x1900 AIW

[Sparticus]

Ok, I bought an x1900 AIW for a few reasons:
-I need to do video editing
-I need to play games
-I want the latest and greatest
I took this over the x1800 because of the 48 shaders and higher overclockablity. Stock my x1900 AIW runs at 500/475. I can OC it with my watercooling setup and Swiftech RAMsinks to 650/690(stable with ATItool). Huge overclocking headroom, but only one problem. FEAR get pretty laggy at times. Call me a whiner, but I was hoping for much more smoothness. Although I can turn Softshadows off, I like softshadows. So having-my-cake-and-eating-it-too is what I am sticking too. Any thoughts? Check my sig and let me know what you think. Also, with this setup I am having boot issues, but only with Cat 6.3, NOT Cat 6.2. And call this a n00b mistake, but I am having my BIOS reset to default every once in awhile. Could this be in part to having my CPU voltage on Auto? Any tips would be great guys! Thanks!

 

[timberwolf1]

Hi Sparticus,

This is why you need:
1) Dual Cores
2) SLI

Hahhaha just my 2 cents.

 

[sojrner]

agree w/ stranger... make sure you are not oc'ing too much. that may be where your instability is.

as for FEAR slowdowns... that engine is flat beefy w/ all effects on @ high res. What resolution are you running @? On my system, i still see a hitch at each autosave point (right before big firefights) regardless of resolution and it can get pretty irritating. That is the game though, not your system per-se (faster hard drives on mine might eliminate that to a degree). At higher res (1280+) there are occasional slowdowns but most of the time it is smooth.

Run the test built into the game and let us know what your #s are. (%'s) with the res you did it @

 

[sojrner]

lol... wow, ya... that is a great point. Didn't even see that one. If you run a desktop app like rainmeter to monitor ram usage on the fly then start up fear and tab back to the desktop you will see the ram full. That means you are accessing the page file which is S-L-O-W. More ram will def. help

 

[Heyyou27]

Even the X1900 XTX doesn't play F.E.A.R. smoothly on the maximum ingame settings; you'll need 2GB of RAM and a pair of videocards for this game.

 

[mdd1963]

"FEAR get pretty laggy at times."

What are your settings and resolution for the performance test, and what are your resultant min/avg/max fps obtained?

The AIW is not clocked quite as high as normal 1900XT/XTX by default, or even as even the 1800XT, but still performs quite well, unless you are atempting 1600x1200/8xAA/16xAF /SSon with FEAR...

 

[sojrner]

dont play fear = NEVER playED fear?

you must have at least fired it up on your system right? w/ a system like that you've gotta check out the visuals on this game man. I love that fear brings even the best systems to their knees. Lots of physics/calcs and effects. mmmm... shaders.

btw: what kind of games DO you play? (better q: do you even PLAY games on that system?) not gonna crucify you if you dont play, just curious.

 

[sojrner]

i agree about not gaming on a system like that, just checkin. (and too lazy to look @ other threads to find out ) to not game w/ those specs is heresy for sure.

by ladder thing I assume you mean about "mounting" the ladder to climb it? Ya, that gets weird sometimes. I certainly play more of the games you mention than fear, mostly bf2 lately. Heck, I play more ut2004 than fear. I just like the "feel" of the gunfights in the game, best of any game and the engine is the credit there.

Saprticus: Thinking about the ram issue above (to get back on-subject ) that 1 gig will only be an issue if you have alot of stuff running in the background. Like if you have 3-400 megs used then you will fill the gig and see slowdown b/c of it. If you shut everything down and get it closer/under 200 megs you should be fine on that end. You can even create a batch file to close down the desktop and all apps, fire up the game, and then restore all the apps after it closes. Back in the day i was doing that for UT2003/4 to free the most ram and use it for cacheing the textures. got some perf. improvement.

post your specs asked for above and we might be able to give you assurance that your system is running as advertised.

 

[Sparticus]

Well my GPU runs at 39C(ATItool) load after 3 hours of playing FEAR and idles around 29C(ATItool). CPU runs at 36C (from AIbooster) full load, 40C from my probe placed under my waterblock next to my CPU(as close as I can get without it being between the CPU and waterblock). Running the in-game bench plots me around 50 FPS with SS,4xAA,8xAF,and everything else on max. I top out at 120FPS and bottom out at 14FPS, while on 1024x760.Also, my LCD is native 1280x1024, but I only have an option for 1280x960 max. I see people posting 1600x1200, and I am wondering why I do not have this option, as I do have this option in other games. I know my memory is a bottle neck, and my CPU isn't all that great, but at what I payed for it you would have taken it too.
I also don't see my video card too clocked because the review for this card on bytesector.com has the card running out-of-the-box OC'd at like 580/675. So with my swiftech ramsinks I got an extra 10Mhz, and a lot more clock with my watercooling (although I expected more than 10Mhz using after-market memory cooling).

 

[sojrner]

cool man,

first off: w/ the water cooling you can get that core up high, but even w/ the aftermarket sinks on the mem you do not have that fan blowing over them like you would with stock cooling. That results in your ram actually getting HOTTER than with stock. This is not a problem, but if you got some air moving on that ram you might get it higher...

Your cpu is not bad at all for games right now man. Your only real bottleneck for games is that ram. Honestly, while I have heard ppl talking about fear being dual core aware I have not noticed much diff between my results and friends using single cores like yours. The ammount of cpu usage for physics and stuff is huge on this game, and that hits cpu and ram.

I am not sure of the resolution settings and why you are restricted to it in the menu. One solution is to edit the .ini file and "force" it to that resolution. With fear however you need to make sure all other settings are what you want and then set the .ini file. If you go back into the settings in the menu after the ini change it will override what you did. I have gotten the game to work that way on widescreen monitors before.

Other than that, your system is doing well. IMO Just get some more ram and you will prb see an improvement.

 

[Sparticus]

Thank you so much for the great information. I will be upgrading to 2GB next, then. Also I was out for some training at my job for new equipment and something came up that I should have also realized before. I am running my computer off of a UPS. Now, although THAT isn't bad the fact that I am running a 500W power supply off of a 350W-400W (can't remember exactly) UPS makes me nervous, so I am bypassed the UPS for time being and I will see if I see a difference in stability.Again, thanks for the info .

 

[Sparticus]

Also, and this is a HUGE question, would water cooling my MOSFETS for my MB and Video card make a significant difference? I expect more in stability than anything, but I was thinking of going that route considering my voltage regulator on my ATI hits 79C on ATItool (which I heard is normal for OC, but I don't like anything getting that hot except my wife ;D).

 

[fainis]

i agree you need as god damn memory as posible.......

just watch the hdd activity.....you will notice great hdd activity when those hangs appear......the game needs more data....there is no more ram to take from...and here it cames the hdd..that s*** slow hdd....

don`t blame that cpu or gpu is your RAM man ...

a similar topic was discussed same time ago when same dude updated from a generic video card to x1900 and notices the same gaming experience....no difference ...the answer is simple ..... you get as much power as your weakest element will allow you to.....

ohhh....this beginers....this is not your case ...but in same cases people think they can put the latest video card on their oldest sistem and turn it into a beast...well here it is folks..the beast turned out to be a p***y

all right...that card of yours can blow settings like AA and AF and high details and so on ...but when it cames to high resolution and lots of data ....you need RRRRAAAAAAMMMMMM....and cpu of course but this is not the case yours is more than enough for that game and most of the games today

 

[sojrner]

I agree. getting better airflow around that mobo, focusing on the mosfet sinks will help better and be easier than fabricating your own block for them. I think that keeping good airflow will help the entire system. Watch out for dead spots in the case.

That heat would concern me as well, particularly if it wasn't my wife...

 

[Sparticus]

There is a waterblock for my MOSFETS on my video card made by Koolance, and a waterblock for my mobo mosfets sold by one of my favorite retailers, Sharka Computers. So I can get them watercoolerd.

 

[Sparticus]

ok, so maybe cooling the MOSFETS on my x1900 AIW isn't a good idea, but I can still get the block for my MOBO MOSFETS. My system is Natively 3/8", so the MOSFET block for my mobo should be fine. But the x1900 MOSFET block is 1/4"