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Riddleofsteel

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 4, 2007
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I'm posting this to see if anyone can recommend a component to upgrade. Right now, I have:

Q9550 overclocked to 3.6ghz
8gb DDR2-1066 (G.skill)
Gigabyte UD3P Rev. 1.0
EVGA GTX 285 SSC
1 x Supertalent Ultra Drive ME 64gb (for os)
various SATA drives
Mitsubishi Diamondtron 22" CRT

I know this isn't a bad machine by any means, but games like Dragon Age seem to stress it on average settings, and Clear Sky etc. are games I've always wanted to comfortably max or come close to maxing. Also, the original Mass Effect didn't like my OC that much. If I was to grab one, maybe two components this spring, where would I see the biggest improvement? Thanks for the help.
 
Nice, I was just looking at a link someone posted here earlier. Does it matter which brand of 5850 I buy? And is overclocking the 5850 easier than past cards? I don't want to burn it out. Thanks for the reply.
 
I would go with the XFX for the double lifetime warranty. From what I've read it overclocks well too. :)
 
Hrm, is that the Black Edition? Is the 60 or so dollar increase over a sapphire card worth the extra mhz? Thanks.
 
Riddleofsteel said:
Hrm, is that the Black Edition? Is the 60 or so dollar increase over a sapphire card worth the extra mhz? Thanks.
Click to expand...
XFX makes a vanilla 5850 for 299.99 but it's out of stock atm. My pops just ordered one Friday. I'm sure they'll be back in stock soon. I'm not sure why they're not listed though...they were as of Friday.
 
I suggest trying a fresh OS install on a spare hard drive to see how that helps.

I ran Dragon Age very well with quality settings maxed on a clocked GTX260 and clocked e8400 at 1080p res.
My CPU was constantly at 100% but the game played very well.
Your CPU and GPU are better for Dragon Age so you shouldnt have any issues.

If you are running at 2048x1536 res, that may not be helping.
Its doubtful you will see much benefit using that high res on a 20" diagonal CRT display (20" is what you actually see on a 22" diamondtron).
 
I agree with Nenu. Since you have a CRT, lower the resolution and you should get good performance out of that GTX285. CRT's look good at almost any resolution because the image is projected instead of static pixels (LCD) -- take advantage of your display.
 
Oh, I forgot to even say my resolution. I'm at 1600x1200. And regarding running your cpu at 100%, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'm trying to avoid that as I'm overclocked.
 
See first line of post #10.
Find if its just a borked Windows causing your problem
 
So the only way to see if windows is borked is to re-install it? Wonder if I should switch to AHCI if I do so.
 
No its not the only way, but its by far the quickest way of verifying what you should invest time in.
It doesnt have to be a final install, just to see if its worth going through your current install to fix it.
As I said, use a spare drive.

I turned on AHCI yesterday and it didnt make one jot of difference for me.
Running X38 mobo, Fujitsu 1TB drives, Win7 32bit.
Windows index was 5.9 before the test and 5.9 after.
I cant tell any difference while using Windows, ymmv.
 
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