Trying to squeeze just a little more power out of a frankensystem.

[TheOriginalAce]

What's up people.  Long time reader, first time poster.  I've been building my own computers since I was a young boy, but I've never really went very far into the overclocking world.  Sure, I've bumped a CPU .2GhZ here or there, but mostly was just me screwing around.  Now, basically, I have a rather out dated CPU/MB/RAM combo and I need to squeeze a little more power out for playing Planetside 2 (A MMOFPS that basically rapes the CPU for things the GPU could be doing).

 

My system (Don't laugh...):

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 4.18Ghz (440 x 9.5)

Gigabyte EP45-UD3R

Some random SATA-2 HDD

Nvidia GTX660Ti

 

RAM: 2x2gb OCZ PC2-6400( 400MhZ) on 1 channel, and 2x1GB Kingston PC2-5300(333mHz)

 

Now, my CPU's "stock" speed is 2.8Ghz, (333 x 8) though at stock it showed 3.16 (333 x 8.5), I torqued it up to 440x9.5 which was the highest I was willing to go - at 445x9.5 the temps got to 72 and scared meh.

 

That increase gave me a very good FPS boost in-game, roughly 10-15 more FPS in heavy CPU taxing spots where previously I was lucky to hit 15fps.  

 

Still, though, I haven't -touched- the memory options.  Now, my BIOS does have an "auto" setting for all the memory timing options, so there is a chance it has been auto-magically optimizing it for my CPU overclock, but I wanna play with it anyway...  As my old cokehead friend used to say quite often... "We need MORE POWAH!"

 

 

 

 

But...  I have no idea how to do this.  Any info would help.  I have a general understanding of CAS latency and such, but because of my two different ram cards I and the drastically different numbers in CPU-Z, i don't know if I should even play with it...

 

I attached a picture of all tabs in CPU-Z.  Also, it's reading 2-something GhZ at idle because of the stupid intel power saving thing that adjusts the multiplier to 6 at idle, it goes to 9.5 whenever i do something.

  

 

Any advice is appretiated.   thanks fellers.

 

[Black64]

Are you using the stock cooler? Because I really wouldn't OC any farther then you just did. 

[TheOriginalAce]

Are you using the stock cooler? Because I really wouldn't OC any farther then you just did. 

 

Stock cooler pushing 1.37v to the CPU?  I'm amateur, but not -that- amateur.  lol  2x120mm case fans, 2x80mm case fans, one on both side of the MB 1x 140mm CPU fan sitting atop probably the biggest elevated heatsink I've ever seen.  

 

Surprisingly enough it's not as loud as one may think.  lol

[Fight Game]

Everything I've read is that 1.365 is the maximum volts you would want to run with these chips.  That's assuming good cooling (not 72C) and stable

[cchalogamer]

Everything I've read is that 1.365 is the maximum volts you would want to run with these chips.  That's assuming good cooling (not 72C) and stable

I would consider running higher in the event of non 24/7 load, but not at anywhere near 72C or if it was my main rig without spare cash to replace it, actually if it's running 72C it's probably throttling to keep it there and the only reason it's not higher.

 

 

Now, my CPU's "stock" speed is 2.8Ghz, (333 x 8) though at stock it showed 3.16 (333 x 8.5), I torqued it up to 440x9.5 which was the highest I was willing to go - at 445x9.5 the temps got to 72 and scared meh.

 

...

 

I attached a picture of all tabs in CPU-Z.  Also, it's reading 2-something GhZ at idle because of the stupid intel power saving thing that adjusts the multiplier to 6 at idle, it goes to 9.5 whenever i do something.

Yeah stock is 333 x 9.5 for 3.16, if it was set to anything else by default some other settings could be off too. As for the 6-9.5 fluctuations that's the CPU going idle dropping the multiplier because it doesn't need the performance at the time (or thermal throttling if under load)

 

It's been a long time since I really pushed my old E8400 (It lived out the last days it was in use as my server usually undervolted and underclocked) but I don't remember it being that hard to keep cool, what is the exact model of the CPU cooler you're using? It might not be mounted properly (too much or too little thermal paste, too tight/not tight enough etc) giving you the high temps or it might just not be able to move the heat fast enough.  

 

With all that said a 1GHz OC isn't too bad of an outcome and to be honest a 2Ghz OC would still sadly have it lagging behind in Planetside 2.

[TheOriginalAce]

Yeah, honestly I don't know the exact model of the cooler. As the title says, it's basaically a frankensystem.  I threw it together with a mobo I scored for free, the E8500 came out of an older base compaq i had laying around (Gotta love realizing your new score MB socket 775 won't fit the i5 you wanted to put into it... then realizing you have a C2D laying around lol), the cooler came with the motherboard.  The fan came with it as well, and it -is- pretty crappy.  Gotta give it a finger flick at boot sometimes or it wont start turning lol.  I know, its bad, but im broke.  The Ram came from my big-box-of-old-ddr2.  Was lucky to have 2x2 matching cards.

 

Anywho...  I actually got my OC specs from this site.  I read an article from here about overclocking the E8500 - the author pushed his to 455x9.5 with safe temps at 1.36, but because of my inexperience I decided to leave the voltages on the "auto" setting for the OC.  Now that I know its stable @ 4.18 w/ 1.37 maybe i should drop it to 1.36 and see if it maintains it's stability.

 

Annnnywho...  The OP was basically asking if I could tweak the memory (safely) to push any more performance outta this, or if I'm pretty much capped out here.  And yeah, I don't expect great results with Ps2, but as it stands Im around 18-25 FPS in the biggest Ps2 battle, I would actually be happy if I could be at 25-30...  Funny thing is, my CPU never actually maxes out 100%.  It hovers between 92%-95% while playing.

[cchalogamer]

 Funny thing is, my CPU never actually maxes out 100%.  It hovers between 92%-95% while playing.

That's mostly due to the coding of Ps2, it's one of the reasons they're having one hell of a time porting it to the PS4, the engine was designed without a whole lot of threading and it's hard to go back and add it.  While kicking up ram speed MIGHT make a noticeable change it seems that it's fast enough to get the work to the CPU cores at the moment so might not be worth the frustration.  The P45 at least has a solid memory controller, but idk how good the ram you have is, could always kick up the speed and see what happens but the BEST option would be to reduce the CPU clock, up the memory multiplier and then slowly test the limits of the ram.

 

All this talk makes me want to get the old EP45-UD3P/E8400/Mushkin 4GB kit/Xigmatek cooler in it off the stop of the bookshelf and see what it'll do

[TheOriginalAce]

 

 

 

Well if you happen to have a Q-series extreme on that book shelf, feel free to send it my way and in exchange I'll give you a E8500...  That's one more hundred than your E8400.  Think thats a fair trade.    

 

Honestly, if I had 4x4gb of the SAME card, I'd probably go for it... but after seeing all of your professional opinions and doing some hard core extra reading on the side, I don't think it's going to be worth it to play with it.  

 

However, I do wonder...  From what I've read, Ps2 is basically two main threads:  Gameplay and Audio.  This may be the dumbass question of the day, but I happen to have an older PCI-E HD sound card laying around... If I threw that in, and used that instead of onboard audio... would it take any load off the CPU?

Edited December 10, 2014 by TheOriginalAce

[cchalogamer]

Well if you happen to have a Q-series extreme on that book shelf, feel free to send it my way and in exchange I'll give you a E8500...  That's one more hundred than your E8400.  Think thats a fair trade.    

 

However, I do wonder...  From what I've read, Ps2 is basically two main threads:  Gameplay and Audio.  This may be the dumbass question of the day, but I happen to have an older PCI-E HD sound card laying around... If I threw that in, and used that instead of onboard audio... would it take any load off the CPU?

For the sound card, likely not enough to notice, you could try it but it's been years since it was a major factor in performance.

 

As for the CPUs, I have my trusty E8400 and Q6600 left from the 775 era paired with the EP45-UD3P and an EVGA 680i SLI, the Q6600 is actually still occasionally used and actually runs windows XP for some apps that interface with old hardware in ways a VM can't.