How much is my CPU bottlenecking me?

[Nobuo]

Yeah, I have been looking at overclocking, because to not take that to at least 3Ghz would be criminal. I have no idea where to start though, but I will be looking into it.

Thanks.

[Barkotron]

Just thought I'd post a conclusion for the benefit of people using this thread for reference.

I upgraded to a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 LGA 775. Has a bit of a lower clock speed than I'd have liked, but I got it with a straight swap for my Celeron, which was a bit of a steal.

3DMark05 scores increased from ~2400 to ~3200, and FFXIBench2 scores went from ~1500-H to ~3500-H. That's a big increase, and illustrates the point that Celerons definately suck for gaming. Essentially, if you're planning to do any gaming, you can't do any worse.

Oh, and those scores are before any overclocking.

Cool. Did you notice any difference in actual games while you were playing them though, e.g. did they feel a lot better? Wouldn't that be the most important thing?

[Nobuo]

Oh, yeah, definately. The framerate never faulters on Doom 3 or FarCry anymore, whereas they did before when a lot was going on.

Could have sworn I wrote that earlier. Anyway, aren't benchmark scores more useful due to their objective nature?

[DanceswithUnix]

Could have sworn I wrote that earlier. Anyway, aren't benchmark scores more useful due to their objective nature?

Depends on the bench mark.

Frames per Second in Quake 4 or HalfLife-2 is relevant to me, I tend to skip straight over 3dmark scores as they seem to be balanced too far towards the graphics card.

Anyway, congrats on the successful upgrade. How is Oblivion now? Not tried the game yet. I got Morrowind but my wife tried playing that and said there was too much dull wandering around before you got to random combat and that rather put me off. Have they sorted the combat out in Oblivion?

To briefly go back on topic ... If you plan any overclocking, you may be limited by your power supply. I don't think you said what the PSU was, and as you were only ever talking about swapping the Celery for a similar clock speed P4 I figured it didn't matter and so didn't ask! I'm sure you will be fine prodding it up to 3.0GHz, but unless you have an exceptional uATX case I wouldn't try any record attempts.

[Nobuo]

Depends on the bench mark.

Frames per Second in Quake 4 or HalfLife-2 is relevant to me, I tend to skip straight over 3dmark scores as they seem to be balanced too far towards the graphics card.

Anyway, congrats on the successful upgrade. How is Oblivion now? Not tried the game yet. I got Morrowind but my wife tried playing that and said there was too much dull wandering around before you got to random combat and that rather put me off. Have they sorted the combat out in Oblivion?

To briefly go back on topic ... If you plan any overclocking, you may be limited by your power supply. I don't think you said what the PSU was, and as you were only ever talking about swapping the Celery for a similar clock speed P4 I figured it didn't matter and so didn't ask! I'm sure you will be fine prodding it up to 3.0GHz, but unless you have an exceptional uATX case I wouldn't try any record attempts.

lol, I wasn't going to go above 3.0Ghz anyway because I don't wanna move up from stock cooling. Unless anyone thinks that's unwise?

Oblivion's running very nicely now, I have the different video options set to High/Very High with all the other niceties enabled and it runs lovely, only drops a few frames when I turn quickly when outside. Combat is fun, very realistic, but I think your wife's Marrowind complaint is still valid as there's a lot of running from place to place before anything happens, and the optional stuff you can do is pretty boring for the most part.

Yeah, don't think they really broke the mould of Marrowind, if you don't like that I'd give Oblivion a miss.

[sawyen]

Standard cooler that came with the 520 should do 3.2ish fine.. going past that will 'as a rule of thumb' require better cooling..

[DanceswithUnix]

Yeah, don't think they really broke the mould of Marrowind, if you don't like that I'd give Oblivion a miss.

It wasn't the running around that bothered her, it was the the combat system that just seemed utterly random and so unrewarding at the end of the travels.

We had just been playing Might and Magic 6, which goes in the opposite direction: dire graphics, but excellent turn based combat.

Perhaps I will give Oblivion a try when it gets down to a tenner.

[Barkotron]

Oh, yeah, definately. The framerate never faulters on Doom 3 or FarCry anymore, whereas they did before when a lot was going on.

Could have sworn I wrote that earlier. Anyway, aren't benchmark scores more useful due to their objective nature?

Dunno really. I suppose what I was wondering about was whether you actually subjectively felt a benefit when you were doing what you bought the chip for i.e. gaming. Unless you actually bought it just to run benchmarks, in which case I'd guess you'd be pretty pleased .

Good that you found it a worthwhile upgrade though .

I wuv Oblivion. It has that annoying "oh good GOD is that the time!??!" quality to it though. Must... stop... playing... till... 3AM... then... getting... up... for... work.. 3... hours... later...

[Barkotron]

It wasn't the running around that bothered her, it was the the combat system that just seemed utterly random and so unrewarding at the end of the travels.

We had just been playing Might and Magic 6, which goes in the opposite direction: dire graphics, but excellent turn based combat.

Perhaps I will give Oblivion a try when it gets down to a tenner.

Combat system is much, much better than Morrowind. If you hit someone, you hit them, it's not a dice roll. The damage you deal is dice-roll dependent, but at least there's none of the feel Morrowind gave, which was "but I've just swung a massive 2-handed sword straight through that guy and it didn't even connect" at times. I guess if you want turn-based, you'll need to go somewhere else though, as it's entirely real-time swinging lumps of metal about. Personally, I love it .

[Nobuo]

It wasn't the running around that bothered her, it was the the combat system that just seemed utterly random and so unrewarding at the end of the travels.

Oh I see now, sorry. In that case, see Barkotron's post.