Problem:
I'm stuck with a PCI-X GayForce 6600GT 128Mb. And I'm dying for an upgrade so Armed Assault or Supreme Commander would play more like a movie than a slide show.

Planned system upgrade:
Asus P5N-E SLI Nvidia nForce 650i
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2x2.66 GHz/1333 4MB
Corsair XMS2 2048MB Kit (1024+1024Mb) 800MHz

Is my GFX card such a terrible bottleneck that all that purdy expensive technology is going to waste?

EDIT: Total price of the upgrades mentioned above: 390€

I'd get a worse CPU and cheaper memory for a better GFX card.

Even with my 1337z0r PC, which is a Quad Core and a 7950GT i get about 20 fps in SupCom on high most of the time.

Could you see what the prices of the Intel Xeon X3210 is round there? They're a Quad core version of the E6400 and are usually cheap used (ie i picked mine up for less than a new E6750)

What's your take on this:

THG CPU Chart 2007 - Supreme commander:
AMD64 3000+ (my current processor) scores 5,4
vs.
Planned upgrade E6750 scores 46,6 (nearly ten-fold score!)

Aaaand...

THG GFX Chart 2007 - All games:
Nvidia 6600GT scores 486,4
vs.
Possible upgrade 8600GT scores 962,0 ("only" twice as fast)

If I'm not too delusional, it certainly looks my CPU is holding me back a lot more.

Supcom EATS CPU power, but you WILL want a better card for it at the same time.

A CPU upgrade will help, but not much before you hit the limit of your GFX card...

Yeah, SupCom does eat CPUs for breakfast so maybe it's not a fair benchmark.

I figured... Hell... I can always pull down the in-game GFX sliders and deal with worse graphics if the game runs fine thanks to powerful CPU.

Well... This seems like a lose-lose situation unless I can get extra 200 euros to the budget. I'm not keen on going for the cheapest components as I have to make my PC last 2-3 years per upgrade cycle.

Thanks for the help anyway! I decided to skip this round.

Shit, I went along and bought all that.

i hope its not a ASUS GFX card (passif cooled) cause what i experianced at work those 8600GT's can get veery hot but really verry, so plz put a casefan extra or smthn init or just get a gfx card with a cooler on from BFG tech or whatever

Erm, the 8600GT's get just as hot as a 7900 did, and the XFX 7950GT was cooled by the XFX Passive system quite well...

TBH I'd go for a cheaper CPU (something from the e4400, or the e6300) and throw a light overclock on it (they will get a nice jump with stock cooling on stock voltage) then throw on a 7900 GS or perhaps an 8600 GTS from Nvidia. The 8600 isn't much of a DX10 performer, but it's hard to judge yet when we don't have proper DX10 testing. Both cards will handle any dx9 game at a high resolution (1680x1050 anyone?) with some AA and AF.
PS, jakg, I'm getting kind of sick hearing about you boast about your damn quad. Sure, you have a nice processer with a decent overclock. Alot of us don't. So feel free to stop rubbing that in when it comes to Intel CPU's, and yes, I am aware that you worked for the money to pay for it, and it wasn't just a present from mommy and daddy...
~Bryan~

Quote from Jakg :

Erm, the 8600GT's get just as hot as a 7900 did, and the XFX 7950GT was cooled by the XFX Passive system quite well...

ok, but at work we held a LAN party for open-door days and even with 2 case fans for good airflow some pc's started to fail after several hours.. setups:
Intel C2D E6750
ASUS P5N-E SLI
ASUS EN8600GT Silent
2 gig corsair ram

it was in big tent open air so warmth couldnt be the prob. I dont say they are bad but u better take some good cooling imo

Finally brought the system home yesterday (with a good price discount too ) as Finland's importer/distributor had messed up big time with the E6750 delivery nationwide.

Off to backing up stuff, hoovering the dust off the rack case, installing hardware and slipstreamed Nlite XP...

Motherfkuc!

Took three damn hours to even get the Windows boot CD installer to start up. Temps were ok, nothing was shorting out, PSU was giving steady voltages, checked the cables and components were secured, ran Memtest86+ to make sure the Corsair XMS2 6400 kit wasn't fubar and even checked the caps on the mobo.

Lots of forum and manufacturer support site browsing ensued.

Solution was to set memory timings manually according to the DIMM specs and unlinking FSB speeds (setting them manually to specced 1333Mhz and 800MHz instead of auto).

Freezes stopped and all is fine finally. Doing some torture tests tonight to check the cooling. Northbridge gets hot on this mobo/chipset, but so far temps have been ok under load (NB around 42C, CPU around 50C) despite I'm running mostly passive cooling.

Here is some observations from last pic, just to help you get even more quiet and stable system if that is what you will look at some point.

Add 1 quiet fan to those places under PSU, then one to front of HDDs if there is none, then replace that crappy stock cpu cooler with some decent one, looks like Scythe Ninja won't fit but there are lot of alternatives, that cool more and are more quiet.

When using passive cooling, you need to get good airflow from lower front part of case to upper back and you don't like to PSU suck all hot air out as that makes lot of unneeded noise, so use case fans, some quiet versions.

I have also one 120mm fan blowing slowly to gfx card to cool memory of it, I run it at 5 volts so not much if at all noise from it, same is case fans, they don't add much of noise as case is cooler and psu runs slower etc.

When airflow is made properly temps can actually rise if you open side panel.

You bought a rackmount case?

Spanky always delivers with the comedy threads!

Quote from thisnameistaken :

You bought a rackmount case?

Spanky always delivers with the comedy threads!

The rack case is a long companion of mine, only the PC inside changes. Sturdiest case ever, looks ugly, weights a metric ton but delivers.

Quote from JTbo :

Here is some observations from last pic, just to help you get even more quiet and stable system if that is what you will look at some point.

Add 1 quiet fan to those places under PSU, then one to front of HDDs if there is none, then replace that crappy stock cpu cooler with some decent one, looks like Scythe Ninja won't fit but there are lot of alternatives, that cool more and are more quiet.

When using passive cooling, you need to get good airflow from lower front part of case to upper back and you don't like to PSU suck all hot air out as that makes lot of unneeded noise, so use case fans, some quiet versions.

I have also one 120mm fan blowing slowly to gfx card to cool memory of it, I run it at 5 volts so not much if at all noise from it, same is case fans, they don't add much of noise as case is cooler and psu runs slower etc.

When airflow is made properly temps can actually rise if you open side panel.

Thank you for the input. At the moment I'm 90% pleased with the current setup what comes to noise and temperates. Did some torture testing earlier tonight without problems. Running on idle, the front 120 mm fan running on 5V is the only source of audible cooling noise from the case sitting 50 cm away from my ear. Very pleasant. Under full tilt the CPU fan revs up but the stock cooler is surprisingly quiet. The PSU has a single nearly silent 120 mm cooler inside.

I'm far too old for the temperature battles, so unless I get stability issues I'm fine. During audio production I'm not hitting constant load so the setup is running whisper quiet for majority of time.

Looks nice. I wish my new computer was quiet as my old one. The graphics card had the same kind of passive cooling you got there now, CPU had a huge Zalman heatsink with a silent fan and it had very quiet PSU. You could hardly notice the thing was on, it was slow though. Now I only have a silent PSU and the 8800 GTS needed a 120 mm fan bolted on the side of the case to keep it cool. Still seems to run rather hot though, but at least it doesn't sound like a jet taking off!

Really would like to build some quiet stuff, but at least AMD claims that any other cooling blocks voids the warranty. Although, how on earth they know what I was using to cool it down. But that is not the problem anyway, it's the dam graphics card...and there isn't much you can do without really tearing it to parts.


/Goes play Supreme commander

SupCom rocks!

AMD can't tell what HS you use, however they can tell what thermal paste you used (as it's virtually impossible to remove _EVERY_ last bit from the IHS).

FTR Intel CPU's (and i presume AMD's, too) log the vCore used on the CPU, and that's it, so actually while OC'ing techincally voids the warranty, i've seen 100% OC's which they wouldn't know about :P

Main thing is that computer user is happy

I'm running passive watercooling in everything except psu at the moment, still keeping case cool as possible without any audible noise, well system fails miserably being noiseless, but at least it is relatively quiet (same noise level at full load or at idle), need to replace case to get 120mm fans to front and rear so then I hope to have perfectly quiet machine

That should be one very silent PSU...perhaps it's broken?

Or los noises locos in your head are messing with you.

Yeah, I'm baffled whether the thing was broken or not. The sound it was emitting was like an ordinary 120 mm fan spinning fast: Low, constant and muffled whoosh. Didn't sound like the bearings were failing but it was definitely out of the 'near silent' category.

Pisses me off as tomorrow is race day and I got to kick Danowat's ass.

Hmph, Nexus is not very quiet from my very own experience, Seasonic S12 is more quiet, but not perfectly quiet (quite low humming noise), Be Quiet Blackline is very quiet, but it was not so reliable at least those two I got.


Very subjective it is what is quiet and what is not and many things affect into it, but that is my experience and I prefer truly noiseless systems

Los probelmos solved! :bandit:

Corsair HX520W

Insanely great price/performance/silence ratio. My system just went into whisper territory when I swapped the PSU into this one. 5-year-warranty too. Recommended!