jsagaga02

Distinguished
Jul 4, 2010
102
0
18,690
I recently cleaned out all of the dust built up in my PC build today because games were lagging when I played them. I just played a little bit of Crysis for about 3 hours and after that I thought I'd take a break from it so I quit the game. Before cleaning my build, the benchmarks were horrible, because I usually get a score of about 7500+ running the AMD Overdrive benchmark or even the 3D Mark benchmark software. So after cleaning my build and playing a little Crysis I ran the benchmark again on AMD Overdrive hoping my scores would be back to normal, I got a score of 7500+. But after that I restarted the system since it was recommended by AMD Overdrive, I ran the benchmark again after rebooting and I got a very low score of 1900+. Do you guys think I need a CPU cooler? The reason I ask is because after the reboot, CoreTemp says my cpu temp is around 23-26 degrees celsius, but in the BIOS it says 36 degrees celsius.

My PC specs:

CPU- Phenom ii x2 555 BE with stock cooler
MOBO- Asus M4A785TD-V EVO
RAM- G. Skill F3-10666CL8D-4GBRM
PSU- Corsair TX650W
HDD- Maxtor 6L00R0 200gb (Upgrading next month to Samsung F3 Spinpoint 1tb)
GPU- XFX Radeon HD 5770

Thanks!
 

jsagaga02

Distinguished
Jul 4, 2010
102
0
18,690


So if I upgrade my hard drive to the "Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb" that I plan on buying, my benchmark scores should go back up again to where it used to be or maybe go up to an even better score? My PC case is the CM HAF 922 Mid-Tower. and I am still using the fans that came with it, do you think I should buy some side panel fans or are the ones on the case should be just fine for the hardware that my build has?
 

masterasia

Distinguished
Feb 9, 2009
1,128
0
19,360
Side panel fans wouldn't hurt, but I don't think you really need them.
The HAF cases already have decent air flow, but I think the hard drive cage
restricts some of the air that comes in from the front.

7500 is a pretty low score these days. My 2 year old system, Q9550 with CFX 4870
is 22,000+. With your setup, you should be getting 10,000+

Also, I believe with your motherboard, you can unlock the hidden cores on that Phenom II.
Give that a try to see if your computer is still stable.
 

jsagaga02

Distinguished
Jul 4, 2010
102
0
18,690


Wow I thought my score was pretty good for the setup that I have for my build. For the unlocked cores, sadly I can't because I tried it before and it looks like my 2 extra locked cores are defective. When I did it windows wouldn't boot and I even followed a guide on Overclockers.net on how to increase the voltage to try and make it stable but no go.

I'm thinking that the only thing causing the constant lag at times on my build is the hard drive, but I am not actually sure though. I thought it might be my GPU, but my GPU's temps seems to be ok. On GPU-Z, it shows "GPU Temperature" at 42.0 degrees celsius, "GPU Temp#1 and GPU Temp#2" at 38.5 degrees celsius, "GPU Temp#3" at 42.0 degrees celsius, and "Fan Speed" at 35%.
 

jsagaga02

Distinguished
Jul 4, 2010
102
0
18,690
Also, do you have the latest catalyst drivers installed?

Yup I installed 10.7 with Catalyst Control Center when I first bought the XFX Radeon 5770 which was the first discrete card I've ever installed to this build. Although I installed the new 10.7a driver which was suppose to enable anti-aliasing in StarCraft II. But I reverted back to the 10.7 because after installing 10.7a and installed some updates for Windows 7 64-bit (Ultimate), that is when I first began to see lag when gaming. I removed those recent updates to windows (don't know if I got rid of all the ones that were recently installed) and went back to 10.7. Cleaning out the dust from my build helped but then all of the sudden the lag came back as I mentioned in my first post.