What a Dilemma

[Houndstone Hawk]

Originally Posted by squidgyb

without much else to go on, I'd say the weak point is the CPU/OS - depending on your motherboard/power supply the CPU is ripe for overclocking, which would undoubtedly help - 3-3.2GHz should be doable with stock cooling, 3.6 and up to possibly 4GHz with decent cooling. That might not be your thing though - but I'm surprised you're having problems with graphical effects, considering you're running a GTX 580; I'm deducing that the CPU must be chocking trying to feed the GPU with the information it needs.

Windows 7 would be a viable upgrade too - I'd advise anyone to do that upgrade if they have the cash to spare.

e: hah, nanja'd

OMG! Only had the sodding thing 18 months ago lol. Thanks for your advice. I would go down that road, it's just the know how that's against me. I wouldn't have a clue how to o/c anything & am not sure even how to find the spec of my motherboard lol. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

*Edit* M/Board is a P5QC & P/Supply 850W if any help.

[squidgyb]

Originally Posted by Houndstone Hawk

OMG! Only had the sodding thing 18 months ago lol. Thanks for your advice. I would go down that road, it's just the know how that's against me. I wouldn't have a clue how to o/c anything & am not sure even how to find the spec of my motherboard lol. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/overc...beginners.html

That's a great place to start, imho. Clunk's is a nice noob friendly place with a hell of a lot of info.

Give us the name of the mobo/psu if you can, or a link to where you got the PC/parts from - we can start there

[Houndstone Hawk]

Originally Posted by squidgyb

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/overc...beginners.html

That's a great place to start, imho. Clunk's is a nice noob friendly place with a hell of a lot of info.

Give us the name of the mobo/psu if you can, or a link to where you got the PC/parts from - we can start there

Will for sure. Will find out from the guy that made it up for me. Many thanks to you for your help & time thus far.

[BadAim]

I'm simply amazed by how all over the place people's experiences are. You have the same motherboard as me (plus a few bells and whistles) a better proc. (except for mine is OC'd).and a WAY better vid card, yet your having a worse experience. It's really unbelievable, but I guess that's just how computers are.

Assuming that you have the same Bios as I have, your board, while not being an overclocker's dream isn't to difficult to OC. I'll make another post with some basic instructions for you as soon as I stick my head in the bios to make sure I remember everything right.

I'm still confounded though, I can slide the canopy back and stick my head out in front of the exhaust and the frames don't waver with my GTX 470! Maybe it is the OC?

[Houndstone Hawk]

Originally Posted by BadAim

I'm simply amazed by how all over the place people's experiences are. You have the same motherboard as me (plus a few bells and whistles) a better proc. (except for mine is OC'd).and a WAY better vid card, yet your having a worse experience. It's really unbelievable, but I guess that's just how computers are.

Assuming that you have the same Bios as I have, your board, while not being an overclocker's dream isn't to difficult to OC. I'll make another post with some basic instructions for you as soon as I stick my head in the bios to make sure I remember everything right.

I'm still confounded though, I can slide the canopy back and stick my head out in front of the exhaust and the frames don't waver with my GTX 470! Maybe it is the OC?

Many thanks to both yourself & squidgyb for helping out. I am a military aviation nut, & sims being a large part of that hobby but the moment a pc lid comes off, I'm afraid my interest leaves the room but always happy & willing to be accept help & advice from decent & accomodating folk as yourselves

[RocketDog]

If it's graphic effects causing a slowdown, I doubt if it's anything to do with the CPU. I would also be very careful of trying to OC if you don't know what you are doing. That way lies smoking ruin for your PC.

Are you sure it's the exhaust and not the mirror?

With your PC you should definitely get pretty reasonable performance.

[Houndstone Hawk]

Originally Posted by RocketDog

If it's graphic effects causing a slowdown, I doubt if it's anything to do with the CPU. I would also be very careful of trying to OC if you don't know what you are doing. That way lies smoking ruin for your PC.

Are you sure it's the exhaust and not the mirror?

With your PC you should definitely get pretty reasonable performance.

Always have mirror turned off. It's most definately the exhaust effect, taking the fps down to low teens. Turning the visual effects to low kills that particular graphic effect & fps climbs again but a very large part of the games graphic effects goes with it. The moment I turn CEM off, the fps counter is back in the 40's.

[squidgyb]

Originally Posted by RocketDog

If it's graphic effects causing a slowdown, I doubt if it's anything to do with the CPU. I would also be very careful of trying to OC if you don't know what you are doing. That way lies smoking ruin for your PC.

Are you sure it's the exhaust and not the mirror?

With your PC you should definitely get pretty reasonable performance.

It's got a very good chance of being the CPU, in all honesty - the CPU "feeds" information to the GPU to display; if the CPU is lagging behind, the GPU has to wait for the CPU to give it what it needs to display the frame.

A quick and easy test would be to run a program(s) that displays a graph of CPU usage and GPU usage. In times of low fps as you describe, I'd expect to see the CPU working at 95-100%, and the GPU load dropping a little - though the GPU load may not drop at all, depending on what's going on and what screen resolution you're running at.

Overclocking is inherently dangerous, but that's why I directed Houndstone to an overclocking beginner's site - I won't be telling him to "press del on bootup and whack CPU voltage to 1.4 and yer done" - like anything fun in life - if approached in the wrong way it can indeed be dangerous/costly. Done in the correct, slow and safe way, there's very little risk involved.

[Houndstone Hawk]

Took another screenshot with the task manager performance tab running.