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Portal 2: A hardware question

E

Eisenblut

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 23, 2011
Messages
1,108
In building a completely new system, my wife and I agreed that she would get my old one (with some tweaks) that is still better than her current one. Portal 2 is what she really wants to play, so that will basically be the limit for game complexity as far as hardware requirements go. However, a question has arisen based on my experience with upgrading my machine as to what is best for Portal 2.

My old machine is a dual core 3.0Ghz Athlon X2 6000+ with 4GB DDR2. Because I had ordered the rest of my upgrade, I ordered the video card replacement first (an EVGA 570GTX 2.5GB) to see how much of an improvement it would be over the 4870 1GB that was in it at the time.

I noticed something in Portal 2 in regards to being around the gel tubes: the 570 had little effect on the stuttering when being in the presence of two or more gel tubes that were spewing. So, I imagine that it is physics that is best handled on a better CPU, but more importantly, is it a result of a much higher clock rate or because of more cores for the multithreaded rendering to use?

This comes down to (and the reason for posting this here) two choices for upgrading my old machine for her:

1) Keep the current CPU/mobo/RAM (dual core 3.0Ghz and 4GB DDR2) and put an nVidia 560 in it and most likely have the jittering when around the gel tubes or

2) replace it with an A8-3850 2.9Ghz quad core and 4GB DDR3 and use the 6550 that is on the core of the A8.

What it comes down to is if the 6550 is a good enough GPU to do what it needs to, while the 2 extra cores should handle the physics of the gels fine. The cost difference between the two choices is really not that much.

Any thoughts on this are appreciated. Thanks.
 
I think that you can keep your cpu/mobo/mobo ram but for gpu radeon5770/gf 550ti is max that will not be so bottlenecked i think.It will be perfect for portal 2 :) I play portal 2 on 5750 and phenom x4 @3,6Ghz on max details.
 
You're just being severely CPU bottlenecked. IIRC, the source engine puts physics on a separate thread so it may be some background service messing it up. You also might want check your drivers as well. Bottom line is your CPU needs an upgrade. That 570 with 2.5 GB of memory is completely over kill. Like... you could probably play portal at 4000x3000 if it existed on that beast.


If you do want to move to llano, an A6 will play Portal 2 fine at laptop resolutions and an A8 should be pretty decent.
 
Right, but the real question surrounds the CPU needed to not have the gel cause jittering when around it or looking at it.

The 6550 that is on the A8's die is allegedly between a 5650 and a 5730 as far as performance goes, which you say runs fine on max settings on a 5750. I just want to eliminate the jittering when around the gel tubes and I was looking to see if anyone who had a dual core system had the same issue.

I run Portal 2 on my system at 1080 at max settings and 16xQ CSAA and still get 150fps, but she doesn't really need that kind of performace. :p
 
AntiSocialMunky said:
You're just being severely CPU bottlenecked. IIRC, the source engine puts physics on a separate thread so it may be some background service messing it up. You also might want check your drivers as well. Bottom line is your CPU needs an upgrade. That 570 with 2.5 GB of memory is completely over kill. Like... you could probably play portal at 4000x3000 if it existed on that beast.


If you do want to move to llano, an A6 will play Portal 2 fine at laptop resolutions and an A8 should be pretty decent.
Click to expand...
I think you are misunderstanding.

I put the 570 2.5GB into the dual core system just to test it BEFORE I got the rest of the parts for my system upgrade. The 570 is now in my new system which is a 2600K@4.7Ghz, 16GB DDR3 and a P8Z68 (see signature).

I was looking to do either one of two things with the old system (the 3.0Ghz dual core):

1) just slap a 550 Ti or 560 in it (Portal 2 only uses about 750MB VRAM so 1GB on the card is fine) and still have the jittering around 2 more more gel tubes) or
2) replace the CPU/mobo/RAM with an A8-3850 which uses a 6550 GPU on die for maybe $100 more than the cost of just putting in a 550Ti/560 into the dual core setup.

My two concerns are if the 6550 is up to the task and that the A8 (since it's quad core) will solve the jittering problem, which I think it will, so it's down to the 6550 being enough to do the job.
 
Finally dug up a review of the A8-3580's GPU performance:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4448/amd-llano-desktop-performance-preview/3

Looks like that answered some of the questions. I didn't know it was called a 6550D (and not just 6550) so it was hard to find a good review of it. Hmm. However, I'd need to put 8GB on the motherboard since it's going to steal 1GB at least from system RAM to run and obviously, DDR3 is much slower than GDDR5. Meh. This got more complicated.
 
The 4870 and the x2 should be enough....portal 2 isn't that CPU intensive.
Have you checked CPU utilization during play?
Updated drivers? Or just freshened up Windows? 7 or Xp?

What board do you have? Can you upgrade to a triple or quad?
 
kirbster said:
The 4870 and the x2 should be enough....portal 2 isn't that CPU intensive.
Have you checked CPU utilization during play?
Updated drivers? Or just freshened up Windows? 7 or Xp?

What board do you have? Can you upgrade to a triple or quad?
Click to expand...
I swear that no one actually uses reading comprehension in here. There is no 4870 in it; I said that there WAS one in there and I was not even considering using a 4870 since I sold it and only mentioned either a 560 or the 6550 on the A8-3580.

And no, I'm not a moron. All of the drivers were updated at the time and I keep my Windows 7 install extremely clean, doing weekly maintenance.

If the 4870 and the dual core 3.0Ghz was enough, I never would have made this thread in the first place. However, the FACT is that there is some jittering in the frame rate when around 2 or more active gel tubes and this occurred with both a 4870 and a 570GTX which leads me to believe that the dual core 3.0Ghz was not enough.

I'm just going to give up and put a 560 in it and then in a few months just rip out the CPU/mobo/RAM and replace it with an i7-2500.
 
Eisenblut said:
I swear that no one actually uses reading comprehension in here. There is no 4870 in it; I said that there WAS one in there and I was not even considering using a 4870 since I sold it and only mentioned either a 560 or the 6550 on the A8-3580.

And no, I'm not a moron. All of the drivers were updated at the time and I keep my Windows 7 install extremely clean, doing weekly maintenance.

If the 4870 and the dual core 3.0Ghz was enough, I never would have made this thread in the first place. However, the FACT is that there is some jittering in the frame rate when around 2 or more active gel tubes and this occurred with both a 4870 and a 570GTX which leads me to believe that the dual core 3.0Ghz was not enough.

I'm just going to give up and put a 560 in it and then in a few months just rip out the CPU/mobo/RAM and replace it with an i7-2500.
Click to expand...

Woah ,easy there big fella....

Your initial post isnt 100% clear, and i assumed that the 4870 was moving over to the old setup. I reread it several times and still wasnt convinced one way or the other.

No one called you a moron either..... You seem to be lacking a positive attitude for someone who came on here asking for advice.

The A8 -3850 gives you more cpu power but far less video power. The 560 is a very decent card but doesnt fix your apparent physics issue.

And you still didnt answer which board you are running and if perhaps a used triple or quad could slide in place. That combined with a 5770 should play portal 2 just fine.
Newegg still has the the 4870 512mb for $55 and that with a cpu upgrade may do you just fine at very low cost.

Sorry you feel frustrated, try and take it easy!
 
I apologize.

The motherboard in the old system is a M3A79-T Deluxe that supports AM2 and AM2+. It is difficult to find a quad core AM2+ CPU that isn't 300+ dollars. Since the dual core in it now is AM2, the RAM only runs at 800Mhz; I would need an AM2+ CPU to get it to run the 1066 that is in it at its rated speed. Newegg doesn't even carry anything under AM3 anymore; they used to have the quad core that I would need last year for $95 but it is obviously long since gone.

Thus, the problem.

Since the 6550 equivalent that is on the A8-3850 core seems to not be enough, as you said, I think the only real solution seems to be to put a 560 in it for now as the 4870 was sold to a friend (the wife would be happy just to be able to play Portal 1 and 2 at all, since her current Gateway One is just a dual core 1.6Ghz with crappy onboard Intel video), deal with the jittering (it's not terrible or unplayable, just a bit annoying) and then replace the rest sometime early next year, possibly with the A8-3850 but use the 560 as the GPU.
 
Well, if you had a microcenter near you I would suggest the Phenom @ X4 830 for $49.99 and a cheap AM3 board and DDR3 is dirt cheap too. Could probably get everything for around $140. Then sell off the old bits.

Closest thing Newegg has is the X3 720 for $75, but at least its a black edition, making overclocking easy, but again, new board and ram....



I feel for ya bro....
 
The GPU performance on that Llano will depend on the resolution and settings she'll want to play. If it's not high, which i'm guessing is a rather safe assumption since she's probably no enthusiast, the AMD Llano APUs were practically made for your scenario.

You'll get a decent increase as you go up in DDR3 speeds, but a G.Skill 1600 ddr 3 8gig set can be had for 30 bucks. You can overclock that a bit and increase performance as well. She won't be CPU bottlenecked at high settings and at lower settings the CPu and GPU have enough punch to make the FPS quite respectable.

The CPU side of that APU is actually quite good, providing a slight IPC increase over Phenom II chips (remember that it's a stars core on 32nm. basically what everyone wanted bulldozer to be). The new unlocked Llanos have just started showing up on distributor lists if you're willing to wait it out. They'll have higher clocks (think 3ghz for the top end?) but I'm not sure if the graphics has been touched. Given GloFo's issues with the graphics end of those APUs, I'd safely say that "remained the same" would be the most likely.

If I were you, a Llano would be a pretty safe bet and for a quite a while. If you need more GPU juice down the road just add another discrete card later on or make it an HTPC =P

EDIT: disregard everything I said above and buy yourself a Trinity in Q1 or early Q2 of 2012. If you can't wait then jump on the Llano

http://www.techpowerup.com/156232/AMD-A8-3870K-and-A6-3670K-up-for-Pre-Order.htm
 
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She found a good 1280x1024 LCD at Goodwill for $40, so yeah, the resolution that it will be played at will not be that high. I just wonder how much the GPU in the A8 is gimped because it is using system RAM that is nowhere the speed of GDDR5, but at least it's on the same die as the CPU.

She may not be an enthusiast, but I am, and I want to give her the best that I can without spending what I did on my own system. :p
 
Eisenblut said:
I apologize.

The motherboard in the old system is a M3A79-T Deluxe that supports AM2 and AM2+. It is difficult to find a quad core AM2+ CPU that isn't 300+ dollars. Since the dual core in it now is AM2, the RAM only runs at 800Mhz; I would need an AM2+ CPU to get it to run the 1066 that is in it at its rated speed. Newegg doesn't even carry anything under AM3 anymore; they used to have the quad core that I would need last year for $95 but it is obviously long since gone.

Thus, the problem.
Click to expand...

The M3A79 Series should support all AM3 chips, you could get either the Athlon II 640 or the Phenom II 560 (your board should support unlocking the other cores) for $95.

I really wouldn't worry about whether or not the DDR2 is running at 1066. Most DDR2-1066 memory is just overclocked DDR2-800.

Eisenblut said:
Since the 6550 equivalent that is on the A8-3850 core seems to not be enough, as you said, I think the only real solution seems to be to put a 560 in it for now as the 4870 was sold to a friend (the wife would be happy just to be able to play Portal 1 and 2 at all, since her current Gateway One is just a dual core 1.6Ghz with crappy onboard Intel video), deal with the jittering (it's not terrible or unplayable, just a bit annoying) and then replace the rest sometime early next year, possibly with the A8-3850 but use the 560 as the GPU.
Click to expand...

Do you already have the A8-3850? That and the cheapest A75 FM1 board (personally, I wouldn't go for the A55 boards) come out to $212 before taxes/shipping. You can get a Phenom II 560 + M4A88T-M + 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1333 for $195.
 
At that resolution the Llano will have 0 problems neither on the CPU nor GPU side.

Frankly, you can go even cheaper if that's the resolution you'll stick to.
 
Source games are very CPU bound, portal is no exception. I played portal 2 at 19 x 10 max settings 8x aa on a 3.2 c2q hd 4870 1gb with no problems.

I would go with a phenom ii quad core CPU. The hd 4870 should have no problems running portal 2 as long as the CPU is up to it.
 
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I checked the asus site and you can drop in that X3 720 for $74.99 from newegg along with that 4870 for $55 and you get a solid upgrade!
 
You don't need that much more CPU power to play this ok. You might even be find with an overclock.

I have an e5200 @ 3.6 and it's generally a piece of junk. It plays Portal 2 fine with an HD5850.
 
serpretetsky said:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1857090

common stuttering issue with source engine gels. For some reason turning the threads that the blobs use from 4 down to 1 seems to smooth things out for a lot of people. Strange.

But you have to put in that command every time, the other option on that thread is turn down the effects settings.

edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQZ2kyXW6Ac
Click to expand...
Very nice. Thanks for that! I'll try it once I get her system up running just the dual core for now.
 
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