Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 Bit the bullet and ordered a Quad core Q9550 today, for the bargain price of £165. As I'll be jumping from a C2D at 1.86ghz I'm expecting some healthy improvements for Arma2. Should arrive tomorrow, so will spend the evening trying not to feck up my PC! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Durka-Durka~SPARTA~ Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 That's what I got, along with W7. I dunno, to me I guess I didn't notice too much of an improvement over my too-old dual core, but it's most-likely due to me not knowing much or not paying attention to my computer. I'll say this, my 9550 + my GTX275 = 30-40fps in Arma2. I like it so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
custard~SPARTA~ Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 Nice mate I kinda think that'll be my next upgrade if I get it cheaper in a few months I will take the mick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halli~SPARTA~ Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 That's what I want..It's the best I can get for the Striker Extreme, They say you can't go over the 65mn cpu. Let us know how that dog runs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Batwing~SPARTA~ Posted January 11, 2010 Share Posted January 11, 2010 What makes the difference on demanding games as Arma2 is not the processor "only". Where possible you have to think about a mix of decent processor, beefy videocard ( a must) and good RAM. In general in games you see improvements first of all improving your videocard. It make poor sense trying to improve CPU while standing on old class videocards, especially now that videocard wars beetween ATI and Nvidia put us, consumers in a very good position to choose what you like better at very affordable prices. So, invest the best you can on Videocard first, because that is the component making the massive graphic job. About CPU, dual core have always been very very good at games, almost not justifying moving to a quad-core just for gaming. But you have to consider "speed". Your dual-core at only 1.8 Ghz is suffering slow performances. I don t remember on top of my head what s the Q9550 speed, but i m quite positive it will be somewhere close to 2.5 or 3 Ghz, which makes a huge leap ahead from the performance you had before. If it was only about speed, you already will see a noticeble improvement. Abouot going from dual-core to quad-core, that also make sense when you are playing games optimized for that kind of technology. I heard Arma2 is able to use multicores in a decent way and I monitored the core usage on my i7 and I see the game use the cores, so you should see improvement. However, the game is running smooth also on the e6750 I have on this other machine, so I have e6750 overclocked at 3.3 Ghz and a Nvidia GTS 250 (Win 7) The other Machine has an i7 920 overclocked at 3.5 Ghz and 2 hd4850 in crossfire (Win 7) and honestly, I don t see that much of a difference, although I should... Let me know what videocard will u use with your new Q9550, so I will be able to have an idea of your performance See ya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 11, 2010 Author Share Posted January 11, 2010 My setup currenty has a Radeon 4870 with 1024mb DDR5 and 8Gb of PC8500 RAM, so as you can see, my CPU has been the bottleneck for a while. The Q9550 runs stock at 2.83Ghz, which is a heck of an imrpovement over the 1.86 Ghz of my C2D. Plus once it's bedded in it should be comfortably OC'd beyond 3 Ghz. Oh, and I overcooked the price, it was a "special" at £144, so even better than planned. My expectation is this now gets me through at least the next 18 - 24 months without any real concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 12, 2010 Author Share Posted January 12, 2010 Ooohh, super smooth! Early days but gameplay was silky smooth in comparison to the C2D, no stutter at all. I'll keep an eye on the frame rates but initial effect seems to be an average 5 fps improvement. Didn't really expect that, so an added bonus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fatal_Papercut~SPARTA~ Posted January 12, 2010 Share Posted January 12, 2010 ... My expectation is this now gets me through at least the next 18 - 24 months without any real concerns. Yep, you're good to go, because in the next 18 - 24 months, PC gaming will become obsolete and we'll all be playing on consoles, a Nintendo hand-held, or nothing at all. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halli~SPARTA~ Posted January 12, 2010 Share Posted January 12, 2010 This is true but we still have our old games to play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 12, 2010 Author Share Posted January 12, 2010 Anyone know of an analysis tool I can use to monitor the core temps? I have Intel TAT but it doesn't work on 64 bit OS and I'm running Win7 64. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MH6~SPARTA~ Posted January 13, 2010 Share Posted January 13, 2010 Anyone know of an analysis tool I can use to monitor the core temps? I have Intel TAT but it doesn't work on 64 bit OS and I'm running Win7 64. Thanks HWMonitor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PANiC Posted January 13, 2010 Share Posted January 13, 2010 (edited) coretemp or everest Edited January 13, 2010 by PANiC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athlon64~SPARTA~ Posted January 13, 2010 Share Posted January 13, 2010 (edited) AMD 965 Black edition. Real power at a great price. Intell has been caught like a koren in crysis. Edited January 13, 2010 by Athlon64~SPARTA~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 13, 2010 Author Share Posted January 13, 2010 AMD 965 Black edition. Real power at a great price. Intell has been caught like a koren in crysis. Maybe, but that would require a mobo change as well, so not even on the radar. This was done to give best possible performance increase with minimal investment / hardware change. Maybe I'll swap back to AMD for a future build . . . . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 17, 2010 Author Share Posted January 17, 2010 HWMonitor Downloaded & running, thx. It's showing cores 0 & 1 running at 30 degrees but cores 2 & 3 running at 38 & 39 degrees. Is this typical, I would have assumed all 4 cores to be in a close range? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PANiC Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 (edited) are the temps closer in the bios? it's possible the heatsink isn't flat/seated correctly i guess, is it the stock cooler or one you bought? also suggest trying another app to check temps: http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ Edited January 17, 2010 by PANiC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 17, 2010 Author Share Posted January 17, 2010 CoreTemp gave exactly the same readings: 30, 30, 38, 39. It's an aftermarket cooler, a Zalman 9700, so I guess it's not seated right. Maybe too much or too little paste?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PANiC Posted January 17, 2010 Share Posted January 17, 2010 (edited) does it clip on or screw on? clip on should be fine, the screw down ones are reaolly easy to unbalance. almost everyone puts too much paste on but as long as it's not like a cake filling then you sould be ok, certainly it wouldnt cause an uneven balance like that (unless you left the actual plastic tube under the heatsink ). i know it sounds stupid but just make sure it's the right way round and not resting on the plastic on the edge of the socket, just reseat and check again, messed it up a ton of times myself. Edited January 17, 2010 by PANiC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchman~SPARTA~ Posted January 17, 2010 Author Share Posted January 17, 2010 (edited) It's screw down and the base of the heatsink is way smaller than the plastic mount, so would be impossible to have the plastic frame in the way. But I'll reseat it later and see what that does. Edited January 17, 2010 by BPR_Watchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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