Just looking for some confirmation

[Nemacol]

Here is what I am working with:

Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
ASUS Rampage III Formula LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0
AMD HD5970 Radeon HD 5970 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16
Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366
Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080G2R5 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Intel X25-V SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner

Cyborg R.A.T. 7 Gaming Mouse
RAZER Arctosa Silver USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard

ASUS VE276Q Black 27" Full HD HDMI Widescreen
2x Acer 22" widescreen

recently upgraded to the 5970 video card from 5770CF (very happy with the results so far).

BUT I still seem to be having some issues with a couple games (mainly SC2 but i feel that this is the fault of SC.. not my PC) I have tried a variety of different settings, starting with max and incrementally lowering them and I feel that I am playing these games well below what I should be for the system i am running.

Anyway, the real question = Am i bottle necking at the CPU? I really feel like this is where it has to be, i have a ton of RAM and a smoking GPU. Just looking for a little confirmation that this is where i am getting.

Once I feel confident that the CPU is my hold up I will be looking into a new cooling solution for it and shooting for a 3.7-4.0 OC to the CPU.


Thank you for reading,
Nem

 

[Nemacol]

Oh, and while I am at it - The 40GB SSD is where my OS and drivers are sitting, the 80GB SSD is for all of my programs, and i have a WHS to keep all of my other files and the like stored.
As time has gone by (over the last year and couple months) those SSD's (mainly the one for Windows and Drivers) has gotten rather full from new hardware, windows updates and the like. I have been tossing around the idea of getting another SSD like a 120-160GB and moving all of them up a level.. (80= windows 120= programs)

Anyone see a better solution for this?

Thank you for reading,
Nem

 

[Wolfshadw]

Honestly, I don't think there is a game on the market that going to even come close to putting your CPU under duress (unless you're running multiple instances). Here's a test you can try.

Open Task Manager, switch to the Performance Tab and minimize it. Open SC2 and play for a few minutes (or through a mission). Once completed, switch back to task manager and see how heavily your cores are running.

Another quirky test you can try. Remove half of your RAM and see how (if) things change.

-Wolf sends

 

[Nemacol]

Thank you for the reply.
SC is a weird issue to be honest. For whatever reason I am getting 20-25FPS (sometimes lower) so i am thinking I have a setting on that SC just does not play nice with.

CoD:Black Ops i get some significant staggering during high stress moments (heavy combat and explotions... just for a few seconds it will drop from 85-90 FPS to 10-15) just enough to get me killed because i cannot see whats going on when someone shoots at me

I will take your advice and come back with more details.

Thank you,
Nem

 

[Nemacol]

After taking some time to work with those tips (took me a while because I was not at home when i posted first time) that the CPU do not max at very much. only during loading screen do i see them hit 95+.

But i still dont understand why i am getting these lag when there is heavy action.

Time to move to the GPU boards i guess.

Thank you for your help.

nem

 

[diellur]

That's a really nice setup!

I can't see the problem being the CPU or RAM. Logically, I would have thought it's the GPU, although you do sound like you can play at very good FPS rates and then get smoked because they drop. But that's at moments that the GPU is under stress, so it might be the GPU is just not up to the task.

You could fire up the Windows 7 GPU monitoring gadget, play in windowed mode and see how the GPU fares through a period playing the game. Might be you see it getting maxed out.

 

[Nemacol]

You are right. My GPU is capping.

This is extremely disheartening. I just picked this card up this week and I thought that if I dropped the kind of money that i dropped that I would be able to play some freaking games with decent graphics settings and not lag out all over the place. Before i grabbed MSI afterburner (just to keep an eye on the cards stats) I didn't think that this card could be the bottle neck.

I really just do not understand at all. What in the world do you have to do to play these games with high settings? Seems unreasonable that they would make games that cannot be played to the full visual capabilities.

What am i missing here. does someone really have to drop 3k on a PC and then OC it to be able to play these games in this way?

Its a small wonder why people just buy an Xbox or PS3... its a one time cost and they know they will be able to play those games.. What did I do here? I spend over 2k, MANY hours reading and considering and comparing .. and i can successfully play some games at Mid to High settings... OH but not before I set up different graphics card profiles... because differet games have different needs... and i cannot, at the moment, Play SC2 at all... it just thrashes all over the place...

Sorry I am venting... just feels like wasted effort just to be slightly ahead of where i was a week or two ago (with my 2x 5770's)


Thanks

Nem