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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JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
This may seem like a stupid question, but you did copy the SuperPi executable into two separate folders, right? Otherwise, the two running processes overwrite each others' data and one will always fail. Anyway, I don't find SuperPi to be a very useful stress test compared to Folding@Home, Prime95, and several other utilities; it just doesn't stress the system out that much IMO.Yianaki - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Yes of course it is in two folders. I realized that the SECOND time I did it Heh.Leper Messiah - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Thats actually a good thing, my X2 3800 does 2.65 at 1.425 vcore stable a rock. Looks like this x2 test is a good average indicator instead of most reviews which have the nice cherry picked silicon.JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Yeah, My Opteron 165 seems to top off at around 2.6GHz with the stock cooler.Araemo - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
If you buy a socket 939 opteron, will it work in a normal NF4/etc mobo?A dual core opteron is tempting if it will work in the standard enthusiast motherboards. Get a nice heatsink and get it nice and toasty, I could turn my heater back off. :) And I hope 2GB RAM sticks go down in price within the next 9 months.. I'm still debating between a sweet laptop or a good overclocker desktop for my next computer, the desktop would be much cheaper, for sure, but it is a pain to take to LAN parties.
JustAnAverageGuy - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Most NF4 motherboards support the S939 Opteron, yes. Check the manufacturer's site to confirm though.Googer - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
I found it a bit humourous that this http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/athlon...">graphresembles a tent. It reminded me of the days in high school when kids would get fill in the bubble tests and use the answer sheets to do connect the dot drawings.
I wonder if Jarred had too much time on his hands?
kleinwl - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
If you are going to start testing various cooling systems and how they affect max overclock... go ahead and throw in a Seasonic PSU as well. The Seasonic should be rejecting less heat into the case which may make as much difference in overclock as a more efficent Heat Sink. In any case... try it out please!<Note I have a XP-90, with a Antec SmartPower 2.0, on a venice... and I'm curious how such a case temp difference could affect the overclocking potential>
BigLan - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
quote: Looking at the different RAM options, it's difficult to make a good case for spending tons of money on memory.I've always thought that spending a lot of extra cash on memory was a bad idea. It pretty much shows no improvement in Fear. It's nice to see a review of the everyday stuff.
Puddleglum - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
The results for Fear looked bizarre. After reading some of the charts where 4xAA is used on games like Battlefield2 and FEAR, which would be a nice feature to show off on a high-end system, the numbers reveal marginal performance.I confess, I'm still using a Ti4200, which is only performing well in games because it's not drawing the DX9 stuff, and I've truly been waiting for an ideal video card to come out that's worth purchasing; but the new cards that are out right now are making it easy to sit back and wait for the hardware/software ratio to become a little more price-competitive.
Also, why is the OCZ PC4800 freaking out with BF2 when the CPU is overclocked to 2.1GHz?