Yes, this is severe underperformance, I am getting more than 40 average on extreme with an i5 750 / 4gb ram / ati5850. Also note that Extreme only works in singleplayer. In multiplayer, Extreme is the exact same thing as Ultra.
Theres been a lot of these threads popping up lately, im starting to think sc2 has an issue with some specific cards or something along those lines. As for you're question, check you're temps, drivers etc, im getting around you're fps with a 5770 and a phenom II 955 with 4GB of RAM running on ultra if its anything to compare it to.
OC the CPU to about 4.2, OC the GPU and you might get away with it without an RMA? Not that the setup you have would differ much in quality as when you would get a, say, i5-760 with a GTX 460?
Underperforming by a long way, unless you spend most of your time playing mass-macro 4v4s. Check the temperatures of both the GPU and CPU while running SC2 (CPUID HWMonitor will do), as thermal throttling can cause this sort of trouble.
On January 23 2011 09:27 Seth_ wrote: It is a bit lower than I would expect.
What's the resolution you're running at?
1900x1080 currently
That's horrible, I bought my computer last year for about £650 and I can max SC2 on that resolution with similar FPS results. Can't say more than that as I'm no tech expert, but well, confirmed something ain't right :|
On January 23 2011 13:50 Dont Panic wrote: Ummm not to brag but ig et that shit and my budget comp cost me 520 USD like 5 months ago.
Sigh. His graphics card alone costs as much as your entire computer.
Maybe a misplaced heatsink is at fault? Starcraft 2 is very cpu intensive, perhaps it is overheating and causing the cpu to cut back. Try running a stress test like prime95 and find out what your cpu temperatures are. I have the exact same computer honestly, and it runs extreme at about 100 fps. (Although my processor is overlocked). So yeah, something is definitely not going right.
I have just got my internet back so I am going to run these tests which you have reccomended and I have also updated the the original post to more exact detail, also if possible to could someone please point me to a good video or writen guide on how to overclock my processor.
So it's really not too far off, Starcraft 2 isn't really true multicore, so the higher the clock of the processor the better, oc if you can.
Also, the GTX 580 is a pretty new card, so it might take a bit before drivers catch up with it and give it better performance in certain games that it currently has issues with.
Could anyone suggest any other games which I could try and test my FPS on I am currently limited on my amount of PC games I currently only have Crysis and SC2 installed.
OC to 4.5 on air,
( use alcohol/wipe off ) spread a dot of x23-7783 paste ( works better than silver )
go into bios to disable cpu throttling ( there's 2 options there ) one drops the multiplier, the other one halts execution...
Is my current setup able to handle such a high Overclocking? I am not experienced with any kind of overclocking and do not have any of this paste or any kind currently.
It sounds to me like your PSU is a little low? i remember the 580 being pretty power hungry my rig is pretty similar, but from 2 years ago, i had to get a kw PSU to supply computers hunger for energy =\ (course i'm overclocking from 2.4 to 4.0 which eats more but yeah)
1) I personally don't think overclocking your CPU will fix anything. Your low framerate doesn't result from not overclocking your CPU.
2) Did you try any regular video benchmarks? I am out of touch with what benchmarks to use, but if you look at GFX / CPU reviews, you might find a few. If your system is also underperforming there, it might be a general problem, if not, it should be related to SC2.
He could at least try to disable the two throttling options in bios ( one will drop the multiplier at times so he'll go down possibly 600-1000 mhz sometimes
he needs a 800-850w psu. he has a badass gpu and 2 hard drives. All running on 600... that crazy underpowered. You went cheap on the one piece of the computer that matters the most...
Doesn't particularly sound like your system is "underperforming" that greatly, its exactly the reason why there is little point buying high end computer hardware for games these days. Starcraft 2 only manges to use two cores so its heavily dependent on clock speed, which means the 8 threads on your processor are absolutely useless.
The stock i7 950 is inferior or simply equal to the stock Lynnfields (i5 760 and i7 870) on socket 1156 simply because the Lynnfields have a much more aggressive turbo boost. Its also part of the reason why you see the Lynnfields annihilating AMD in game related benchmarks since its never running at its "stock" speeds. You shouldn't be too surprised about 40-60 FPS ingame because Starcraft 2 isn't threaded enough for the processor to show its true power unfortunately...
A GTX580 isn't going to change much seeing how CPU dependent RTS and strategy games are. What you can do to improve ingame performance is by turning off some useless settings like animated unit portraits, which for me was the thing that made ultra unplayable to playable.
On January 28 2011 23:55 Womwomwom wrote: Doesn't particularly sound like your system is "underperforming" that greatly, its exactly the reason why there is little point buying high end computer hardware for games these days. Starcraft 2 only manges to use two cores so its heavily dependent on clock speed, which means the 8 threads on your processor are absolutely useless.
The stock i7 950 is inferior or simply equal to the stock Lynnfields (i5 760 and i7 870) on socket 1156 simply because the Lynnfields have a much more aggressive turbo boost; the reason people buy socket 1366 is for PCI lanes. Its also part of the reason why you see the Lynnfields annihilating AMD in game related benchmarks since its never running at its "stock" speeds.
A GTX580 isn't going to change much seeing how CPU dependent RTS and strategy games are. What you can do to improve ingame performance is by turning off some useless settings like animated unit portraits, which for me was the thing that made ultra unplayable to playable.
It does come with HT as a feature ( can be disabled to run the cpu cooler and allow you to OC a tiny bit more if not )...the
i7(nehalem ones) at 2.66 is equal to the phenom ii at 3.25 as for instructions per clock
that video card should draw less power than the 480 due to optimization
yeah, sc2 is mostly cpu
the turbo function can be turned off in bios power saving features will slow the comp down (found in bios press F8 or whatever that brings up a blue screen at start)
Yes, Intel is far better clock for clock but the main reason why CPU game benchmarks are so lopsided is mainly because the turbo boost function. The quad core Phenoms don't have any form of turbo boosting and the Thubans offer a much more prehistoric version of the idea.
Power saving features should be largely irrelevant to computer performance and I doubt his PSU is inadequate. This isn't AMD having trouble with Cool n Quiet, we're talking about today's Intel and a guy who bought a ROG motherboard. For such high quality settings, I'm not surprised he's "only" getting this performance and I don't see how everyone has come to the conclusion that his computer is severely underperforming - it isn't and if you think it is, it has less to do with his computer and more to do with Starcraft 2 itself:
This is with Anandtech turning the settings to pretty much the bare minimum (1024 x 768 at medium quality settings) to test the Sandy Bridge processors in a 3v3 battle. The max these got were around 60, and these processors are as fast as the i7 980x in single threaded tasks.
you guys keep referencing othre processors and other tests and blah blah. All of those computers had more than a 600w PSU. He needs to be at 800. I don't know how the hell he thought he could get by on 600w PSU.
Just because it turns on doesn't mean its at peak performance.
You do not list your compuer peripherals but I am assuming you have a few. Given how powerful your computer is it is likely,as someone else has mentioned that computer is in fact underpowered. My computer is about 2/3 the specs of yours, minus a hard drive and I recently upped from a 500W to a 1000W power supply in order to actually get performace it is capable of. The power was less an issue of my direct computer use and more on the peripherals I was using. I use a DAC, HD webcam and external hard drive which all taxing on the powersupply if drawing power from the computer instead of an independent plug. I had a few obvious signs of under powering mind you, including BSoD when pluging in a HD web cam as it instanly drew more current than the power supply could handle after upgraded to a higher grade RAM. If you are literally using almost all of your USB ports, and all these devices draw power from your computer you may be having the same issue I did.
My suggestion would be trying to get your hands on a better power supply. Ebay will get you one for around $100 if you are looking in the right places.
On January 29 2011 02:56 purecarnagge wrote: you guys keep referencing othre processors and other tests and blah blah. All of those computers had more than a 600w PSU. He needs to be at 800. I don't know how the hell he thought he could get by on 600w PSU.
Just because it turns on doesn't mean its at peak performance.
You shouldn't be giving tech advice if you think a corsair 600w can't run a single GTX 580 and a 1366. You think these two components pull 300 each or something? Cause let me tell you, they don't...
I am going to saw it could be a couple things. PSU is a bit on the weak side, but probably only 10% chance of being a problem. If you're not overheating then... It is because this game is designed to only utilize 2 cores at a time. In reality it only uses one mainly. So, no matter how much shit we all shove into a case it won't greatly improve your performance.
On January 29 2011 02:56 purecarnagge wrote: you guys keep referencing othre processors and other tests and blah blah. All of those computers had more than a 600w PSU. He needs to be at 800. I don't know how the hell he thought he could get by on 600w PSU.
Just because it turns on doesn't mean its at peak performance.
You shouldn't be giving tech advice if you think a corsair 600w can't run a single GTX 580 and a 1366. You think these two components pull 300 each or something? Cause let me tell you, they don't...
Last time I checked more than 2 things ran off the PSU...He has an additional hard drive... its way underpowered for optimal gaming. And yes it does make a difference.
Use that calculator if you want. I did it for you already and the minimum PSU recommended is 581 Watts. 600 Watts is really holding back your system. Upgrade to 750 or 700. Just give yourself a little more room to breathe if you ever want to add more HDDs or w/e.
Currently having issues with internet will try and look at all your suggestions once i have internet sorry for my inconsistanty on replying. I am very greatfull for all the advice so far <3
A 600Watt PSU simply doesn't do justice to a £1500 rig... It makes no sense to skimp out on power supply with that kind of budget.
I run Sc2 on Ultra settings at 50-60 fps with a Dual core CPU (albeit 4GHz) and a vastly inferior video card (Radeon 4890 - overclocked but still shouldn't keep up to a 580).
Certainly there is something wrong. I would start with this list of things to check for:
1- Power Supply 2- Overheating 3- Drivers 4- Copious amounts of background applications 5- You don't mention how much RAM you have. I'm sure you have enough but if for some idiotic reason you only have 2 gigs or something, That could be a bottleneck.
Seriously... ignorant people still suggesting 600W isn't enough to run the rig?
A 600W PSU can cost up to $200 FYI. I would gladly place my components in the care of an X650 instead of a shitty no name 1000W PSU. The fact that most of you think that a GTX 580 and a 1366 processor can use a combined load of more than 400W is delusional.
If a power supply wasn't providing enough power to its components. The computer would be experiencing lockups, random reboots, or BSODs. Seriously. Go into your BIOS and try it. Lower the vcore to your CPU and see what happens...
There is the chance that the PCI-E power connectors on the GTX 580 came loose or never connected and that could prove to be the problem. But for the last time, it is not the ****ing wattage of the power supply that is the problem.
A 600W power supply should be enough. That doesn't mean that it can't be the problem, maybe it is faulty and doesn't deliver what it promises. But suggesting 1000W PSU's is way overkill. If you look at the grafic posted by eight.BiT on page 2 that is total system power consumption. Not just the 580. This is not the worst case scenario, so it is possible that his system draws more power, but that still won't get him to 600. The sound card also takes a bit, but not too much. What i am not sure about is this (useless) gaming network card that you have. It is in a PCI-E slot so if could draw power that might be significant in this scenario.
Maybe i missed it but you didn't specify what exactly happens in the game when you have 30-60 fps. So do you start with no more than 60? Do you have vsync enabled maybe? Do you have reduce mouse lag enabled? Turn them both off and see if it makes a difference.
So my first bet is that it is because of some wrong settings. If you are worried about the PSU try to remove this gaming network card and the sound card and remove any other devices besides mouse and keyboard. Then test if it makes a difference.
If you saw the chart on the previous page, you could see that a system with 2 580's in SLI takes about 620 watts of power at load. So something above that. 750-1000w would probably suffice.
On January 29 2011 10:40 Sgany wrote: I just noticed that my computer say it currently only has 4gb of my 6gb of ram installed, could this be a possible issue?
On January 29 2011 10:12 skyR wrote: Seriously... ignorant people still suggesting 600W isn't enough to run the rig?
A 600W PSU can cost up to $200 FYI. I would gladly place my components in the care of an X650 instead of a shitty no name 1000W PSU. The fact that most of you think that a GTX 580 and a 1366 processor can use a combined load of more than 400W is delusional.
If a power supply wasn't providing enough power to its components. The computer would be experiencing lockups, random reboots, or BSODs. Seriously. Go into your BIOS and try it. Lower the vcore to your CPU and see what happens...
There is the chance that the PCI-E power connectors on the GTX 580 came loose or never connected and that could prove to be the problem. But for the last time, it is not the ****ing wattage of the power supply that is the problem.
You're right. Because a PSU only supplies power to the video card and processor. Forget about the 2 HDDs, multiple fans, sound card, network card and all the other things needed to run a computer. The GTX580 alone uses 389 watts when under a full load btw, so yes, a processor and gtx580 while playing SC2 easily eat up 400 watts of power.
A PSU doesn't cost $200 either. I bought by Corsair 650W for $90 and even got $20 back in a MIR, so you are way off. a 750W PSU shouldn't cost him more than $140-$150.
On January 29 2011 10:12 skyR wrote: Seriously... ignorant people still suggesting 600W isn't enough to run the rig?
A 600W PSU can cost up to $200 FYI. I would gladly place my components in the care of an X650 instead of a shitty no name 1000W PSU. The fact that most of you think that a GTX 580 and a 1366 processor can use a combined load of more than 400W is delusional.
If a power supply wasn't providing enough power to its components. The computer would be experiencing lockups, random reboots, or BSODs. Seriously. Go into your BIOS and try it. Lower the vcore to your CPU and see what happens...
There is the chance that the PCI-E power connectors on the GTX 580 came loose or never connected and that could prove to be the problem. But for the last time, it is not the ****ing wattage of the power supply that is the problem.
You're right. Because a PSU only supplies power to the video card and processor. Forget about the 2 HDDs, multiple fans and everything else needed to run a computer. The GTX580 alone uses 389 watts when under a full load btw, so yes, a processor and gtx580 while playing SC2 easily eat up 400 watts of power.
A PSU doesn't cost $200 either. I bought by Corsair 650W for $90 and even got $20 back in a MIR, so you are way off. a 750W PSU shouldn't cost him more than $140-$150.
Source? Rofl. You probably don't have any or are referring to the anandtech bench which clearly states FULL SYSTEM load. Thanks for educating me that there are more components than the GPU and CPU because I clearly didn't know that... Clearly these other components consume a lot of power... gosh.
A Seasonic x650 at one point did cost $200 and btw if you didn't know, the majority of Corsair PSUs are manufactured by Seasonic.
Hard drives consume 10 watts each. Fans consume basically nothing...if your computer crashes if you plug a fan in, you've got some major problems. Add 100W for all the random stuff he's powering and its still only around 450w max draw during gaming.
600W is enough for this system, yes his power supply is not the best out there but if he had issues with his power supply, he'd be having more problems in the form of his computer actually fucking up - which I assume he isn't.
There is nothing wrong with his computer full stop. That is the performance you should get, a GTX580 and a i7 isn't going to magically make Starcraft 2 run at 100fps on max settings, that's not how computer games work - in fact it should be running worse than a i5 760 because of the overhead you get from hyperthreading and that its turbo boost is older than the ones used on the Lynnfields.
Its why you don't buy i7s for gaming because they provide zero (0) performance benefits full stop: enthusiasts buy LGA1366 because they want to make use of the PCI lanes or use the RAM for VMs. Crysis 2 is basically the only game that will benefit from it in the near future because it will accept up to 8 threads.
I would also go with power supply sorry but by experience your gear would go with a 750W minimum. I mean the i7 950 is already known to be pretty consuming, and that GTX 580 does not help. Having 2 hard drives and a sound card in PCI with a network card pci-e will also be pulling more from the wall.
Your hole system if you use the "antec power supply calculator" would be 870 watts but they always over do it a little. 750 watts should do the tricks.
I agree with several other posters: your PSU is not enough for your system. Here is your graphics card's official page. Click "Specifications" and scroll to the bottom.
Minimum Recommended System Power (W): 600
The difference between a 600W and a 750W is ~50 U.S. dollars. Why did you choose to go for the minimum recommended system power? In my amateur opinion, that is a terrible idea unless you have worked the calculations.
On January 29 2011 10:12 skyR wrote: Seriously... ignorant people still suggesting 600W isn't enough to run the rig?
A 600W PSU can cost up to $200 FYI [Citation Needed]. I would gladly place my components in the care of an X650 instead of a shitty no name 1000W PSU. The fact that most of you think that a GTX 580 and a 1366 processor can use a combined load of more than 400W is delusional.
If a power supply wasn't providing enough power to its components. The computer would be experiencing lockups, random reboots, or BSODs. Seriously. Go into your BIOS and try it. Lower the vcore to your CPU and see what happens...
There is the chance that the PCI-E power connectors on the GTX 580 came loose or never connected and that could prove to be the problem. But for the last time, it is not the ****ing wattage of the power supply that is the problem.
Here is a link to Newegg's listing of 750W PSUs ranked from highest price to lowest price.
A 600W PSU can only cost $200 if you have a working time machine (unless you're a sucker).
Disable C1E ( stops execution ), EIST ( multiplier drop results in lower frequency at times ), and the on the motherboards for the i7, disable the thermal throttling one ( this one also slows down the cpu drastically ) ( that's also when the there's possible heat issues )
HT sometimes does slow down the computer and could be turned off, but it benefits encoding applications rather than gaming applications.
On January 29 2011 13:02 Obsolescence wrote: I agree with several other posters: your PSU is not enough for your system. Here is your graphics card's official page. Click "Specifications" and scroll to the bottom.
The difference between a 600W and a 750W is ~50 U.S. dollars. Why did you choose to go for the minimum recommended system power? In my amateur opinion, that is a terrible idea unless you have worked the calculations.
On January 29 2011 10:12 skyR wrote: Seriously... ignorant people still suggesting 600W isn't enough to run the rig?
A 600W PSU can cost up to $200 FYI [Citation Needed]. I would gladly place my components in the care of an X650 instead of a shitty no name 1000W PSU. The fact that most of you think that a GTX 580 and a 1366 processor can use a combined load of more than 400W is delusional.
If a power supply wasn't providing enough power to its components. The computer would be experiencing lockups, random reboots, or BSODs. Seriously. Go into your BIOS and try it. Lower the vcore to your CPU and see what happens...
There is the chance that the PCI-E power connectors on the GTX 580 came loose or never connected and that could prove to be the problem. But for the last time, it is not the ****ing wattage of the power supply that is the problem.
Here is a link to Newegg's listing of 750W PSUs ranked from highest price to lowest price.
A 600W PSU can only cost $200 if you have a working time machine (unless you're a sucker).
600W power supplies can cost that much if you go buy 80+ Gold power supplies.
The vast majority of the ones you listed have major flaws...in fact the only ones I'd trust without reading reviews (not Newegg reviews, proper reviews) are the PC Power and Cooling ones because of their long successful history. For instance the Coolermaster 750W GX Series has problems with fan noise, suppressing electrical noise and running within spec when drawing heavy loads and the Thermaltake TR2 RX 750W can't actually draw its specified loads when the operating temperature is hot and has problems suppressing noise and ripple during heavy loads. That shit can fry your computer if you're not careful.
Its cute that people are just throwing around PSU wattages as if its the only thing that matters.
On January 29 2011 10:33 Sgany wrote: Ok have some internet
My ram is 4gb atm, I plan to upgrade to 8gb.
I plan to do x2 gtx 580 SLI once I get more money, so what PSU would I need to support this?
I didn't notice this post until just now - but I sincerely hope you aren't doing this to improve your frame rates. Womwomwom already posted a link on page 2 which highlights the issue.
At the lower resolutions, 1680 and 1920, you aren't even seeing any major separations from the GPUs until you add 4x AA. That's a basic indicator that an i7 at 4Ghz is still CPU-limited at those lower resolutions.
Until SC2 becomes truly multi-threaded, single thread performance will be king. This means max IPC, max frequency - which is both in Intel's favor at the moment. I'm talking air OCs, before someone quotes me the PhII at 7Ghz haha.
On January 23 2011 09:15 Sgany wrote: I currently run sc2 on extreme at around 30-60 fps which averages around 40, is this under performing for my specs. Nothing is currently overclocked.
What kind of performance were you expecting exactly?
On January 29 2011 13:02 Obsolescence wrote: I agree with several other posters: your PSU is not enough for your system. Here is your graphics card's official page. Click "Specifications" and scroll to the bottom.
Minimum Recommended System Power (W): 600
The difference between a 600W and a 750W is ~50 U.S. dollars. Why did you choose to go for the minimum recommended system power? In my amateur opinion, that is a terrible idea unless you have worked the calculations.
On January 29 2011 10:12 skyR wrote: Seriously... ignorant people still suggesting 600W isn't enough to run the rig?
A 600W PSU can cost up to $200 FYI [Citation Needed]. I would gladly place my components in the care of an X650 instead of a shitty no name 1000W PSU. The fact that most of you think that a GTX 580 and a 1366 processor can use a combined load of more than 400W is delusional.
If a power supply wasn't providing enough power to its components. The computer would be experiencing lockups, random reboots, or BSODs. Seriously. Go into your BIOS and try it. Lower the vcore to your CPU and see what happens...
There is the chance that the PCI-E power connectors on the GTX 580 came loose or never connected and that could prove to be the problem. But for the last time, it is not the ****ing wattage of the power supply that is the problem.
Here is a link to Newegg's listing of 750W PSUs ranked from highest price to lowest price.
A 600W PSU can only cost $200 if you have a working time machine (unless you're a sucker).
600W power supplies can cost that much if you go buy 80+ Gold power supplies.
The vast majority of the ones you listed have major flaws...in fact the only ones I'd trust without reading reviews (not Newegg reviews, proper reviews) are the PC Power and Cooling ones because of their long successful history. For instance the Coolermaster 750W GX Series has problems with fan noise, suppressing electrical noise and running within spec when drawing heavy loads and the Thermaltake TR2 RX 750W can't actually draw its specified loads when the operating temperature is hot and has problems suppressing noise and ripple during heavy loads. That shit can fry your computer if you're not careful.
Its cute that people are just throwing around PSU wattages as if its the only thing that matters.
Well what I find cute is people saying to OC CPU or GPU. I mean his GTX 580 is well enough to get 100 + fps easy and the i7 950 is a really good CPU witch yes stock without OC will give you great performance on starcraft2.
On topic, OP there are a few things you can do to improve your performance. The RAM boost will assist load times, can't hurt you there, but in general to get better performance from what you already have you would need to OC your hardware. I wouldn't recommend it since no offense if you knew how to take care of OC'd hardware you probably wouldn't have bought some of the things you ended up purchasing. You are already running at a pretty strong frame rate but if your system is running really cool you can squeeze more out of it, just make sure you do your research first.
I agree that lack of power isn't causing a reduction in framerates, that's just silly since if you have ever experienced that problem you'd know that you couldn't even get the thing stable in the first place to even test framerates.
On January 29 2011 10:33 Sgany wrote: Ok have some internet
My ram is 4gb atm, I plan to upgrade to 8gb.
I plan to do x2 gtx 580 SLI once I get more money, so what PSU would I need to support this?
I didn't notice this post until just now - but I sincerely hope you aren't doing this to improve your frame rates. Womwomwom already posted a link on page 2 which highlights the issue.
At the lower resolutions, 1680 and 1920, you aren't even seeing any major separations from the GPUs until you add 4x AA. That's a basic indicator that an i7 at 4Ghz is still CPU-limited at those lower resolutions.
Until SC2 becomes truly multi-threaded, single thread performance will be king. This means max IPC, max frequency - which is both in Intel's favor at the moment. I'm talking air OCs, before someone quotes me the PhII at 7Ghz haha.
To get the values for 2560x1600 (double the processing power from the latter ) from the 1920x1080 tests, you can just cut the FPS in half
and it would end up getting the FPS as stated in the OP
Would this guide be suitable/compatible with my current setup, also I have no thermal paste.
With a weak power supply and inexplicable performance issues (you should be getting better FPS regardless), the last thing you want to do is start overclocking...
If your temps are almost up to 70 on stock voltage with no OC then you'll likely need better cooling if you plan to OC... obviously going to need thermal paste as well.
Honestly it sounds like you don't really know what you're doing so be careful and take the appropriate precautionary steps listed in a trusted guide. The only thing worse than an under-performing expensive rig is a dead expensive rig.
Also note that overclocking will increase the amount of power drawn from your PSU, which is a likely/possible source of the problem in the first place. I would strongly recommend to get your hands on a 800+ watt power supply and swap that into your comp. There is a reasonable chance that it may fix your performance issues.
Would this guide be suitable/compatible with my current setup, also I have no thermal paste.
With a weak power supply and inexplicable performance issues (you should be getting better FPS regardless), the last thing you want to do is start overclocking...
If your temps are almost up to 70 on stock voltage with no OC then you'll likely need better cooling if you plan to OC... obviously going to need thermal paste as well.
Honestly it sounds like you don't really know what you're doing so be careful and take the appropriate precautionary steps listed in a trusted guide. The only thing worse than an under-performing expensive rig is a dead expensive rig.
Also note that overclocking will increase the amount of power drawn from your PSU, which is a likely/possible source of the problem in the first place. I would strongly recommend to get your hands on a 800+ watt power supply and swap that into your comp. There is a reasonable chance that it may fix your performance issues.
After attempting overclocking using my motherboards auto OC to 3.7 my core temps went to around 85-91. So that is currently not an option, but I do believe I have a good cooling system for my computer?
Overclocking doesn't really change power demands by a lot until you hit the point of diminishing returns where you need to increase the vcore to ensure stability. The same goes for GPUs, very often on stock voltages you can overclock certain cards very far...for instance the HD5850 can be clocked to 850/1200 which is quite noticeably higher than the stock settings (750/1000 I think).
Depending on how well your chip has been binned, you can turn off tubo boost and "overclock" the i7 950 to 3.6ghz on stock voltages by playing around with the multiplier.
After attempting overclocking using my motherboards auto OC to 3.7 my core temps went to around 85-91. So that is currently not an option, but I do believe I have a good cooling system for my computer?
Because of the binning process, the auto OC function are always extremely conservative. If you're lazy they're generally very decent but its always better to do it yourself.
I plan to upgrade my PSU to around 1000 watt when I get more money, I plan to future proof my computer as I will also be getting an additional 580 and most likely a motherboard upgrade to make room this SLI.
With the hardware you have, overclocking NOT needed to run well (580 heats up a lot so I wouldn't recommend overclock) What you need is more power supply man! I think you need at least 800 Watt. Edit: oops I didnt see your post, 1000 should do it.
On January 29 2011 13:41 LorD_AreS wrote: Well what I find cute is people saying to OC CPU or GPU. I mean his GTX 580 is well enough to get 100 + fps easy and the i7 950 is a really good CPU witch yes stock without OC will give you great performance on starcraft2.
Did you bother reading through my links? Cute or not, the point of OCing is raising the minimum FPS more than the max FPS. Nobody cares what you max out at, but you can be damn sure when your FPS drops to the minimum it is noticeable. Again, if you bothered reading my links you'd see that with the SB overclocks you are actually hitting a point where minimum FPS is exceeding 60FPS.
Now does that mean all of us have to go out and buy a SB? No, but if you don't have one and you don't have similar clocks, you will need to lower your expectations for minimum FPS. I am still baffled at the amount of people who recommend AMD CPUs at this point. Even in Tom's badly done CPU-scaling article, it highlights the effect that AMD's lower IPC has in CPU-scaling: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/starcraft-ii-radeon-geforce,2728-8.html
Now Tom goes on a tangent, showing a graph comparing # of cores for the Phenom II, when it can't even beat the lowest clocked i5 750. Tom ignores the bigger point that is staring him in the face: that PhII's really need overclocking just to match stock-clocked i5/i7's. IMO, who gives a shit about the # of cores involved (for an AMD chip) when the highest performing chips (i5/i7's) are already quad-core by design?
You know it's ironic, for a site that used to be heavily Intel-biased in its early years, they could actually use some if they wanted to provide good information for the community. But I digress
And wow....people are still hung up on the power supply in this thread. Simply hilarious.
You know what, I'll write it out so people without reading comprehension will understand. Anandtech's test system is a 920 @ 3.3Ghz. I.e. an overclocked 920. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/nvidias-geforce-gtx-580/5 With a GTX 580, at full 3D loads (Crysis), they hit 389W. Total system power consumption. The end.
On higher priority issue currently with my computer is that one of my ram sticks does not seem to be registering with my computer my ram is currently 4gb when I am using Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) XMS3 1600MHz - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
On January 31 2011 23:35 Sgany wrote: On higher priority issue currently with my computer is that one of my ram sticks does not seem to be registering with my computer my ram is currently 4gb when I am using Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) XMS3 1600MHz - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Try reseating them first. If that doesn't work, run memtest86+ on each stick individually for a minimum of 8 passes. If an error shows up, you are going to have to RMA.
On January 31 2011 23:35 Sgany wrote: On higher priority issue currently with my computer is that one of my ram sticks does not seem to be registering with my computer my ram is currently 4gb when I am using Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) XMS3 1600MHz - Lifetime Warranty (DDR3)
Try reseating them first. If that doesn't work, run memtest86+ on each stick individually for a minimum of 8 passes. If an error shows up, you are going to have to RMA.
I currently have an issue getting my sticks out of their sockets as my GTX 580 is making it near impossible to access the second clip. Is memtest86+ a boot program, as I cannot seem to run it as an application.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4012/33985.png)
![[image loading]](http://i54.tinypic.com/b3oi38.jpg)
