Investigations into Athlon X2 Overclocking
by Jarred Walton on December 21, 2005 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Far Cry Performance
Yes, our benchmarks are decidedly FPS-centric. Unfortunately, first-person shooters are the one of the only genres that pays significant attention to benchmarking tools. It's also worth noting that many other genres do not require as high end of hardware. If you can run all of the latest first-person shooters at high frame rates, you should be fine when running strategy games and the like. Flight simulations might do better with a faster CPU, though.
We experienced consistent crashes during Far Cry testing; however, it's not what you might expect. Our XFX 7800 GTX comes factory overclocked, and unfortunately the overclocking isn't entirely stable. The Regulator level consistently crashed at high resolutions, with and without antialiasing - though 4xAA crashes were far more frequent. Reducing the clock speeds to stock 7800 GTX values got rid of the crashes, but we didn't want to have to rerun all of the other benchmarks. We should note that the Regulator level was the only instance where we experienced crashes related to the GPU, but the net result is that the Far Cry numbers at 1280x1024 and higher resolutions aren't entirely reliable. Since we couldn't get results at 1600x1200 4xAA with most of the configurations, we chose to not show the results for that setting.
Needless to say, if you have a factory overclocked card that consistently crashes in certain games, you might want to try underclocking it. Yes, it should work at the advertised speeds, but you can at least reliably determine whether or not the factory OC is the cause of your problems .
Besides the problems with stability, Far Cry continues the trends we've seen so far. At lower resolutions, there's a pretty significant difference between the fastest and slowest RAM/processor configurations. The value memory can be as much as 10% slower, but as we run into the limits of the graphics card, everything evens out. If you have to choose between is significantly faster processor and is significantly faster graphics card, for gaming the latter should always take priority.
Yes, our benchmarks are decidedly FPS-centric. Unfortunately, first-person shooters are the one of the only genres that pays significant attention to benchmarking tools. It's also worth noting that many other genres do not require as high end of hardware. If you can run all of the latest first-person shooters at high frame rates, you should be fine when running strategy games and the like. Flight simulations might do better with a faster CPU, though.
We experienced consistent crashes during Far Cry testing; however, it's not what you might expect. Our XFX 7800 GTX comes factory overclocked, and unfortunately the overclocking isn't entirely stable. The Regulator level consistently crashed at high resolutions, with and without antialiasing - though 4xAA crashes were far more frequent. Reducing the clock speeds to stock 7800 GTX values got rid of the crashes, but we didn't want to have to rerun all of the other benchmarks. We should note that the Regulator level was the only instance where we experienced crashes related to the GPU, but the net result is that the Far Cry numbers at 1280x1024 and higher resolutions aren't entirely reliable. Since we couldn't get results at 1600x1200 4xAA with most of the configurations, we chose to not show the results for that setting.
Needless to say, if you have a factory overclocked card that consistently crashes in certain games, you might want to try underclocking it. Yes, it should work at the advertised speeds, but you can at least reliably determine whether or not the factory OC is the cause of your problems .
Besides the problems with stability, Far Cry continues the trends we've seen so far. At lower resolutions, there's a pretty significant difference between the fastest and slowest RAM/processor configurations. The value memory can be as much as 10% slower, but as we run into the limits of the graphics card, everything evens out. If you have to choose between is significantly faster processor and is significantly faster graphics card, for gaming the latter should always take priority.
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TheHolyLancer - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
i that since this is an OC thread, they should have used a DFI NF4 Ultra-D or a Expert, they have a 4V jumper that allows you to take DRAM voltage into 4 V (i hope no one does though)JarredWalton - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
The higher voltages would have helped the VX RAM a bit. I may shift to a LanParty SLI-DR for the cooling test... or at least try it at some point to see how much of a difference it makes in performance.KingofCamelot - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
I noticed that the BF2 demo file for v1.12 did not work. The bf2bench.demo file needs to be changed for it to work. The bf2bench.demo file can be opened in Notepad, and the following changes need to be made.These lines:
demo.camerafile mods\bf2\Demos\jw112.bf2cam
demo.demofile mods\bf2\Demos\jw112.bf2demo
Need to be changed to:
demo.camerafile mods\bf2\Demos\jwanandtech112.bf2cam
demo.demofile mods\bf2\Demos\jwanandtech112.bf2demo
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
Thanks! I've corrected the file and uploaded the new version.--Jarred Walton
tayhimself - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
Hey Jared,This was a very well written article. You were thorough with the benchmarks almost to a fault. I liked your introductory and ending commentary. Your first article was just as good.
Props!
sxr7171 - Thursday, December 22, 2005 - link
Agreed. This was a quality job for sure and the questions he raises at the end are very pertinent. I'm sure he'll come up with the answers.ElFenix - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
i assume you used the stock heat sink/fan unit?JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Er, sorry I forgot to mention that. I used an XP-90 with a 3000 RPM 92mm fan (generic fan). I'll make a note of that, since that's important information. The followup looking at cooling options will use a retail HSF as well as the XP-90, an Asetek MicroChill, and an Asetek WaterChill. (Why Asetek? Because they asked me to review their two products.)Furen - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
How come the graphs arent zeroed? I suppose it'd be pretty much a bunch of overlapping straight lines if they were but having a graph that shows framerate from 63.5 to 65.0 is not much better.JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Yeah, the graphs could be a bit misleading unless you look at what the lines actually represent.The difference between the OCZ PC4800 and everything else looks huge in the http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/athlon...">Doom 3 graph @ 1600x1200 4xAA, but if you actually look at the lines, the difference is less than 1 frame per second.