Upgrade or overclock?

[intlschizo]

So after about a year of playing Skyrim on medium w/a GTS 250, swearing up and down that I was not going to spend $100+ on a video card for ONE GAME, I broke down over Christmas and bought a GTX 650. Best money I ever spent. I can run on High with ease, and can even run on Ultra in some places, but the mods start the dreaded drag n'lag, especially in the cities.

 

Now I'm eying my processor. It's an E8400, which most computer enthusiasts remember from waaaaay back in the way as the go-to for overclocking. Note that I have no other problems with any other programs or games (I played Arkham City with no problems at all, even w/the 250), so I'm not looking for a bunch of "you need to upgrade this and this and that and this and that". I just want to know if OCing the processor would do any good at this point.

 

Specs for my computer (don't laugh, it's a great little rig that does what it's supposed to do):

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P

Monitor: Westinghouse LVM-47W1

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz

Video card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650

Case: Zalman PC HD135

RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2x2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (5-5-5-15)

Hard drives: 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA (x1); 1 TB 7200 rpm SATA (x2)

PSU: Raidmax Volcano 630W Modular

Tuner: WinTV-HVR-1100

 

Edited March 17, 2013 by intlschizo

[stockwiz]

overclocking is free... just don't spend money upgrading your old rig.. buy a new one. Your graphics card is also a bottleneck though so if you couldn't put up the bucks for a 660ti or 670, you may not be able to afford a new rig when haswell comes out. Not trying to sound mean or anything, just saying. I probably do come off sounding mean though. Sorry.

 

For those who want bang for the buck, the next gen consoles at 400-500 will give a great bang for the buck for the price just a little more than one mid-upper range video card. High end PCs can get pricy.

Edited March 14, 2013 by stockwiz

[intlschizo]

Interesting...I don't ever recall saying that I couldn't afford a 660ti or 670...just that I didn't. Would YOU spend $300 for a video card on a setup like this? Of course you wouldn't.

 

I probably do come off sounding mean though. Sorry.

 

Not mean. More like an ASSuming jerkwad who thinks that s/he can see in my bank account. I won't even get started on the idea of buying a computer off the shelf. I have no problem with spending more money on a homemade build than I would buying some generic PC out of Walmart - or worse, those hideous Alienware machines.

Edited March 14, 2013 by intlschizo

[Georgiegril]

My suggestion is that if you want to overclock, you may need to look at replacing your PSU to get more watts.

[hangarspace]

Go for an over clock on the cpu, it costs nothing, unless you overcook things! Unless you are going for some stupid liquid nitrogen cooled over clock, I don't think you'll have any problem with you psu. What the result will be can't really be said, but it's definitely worth a shot. If things don't work out, sell the mobo, cpu and ram on fleabay and put the money towards a new i5 and mobo.

 

So far as the GPU goes, one way to look at it would have been to have bought the 670 rather than the 650 at the time, granted that might be considered overkill for the rest of the hardware, but then at least when you uprated the rest you wouldn't end up with a GPU bottleneck and would only have had to spend the money once. Tho, there is also a very good reason to hold out until the 670's drop down then upgrade. But hey, hindsight is a wonderful thing and money only goes so far and, yes, I'm the fool that went and spent £300+ on a 3GB 7970 and a fast SSD just to play Skyrim.

 

Have fun whatever you decide to do!

 

Chris

[intlschizo]

My suggestion is that if you want to overclock, you may need to look at replacing your PSU to get more watts.

 

So far as the GPU goes, one way to look at it would have been to have bought the 670 rather than the 650 at the time, granted that might be considered overkill for the rest of the hardware, but then at least when you uprated the rest you wouldn't end up with a GPU bottleneck and would only have had to spend the money once.

 

True, true. I have a second computer - an HTPC - and anything that I put into this computer will just go into that one. (Actually, that silver case is the one for HTPC - I'm using an OriginAE x11 for my so-called gaming PC.) That one is running a GTS 9800, so this 650 will make for a great upgrade for that. I give my castoffs to my niece and nephews so they'll learn how to work with computers. Don't remember what the PSU in my other computer is, though. I'll have to check. Can't imagine it's much better.

 

 

yes, I'm the fool that went and spent £300+ on a 3GB 7970 and a fast SSD just to play Skyrim.

 

You can never be too foolish when it comes to Skyrim! May the FUS be with you. :)

[MightyZ0G]

it would also be worth getting Advanced System Care from IObit.com

it's got lots of features to help keep a PC running smoothly as well as configurable performance modes for gaming that turn off processes that are not needed while playing and freeing up the CPU.

definately worth looking at as it has a free version for download and there are regular offers to upgrade for huge discounts and anything that helps widen the bottleneck is good no matter what your system :D

[Lord Garon]

I've decided that I am the unluckiest electronics technician on the planet; I've NEVER gotten an OC to work like advertised (mobo, video, memory timing, ...). Then again, I also understand a little of the why. I'm not so sure any more, but OC in the past was simply a statistics game; crank up the freqs and/or voltages and see if your machine's error rate is tolerable and if it maintains a survivable speed-power product (heat). I think some manufacturers today actually under-spec parts knowing that OC is a standard practice; OC'ers just get the part up to "normal" specs and do the manufacturer a favor by voiding the warranty.

 

If your machine is old and your only concern is gaming performance, crank it up and see what happens. A big OC might require system timing changes as well. Overclock.net is your friend. Watch your CPU temp; raising core voltage and frequency results in geometric power increases and a quick rise in CPU die temp. If you haven't done this before, find out how to reset your BIOS BEFORE you start mucking around with settings. Its entirely possible to prevent your machine from booting through over-zealous BIOS and/or OC program settings.

 

Let us know if it works. I get a vicarious thrill from other's successes since I can't seem to get anything to OC reliably. (Well, I got an older AMD card to OC about 3% according to the numbers, but it wasn't noticable in-game.)

Edited March 16, 2013 by Lord Garon

[Meeps]

Do both OC and upgrade did to mine in its purrs like kitten =3

Also the other post mentioned Advanced System Care you should really use it its the best All-in-one system repair tool.

[intlschizo]

A quick update...

 

Was able to OC to 3.6 like a dream. Then I got greedy and pushed it to 3.9...oops. (No big deal - it's back to normal now.) Getting rid of the HiRes pack lets me run it on high. (I still have a lot of the 2K texture packs, plus SIMM.) Still tinkering around. Starting to think that I might have too many mods, specifically of the HD/texture kind. If all of my games were running slowly, I'd say it's my setup, but it's just...this...one.

 

Slightly O/T...I picked up a Gigabyte 650 Ti OC 1GB for $125. Since I'm going to replace the card in my other PC, I'm happy for the cost, even if I did just spend $100 on the 650. (The other PC is currently running a 9800 GT.) But will the 650 Ti make that much more difference, or is it negligible? (And should I have gotten a OC 2GB instead?)

Edited March 28, 2013 by intlschizo