Want to update my pc specs a little.

[gozling]

My pc specs are

Maximus 4 extreme-z

i7 2700k

Hd 7970. Over clocked when gaming to= gpu clock setting 1125, memory clock setting 1575, power control setting + 20.

Ram 2 times= 4 gigs 1300, 2 times 8 gigs 1600 corsair. 24 gigs in total.

Corsair ax 1200 power supply.

H80 cpu cooler.

I know there not great specs but living over in Tenerife it can be difficult to get the latest hardware. At the moment one thing that does seem to be letting me down is the hardrive, WDC 931 GB times 2 only getting 5,9 in the windows disc data transfer rate.
Can anyone recommend a good fast hardrive for gaming, also would anyone recommend crossfire, my favorite game is Skyrim, which i play just about all the time.

Cheers.

 

[vitornob]

Why would you need more performance for Skyrim? This game would run just fine in your PC.
Maybe your hardware is faulty?

 

[manofchalk]

Any Hard Drive will get 5.9 in WEI, its not exactly the best tool to benchmark a machine.

I suspect its the fact you have mis-matched RAM that would be causing any performance issues. Remove the 1333Mhz RAM and see if it clears up.

Otherwise you have a pretty strong system. Don't see any way you could improve on it. If anything I would downgrade that overkill PSU.

 

[gozling]

Thanks guys

This is going to sound really sad, but I only get a bad frame rate in two areas of the game. But I know it’s there and its bugging me. If I reduce shadows then it goes away, but the rest of the game looks crap then. Saying that I do have at least 60 mods installed.

 

[manofchalk]

Skyrim mods tend to add a lot VRAM usage as it has to hold extra textures and such. Maybe run MSI Afterburner in the background and when you hit one of these trouble spots, ALT+TAB out of the game (being a Bethesda game it will likely crash when you do this :lol and check the VRAM usage.
If its peaking at 100%.
1. I am impressed, it is fairly hard to use up 3GB of VRAM at 1080p.
2. Thats what would be causing your performance hits, as it then has to start swapping textures back to the HDD which kills your FPS.

 

[gozling]

Thank you

Actually just counted how many mods are installed, and including the texture updates it amount to 95, didn’t realize i had so many. Will do what you said though

Cheers.

 

[gozling]

Memory usage is only about half.

 

[manofchalk]

No idea then, might be a software issue (which is likely, it is a Bethesda game). Maybe play vanilla Skyrim and see if the issues persist, that way you could rule out or identify the mods as the problem.

 

[gozling]

Sorry one last thought why would you downgrade the psu?

 

[manofchalk]

80+ certification only applies to a PSU when its above 20% load. If the system is drawing less than that (240W, which at idle it will easily be under), voltage control and conversion efficiency aren't guaranteed. So you could potentially be running the PSU at a much lower efficiency than the Gold sticker would imply and your voltages may be outside 80+ spec.

I dont think it will be much of an issue, as the AX1200 is a good unit from a great manufacturer, but on a lesser unit you could run into trouble.
Also its vastly overkill and expensive, you could have spent the money elsewhere much better (like an SSD).

 

[gozling]

Thinking next month i will get another hd 7970 for crossfire, and a SSD. That might make the unit work a little bit harder. Might take a look at some crossfire reviews first though, drivers for the card are starting to mature but not sure about crossfire.

Thanks for the info.

 

[shirokado]

My pc specs are

Maximus 4 extreme-z

i7 2700k

Hd 7970. Over clocked when gaming to= gpu clock setting 1125, memory clock setting 1575, power control setting + 20.

Ram 2 times= 4 gigs 1300, 2 times 8 gigs 1600 corsair. 24 gigs in total.

Corsair ax 1200 power supply.

H80 cpu cooler.

I know there not great specs but living over in Tenerife it can be difficult to get the latest hardware. At the moment one thing that does seem to be letting me down is the hardrive, WDC 931 GB times 2 only getting 5,9 in the windows disc data transfer rate.
Can anyone recommend a good fast hardrive for gaming, also would anyone recommend crossfire, my favorite game is Skyrim, which i play just about all the time.

Cheers.

your system is fine. yea not the best hardware since u go x79 platform for performance now. but you just need an SSD, I suggest the new Samsung 840 SSD, its fast and reliable because Samsung made the whole SSD, not parts of it, thw Whole time in their own Chinese factory. yea just get an ssd and ull get 7.9 on that and real life performance.



and I would downgrade the PSU, your not getting the efficiency. your system would be much better off with a 600w psu, and if ur going crossfire a 750w PSU(in real life power usage, a crossfire 7970 would draw about 400w-500w during a gaming load) but its 750 is good for extra headroom if u want to triple xfire