of more benefit due to twice the VRAM bandwidth.

CPU clock speed can be a huge factor. Have you been able to overclock the Quad at all? If not then I'd recommend you switch your Core 2 Duo back into the gaming rig. You'll benefit infinately more from more clock speed than two extra cores.

There seems to be alot of people wanting to tweak performance in thet game. Many have 4870's or higher. At 1680x1050 with a GTX275, one guy's only hetting a 30FPS average. Sounds like a combination of high graphical detail and average optimization. Also remember that if it's a new release, ATI may improve performance in the next Catalyst update (9.7)

[NimrodAUS]

Hey Psycho no I havent been able to overclock the Quad @ all. Cant even Underclock it with 400X7 Im not sure whats going on. I will post full Overclocked BIOS settings tonight if you would like. On the Box it basically says its optimised for Quad cores so yeah. Optimum System for it is Intel Quad core 2.Ghz or higher + HD4850 or higher. Its not hard for me to smash the HD4850 back into the other rig with the overclocked E8500. I might try it later. ARMA 2 is a awesome game with mad graphic detail and realisim. There are a far few graphic tweaking options. I only run games @ 1280X1024 as its the highest my montiors can take at this stage. I've yet to run fraps while playing to see what im actually getting. I havent really tweaked the Catilyst settings much they are pretty much stock. I dont really want to sacrifice quality for speed though. I did turn off Shadows which helped and lowered AA & AF but it would be nice to have them max as they make a difference with all the "Grass" and stuff. Other than that is a mad wicked game. Bullet sounds are pretty good. However its still hard to say that it sounds better than Battlefield Bad Company. Which if you have played you will know what im saying about sounds.

It would be good if I could get the Q9550 to 3.4 or something. Temps wont be a problem as its very cool with the Noctua NH-U12P. If I dont get a chance to do much tweaking with the overclock tonight I will deffinatly have a far crack this weekend. Yesterday I also discovered that there is a newer version of Prime 95 than Ive been running. I have been using 28.5 I think there is now 29.5 or something. So Ill give it a spin. Also I may just overclock it and run the game and see what happens. It might not error out? Who knows. Maybe I just have a crap chip that only like to be stock. But I think theres something else going on as it wont run 2.8ghz with 400mhz FSB. What else could it be?

[Psycho101]

I downloaded the ARMA 2 demo to give it a go on my system. It's definitely the game. It's worse than Crysis to run.

Everything on max gave me around 12FPS. Even everything on medium only improved things to 30 FPS or so. Again like Crysis, because it's trying to look realistic, anything less than max starts to look nasty after a point.

Strangely, there are two resolution settings, one for over all screen and OSD res and another to down sample the 3d rendering. This setting, coupled with view distance and AA made the biggest difference in performance, but it still ran like a dog. Hopefully a driver update will improve things. That or a game patch.

[NimrodAUS]

Yeah I noticed that 2 resolution thing. I just left them both at 1280X1024. I have no doubt its the game. Just like the first Arma after about 20gig of patches it was good. So far arma 2 has only has a 120Mb patch so give it time. I would think I had more than 12FPS with everything on max be it at my max resolution is not "High" in todays standards. The Motion Blurr when you spin your head is cool. And the Fact that you can lessen the head bobbing is going to be the next setting I adjust as its a little toooooooo Realistic. I dont even know if its using Direct X 10 or not. I doesnt say anything about it so I doubt it. But it does look good. hey.

[NimrodAUS]

I have been combing google for days now and ive came across these settings which I will try tonight. I havent actually tried increasing the FSB voltage.
FSB +0.15V
(G)MCH +0.20V
Vmem +0.3V
GTL1 -3%
GTL2 -3%

EDIT: Just for me http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=5806770
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=6159110
So I dont loose this link.

[Psycho101]

The head bobbing did make me feel a little nausious, so I turned it to about 20%.

To be honest, just like Crysis, I find the visual style of the game not to my tastes. A more stylized drawing style looks better IMO. I can see the appeal of the game to military buffs though. If I could run Crysis on maximum at over 45 FPS, I'd love it, but I don't think that's going to happen for at least a year, maybe two.

It may be worth swapping che chips around if you don't get a result. Could possibly be the board holding you back for some reason.