Biggest Bottleneck

[ShortRef]

My system is:

Duo core E6750
600Watt PSU
8800 gts 320mb
p5k board with a fsb of 1333 mhz


And

IDE connected hard drive at 7200 rpm
1 gig of 333 mhz ram



Is the hard drive of the ram the biggest bottleneck for my CPU, which one shall i upgrade first, thanks

 

[sirkillalot]

8800 gts 320mb to 8800gtx 768 meg then 1 more gig ram

 

[ShortRef]

8800 gts 320mb to 8800gtx 768 meg then 1 more gig ram

Lol no that wasnt my question

Do I upgrade my ram first or my harddrive, I dont need to upgrade my gfx card because I cant tell the difference btween 60 fps and 70 fps

 

[ShortRef]

will there be alot of difference between:

333mhz ram, and 1066 mhz

IDE connected 7200rpm drive, SATA 10000

 

[kingoftherings]

will there be alot of difference between:

333mhz ram, and 1066 mhz

IDE connected 7200rpm drive, SATA 10000

Not normally.

But if you have Core2, you should have DDR2 RAM, so I'm guessing you have 667mhz RAM. You must have forgotten to multiply by 2.

I'd say just buy another gig, and thats about all you need.

 

[ShortRef]

On cpu-z

So it says 333mhz, its actaully running at 667?

 

[makingthemaker]

Yes it is. It is ddr2 ram, thus double data rate, so you take the speed it says its running at and double it, and that is your actual speed. System is good mate. Add another gig of ram and you have a very ideal system. Definitely kills mine
Cheers!

 

[aevm]

Another vote for adding another GB of DDR2-667.

 

[jaypaul2577]

I'd have to say RAM too.New games like bioshock need 2 gig of ram for a smooth experiance.A SATA hard drive is something you can get next and will improve loading times but the RAM's gonna make more difference for sure

 

[Hatman]

Since ram is so cheap now its definatly worth it to go to 2gb of dual channel ram.

 

[onestar]

Our modern systems just love RAM, even while they do not use it effectively. It is a shame we can not overcome the hard drive bottleneck. Maybe the new flash based drives will help.

 

[nukemaster]

everything is well balanced....so add 1 more gig and your good to go(or at least you should be)...

 

[nightscope]

Be sure that the extra gig of ram will work in dual channel with the current gig, otherwise you'll lose a bit of performance in that area. Personally, I would just buy a 2X1gb ddr2-800 memory kit that's running at 4-4-4-12 (Better timings than what you have atm) since prices are so low at this time. You can get a very good kit for around $60 after rebate.

 

[dragonsprayer]

hard drive is the biggest bottle neck

you want 3 hard drives and one is raptor is better - you builk regular stuff is on the raid0 thats 2 drives and games/apps on the raptor


or if you have alot of data raptor os and raid as the second drive


dual drive raid

 

[ShortRef]

Yes I was going to get a fresh set of ram

Ram for breakfast :F

Is there much difference between 800mhz and 1066mhz ram. My motherboard says it officially supports 800mhz ram, and natively supports 1066mhz ram, what does this mean? Thanks

 

[yomamafor1]

Hard drive will always be the biggest bottleneck in your system. However, you'll need to drop extra big bucks, when you don't get that much in return.

Raptors 150Gb are 150~200 bucks each, when a 500Gb is 100bucks. Having two of them in RAID will slightly boost your startup time by a few seconds.

Solid State Drivers are even more expensive. A 32Gb cost around 500bucks.

IMO, you should improve your RAM timing to DDR2-800, upgrade it to 2Gb, than dropping the big bucks on the hard drives. You'll see a substantial boost from switching from 667Mhz to 800Mhz.

 

[hell_spawn]

would i be being a prick if i mentioned that the word should be effective instead of actual?

no, not a prick, just comical

 

[SteelZ]

Go for another gig! hdd doesnt do much at all!
I had 1 gb for like 2 months and had to suffer on medium settings on fear...
as with 1 gb it would lag each time i enter a new room.
if i go to task bar i see it usuing 1.25gb of ram when i only have 1.024gb...

i would get around 60fps when standing still the sec i walk it drops to ~ 23..... WTF right?

 

[andybird123]

I was getting <20fps inside Titan's on BF2142 with 1GB... checked ram usage while playing and it was using >1.2GB... upgraded to 2GB and now I get 80FPS max, 60fps min

(ignore the "you need DDR-800" comments, Intel CPU's see only marginal improvements using faster non-1:1 memory types, so for your 1333mhz fsb CPU you do only need DDR2-667, which is what you have)

 

[keeperos]

I think 2 Gigs of ram are the norm nowadays. Not too long ago I set a E6400 based system and at the time RAM was super expensive so I only got 1Gig. I actually thought there was something malfunctioning.
When prices dropped I got another gig and voila, it was as if everyting finally had fallen into place.
And that was a system with the 7600 GS, with your Graphics card the need for 2Gigs is even greater.

Oh, and as another poster said earlier, Core2 DUOs actually take performance hits when they run with RAM that isn't 1:1 with their FSB so definitely go with another 667 rather than 2 new 800...
Ain't worth it.

 

[systemlord]

The truth is the HDD is the biggest bottleneck of them all. The HDD has been falling behind for sometime now, because everything starts from the HDD. From the HDD to the Ram to the CPU, the HDD is the one with the moving parts which is why its limited.

 

[keeperos]

There you have it really. From an academic standpoint pretty much everyone agrees that the biggest bottleneck comes from the HDD. Not YOUR IDE in particular as much as today's HDDs in general.

On the other hand, since you're asking which should you upgrade first the answer is simple:

Get another identical to the one you currently have RAM DIMM and be done with it.

 

[nhobo]

RAM first, you'll see a big difference immediately, since the CPU won't be as busy swapping memory to the disk. Even the fastest hard drives are always the slowest part of a system.

 

[systemlord]

RAM first, you'll see a big difference immediately, since the CPU won't be as busy swapping memory to the disk. Even the fastest hard drives are always the slowest part of a system.

Ram is even faster than the CPU, don't know where you heard that from. We are talking about speed/performance in general terms.

If you were to have 4GB of Ram, the fastest CPU around and the fastest HDD, you'd find that the biggest bottleneck would be the HDD. From a mechanical (moving parts) point of view the HDD is the slowest of the bunch.

 

[systemlord]

Even the fastest hard drives are always the slowest part of a system.

Isn't that what I just said? The HDD is the bigger bottleneck in the system, then you say Ram first???