What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

[Pentium4]

So, this is the computer I'm using in my place away from home that I'll be using 5 days a week, I paid $225 for it, yeah what a steal...

Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz/2M/1066
3GB DDR2 RAM 667MHz (2GB+1GB)
GeForce GTX 260 896MB
Intel D946ZGIS Motherboard
180GB Intel SSD 330 series
Antec Earthwatts 500D

I'm thinking that the CPU would be the biggest bottleneck, even though the RAM is pretty slow. I'm thinking of upgrading the CPU first?

I've played some games on it and it can max TimeShift and FEAR 2, I just think it'd be smoother with a proc with more cache

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

its most likely both the cpu and memory. i dont think its the cache my current setup has less cache and its pretty decent. more memory would make a big improvement. and a faster cpu wouldnt hurt ither.

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

you may be able to find a faster cpu on ebay for not too much money and depending on how manny dimms your motherboard uses you motherboard may max out at 4gb or 8gb.

[Pentium4]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

its most likely both the cpu and memory. i dont think its the cache my current setup has less cache and its pretty decent. more memory would make a big improvement. and a faster cpu wouldnt hurt ither.

Yeah maybe memory then. Unfortunately this thing only supports up to 4GB of 667MHz RAM...it supports up to 2.66GHz/4M/1066 Core 2 Duo

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Yeah maybe memory then. Unfortunately this thing only supports up to 4GB of 667MHz RAM...it supports up to 2.66GHz/4M/1066 Core 2 Duo

i used to have a not too different setup 4gbs would most likely make a huge difference. i have a 3ghz pentium 4 cpu 775 that i got out of a computer i was working on recently.

[Pentium4]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

i used to have a not too different setup 4gbs would most likely make a huge difference. i have a 3ghz pentium 4 cpu 775 that i got out of a computer i was working on recently.

Nice, P4's are still good computers as long as they have HT and some RAM to work with. I'll see if I can find a 2GB stick somewhere, there's probably one around here somewhere

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

id say upgrade your memory first get a good set not some cheap stuff and i think your problem will go away.

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Nice, P4's are still good computers as long as they have HT and some RAM to work with. I'll see if I can find a 2GB stick somewhere, there's probably one around here somewhere

not useing it the computer i took it out of didnt want to have a picture on screen after i spent $45 on parts for it. she ended up just buying a new one.

[Pentium4]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

id say upgrade your memory first get a good set not some cheap stuff and i think your problem will go away.

Of course. Right now I have Kingston and Patriot in there. I'll look to replace the Patriot with another 2GB Kingston, my favorite RAM company!

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Of course. Right now I have Kingston and Patriot in there. I'll look to replace the Patriot with another 2GB Kingston, my favorite RAM company!

i prefer patriot but have kingston in my current setup and its the cheapest mem i can get atm.

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Category/Memory

[Phaihn]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

you could get a 2.5ghz amd a3300 and motherboard for around $100

[Psygnosis]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Have you considered one of the newer pentium Dual-cores like the g620?
The thing has 3 MB of cache and runs at 2.6, I believe.
Then again, are ya comfortable with replacing yer mobo with an 1155, and getting new memory (I believe you can get 'em all, including the G620 for about $140) for the sake of the new processor?

If not, AMD's a nice route to follow- I like the APU feature of the A3300, myself.

[JuniperSprouts]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Bottleneck to do what? If you are gaming, the GPU & memory bandwidth, speed & timing are normally the first to be addressed. Have you tried overclocking your GPU with RivaTuner: http://www.guru3d.com/content_page/rivatuner.html

Your motherboard, as an Intel, is not very tweaker-friendly. A mobo upgrade will allow you to OC your CPU/RAM & tighten up your RAM timing (an underrated tweak). As mentioned, 4GB of matching, high-quality RAM can help. Check ebay, geeks.com, newegg, directron, and tigerdirect for a mobo & RAM. You could put a free/cheap 775 CPU (gilly1984 is giving one away in the FS/Trade forum) in your Intel mobo, along with your RAM (if you replace it), and sell that (here or on eBay) to pay for some->all of your upgrade.

Which model is the CPU? E4300? Which revision/stepping? You can use CPU-Z to check. Depending on your ambient temp, C2D's can offer truly remarkable overclocks.

[mariushm]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

What's good in that setup : the SSD and the power supply.

The Intel MB should be stable, but probably has minimal overclocking capabilies.
The processor is OK, can be overclocked a bit, if the motherboard lets it.

The video card is a decent one, should be good for games made around 2008-2009.


I assume the mb is actually ZGIS, not GZIS : http://ark.intel.com/products/23503/...Board-D946GZIS

The page says the board supports a maximum of 667 Mhz on memory, so there's no point buying higher frequency memory (unless the page is wrong).

Looking at what processors it says it supports: http://processormatch.intel.com/Comp...dName=D946GZIS

... there's not much you can upgrade it to.

Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66 Ghz) and E6600 (2.4 Ghz) are the highest you can go to... not sure if it's really worth spending 30-40$ on eBay for these.

CPU Benchmark is pretty good at evaluating cpus based on their processing power, not combined with video cards and other factors :

http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Looking at E6700, it has 1644 points.. A Core 2 Duo 1.86 Ghz has about 1100 points. So it's about 40-50% better.

So the potential cpu upgrade could give you about... i would say... 10-20% performance improvement overall.

Would that be enough of an improvement to be worth spending 30-40$ on the CPU? I'm not sure.

Best thing would be to do a motherboard + cpu + ram upgrade:

60$ : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157292
ASRock 880GM-LE FX AM3+ AMD 880G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Relatively new chipset, with lots of features. There are cheaper boards, from about 45$, but then it's only socket AM3, so you're restricted at what cpus you can use

75$ : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103886
AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor ADX450WFGMBOX

This x3 450 has 2750 points, probably 3 times as fast as your current cpu, 2-2.5x times better than your max cpu upgrade, and if you're lucky you can unlock the fourth core and have a quad core cpu.

A 4 GB DDR3 is another 12-15$... so overall you're looking at around 150$.

ps. And being ddr3 memory running at 1333-1866 mhz will also matter, not just the processor. will improve transfers to and from the video card. It will make some games run better just because the memory has faster transfer speeds.

[Logistics]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Are you positive what the memory is running at? Are both the 2GB set and the 1GB set the same speed memory? Do you have them installed in the slots correctly to behave in dual-channel the way they are meant to?

I don't know how Core 2 Duo's behave because I've never owned a dual-core, but I know on my P4 640 when I turned off HT it ran everything way better. Got rid of the pausing that made watching HD movies in VLC unwatchable. (still has slight pauses, but they are quick and not a constant 10+ second pause)

Do multi-core cpu's use HT? Try turning it off?

[ratdude747]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Core 2 doesn't have HT.

[Pentium4]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

Bottleneck to do what? If you are gaming, the GPU & memory bandwidth, speed & timing are normally the first to be addressed. Have you tried overclocking your GPU with RivaTuner: http://www.guru3d.com/content_page/rivatuner.html
Your motherboard, as an Intel, is not very tweaker-friendly. A mobo upgrade will allow you to OC your CPU/RAM & tighten up your RAM timing (an underrated tweak). As mentioned, 4GB of matching, high-quality RAM can help. Check ebay, geeks.com, newegg, directron, and tigerdirect for a mobo & RAM. You could put a free/cheap 775 CPU (gilly1984 is giving one away in the FS/Trade forum) in your Intel mobo, along with your RAM (if you replace it), and sell that (here or on eBay) to pay for some->all of your upgrade.

Which model is the CPU? E4300? Which revision/stepping? You can use CPU-Z to check. Depending on your ambient temp, C2D's can offer truly remarkable overclocks.

The GTX 260 is a pretty powerful card. I would OC it but it's factory overclocked and even increasing the clock by 4MHz causes it to freeze. It's an E6300. I haven't checked in the BIOS to see what I can do there yet, I'll have to check it out.

What's good in that setup : the SSD and the power supply.

The Intel MB should be stable, but probably has minimal overclocking capabilies.
The processor is OK, can be overclocked a bit, if the motherboard lets it.

The video card is a decent one, should be good for games made around 2008-2009.


I assume the mb is actually ZGIS, not GZIS : http://ark.intel.com/products/23503/...Board-D946GZIS

The page says the board supports a maximum of 667 Mhz on memory, so there's no point buying higher frequency memory (unless the page is wrong).

Looking at what processors it says it supports: http://processormatch.intel.com/Comp...dName=D946GZIS

... there's not much you can upgrade it to.

Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66 Ghz) and E6600 (2.4 Ghz) are the highest you can go to... not sure if it's really worth spending 30-40$ on eBay for these.

CPU Benchmark is pretty good at evaluating cpus based on their processing power, not combined with video cards and other factors :

http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Looking at E6700, it has 1644 points.. A Core 2 Duo 1.86 Ghz has about 1100 points. So it's about 40-50% better.

So the potential cpu upgrade could give you about... i would say... 10-20% performance improvement overall.

Would that be enough of an improvement to be worth spending 30-40$ on the CPU? I'm not sure.

Best thing would be to do a motherboard + cpu + ram upgrade:

60$ : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157292
ASRock 880GM-LE FX AM3+ AMD 880G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Relatively new chipset, with lots of features. There are cheaper boards, from about 45$, but then it's only socket AM3, so you're restricted at what cpus you can use

75$ : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103886
AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor ADX450WFGMBOX

This x3 450 has 2750 points, probably 3 times as fast as your current cpu, 2-2.5x times better than your max cpu upgrade, and if you're lucky you can unlock the fourth core and have a quad core cpu.

A 4 GB DDR3 is another 12-15$... so overall you're looking at around 150$.

ps. And being ddr3 memory running at 1333-1866 mhz will also matter, not just the processor. will improve transfers to and from the video card. It will make some games run better just because the memory has faster transfer speeds.

It actually is a GZIS Yeah I checked the Passmark scores and upgrading it isn't really worth it. I guess for now I'll just have to deal with it Thanks for the long reply!!!!

Are you positive what the memory is running at? Are both the 2GB set and the 1GB set the same speed memory? Do you have them installed in the slots correctly to behave in dual-channel the way they are meant to?

I don't know how Core 2 Duo's behave because I've never owned a dual-core, but I know on my P4 640 when I turned off HT it ran everything way better. Got rid of the pausing that made watching HD movies in VLC unwatchable. (still has slight pauses, but they are quick and not a constant 10+ second pause)

Do multi-core cpu's use HT? Try turning it off?

Yeah they're running at 667. Both the sticks are 800MHz so they just down clocked. Turning off HT gave you a big increase? Were you using XP? Cause I know Windows 7 can utilize HT better than XP can. No, none of the Core 2 Duo's or Core 2 Quad's have HT.

[Pentium4]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

So, I did a little experiment and was really surprised by it...I threw in a Pentium D 940 3.4GHz/4M/800 and it plays games better now. It's cooled well too, under full load it gets to 55C. I thought the Core 2 would be better though....also in WEI, after putting in the PD, the RAM score went up

[mariushm]

Re: What do you think the bottleneck is in my system?

You're probably playing single threaded games... that D940 is two cores at higher frequency, core 2 duo is dual core, less frequency... if the game won't use both cores, it doesn't matter that it's overall better.