Hey i am also using this board and was looking into the registered ECC ram(2x2gb) and was wondering how it worked out for you? yah i agree with you that this thread is still relevant! my main reason for doing this is for less loading lag in battlefield 3 and other new games. oh and for all those who dismiss old harware like this, i am currently able to play any game that i have tried with decent framerates, eg..
(all at 1680x1050) (Vsync ON... obviously fps above 60 is when off.) system specs are below
MW2 - max everything, 4xAA, 16xAF - solid 60FPS online
Crysis 2 - (not updated) - "advanced" - 30 - 70FPS
Metro2033 - DX11 mode, most all settings on high/max, tesselation etc all on - 35-80FPS avg about 50-60FPS
Black OPS - High settings i think some texture set extra, Avg50-80FPS, occasion drops to 8 in the "min" fps stats but no noticeable drop in live FPS stat. very slight but one off lag when entering new area first time on zombies etc
Battlefield 3 - everything on HIGH,except geometry n draw distance n mesh on ultra, SSAO ambient occlusion, 4xdefered AA, 16xAF, postprocessing AA is off, resulting in 30-80FPS avgFPS 45-55 in 1440x900. however when moving around new areas, turning aroud quickly, get sound jitters and gfx stutter i believe when HDD reads. 1680x1050 reduces avg to maybe 25-40FPS with occassional drops just below 20 during large explosions, buildings falling etc. a bit slow for me so i reduce res.
To achieve this i spent a total of $105 building the following system. i know these are by no means stellar framerates, but with the exception of battlefiled 3 i dont notice any slowdowns.
A8n Sli Premium (found on side of road with athlon64 x2 4200+ and 2x1gb corsaid value select ddr400... seriously! not in a case, just mb,cpu n ram installed sitting on a cardboard box by the road (council cleanups!) it was even raining, but dried it out and all was sweet. it sat at my home in a box for about 2 years until few months back as i didnt have a PCI-e video card to test it, but figured if was faulty then u wouldnt chuck cpu n ram aswell.. ( i wasnt gaming so just had been using laptop for some years)
anyway, on with the system spec
A8n Sli Premium - bios 1302??
Athlon64 x2 4200+ (2.2ghz stock) oc @ 2.475ghz (225x11) (stable to 2.62 on air, resulting in less ram speed , 10%slower HT) im sure i could push it further with better ram and better than stock heatsink.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 1gb (OC - core@900 memory@5200(1300mhz)) - $75 2months old, orig cd n box contents.Free ship
2x1gb value select dual channel @ DDR450 2.5-3-3-7 CR1 (DDR435 when CPU@ 2.6ghz)
Antec 500w PSU - $30 online.
7200rpm IDE HDD (soon to be replaced with 7200rpm SATA drives from laptop lying around) - $6 for cable when i buy it
ACER x213W LCD
Win 7 Ultimate 32bit (would clearly change to 64 had i 4gig ram)
total cost = AU$105 (plus a lucky find some years ago to be fair
. Result = Perfectly capable gaming machine for most any game @1680x1050 max/medium high setting. yes yes, BF3 at 1440x900 which i know it sucks
so thats my very long winded way of asking about the REG ECC ram and if it worked and what the performance was like, and also to vindicate Lopper that YES! this is still a relevant thread. Dont 'mindlessly' dismiss old builds!
I just tried chucking in 2 matched 512MB sticks i had lying around (Elixer?? i think) to see if the extra gig would assist with the loading lag in BF3, and it did help a little, however it reduced my OC to 2.31GHz DDR420 2.5-3-3-8 CR2.
although battlefield performed a little better in terms of cacheing lag i found that MW2 for example went from a solid 60FPS to frequent drops to the 30's when moving around esp on large maps. this is much worse than my system with everything at stock speeds, in mw2 i still get solid 50-60 on stock. so i can only assume this is a result of the Command Rate being set at 2.
though it seems like alot for that so perhaps issues with memory controller and having 4 sticks, 2x1gb, 2x512.
So yah! any advice on ways to improve performance without spending much? i am currently saving for a bulldozer system so any mid way upgrade isn't worth it. I am hoping 2x2gb dual kit that can run decent timings and CR1 when OC will help. there is one on offer for $39 but as i said its Registered ECC. I do realise that the major bottleneck on my system is the CPU
(on most nearly all games bar BF3 the difference between Min everything at low res and max everything at high res is not more than 10-15FPS. my gpu fan never even goes above 50 - 53%. utilisation very rarely above 50 - 70. BF3 pushes to 85. CPU util however, is often 99.
so aside from 2x2gb dual kit ram would it be worth picking up say an Opteron 185 (max supported) if can get on the cheap. do you think it would make much difference with a good OC? keeping in mind that i will probably only be using this systm
for another few months.
thanks for any help you can offer.
p.s i know its not really related but you will recall im saving for a bulldozer build with a 990FX/SB950 AM3+ SLI/xFire board (at the very least a Phenom2 x6), do you think my sapphire HD 6770 would perform acceptably into the future in crossfire with a HD6790. or would i be better spending the money on a new card entirely like a 6850 or 6990 or even nvidia? i hope by then to pick a 6790 up for about same as i paid for 6770 ($75). or would it scale better with another 6770 as the 6790 tho compatable uses Barts GPU instead of Juniper.
sry for the long rambling post. thanks for any input anyone can provide. cheers.
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