Easy upgrade advice / question thread

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 16:36

Hi all,

I have a 2 year old machine which is starting to creak a touch..

OS Vista 64 HP (will change this to Win7 in due course)
GPU 8800GT 512MB
CPU Intel Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
RAM 4 Gigs DDR2 (4x1G) 6400C4
HD Seagate 500Gig
Case Antec 900

All the above was bought from OCUK in a complete bundle and was OC'ed by them before purchase.
I want to increase what it can do game wise. All games played on Samsung 22" widescreen that only goes to x1050.
Usual suspects.. CS:S, TF2, Crysis, Guild Wars, Borderlands, MW2, etc etc etc...
Where would you put up to £200 to get best bang for buck to increase what she can do? I have noticed the fans start to step up a gear when playing any more demanding games. I don't remember them ever doing this a year ago but that is probably more down to my Guinness addled brain than anything else. This makes quite a bit more noise but the system is reasonably noisy anyway..
Is the best to just slot in a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £124.98 and go from there?

Any help and advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers

MC

Daaaveee · 16 Feb 2010 at 16:41

I'd probably just spend it all on 5850 tbh

SfnX · 16 Feb 2010 at 16:43

ye that cpu etc is fine and dandy altho the mem seems a bit slow but managable. id agree with the GC and geta much better 1.

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 17:09

Thanks guys... ouch £210 but guess will hold me fo quit a while ??

Daaaveee · 16 Feb 2010 at 17:13

Yep it will definately last you a good while, fantastic performance for the money.

UKDTweak · 16 Feb 2010 at 17:13

You say the system was bought pre oveclocked... yet state the CPU running at 2.4 (default)... Is it running at 2.4 or higher?, as a good overclock will help get the most out of whatever GPU you upgrade too.

reiyushin · 16 Feb 2010 at 18:40

A 5850 + an nice overclock on that CPU will tide you over for a couple of years

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 19:43

Hmm CPU-Z says under specification Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
How do I check how it is running?

Cheers in advance..

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 19:47

In fact now that I think about it... I was always under the impression that this machine was OC'ed but in truth I left it at that and never really went under the hood.. I understand there should be some different profiles in my BIOS that I can check is this correct? I don't remember much if any paperwork or notes from OCUK on this...
I would attach my CPU-Z file but can't... Processor bit is Cut & paste below
Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 4)
Number of threads 4 (max 4)
Name Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Codename Kentsfield
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 775 LGA (0x4)
CPUID 6.F.B
Extended CPUID 6.F
Core Stepping G0
Technology 65 nm
Core Speed 1631.9 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 6.0 x 272.0 MHz
Rated Bus speed 1087.9 MHz
Stock frequency 2400 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, EM64T
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 2 x 4096 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes
FID range 6.0x - 9.0x
Max VID 1.275 V

Does any of that help? Thanks in advance...

stulid · 16 Feb 2010 at 19:49

CPU Z should have the frequency its running at displayed at the bottom to the left.

This of course would be useless if you have speedstep turned on, this slows the CPU down when its not doing anything to save power/heat.

Try running prime 95 while CPU Z is running to see the correct speed.

stulid · 16 Feb 2010 at 19:52

The core speed is what its running at, looks like speedstep is on.

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 20:27

With Prime95 running which my PC doesn't like I get
Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 4 (max 4)
Number of threads 4 (max 4)
Name Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Codename Kentsfield
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 775 LGA (0x4)
CPUID 6.F.B
Extended CPUID 6.F
Core Stepping G0
Technology 65 nm
Core Speed 2448.0 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 9.0 x 272.0 MHz
Rated Bus speed 1088.0 MHz
Stock frequency 2400 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, EM64T, VT-x
L1 Data cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 4 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 2 x 4096 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes
FID range 6.0x - 9.0x
Max VID 1.275 V

My machine can only seem to run Prime95 as Stress Test for minute or two... see below.... sorry seems to be fine running the Torture Test...

But results above look like I am not overclocked currently yes??

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 20:33

Hmmm I get Hardwear problem with Prime 95

Fatal Error Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file
Torture Test ran 3 minutes - 1 errors, 0 warnings
Worker stopped

Doesn't read well to my very layman eyes !!

Anything I need to get concerned about guys??

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 21:26

Wow I got unstable errors after 78 seconds of Intel Burn also...

Any sugestions where I go from here??

Cheers in advance

MC

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 21:28

----------------------------
IntelBurnTest v2.4
Created by AgentGOD
----------------------------

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
Clock Speed: 2.45 GHz
Active Physical Cores: 4
Total System Memory: 4093 MB

Stress Level: Standard (1024 MB)
Testing started on 16/02/2010 21:23:39
Time (s) Speed (GFlops) Result
[21:24:18] 28.035 31.8844 9.048905e+010
[21:24:56] 28.126 31.7815 8.756764e+010
Testing ended on 16/02/2010 21:24:56
Test Result: Failure.
----------------------------

Mal Cullen · 16 Feb 2010 at 21:30

Should I move these questions to Overclocking forum? It is just I am obviously not convinced I am overclocked at all so not sure if it would be appropriate...

stulid · 16 Feb 2010 at 21:53

No your not overclocked, is there a profile in the bios, that looks like ocuk could have set and saved? I don't know your motherboard at all, I'm just remembering a thread were someone moaned why his overclocked bundle was running at stock speeds, turned out ocuk had left a profile of tuned settings in his bios, he selected this and all was good.

Edit. Just seen your fsb! 272 is not stock. Turboboost?