AMD64 3700+ with 2x 7800GT, why doesn´t it eat the graphics?

I have:
Asus A8N-Sli Premium (the newest with cool-pipe) (Bios Rev. 1009)
AMD64 3700+, 2,2GHz, 1024Kb cache, San Diego
2x Corsair TWINX1024-4400C25 DDR550 512Mb (400MHz @ 2-2-2-5-7-9-1-2-1T @ Auto-voltage)
2x Leadtek GeForce 7800GT 256Mb in SLi (Overclocked to 475/1150MHz)
Maxtor DiamondPlus10 250Gb, 16Mb cache, (This one is for all my apps, games and Windows) [SATA2]
Do.not.know.brand 250Gb [ATA133]
Seagate 160Gb [USB2.0]
Lacie Porsche 250Gb [USB2.0]
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Elite Pro with Logitech Z-680 5.1 (1010Watts)
Do.not.know.brand DVD-play/burn
Hiper Type-R 580W with support for everything
Antec P-180 (the newest)

Screen: Samsung SyncMaster 192v, 8ms
Mouse: Logitech MX-1000
Keyboard: Logtech MX-3100

[3DMark05: 10 800p]

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If I play Battlefield 2 with the newest patch, then I cannot run the game at maximum settings, because it laggs like if the cpu cannot handle the game.
Why can´t I run all games at the highest settings? I thought my system could handle it, thats why I bought it...
Any solution to this?

I am wondering if the cpu ain´t good enough, because my old P4 530 3,0GHz clocked to 3,82GHz could handle almost the same settings in Battlefield 2 and that was with a Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256Mb (from 2003)... Or have I got some wrong settings somewhere?

My second question is why I cannot overclock my computer? I can change all settings and that is a lot with the A8N-Sli Premium, but if I pull the FSB over 210MHz, then my SATA2 harddrive stops working. Is there any solution to this problem?
My memory can hanlde speeds up to 275MHz (DDR550) without any problems as long as I run it at 2.75v...

I thinks its your memory , Battle Field 2 NEEDS at least 2Gb of memory too run smooth and with out ant lag !!
upgrade your system to 2Gb DDR and you will be able to play BF2 at 1600x1200+4xAA (at maximum detail ) Just Like Me !!

iirc the SATA thing is because some of the SATA ports on the nforce 4 aren't locked, so they take their speed from the system bus, and if I remember correctly the article/post said that ports 1 & 2 should be properly locked. Of course, this is just from memory from something I read 6-12 months ago and may have been for the nforce 3, but if your SATA drive isn't on ports 1/2 give it a go.

As for the BF2 isssues, have you got the latest graphics drivers? I seem to remember some bug fixes for it in the last few updates. Maybe the SLI profile for the game is incorrect, a quick way to check it is just disable SLI for a moment, you can do that now without rebooting, see if that helps, and if it does I'm sure a seach in google will turn up the correct SLI profile to use.

Hope this helps, let me know how you get on. Nice setep, should go like the wind once these issues are resolved

Edit: Just checked the motherboard spec in detail, seems you have an SiS SATA controller on there too, since it's seperate from the main nvidia MCP chip, it might be possible to run your SATA drive off it, assuming you have it enabled in the BIOS and all.

Try switching cool n quiet off and testing battlefield - might be throttling the CPU unnecessarily.

Also check the temps of the two cards, they might be throttling if too hot, although this is a long shot because they don't throttle until they reach 100 degrees or summit (unlikely!).

Sounds stupid....but is SLI enabled i.e. ticked in the drivers/enabled in bios/the sli bridge is installed? Things to check is all! Not trying to insult your intelligence!

edit: you said its patched, I didnt read it!

With regard to your OC - try finding a place where you can lock the PCIe and PCI buses to 100Mhz and 33Mhz respectively, also check your chip can do it by lowering the memory speed to 100 or something ridiculously low then upping the bus, also...don't forget to drop the HTT/LDT bus multiplier to 3x as it is supposed to run @ 1000Mhz or less and can cause instability if too high...

Just set the memory and HTT multipler low whilst testing the processor out, you can tweak them up later i.e. your chip can do 240Mhz FSB, so tweak the HTT to 4x 240 = 960Mhz, and memory timings might be able to be tightened a little @ 240 since your corsair can run at 275.

Overclocking with Athlon 64's is a little different to the P4's because of the memory controller being on-chip and the HTT being a bus for component communication and not the memory.

A really good guide (OK its for DFI boards but explains ALOT) is available here: http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20823

My $0.02!

Matt

I did a quick reboot and stoped into the bios settings.

I found:
PCI Express Clock - could be set to Normal or 100<MHz
PCI Clock Synchronization Mode - could be set to Auto, To CPU or 33,33MHz

I didn´t find anything with locking SATA ports, but I turned on the Silicon SATA Controller that has control over SATA ports 5,6,7 and 8.

I am going to try to put my harddrive in one of those ports and see if it is locked then... I have it in port 1 now and that is the nForce4 chips port.

What is S/W Dram over 4G Remapping and H/W Dram over 4G Remapping ? Should they be enabled or disabled?

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To get my graphics right I changed SLI from Auto to Dual Video Card so now it forces SLI to show up in Windows.

In Windows I turned off SLI and also changed the profile for Battlefield 2 from Quality to High Perfomance. (I cannot see any difference in the game)
In Battlefield 2 I turned on show FPS with the command|| renderer.drawfps 1 ||and it showed that with one card (no SLI) I got about 20-55 fps all the time and some drops to 10... With SLI turned on it boosted up the perfomance. I now got about 30-100 fps!!!

So for the first try on one server with everything on the max and 64 players running by I got the first place!!! That was so nice, because there were no lag at all!

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Back to the overclocking stuff. If i want to go from 2,2GHz (standard for my 3700+) to about 2,6-2,8GHz, what should I do? If my harddrives sata is locked...

Should I turn the CPU frequency to 237MHz and the multiplier to the maximum and turn down the HTT to 4x?
CPU Speed: 237 * 11 = 2607MHz
Ram Speed: 237 * 2 = 474MHz
HTT Speed: 237 * 4 = 948MHz

Am I thinking the right way?



EDIT: I also turned the Cool & Quiet off.

Well,the CPU is simply too slow for 2 7800GTs.
As for the poll question:
2x7800GTs>>> 7800GTX in the applications that support SLI.
The p4 OC to 3.8(BTW temperature? anyway cool OC) should be a BIT weaker than 3700(equivalent of 3.7 GHZ) in games and equal at other stuff.
A 5950 while old still packs quite a punch. Your older sistem is much more ballanced and will perform well in CPU and GPU or CPU only stressing games . The newer will perform a lot better in very GPU hungry games( like Fear).
Oh and do not expect AMD(3700)>> Intel(3.8) in games. A few frames per second is not what i'd call a big improvement. If that P4 CPU was stabble at that clock i'd have upgraded the GFX on that system and waited for AM2 or Conroe.

And what do you mean by maximum? 8xAA and 8Xaniso? For that you probably need at least a AMD 64 4000+(or oc at that speed)/FX-55/FX-57X2 4400/X2 4800/ FX 60/Opteron oc or an Intel 955,XE or 6/9xx OC(with good cooling). The GFX card usually bottlenecks at that kind of settings but certainly a 2 7800GT should still leave a lot of stress to the CPU.
In other words
The gfx cards SHOULD NOT bottleneck your CPU .
So stay with those gfx cards and firstly change memory.
If that doesn't improve much then you could upgrade the CPU though be mindfull that the 939 socket is getting a little oldie.

In fact,if i were you i'd stay with what i have untill Conroe arrives then upgrade both memory and CPU and change mobo.

You should be able to get at least 200 mhz clock boost out of your CPU.
And the 3700(stock) doesn't really suck(that's coming from an Intel fan) but it can't keep up with a 3.8 ghz P4(that was OCed) in some stuff which is no surprise really.
At 2.4 Ghz it should perform at least on par with the current P4.

BTW Nice temps! I dunno what's up with the Intel heating problem. For some of us they don't overheat(don't pass 60) at all .
And i'm not saying that you need to,i'm saying that if you want all bells and whistles on at some games the CPU might slow your rig down.

If I get my AMD64 3700+ to 2,6GHz, which Intel cpu can I compare it too then?

EDIT:
Could my solution be 2Gb ram?

So my best choice is to buy more ram. The memory costs around 2500 kr (swedish money) or 312,5 US Dollar.

yes you need 2GB ram,


greetz

As others have said, you need more RAM. Also, did you get a good deal on those 7800GTs? Tigerdirect had some sort of bundle like that, giving a powersupply and two 7800GTs for about 600$. (Turned it down for the faster evga 7800GTs)

No I didn´t have any deal... They costed me about 340$ each.

Eh, my suggestion would be to stop fiddling around with your other components and get some more ram, to get BF2 running well, you need to up it past 1gb.

Umm, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to run everything on high settings with 2gb of ram, with no overclocking. I have an athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz) with 1gig of value ram and a geforce 6600GT, and I run 1280x1024 with everything on high except I have 2x AA and medium textures. I get a solid 40+ FPS with the only hiccups being in the first 20 seconds of a map.

2gb should definately get rid of your hiccups though 3700+ is plenty powerful, and 2x 7800GT's is DEFINATELY not holding you back.

EDIT: I just turned textures to high, and it got really f#$cking laggy. With the amount and size of textures used in BF2, you definately need 2gb of ram. And for pete's sake, leave the clocks alone. 3700+ is plenty.

You picked the wrong 7800GTs then. I got my 7800GTs for 320$ each, 470MHz core 1.1GHz memory.

I think that was my problem too... Now when I don´t have anything except for my Nod32 antivirus program running it works fine!!!

I am always buying from the internet, but only stores in the scandinavian... Because the prices are so high in a normal store! Where do you live?

Yeah a 2Gb ram would definitely help in performance increase and get rid of that lag while playing BF2.

You could get over 500 with copper heatsinks.

I am going to test BF2 today again later, because I have trimmed up my memory.

Normal settings for my memory are:
tCL - tRAS - tRCD - tRP - tRP - tRC - tRFC - tRWT - tWR - Timing
2.5 - 8 - 4 - 4 - 11 - 14 - 4 - 3 - 2

I am now running them at:
2 - 5 - 2 - 2 - 7 - 9 - 1 - 2 - 1

No problems at all, can handle Memtest86 stable. And yes it goes quicker with apps loaded into the ram!

And there will always be room for upgrade:
now memory (as most sugested)
tomorrow CPU (3700 needs a 7800GT/GTX to run at full potential in most games, better gfx cards will get slowed down)
2 days after tomorrow GFX
and again ram
It's a never ending circle. That's what you pay for playing games i guess.

I have 1 gb of Corsair XMS (2x512) in dual channel, with a 3.0ghz P4 and a 6600GT at 540/1080 and don't get lag running BF2 at 1024x768 on high settings with no AA or AF. I remember reading some THG charts showing that BF2 does not require more than 1gb of RAM at most resolutions and no AA or AF, confirming my setup's performance. Anyway, the video card is the number one limiting factor in BF2, followed by RAM. BF2 relies far less on the CPU than other games such as HL2. A 3700+ is more than sufficient, as is a 7800GT. The problem sounds more driver/software related to me. IMHO, RAM is not the problem.

its definately a ram problem mate, even just doing a google search for "BF2 2gig" without the "" turns up numerous results agreeing

I consider the article referenced!

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/1 [...] page7.html



"With 2 GB system memory, the game performance is for the most part kept above 60 FPS."