S754 upgrade path

M

Mojo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 28, 2003
Messages
1,569
Well, I jumped on the Athlon 64 bandwagon fairly quickly last July. And some people have been telling me that having a S754 rather than a S939 is impeding my performance in CS:S. As in, my S754 chip is responsible for my slow downs on certain maps and such.

Is this true? And if so what should I upgrade to and when?
-Venice?
-Dual Cores?
-Winchester now?
 
s754 for life!

the only thing that s754 really holds you back from is being able to upgrade to faster desktop chips later. the a64's don't really benefit from the extra bandwidth.

my advice? wait a while. let dual-core become more mainstream and come down in price. (probably a good year and a half) then upgrade your system if you really need to.
 
Mojo said:
And some people have been telling me that having a S754 rather than a S939 is impeding my performance in CS:S. As in, my S754 chip is responsible for my slow downs on certain maps and such.
Click to expand...

well thats horse poop

s939 @ same clockspeed as a s754 might give you 0-5% performance increase, depending on the application. edit: not entirly true, as the newer 939's have some other optimizations. maybe 10% max.

i went from a 3200 754 to a 3700 754 and then overclocked it...its *fast*. sure its not as oooo-ahh as the 939's...but i dont care about that.

most map slowdowns are RAM related. how much you running?
 
Steel Chicken said:
most map slowdowns are RAM related. how much you running?
Click to expand...
I'm running.... 2 x 512mb Corsair Valueselect DDR400 at CL2.5

I think it might actually be my PSU holding me back. I only have a 350w Enermax, so maybe if I get a new like 450+ watt PSU it'll help. What do you think?
 
yeah, get some crucial ballistix and an ocz powerstream :D

gotta love how we have a whole bunch of 754 fans in one thread. ;)
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
yeah, get some crucial ballistix and an ocz powerstream :D

gotta love how we have a whole bunch of 754 fans in one thread. ;)
Click to expand...

time to put 754orever! in our sigs, lol

if i was buying new, id definitely go either 939 venice or dual cores, but since ive been running 754 since Jan of last year...no point. ive never had a faster more stable system.
 
I'd go with 754 if I already had the mobo, but I don't so I'm gonna spend ~100 more for a solid 939 setup :)
 
Steel Chicken said:
time to put 754orever! in our sigs, lol

if i was buying new, id definitely go either 939 venice or dual cores, but since ive been running 754 since Jan of last year...no point. ive never had a faster more stable system.
Click to expand...
haha. yeah.. for me, i'd like a more tweaking friendly cpu than my 3200+, however i see absolutely no reason to ditch this socket yet. the bandwidth just doesn't matter, and i'll probably wait till M2 and get a pci-e video card to go with it. skip 939 all together :D
 
Mojo said:
I think it might actually be my PSU holding me back. I only have a 350w Enermax, so maybe if I get a new like 450+ watt PSU it'll help. What do you think?
Click to expand...

if you get a 900W psu then you will have like double the fps
 
S754 chips are nearly as powerful as S939 chips... it's hardly an issue. Maybe if you didn't have three porn sites open at once, your games would be faster.

Put me down too as a S754 fan. :cool:
 
hahahaha. indeed.
just make sure you have at the very least 20a on the 12v line. 30 if you're going sli.
 
So are you guys going to get PCI-E MB's for your s754's (e.g. MSI Neo3 is the only one I've seen, but I'm sure there are more coming)?

I had a s754 for a while too but I sold it to my brother because I wanted to monkey with SLI. I liked it though :). Maybe when the Turions come out I'll play with it again ;).
 
needmorecarnitine said:
if you get a 900W psu then you will have like double the fps
Click to expand...
That's not what I meant at all.

It is actually possible that my PSU is holding my card back though.
However, my 350w Enermax is now slouch. The 12V rail is fairly stable around 11.84V, and it's rated at 26A. That's why I'm a bit baffled as to why I'm getting low FPS.
 
the power supply has nothing to do with performance, just stability. check to make sure your setup is configured right ;)
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
the power supply has nothing to do with performance, just stability. check to make sure your setup is configured right ;)
Click to expand...
I have tried EVERYTHING!

-updated video drivers (now running 71.84)
-most up to date motherboard drivers
-fiddling with numerous CS:S console settings
-changed the PCI latency on the card from 248 back to 64.
-etc etc etc

And on Steampowered forums, I have fairly reliable poster telling me his rig (which is similar to mine only he has a 6600GT, 550W PSU and 512mb ram) rarely goes below 70-80fps on cs_office. And mine goes below 30fps at times. Them ost confusing thing is I even tried it at 800x600 with no eye candy on, and I still get the slow downs. Which tells me it's either:
-CPU
-Ram
-Game programming

It's frustrating, I bought a $500 Canadian video card. I just thought it would perform a bit better than 30fps on CS:S.
 
but why would the psu effect the framerate? if it's going to cause any problems, it'll be things like games crashing, the computer randomly rebooting. things like that.
have you run memtest and prime95 on it to ensure it's stable?
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
but why would the psu effect the framerate? if it's going to cause any problems, it'll be things like games crashing, the computer randomly rebooting. things like that.
have you run memtest and prime95 on it to ensure it's stable?
Click to expand...
I ran memtest when I got the computer in July, but I haven't ran Prime95 yet. I know it's stable though, I just had 3D Mark 2001se on loop (by mistake) for about 3 hours while I was out. So I know the system is stable that way.

However, my game has crashed a few times, and my movies have crashed a few times (it's a really weird error which you can read about here: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1554753&enterthread=y )

Any other ideas as to why my performance is messed up?
 
maybe you have a borked card? even if it loops 3dmark fine.. i was able to game pretty stable on a system that failed prime in less than a minute :rolleyes:
never had any reboots, though if temps got too high, things would lock up :(

though 3dmark01 isn't crazy video intensive. try '05 if you can.
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
maybe you have a borked card?
Click to expand...
Can't be, I have normal 3D mark (01, 03 and 05) of around 21000, 13000 and 5400 (oc'd card to 410/1100), and my aquamark was normal also I think it was like almost 70000 or something.
 
do you have problems in any other games? it could just be a game specific issue.
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
do you have problems in any other games? it could just be a game specific issue.
Click to expand...
That's the main game I play. I did try UT2004 the other day and it ran really well. I ran Medal of Honor the other day also and it was pretty good.
 
software issue then. if it's only one program causing issues, then.. generally it's not a hardware problem
 
Do you play the game? What are your framerates near the CT spawn of cs_office (on a like 20 man server)?
And what are your settings/system specs?
 
nah, i don't have the game... i'm tempted to get it though

2.3ghz clawhammer
2x512 crucial ballistix at 230mhz, 2.5-2-2
6800gt at 380/1080
 
My FPS usually stays up around 80, only drops down to 30-40 at the main entrance to the office. The Rig is in my Sig.

Two things though, firstly, I'm running at Medium Texture resolutions (both Models and Textures). I saw a friend's 3.0ghz Prescott w/ an ATI X800 XT PE, and he's hitting 30-40 fps on Office. He's running High texture, 4xaa, 8xaf. The stock Steam recommends.

Two things to try:
1. Format
2. lower Texture Resolution to Medium.
 
In my case, its 754 until I got to college & get a laptop :p
I got my 3000+ back in June, so 939 wasnt really a less tahn $600 option for me. I just hope my current rig can last for 3 more years, at least being able to play new games semi-decently.

Another 754 for life (before college) member!
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
yeah, get some crucial ballistix and an ocz powerstream :D

gotta love how we have a whole bunch of 754 fans in one thread. ;)
Click to expand...

That won't do anything for performance, at all. Please check your facts before giving useless information.

His best bet if CS:S is laggy is to overclock his CPU and video card a bit. Most Athlon 64s can go 200-500 MHz over stock without any new cooling, just the original stock AMD heatsink and fan if case cooling is good.

Steel Chicken said:
a flaky PSU will NOT cause a GPU to slow down. it WILL cause it crash.
Click to expand...

That isn't true either. Many modern cards like nVidia's GeForce 6x00 series will slow down the GPU if there is not sufficient power reaching the card. This usually comes with instability as well though.
 
Epicenter said:
That won't do anything for performance, at all. Please check your facts before giving useless information.
Click to expand...
sorry, if you read the rest of the thread and the advice i gave on how the psu probably isn't related to performance, you'll realized that i was joking around in that post. ;)

also, check your facts too. a performance drop that large won't be fixed by oc'ing the cpu. read anandtech's article on how clock speed effects framerates. note that it takes a 1ghz a64 to drop just below 40fps with the 6800gt? ;)

another thing, if you're saying a flaky psu will slow down the video card if it's just enough power, then explain to me again how getting an ocz powerstream won't help performance.

and lastly, 754 setups are more bandwidth limited than 939 (obviously, also, check anandtech's review i linked to before, it shows some single vs double channel tests) getting some ram that can overclock at tight timings that's still relatively cheap would also help performance out, though probably not outside 5%, which will be unnoticable. it's more a peace of mind thing

note the quote in my sig. baldrik said that for a reason, though please don't start flame over this. i'm just merely stating what i know to be true
 
His signature clearly reads: "Enermax 350w 26A 12V rail". An Enermax supply with >20A on +12VDC is MORE than enough to power his system reliably. So .. it's unlikely to be a power problem, and an OCZ Powerstream won't do him a bit of good. You should not advise the purchase of an expensive new PSU unless you can confirm he has piece of shit, like some "Eagle 5472-Watt supply" or if his rails are bouncing all over the place, or far off the mark, which they won't likely be with such a quality supply.

Enermax supplies are known for having very accurate, stable rails. This OCZ Powerstream I see touted here so much (presumably because it was in a machine that got an impressive overclock?) has proven in benchmarks, even wtih a 30A +12v rail, to supply uneven, off-the-mark power in the range of >5.2v on 5.0v, 12.4v on 12v, 3.5v on 3.3v .. These are not amazing results by a long shot; and this was with a very low-calibre system using a mobile CPU, 2D Only graphics card and some 7200 RPM hard disks, on a 520w supply! Despite solid construction internally, and modular cabling which is a plus, this supply is clearly not a heavyweight performer. I shudder to think how this '520w' Supply would run an actual stressful machine like an FX-55 or Prescott with a GeForce 6 series GPU and some 10kRPM hard disks! And god forbid an SLI configuration.

So .. he should keep his existing PSU solution and RAM. They're serving him quite well. If anything he should see if these problems can be generated in any other games, and accept that some slowdown during loading or very stressful areas (e.g. 40fps in bursts) is something people with even the most powerful machines deal with from time to time.

A small overclock MAY help him-- I play Half-Life 2 DM Online quite a bit, and as you probably know, 8-16 clients using heavy ragdoll physics is stressful. I was seeing <20 FPS in bursts on a 2800+ 754 A64 and a 6600GT with 1024 MB of RAM. I Took my CPU from 1800 to 2360 MHz, and my GPU from 500 to 590 MHz, VRAM from 1.0 to 1.2 GHz .. and now, I only get 30-50 FPS in the most stressful situations. It can make a hell of a difference.
 
I have an Enermax. The same exact model he has, 26A on 12v and all.. It's 12v rail is a piece of shit. Right now it's 11.32. This is with a couple fans, 1.55 vcore, 1 harddrive, and 1 optical drive. If I plug in one more fan into this fan card running off of the 12v, my system simply wont post.
 
also, out of curiosity, where did you read this review that says the powerstream is a pos?
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article173-page5.html
they give it a good review.
i have one myself. the 12v changes about .04v (measured with a voltmeter) from idle to load.
also, if the rails are terribly off, so what? there's 3 little screws on the back of the psu to allow for voltage trimming.
1. VOLTAGE REGULATION was very good, but subject to careful setting of the voltage trim pots on the back panel. The adjustment range is as follows:
+12V: 10.7 ~ 13.3V
+5V: 4.5 ~ 5.6V
+3.3V: 2.8 ~ 3.8V
Click to expand...

there's just no excuse for having rails that are at an incorrect voltage with a powerstream unless you were fiddling with them yourself and didn't put them back properly.



edit: just noticed something. the modstream is the one with detatchable power lines. don't bash something when you don't know the real name of it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top