Wife says wait. New cheaper plan ;)

[Cowboy10uk]

Hi all,

First of all, thanks to all those who answered my new build thread. While the build is decided, sadly the bank E.G. The wife, has said I need to wait until the loans paid off which is April next year. Bugger

 

Since that is the case, was thinking of ways to get my current machine running better.

 

Was planning on O/Cing the CPU although never done this so no idea if this will work or even how to do it.

 

Upgrade the 4gb to 8gb

 

Add another 5870 in crossfire mode

 

Should be able to do this for £300

 

 

However, would this make any difference to DCS.

 

Currently running at 5670 x 1080 at med settings, with a few stutters when things go bang, no shadows or advanced graphics on.

 

Would like to add 4th screen for Helios, and stop the stutters. If I can up the graphics or get shadows on so much the better.

 

Cowboy10uk

[BIGNEWY]

Good luck with the upgrade cowboy10uk,

 

I would rethink the crossfire mode as it does not work with DCS, I was running 2 cards in crossfire mode and had more fps running a single card.

 

I use a USB - VGA adaptor for my helios screen, works great but not for anything else graphical

[Pyroflash]

I'd do the CPU overclock (Try not to play around with the voltages in order to save the life-span of your proc) and save money by not buying the GPU upgrade (SLI/XFire doesn't really do much except for some very specific games, and other than those, the performance increase is negligible and can cause some significant stability issues). RAM is always nice, but it probably isn't going to increase performance that much over reducing a few stutters you may be having.

[BIGNEWY]

Also invest in a SSD it was the best thing for my DCS stopped my stuttering.

 

I have x2 60gb ssd's ( I was also on a tight budget ) one for my OS and one for DCS, still have a huge HDD for all my other crap :)

[PeterP]

Haha, your situation is very close to mine....I bet our wife's would have a jolly good time chatting together about their lunatic husbands.:D

 

Currently running at 5670 x 1080 at med settings, with a few stutters when things go bang, no shadows or advanced graphics on.

 

Would like to add 4th screen for Helios, and stop the stutters. If I can up the graphics or get shadows on so much the bette

I assume you are in windowed mode -

Windowed mode forces windows to have also your desktop in back-buffer of your GPU and observe it for changes.

This costs CPU/GPU cycles and V-ram.

 

To get more "juice squeezed out" of your system you can't dismiss SoftTH.

The possibility are very high to get at least a 15% performance increase without spending a single €.

(but I encourage you to donate something to kegetys - when it was successfull - as SoftTH is donation ware. Rule of the thumb: 1€ for every frame you gain.)

 

Have a look at this thread to know what route you have to go if you don't want to spend money on upgrades:

Seeking best connection method for optimal multi-monitor-performance

Edited June 25, 2012 by PeterP

[hassata]

Some of this may be relevant: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-introducing-the-digital-foundry-pc

[Cowboy10uk]

Thanks for the replys guys, ok from what I see, the best plan would be O/C the 965. (Hopefully it's ok, I got the black edition which did state it would OC ok. However OCing does seem a black art to me. )

 

Upgrade to 8GB,

 

forget the crossfire and spend the money on a SSD instead. ( sadly this also loses the Helios screen as current card only supports 3 screens :( )

 

Finally change from using eyefinity to SoftTH. ( I thought they did the same thing, but if it can give me upto 15% more fps, then will be worth it )

 

Yes PeterP, I think all the wife's in here could spend hrs complaining about their husbands weird hobby, but hey it keeps us all in the house ;) well apart from the flight sim convention trips :)

 

I'm guessing though if crossfires not an option, I'm pretty much at the FPS limit of this machine unless I drop back to 1920 x 1080, which after flying multi monitor is something I really don't want to do.

 

Away from pc at no till next Sunday, so will attempt the changes then. I'll keep you all informed.

 

 

Cowboy10uk

Edited June 25, 2012 by Cowboy10uk

[PeterP]

Finally change from using eyefinity to SoftTH. ( I thought they did the same thing, but if it can give me upto 15% more fps, then will be worth it )

Some questions before you go the SoftTH route and to prevent to mix apples with oranges.:

 

You are right now running three screens grouped with eyefinity and DCS windowed or fullscreen?

 

 

I'm asking because :

 

Eyefinity has nothing to do with full-screen or windowed mode. and/or interferes Softth.

 

You can run eyefinity if you run DCS fullscreen or windowed.

But fullscreen mode will give you a performance advantage....

 

 

Further :

 

And you can also run eyefinity while using SoftTH - this is even more advisable.

 

You are mentioning to add a 4th screen for Helios.

 

This would mean that you would have to run DCS in windowed-mode to have Helios visible while running DCS.

 

 

But if you would run DCS+Helios+SoftTH you would be able to use the advantages of fulscreen-mode while using Helios.

 

But if you run three screens with eyefinity while DCS is fullscreen and you don't plan to add a fourth screen right now for Helios.

Than there is no need to use Softth.

 

 

I hope you understand now why I gave you the advise to look at SoftTH.

Edited June 25, 2012 by PeterP

[BIGNEWY]

 

forget the crossfire and spend the money on a SSD instead. ( sadly this also loses the Helios screen as current card only supports 3 screens :( )

 

Cowboy10uk

 

For the forth screen you can use a usb to vga/dvi adapter for helios thats what I have it works great :thumbup:

 

something like this usb to vga

 

My right hand screen is a 15" vga monitor you can see my blue usb to vga adapter next to the computer, I use my 15" for Helios and TS

 

Edited June 25, 2012 by BIGNEWY

[Cowboy10uk]

Hi PeterP, yes at moment I'm running 3 x screens at 5670 x 1080 in full screen. My card is the 5870 which only supports 3 x monitors, I do have a graphics chip on my motherboard which I currently have disabled so it dosnt mess with the dedicated card.

 

If the USB to VGA adaptor will allow a 4th monitor then I'll give that a go as just found a 19" TFT for £50 which I would use for Helios.

 

Just reading up on over clocking at mo, it seems my chip should go to 3.8 ghz quite easily, although only time will tell there.

 

Cowboy10uk

[PeterP]

Thanks for clarification - so SoftTh will only be some come in use for you when the fourth monitor is placed.

 

I do have a graphics chip on my motherboard which I currently have disabled so it dosnt mess with the dedicated card.

 

If the USB to VGA adaptor will allow a 4th monitor then I'll give that a go as just found a 19" TFT for £50 which I would use for Helios.

 

Some notes about USB to VGA

It is always advisability to use the on-board solution as a secondary card if the drivers allows it . (simply set in the BIOS to use the PCI-card as primary - that's how it works at least for me)

 

The on-board is always faster - as it is directly linked to the pci-bus and has direct connection to the ram - and can use hardware-acceleration.

 

A VGA-to-USB is nice for general desktop/office use, but needs to install a "virtual-graphics adapter".

 

That means it takes away processing-power and the way for the data gets longer.

It also can't use any hardware-acceleration as it is software only.

 

But it really depends at the resolution and data you want to show on it in the end.

Edited June 25, 2012 by PeterP

[Cowboy10uk]

Ok, just ordered this for my memory, figured its easier to have all the same, so replacing the 4 gb with Corsair Vengeance 8 GB : 2 x 4 GB Memory - DIMM 240-pin - 1600 MHz ( PC3-12800 )

 

Then going to flash my asus Bios, before attempting to overclocked the 965 BE to 3.8ghz.

 

Hopefully that will get the pc running a little smoother. If not, then will attempt to overclocked my 5870. I assume the Gpus can be overclocked as well. If all else fails, then will look at replacing graphics card if I can grab some overtime to pay for it.

 

I'll also try SoftTH and see if that makes any difference.

 

Cowboy10uk