03-03-2011, 05:45 PM
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#1
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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Which component to upgrade?
Hello CP!
So, having upgraded my computer with an SSD... the logical question became: What next?
Here are my specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
AMD Phenom X4 9850 Black Edition
4GB DDR2 RAM
ASUS M3A79-T DELUXE Motherboard
ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB
120GB Corsair Force Series SSD
1TB Western Digital Black SATA 7200 RPM
WEI Results:
I am leaning towards a video card upgrade but I was curious if anyone thought that perhaps a CPU upgrade was needed more?
Thanks!
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03-03-2011, 08:24 PM
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#2
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First Line Centre
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Calgary
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Depends what you want to do with it.
I think a Sandy Bridge Quad Core would get you the biggest boost in WEI score, but I doubt you'd see a big difference in gaming, for example.
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03-03-2011, 08:43 PM
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#3
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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Thanks Mick!
Mostly I'm looking for gaming performance. Probably get the biggest effect with a video card upgrade then eh?
I was looking at going to a 2GB Sapphire Radeon 6950.
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03-03-2011, 09:04 PM
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#4
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First Line Centre
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Calgary
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The 6950's probably your best bet, but you might want to see how a 4850 crossfire setup compares.
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03-03-2011, 11:16 PM
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#5
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tromboner
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: where the lattes are
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What's your screen resolution? More video RAM might be the biggest difference maker (for gaming).
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03-03-2011, 11:45 PM
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#6
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
What's your screen resolution? More video RAM might be the biggest difference maker (for gaming).
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I use a 1920 x 1080 resolution.
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03-03-2011, 11:46 PM
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#7
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tromboner
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: where the lattes are
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nehkara
I use a 1920 x 1080 resolution.
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I'd go with video card for sure then.
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03-03-2011, 11:52 PM
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#8
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MickMcGeough
The 6950's probably your best bet, but you might want to see how a 4850 crossfire setup compares.
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Unfortunately it just can't come close so I have settled on a new single card setup.
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03-04-2011, 01:48 AM
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#9
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Atomic Nerd
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Calgary
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Your 4850 is the thing keeping your system performance down. Sell it and get a 6870.
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03-04-2011, 05:44 AM
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#10
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GOAT!
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Vid card now for sure. Could up the RAM as well, but I'd probably wait til you upgrade the motherboard/processor, as you'd have to swap the RAM there as well.
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03-04-2011, 07:29 AM
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#11
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Calgary
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Video Card and bump ram to 8GB.
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03-04-2011, 07:31 AM
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#12
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Scoring Winger
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I'm confused...7.1 out of 7.9 isn't good enough?
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03-04-2011, 11:53 AM
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#13
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tromboner
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: where the lattes are
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J Diddy
I'm confused...7.1 out of 7.9 isn't good enough?
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There's no such thing as good enough.
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03-04-2011, 04:07 PM
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#14
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J Diddy
I'm confused...7.1 out of 7.9 isn't good enough?
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Its fine on Windows Experience Index... looks nice there in fact. Actually trying to run games is a different matter entirely...
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03-04-2011, 07:45 PM
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#15
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Atomic Nerd
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Calgary
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Skip on the bump to 8GB of ram. Unless you are doing massive video editing or running server virtualizations, etc. there's no need for it.
Use the saved money on the videocard, maybe some better cooling for your CPU (which you will overclock haha).
You've probably got an easy 500MHz of headroom from 2.5GHz to 3.0GHz in that chip for a novice overclocking on average cooling.
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03-04-2011, 11:40 PM
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#16
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tromboner
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: where the lattes are
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
Skip on the bump to 8GB of ram. Unless you are doing massive video editing or running server virtualizations, etc. there's no need for it.
Use the saved money on the videocard, maybe some better cooling for your CPU (which you will overclock haha).
You've probably got an easy 500MHz of headroom from 2.5GHz to 3.0GHz in that chip for a novice overclocking on average cooling.
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Question about RAM:
Which is the Memory column to monitor in Windows7? Commit Size? My "physicial memory" use regularly goes over 4 GB (with 8 GB installed)... is that just because programs use more if it's available? How do I know how much RAM I actually need?
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03-05-2011, 12:19 AM
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#17
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Supporting Urban Sprawl
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Question about RAM:
Which is the Memory column to monitor in Windows7? Commit Size? My "physicial memory" use regularly goes over 4 GB (with 8 GB installed)... is that just because programs use more if it's available? How do I know how much RAM I actually need?
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As long as you never need to swap out to disk, you have enough RAM.
Page faults/sec can be one indication of excessive swapping.
edit: I guess I should mention that you can track page faults in your performance monitor
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Last edited by Rathji; 03-05-2011 at 12:26 AM.
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03-05-2011, 12:37 AM
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#18
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tromboner
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: where the lattes are
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rathji
As long as you never need to swap out to disk, you have enough RAM.
Page faults/sec can be one indication of excessive swapping.
edit: I guess I should mention that you can track page faults in your performance monitor
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Page faults = Hard faults?
I guess the next question is how do you know if you're close to the point where you'll be disk swapping?
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03-05-2011, 08:05 AM
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#19
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: A small painted room
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Page faults = Hard faults?
I guess the next question is how do you know if you're close to the point where you'll be disk swapping?
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I believe it's when your commit charge is over and above your RAM
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03-05-2011, 11:29 AM
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#20
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Supporting Urban Sprawl
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SebC
Page faults = Hard faults?
I guess the next question is how do you know if you're close to the point where you'll be disk swapping?
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Hard faults, yes.
Hard faults are major page faults, which is when something needs to be accessed but is not in memory, so paging to and from disk occurs. Soft faults are when the data already exists in memory but is being used by another process (or thread?) so there is not much time being spent directing the current process to it's address.
From http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc938588.aspx
Quote:
Assessing the Effect of Page Faults on the Disk
To understand the impact of page faulting on the disk, examine the number of disk operations that occur as a result of paging. If paging activity dominates your disk's workload, a memory shortage is causing a disk bottleneck. Start by looking at Memory\Page Reads/sec. This counter indicates the number of read operations by the disk that were required to retrieve faulted pages. Compare the number of reads performed with the number of pages faulted to determine how many pages are retrieved per read. A high ratio of reads to faults means a large number of pages are not found in physical memory and are being demanded from the disk, creating a disk bottleneck.
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