cheapest effective upgrade from 939 4400+ ?

[Squid]

I am looking to upgrade my 939 X2 4400+ (@ 2500) system to more processing power. (my main system stress software where its abilities are tested is LockOn and FSX)

 

So as trying to keep things on tight budget i am currently having the idea of replacing my current rig with an OC C2D E4300 @ 3Ghz with 667 RAM on a 965 mobo. (after giving up the idea of finding a cheap used FX-60 or an Opteron 185 and clock it to 3Ghz with my current mobo / ram, they are rare to find and their price doesn't seem to drop enough ..)

 

I wonder if that would give a significant / noticeable / enough processing power boost compared to my current 939 X2 4400+ ( or the more safe effectiveness to value solution would be an E6600 or 6420 / 6320 system? - i am interested in the 4mb cache)

 

Graphics wise my 7800GTX seems to handle things pretty well, its the CPU power that looks like lockon could just swallow alive an additional +100% of it. I thought going from XP 2700+ to X2 4400+ would had solved that, but it seems to no avail ...

 

 

:: ASRock 939SLI32

:: X2 4400+

:: AC Freezer Pro

:: 2x1Gb Transcend (Samsung UCCC) DDR400

:: 7800 GTX

:: Hiper 480W Type-R

[Prophet]

I had an X2 4400+, and thats the upgrade I did.

 

I would do it again too. The CPU and RAM sure is cheaper than when I did it.

 

I got a P5B-E, E6400, and 2GB PC6400 RAM for about $600.

[bramski]

The e4300 at 3ghz will give you a huuuge boost over your current system. I was running an old xp3200 chip before my upgrade to a 4300 and I was getting a lot of low minimum FPS when there was a lot of action on screen. I got a 4300 and clocked it to 2.4ghz and the difference was immense, now I rarely dip below 30 unless Im over a heavily populated city or in a massive A2G battle and even then its not that bad that it ruins the immersion.

 

Lockon Loves the CPU cycles :D

[bramski]

My settings are the same as yours apart from a resolution of 1280x720 when I run my projector and 1280x1024 when Im running my monitor and heat blur off (Fly mainly A10 and 25T so don't really need Heat blur), 4xAA and 8xAF, I haven't personally tweaked my visibility settings as I don't really know what I'm doing but I am using the medium visibility preset in Modman which tweaks it in favour of higher FPS if Im not mistaken. I notice you have a custom visibility setting, is it tweaked for A2A or A2G? I'm looking for a good A2G visiblity setting if you can give me any pointers on what settings to play around with?

 

Other hardware consists of asrock dual vsta mobo, X1950 pro GPU and 1gb ddr400 memory, looking to upgrade to fast ddr2 memory and mobo soon to allow for more clocking of the 4300 as the asrock board is a bit of a stepping stone to get me up and running with C2D.

 

I'm really enjoying LOMAC with this setup at the moment and it will only get better as hardware progresses and prices fall over the next year or so.

 

Forgot to mention, reflections on, no mirrors, I'm a mud mover :D

[Squid]

my settings are deffinitely lower than those , but i havent done yet any "deep" modification , will check this out when i find more free time.

 

my settings:

 

textures : high

scenes : med (not highest but i want it)

terr prld : 100

civ traff : no

water : medium

haze basic / advanced

lights : (not all)

visib rng: medium (not highest but i want it)

effects: medium

heat blr : on

shadows : all planar

color : 32

resolution : 1024 x 768

 

mirrors : medium

 

My rig is described above

 

And i get 13 fps flying over sevastopol and freezes upon ground strafing or explotion effects (to the degree that when unfreezed, i am finding myself in quite a distance further in an uncontrolled direction, often just on the ground ...)

 

i have also to note that you went from XP 3200+ to C2D, while my X2 4400+ should be normaly a boost already comparing to XP?

[S77th-konkussion]

Vis Ring= Cali ?

 

I don't seem to have that particular setting.. :)

[Squid]

isnt visibility range crimea to california considered cheat in MP ? :D

[bramski]

Yes a XP3200 going to an X2 4400 would be a huge boost, just as good as going to an e4300. If you weren't going to overclock it wouldn't be worth your time, because the 4300 and the x2 4400 are similar performers at stock clocks.

 

But I still believe you would get a very good increase in performance from an Overclocked 4300 @ 3ghz, that's a 70% increase over stock clocks of 1.8, granted, the x2 4400 stocks at 2.2 I think but theres no way you could get anywhere near that kind of OC with the x2 4400.

[hitman]

isnt visibility range crimea to california considered cheat in MP ? :D

lol thats good :P

 

Anyways...why not just stick with what you have? That processor was touted as the kats own ass a year ago, even someone claimed to be on par, if not better than an Fx-57...if overclocked.

[Squid]

well, its that i still cant max visibility range which i need it to indentify targets before its too late and i cant fly over populated areas without the thing turn into a slide show, not to mention the case when the immersion thickens and the freezes of the sudden effects rendering struggles. As i whined again in another thread, i gained a lot of FPS in areas that FPS was already good with my current rig, but none to few where i really wanted to keep a minimum of 25-30 ....

 

if deep config moding of LockOn would change that ... i'd probably stick with this rig till black shark throws it all through the window again lol

[VMFA-Blaze]

Well yes Lock On is more of CPU based game .. I had an AMD 64 3200 cpu, for 2 years, I was ok, but I was getting mimi stuttering and low FPS over cities.. But that was what we had to deal with at that time .. Since then I've added a e6600 and I gotten some major improvements all the way around..

 

But I think that you're right for waiting until Black Shark is released, You'll have a better understanding of just what you'll need..

 

But again I don't think the GPU will be the issue as the code will still be attached to the present engine...

 

Now when ED releases their next engine, that should be a whole new world for us to discover..

 

~S~

 

 

Blaze

[Squid]

hmmm useful info .... (thanks again)

did you keep the same vga card after upgrading to the E6600 or changed it as well?

[Squid]

I finally made the upgrade and now experimenting with the best settings prioritising High Visibility Range .... high visibility range still gives all the trouble even with this system (and this high visibility range was all the fuss about for me lol)

 

Q6600 @ 3Ghz

2x1Gb DDR2 800 @ 1066

8800 GT @ 700/1000

 

- Full shadow option doesnt work anymore, just wraps the whole plane in a dark skin. Any ideas?

 

- Everything is cool performance and image quality wise until i hit high visibility range .... graphics settings do very little to improve the situation there. (its ofcourse a CPU story, and even this hog of processing power bends here ...) Any good mods that seriously improve high visibility range performance? besites the fps drop, there is also the return of stutters even in good framerates

 

in general the 8800GT doesnt seem to sweat at all with lockon

 

My usual settings are

 

1024x768 or 1152x864

2x - 4x antialias

8x - 16x anisotropy

minimum shimmering treatment settings (like clamp, optimizations disable etc)

 

mirrors med

scene medium (cant even imagine the slide show of high scene :( )

water medium ( i love the very high efffects though )

traffic no .....

blur on

preload 100

shadows all planar ( i wish i could use the full though)

effects high

lights all

haze advanced

color 32