Lackluster upgrade?

[Slartibartfast]

I just upgraded from a radeon 9600xt 128mb to a geforce 6600gt 128mb, and while I'm def. seeing an increase in 3D mark scores, Far Cry does not seem to benefit at all Was this not as big a jump as I'd expected? I'm thinking there might be a bottleneck in my ram, as it's 512mb, dual channel ddr400 at 3-3-3-8. Would upgrading to a gig of tighter ram make a really significant difference? I'm fairly certain the cpu is not bottlenecking as it's a 3000+ Venice. Any input would be appreciated

 

[cam966251]

Yes, getting at least a gig of ram will help pretty significantly. My friends has a 6600GT and says he gets pretty god perforamnce on games like BF2, COD2, and FEAR with a few things on high on BF2, and pretty decent settings in COD2 and FEAR, i dont know about far cry though. You could also try to save up and getting something with more performance. I dont think it will be much of a boost, mabey 10-15FPS or so, from a 9600XT.

 

[SEALTeamSix]

Would upgrading to a gig of tighter ram make a really significant difference?

Yes, a gig would boost performance tremendously. Timings are not nearly as important on s939 as they were on Socket A, due to the on-die memory controller - so if budget is a factor, just get some name-brand value RAM and don't worry about the timings. At this point, even 2gb of RAM would not be excessive.

-SEAL

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

^ yeah I definitely agree. Timings are pretty arbitrary. Everyone gets a hard-on for uber-tight timings, but in all honesty they only really show a benefit in synthetic tests and benchmarks. I'd grab 1gb or even 2gb of ram if you can afford it.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Alright, thanks for the input guys. I was told in another thread, though, that tighter timings make a noticeable improvement in gaming. Is it one of those things where like, upping to 1 gig would make a significant improvement, while tight timings are kind of like a luxury item?

Also, Eva_Unit_0 , what part of Rochester are you in? I'm ashamed to say that I'm from Hilton...

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

I'm in West Henrietta at RIT. Microelectronic Engineering, 2nd year.

anyway, yeah, like you said tight timings are kinda like a luxury, beyond the call of duty kind of thing. Regular timing ram does great, but if you have cash aplenty then tighter timing ram will be slightly faster and, more importantly, probably have more overclocking headroom. But overall it's not essential at all.

 

[SEALTeamSix]

Regular timing ram does great, but if you have cash aplenty then tighter timing ram will be slightly faster and, more importantly, probably have more overclocking headroom. But overall it's not essential at all.

But... for my money, if it was between 1gb of uber-RAM and 2gb of normal RAM, I'd go with the 2gb.

The Tech Report on Memory Timings on A64 systems

In fact, with the exception of the Sphinx speech recognition engine, moving to tighter memory timings or a more aggressive command rate generally didn't improve performance by more than a few percentage points, if at all, in our tests.

The other thing to realize is that almost all name-brand (OCZ, Patriot, Corsiar, Mushkin and Crucial) value RAM nowadays can run at tighter timings than they advertise.

Just giving you a head's up...

-SEAL

 

[Slartibartfast]

Thanks seal, I'm def. going to look into upgrading after the holidays.

Eva: that's cool, henrietta is a pretty fun place. You ever make it over to millenium games?