Optimizing Performance

[lazz]

Hi!

I recently upgraded from a 4 year old Atlon 64 3800+ build to:

AMD Phenom II x3 720 BE
Asus M4A78T-e
2 GB Corsair XMS 1333MHz
Sata I HDD 80GB
XFX Radeon 4650 1GB

Now for some reason I was expecting it to be faster than it is... it just seems to be a tad slower than I had imagined.. I was wondering if anyone could give me some tips for improving performance! Thanks.

Here is my 3dmark06 test:

 

[frozenlead]

Overclock.

 

[kevin1212]

Your gpu is rediculously slow. A 4650 is no where near as fast as a gtx 295 or a 4890. Cpu is ok.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Upgrading to 4GB of RAM and a current 7200 RPM HD will improve the system responsiveness considerably. Did you perform a clean install of the OS when you did the upgrade? If not, old drivers and conflicts could be slowing the system down. I would do a fresh install if you didn't already.

 

[lazz]

yes i nuked the HDD with some utility that full cleaned it... took like 2 hours haha..

and even with only 2GB ram would using a64bit windows improve performance?

 

[theblade]

+1 to Kevin, that GPU is very weak, if you can unpgrade it and you will see a big improvement.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

No, a 64-bit OS uses slightly more RAM. I ran 64-bit Vista on my system with 2GB of RAM for about a month before I upgraded to 4GB. It ran OK, but my RAM usage was higher than it was with 32-bit Vista. I would use a 32-bit OS with 2GB of RAM and a 64-bit OS with 4GB+ of RAM. Don't, however, let that stop you from upgrading from 2GB to 4GB even if you have a 32-bit OS. 3GB - 3.5GB is always better than 2GB.

 

[lazz]

say I add only another 1Gig stick in....would that be better using only 3 slots?

also ill look into getting a new GPU - any suggestions for something around the $100 range? Or would it be better to get another 4650 and crossfire X them?

 

[jitpublisher]

Gotta agree, your GPU is not going to do well in 3DMark 06.
Don't get another 4650. 2 weak cards in crossfire means that you have, well 2 weak cards in crossfire. Not very impressive if you ask me.
I'll let someone else guide you in the GPU arena, since most people around here think my idea of a good GPU is "foolish", (or so I have been told), even though my PII 920 and GPU hit over 15,000 in 3DMark 06.

 

[kevin1212]

The 4850 is perfect at $100. The 4650 is so weak, doubling them will not help much. A single 4850 will maul 2 4650's.

 

[jitpublisher]

The 4850 is perfect at $100. The 4650 is so weak, doubling them will not help much. A single 4850 will maul 2 4650's.

I'll go out on a limb here and say for $100, that is a good upgrade from what you have.

 

[bluzman32]

were you planning on gaming with this computer?

 

[lazz]

i am planning on playing Aion with this computer... but not really anything more intense...

also i was wondering if anyone can tell me how to make a flash drive into a boot disk.. i think I need to do that in order to flash bios using a flash drive... supposedly if I update bios on my mobo i may be able to unlock the 4th core of my x3 720.


also i will look into how much to change the multiplier to OC to about 3.0 GHz. Thanks everyone for the input.


and i will look into the 4850!

 

[lazz]

well i OCed the mem clock on my GPU to 680Mhz and OCed the CPU to 3.0GHz still trying to figure out the bios flash so i can see if i can have 4 cores....

 

[lazz]

well i got an hd 4850 1GB and now the 3dmark score is 12700! Thanks!