Need a little pc help

[Raist]

It's VERY CPU hungry at the moment because of the DirectX 9 (a lot of stuff gets emulated in anything newer than Windows XP), and memory bandwidth can have an impact. Even on the XP Pro box I tested with (generally runs DX8/9 stuff well), I saw a directly proportional change in performance just by changing the core bus speed. No tweaking to the GPU, and PCI-E stayed the same speed. Just ramping up the core bus speed to change my dual core from 3GHz to 4GHz garnered a near flat 25% increase.

So, if you feel up to it, could try to score a deal on a better CPU if your motherboard can support something higher. You can try a slight overclock to see if you notice an impact. Sometimes even just a 5% increase in the bus speed can have a noticeable effect. If it does, then you could look into a CPU upgrade.

[cypherx]

Thanks for the reply. This motherboard only supports socket am2 so I'm pretty screwed in that regard. I would be interested in a little overclocking but I'm unsure of where to start. Can you point me in the right direction?

[cypherx]

Oh also I have a macbook pro that runs the game far better than the desktop in question. I do have a large cooling pad for it and temps are not an issue but I worry about the long term effects of playing this game a lot on it. Thoughts on that?

[Raist]

Thanks for the reply. This motherboard only supports socket am2 so I'm pretty screwed in that regard. I would be interested in a little overclocking but I'm unsure of where to start. Can you point me in the right direction?

Actual directions are hard to give, as the specifics can vary by system. You'll need to go through your motherboard's documentation, not only to see if it has a guide for what to look for, but also to make sure you have and understand the process for resetting it to defaults if you set something too far out of spec and can't boot. Some have a button combo you press at power up, some require moving a jumper for a few seconds and then moving it back.

Ultimately, you will likely need to get in your BIOS and look for entries to control clock speed for the Front Side Bus (FSB) (some systems have simple jumper settings, like a Turbo that just boosts it a flat 3 MHz). Sometimes the BIOS settings are locked until you tick a box to get it off of auto-config. Notch it up a little(2 or 3 MHz is usually safe) and you'll see it recalculate your CPU and Memory speeds and such. The key is to do it in small steps so you don't over do it. Most often, F10 pulls up a prompt to save and exit the BIOS, which causes a reboot... cross the fingers you didn't overdo it and run a benchmark to see how it fares compared to before.

(note this is a simple overclock, there are more advanced ways to do it, but you have to tweak voltages, RAM timings... a lot to learn. Not often you break 20-25% increase without a LOT of tweaking).

Once you reach a new clock speed with noticeable results you like, run it through it's paces for a while to see if it stays stable. If it holds up and you think you want more... try again if you like. If you reach a point it becomes unstable, back off the settings and enjoy your free "upgrade"... lol.

[cypherx]

Sweet. Thanks a lot guys. Ill look into overclocking and see what I come up with. The ethernet cable trick solved some of my issues soprogress has been made .