Using HP Z600 for gaming??? Can I make it work for newer games?

woody21369

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Apr 15, 2010
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I have been building PCs for over 20 years now and I have an issue I can not figure out.

My friend has little money to build a gaming machine for his son... Like $300 and that includes monitor, so I went through my stuff and build him what I consider a nice machine. The issue is I loaded 2 older games I had, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake 3. Like I said simple, these will run on Intel Graphics. Both game stutters from time to time and I can't figure it out. Here are specs.

HP Z600 Tower. 3/18/2018 bios
Xeon e5645 6-Core 2.4ghz 12MB cache CPU.
12GB (3 x 4GB ) DDR3 1333mhz ECC Memory.
Power Color AMD R9 285 2GB Graphics card.
650 Watt Power Supply.
1TB Storage - 2 x 500GB WD Black Hard Drives in RAID-0 (NEW)
Windows 7 Pro 64bit.

Windows 7 Experience scores.
CPU - 7.6
Memory - 7.6
2D Graphics - 7.9
3D Graphics - 7.9
Hard Drive - 5.9

Anything I can do to help him out I will. Your help is appreciated.
 
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mcconkeymike

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One issue I can see is that the CPU speed isn't real fast and there could be some sort of issue with the RAID-0. While that Xeon will probably be great for workloads, the lack of overall speed could be an issue. As for the RAID, I've ran a RAID-0 with 2 identical 240gb SSDs before but they eventually started having issues and running at speeds slower than just one of the SSDs. You might be better off running without RAID with 1 disk for OS and 1 disk for games.
 

woody21369

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I did update the Bios with the newest. The station had a bios from 3/11/2011 and now 3/18/2018.

I am using the January 2018 AMD driver. I am thinking the game hates ECC memory, can't access all 6 CPU cores, or RAID-0 Striping is hurting games.
 

woody21369

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You are partially correct in CPUBOSS the single core test for this Xeon sucks. However with all 6 cores this thing is amazing for it's age. I build a similar rig as my media server using 2 x e5645 cores and I am getting 7.9 for the CPU experience score which rocks considering my personal i7 4770 is getting 7.7.
 
Apr 25, 2018
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Absolutely can make it work. I'm rocking a Z600 with dual X5650s and an overclocked R9 380X. Power supply worried me for a bit handling the R9 380x but even overclocked it can suffice. This machine is an absolute beast. If you need an extra 6/8 pin connector for a GPU I recommend splicing in a connector off the Floppy Connection found at the end of the SATA power cable. I always get 60+ fps on all newer titles.


Added Connector Layout

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