Find the bottleneck...

[jprheeder]

Hi All,

First off i would like to say that whenever i have a IT related problem I find myself following a google link to a page in this site, so I thought I would become a member of this reservoir of knowledge that is tomshardware.

Now for the question:

I have done a few benchmarking tests on my PC and would like to improve upon it, I am currently at work so unfortunately i cannot upload exact results but my 3dMark06 score is in the region of 11k. I seem to think that the problem lies with my Mobo/ram but lets leave that up to discussion?

Vitals

-Intel® Core™2 Duo Desktop Processor E8500
-MSI G31M3-L V2 LGA775
-2x Kingston 1GB DDR2 800
-NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
-I'm running XP Pro on my 80GB IDE but i also have 2 sata drives (@160 and 320)


I'm thinking to swap out my G31 for a P45 and 800MHz for 1333MHz?

The floor is now open

 

[outlw6669]

Welcome to the forums!

First off let me ask you a question.
Are you happy with your gaming experience?
3d Mark '06 is a decent indicator of relative performance (ex. stock performance to overclocked performance) but, as you can not play a benchmark, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
11K for a dual core system with a 9800GT sounds like it is in the right ball park.

As for your system, it does not look terribly bad (with the exception of an MSI motherboard ).
Probably the best upgrades I could recommend would be a 4Gb DDR2 800 RAM kit and a faster boot hard drive.

Depending on what resolution you game at, a GPU upgrade could be in order.
To be honest though, your 9800GT is still a very capable card at 1680x1050 and below.
You would probably be better off waiting for the next generation GPU's to come out before upgrading.

If you are not planning on overclocking, which you should probably try, you will see no performance increase between your current G31 based motherboard and a P45 based one.
The only real benefits from upgrading the motherboard would be proper CrossFire support, much better overclocking and slightly lower power consumption.

Same with the RAM.
Unless you are planning on overclocking past 450MHz FSB, you will see no performance increase from anything faster than DDR2 800.
Keep in mind that any potential boost in RAM performance from running at a higher speed is offset by the higher latency.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

+1 above post.

I've used both a G31 and P45 chipset with the e8400.
Without overclocking, upgrading to the P45 chipset with DDR 3 is not gonna give you an "upgraded" feeling when you see the performance gain is very minimal if even noticeable.

If you want to see your 3DMark score go past 13,000, push your e8500 to 3.8 Ghz (9.5 multi X 400) if your current motherboard's BIOS allows tweaking to a 1600 fsb.