Mid level gaming pc

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 5th, 2009 02:41 AM

Some other things with the new rig:

Video
I thought the Windows Experience score of 6.9 for graphics/gaming was way too high. That was using the drivers on the Sapphire cd. I then downloaded and used the latest ATI Catalyst drivers. The score dropped to a more realistic 6.0. But frame rates increased by at least 1/3 on all games.

ex: Doom 3 1152x864 at Ultra settings (everything including shadows enabled). FPS went from 95 to 157

Memory
I used Everest Home Edition to test the ram. It's DDR3 1600 running at a motherboard default of DDR 1333.
CPU: 2.8ghz
Read Speed: 11462 MB/s
Write Speed: 4116 MB/s
Latency: 17.7 ns

Temperatures:
I ran 3D Mark 05 not 06 because I'm currently using a 19" monitor with a res of 1440x900. At a testing res of 1024x768....
HD 5770 GPU max temp with fan at 50%: 50 Celsius
CPU Temp in BIOS during reboot: 46 Celsius

Noise
Much quieter than my previous build. On the older system, I can hear the cpu fan over the cooling fans which were pretty loud on their own. With this new build, all I hear are the cooling fans. Once I disconnected the noisiest fan (80mm side fan inward to cpu), I could barely hear the cpu fan while the video card fan is silent.

I should be finishing the 72-hr reliability testing soon.

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 5th, 2009 08:46 AM

I'm starting to optimize the pc. First thing is setting the DDR3 1600 ram to run at its rated speed. It had been running as DDR3 1333.

I then ran Windows Experience again and got this. I'm not sure how believable this is. The HD 5770 is a mid-range card. I still think it's closer to 6.0 than 7.4

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 5th, 2009 09:36 AM

I attempted another reinstall of Homeworld 2 and C&C: Generals. What do you know, they installed fine this time!

Lessons learned...... Run RAM at rated speed. I know running them above their rated speed can be bad. But, I didn't know running them below their rated speed can also be bad especially since I've done it before with no apparent ill effects.

**Horsepower** · November 5th, 2009 06:47 PM

*Jun, my buddy who is an AMD fanatic told me that you have the Phenom II Black Edition.

1.) you can overclock it +1Ghz.

2.) You can unlock the 4th core by going to the BIOS and turning on ACC and Hybrid. It is due to the SB710 chip.

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 5th, 2009 10:17 PM

Originally Posted by Horsepower

*Jun, my buddy who is an AMD fanatic told me that you have the Phenom II Black Edition.

1.) you can overclock it +1Ghz.

2.) You can unlock the 4th core by going to the BIOS and turning on ACC and Hybrid. It is due to the SB710 chip.

Yup. I read up on it. I don't really want to change my heatsink. So, that would limit me to 3.7ghz with some voltage adjustments. That would put it in the range of a Q9550.

If I leave the voltage alone, it's an easy 3.2ghz. For now, that's what I'm going with. I like taking small steps at a time with overclocking.

As for the 4th core, it's hit and miss. Basically, it's pure luck if I get one with a usable 4th core.

I figured I'd get back into overclocking. My nephews have already jumped into it big time. I prefer to hear them talk about overclocking rather than their trash talk whenever they kicked my butt gaming online

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 5th, 2009 11:02 PM

I guess I am one of the lucky ones where the 4th core of a Phenom II X3 works.

Muwa ha ha ha

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 5th, 2009 11:12 PM

Running Windows Experience again with the 4th core enabled:
Cool!

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 6th, 2009 02:14 AM

Some other stuff needing adjustments.....

For SATA: Enabled AHCI (from IDE mode) first in the Windows 7 registry and then in the BIOS.

Then, I turned off write-caching because I have a number of external hard drives. I didn't want to be bothered with asking permission before unplugging/turning them off.

**Horsepower** · November 6th, 2009 02:27 AM

Originally Posted by Jun aka Pekto

I guess I am one of the lucky ones where the 4th core of a Phenom II X3 works.

Muwa ha ha ha

hahaha! Cheers!

**Jun aka Pekto** · November 6th, 2009 02:56 AM

Originally Posted by Horsepower

hahaha! Cheers!

Now, I have to figure out if that 4th core is really a bad core or a good one that was simply turned off. I want this cpu to last at least a couple of years. If it's a bad core, I may have to revert back to 3 cores.