Best Processor Upgrade for Gaming Excluding Core I5/7 or AMD

[Cronos18]

Wow tends to run fine for me anywhere, 60-70 fps in dalaran, only place that tends to be a problem is WG but I've already got full relentless lolol.

My main focus would be aion and suffice power to play any other games. In crysis I think I was able to play very high with no anti aliasing and decent frames but if i turned down the reso to full screen 1440-900 everything looked the same but It was running a lot smoother, then if i turned it back up I think it still ran smooth. So resolutions do make a HUGE difference in terms of power needed to get the same performance eh. Im just raging cuz hes still using a 8500gt card lol, I said the 8800 meant 8500, I still have my old 8800.


yeah I figured you would mention dual channel. So what would the best idea be, Go with 2x2gb sticks or 4x2gb sticks? I'm thinking even 4gb + my graphics card 1gb would be nice even. I've noticed a pretty good performance boost from 3.0 to 3.8 which is about 22 percent boost in technical speed. I would probably love to get stable 4.0 or 4.2ghz and a 64 bit win 7 if its decent stable when it releases so my OS can access all the ram I have. Yes I am using stock cooling, I have an antec 900 case with a filter that tends to work pretty good, but I wouldnt mind buying some fans or other air cooling solutions + a good heatsink fan for the processor. Any suggestions? Anyone got a good overclock layout I could test? Previously I turned off the C1E speedstep I think its called, and just uppd the fsb to 425 and the cpu voltage to 1.25 but never touched any of the other voltages, not sure if i should have increased those too. Any of you use a 64 bit OS? I heard they are alright as long as you use software that is relatively new.

[ShyguyXPC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cronos18

Wow tends to run fine for me anywhere, 60-70 fps in dalaran, only place that tends to be a problem is WG but I've already got full relentless lolol.

My main focus would be aion and suffice power to play any other games. In crysis I think I was able to play very high with no anti aliasing and decent frames but if i turned down the reso to full screen 1440-900 everything looked the same but It was running a lot smoother, then if i turned it back up I think it still ran smooth. So resolutions do make a HUGE difference in terms of power needed to get the same performance eh. Im just raging cuz hes still using a 8500gt card lol, I said the 8800 meant 8500, I still have my old 8800.


This has to do with your Video Card, Does Not So much Depend on the CPU, a CPU has to be Powerful Enough to Feed the Data to the Video card fast Enough for it to keep up, but an E8400 at stock speeds is more than fast enough to feed a single GTX 275, or even a GTX 285. once you start dealing with 2 or 3 or 4 video cards, that is where a CPU greater than that can come in handy, like the Core i7's, and their Greater PCI Express Bandwidth plays a factor in that too. but the game running better when lowering the resolution is a result of the video card having to process lesser sized textures and freeing up more of its own resources to process more data faster giving the better framerates, nothing to do with the CPU really.

yeah I figured you would mention dual channel. So what would the best idea be, Go with 2x2gb sticks or 4x2gb sticks? I'm thinking even 4gb + my graphics card 1gb would be nice even.


If your not planning on moving to 64-bit OS any time soon, then your best bet right now is just go with 2x2GB for 4GB, leave the extra slots open if you need more down the road, but with DDR2 pricing climbing it'll be more expensive to add more later. in my Q6600 System I ran with 3GB total RAM in Dual Channel, 2x 1GB, and 2x 512MB, I was able to use ALL of my 3GB total, with a 512MB video card, in WinXP 32-bit fine. well not all of the RAM, I rarely used more than 50% of it at any one time, but it was all recognized and capable of being used. as it is right now, with the latest Battlefield 2 Patch, they finally enabled this older game to be able to use MORE than 2GB of System RAM, prior to that BF2 as with many others could only access up to 2GB of RAM anyways, so more than that was a waste unless you had a lot of background apps to use the extra RAM.


I've noticed a pretty good performance boost from 3.0 to 3.8 which is about 22 percent boost in technical speed. I would probably love to get stable 4.0 or 4.2ghz and a 64 bit win 7 if its decent stable when it releases so my OS can access all the ram I have.


Its Pretty Decent And Stable as Is right now with the Release Candidate, I'm betting the Retail version released Today is as stable if not more so.

as to the 4 or 4.2GHz speeds, as was mentioned above, Your Miles May Vary, as not all CPU's are capable of getting that high, so just keep that in mind. As To the 22% increase are you measuring the % of Clock speed increase or actual Frames per Second in game, because honestly I can't see how the game would get a 22% FPS increase on an OC like that, thats generally the same sometimes or more than adding a 2nd Video card in SLI or Crossfire to games that support that.


Yes I am using stock cooling, I have an antec 900 case with a filter that tends to work pretty good,

Define works pretty good? the filter? or the cases cooling? many times those filters can hinder air flow, I usually just rely on a cases Mesh covers and what not to "filter" large particles in air, run a PC long enough and eventually no matter how many filters you put on it, you'll end up with the fine silica like dust. Don't get me wrong, the 900 is a good case, but how many fans are running in the case, is the airflow uniform and flowing in a single continuous pattern, etc, cable management to reduce air turbulence in the case, etc. Also for Stock Cooling, that could be a reason your hitting some barriers, could be the stock CPU cooler isn't doing a good enough job, and if your using stock cooling I'm willing to bet your not using quality Thermal paste as well like Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Silver Ceramique, IC Diamond or other competitors products?


but I wouldnt mind buying some fans or other air cooling solutions + a good heatsink fan for the processor. Any suggestions? Anyone got a good overclock layout I could test? Previously I turned off the C1E speedstep I think its called, and just uppd the fsb to 425 and the cpu voltage to 1.25 but never touched any of the other voltages, not sure if i should have increased those too. Any of you use a 64 bit OS? I heard they are alright as long as you use software that is relatively new.


I'll PM someone to chime in on this thread, has experience OCing, actually a could have a couple chime in on this, they're more experienced with OCing lately with Intel Products, as I haven't OC'd since my Single Core Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+, as I haven't had a need to since moving to Dual core and Quad core

[Cronos18]

Well, it's not so much I don't get good frames, it's more so that when I'm in a highly populated area, more so when I dont have the 3.8ghz clock speed than that of the 3.0. That I see the processor usage is getting maxxed out around 90-95 percent compared to maybe 80-85 with the OC that I get the terrible frame drops. I dont have any more than a guess but I just figured it would be more related to the processor trying to render the mass amount of changing player frames over that of the graphics card having to emulate movement. No idea how that works clearly but it seems kind of logical. I get smoother frames in aion with OC 3.8 with full settings and 4xAA generally, than I do with 3.0 stock high settings and no AA. It gets pretty damn choppy in towns and it annoys me to say the least. In remote locations I will see around 80 fps constant upwards of 100-120 even 150 in some places.

Anyways what I'm ultimately looking for is the most efficient and cost effective way to upgrade my computer in one way or another to not essentially cap out my top fps, but raise my bottom end so that my gpu memory or processor is not getting stressed too hard when experiencing higher loads in dense areas within a mmo. I'm using the 190.62 drivers. Tryed to install the 191.02 or whatever they are a few different times clean installs each time, but when restarting and getting into the OS my drivers keeps being detected and undected I guess, makes the sound as if a device was connected, maybe its crashing and reopening, but I've had that happen few enough times to know there is a message sent by a warning in the taskbar. Find 190.62 works fine anywho.

I believe the Antec 900 has good cooling for my needs, the case is big and All i have in it is the Gtx 275, 2 sata hard drives (which i was thinking of getting cooling for, one of them i just use with a backup image) my creative soundblaster card etc. I don't clean the filter once a month but it hasn't collected that much dust and i usually brush it out anyways. The front bezel feels cold which surprised me. Just checked the idle temps and everything is pretty much 30c across the board. The fans in my case I manually all switched onto high from low, makes a little bit more noise but I don't mind it.

Anyways the only OC I've done before is to disable C1E speedstep, and to set the CPU FSB to 425 and the multiplier which was already at 9 got me 3.8ghz. Turned the CPU voltage up to 1.25 from like 1.12 or something I believe. But there is the northbridge voltage and other stuff that probably also plays a roll. Simply going from 3.8 to 4.0 with 445 fsb nets me a crash before start up everytime, tryed changing the voltage to 1.3 1.35 1.4max (from what I read you dont ever really want to go above that). So I assumed it had to do with cooling or an auto balance wasn't working with the speed and so would try to terminate the power. My motherboard itself asks you to revert to default settings when this happens usually. Kind of cool, but not so much. I didn't really want to ultimately OC without extra cooling even if temps were low just to be safe, but figured it wouldnt hurt to try to do it incrementally as such and see what I can make of it. I don't think 30c idle and like perhaps 50-55c load is major so what would an extra 200mhz do. I've only come to the conclusion that maybe its too far, not enough cooling and auto terminates, or the voltages aren't coorsponding and I need to change some other setting. Which = about everything lol.

hmmm win7 only $120 for 64 bit home premium. If that's all it's going to be I'm down. Any idea how much memory it will support? I'm guessing 8gb, possibly 16? as long as it's 8 I think I'll snag it. Not sure if any of you have mentioned trying it but if you have do you like it? I could be on to something lol

[RicheemxX]

I was about to post something when I went and had a look at the game forums. Read these two threads and you'll see pretty much what we've been talking about

Aionâ„¢ Online :: General Discussion - What kind FPS are you getting?
Aionâ„¢ Online :: General Discussion - Post Your SYSTEM Specs and FPS

Your FPS numbers are exactly inline with even guys running quads. The question that really hit me is you say you are hitting lower FPS and seeing choppiness in populated areas, IMO to me that means there is an issue somewhere else. Even if you drop from 100 down to 60fps you should not see any choppiness. It could be a lag issue, maybe even something heat related.

To be 100% honest neither Wow nor Aion should have issues running maxed out on the system you have even at stock speeds. Now when you ask about Crysis or some of the newer multi-core aware games then yeah going quad core would be beneficial. But as I said earlier if you are only talking about those two games then the cost to performance adding a Quad to your current setup doesn't make much sense.

Now to go to your OC issues, what are you locking your memory to or what setting are you using? Are you locking the pci-e freq controls? Like I said that memory really isn't going to net you a ton of performance when it comes to OC'ing. But as Shy said going from 3.8 to 4ghz really shouldn't make much difference bumping it to the high end at 4.5ghz might give you a few more fps but if you are already pushing the numbers you have it really shouldn't be that big a difference.

[ShyguyXPC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cronos18

Well, it's not so much I don't get good frames, it's more so that when I'm in a highly populated area, more so when I dont have the 3.8ghz clock speed than that of the 3.0. That I see the processor usage is getting maxxed out around 90-95 percent compared to maybe 80-85 with the OC that I get the terrible frame drops. I dont have any more than a guess but I just figured it would be more related to the processor trying to render the mass amount of changing player frames over that of the graphics card having to emulate movement. No idea how that works clearly but it seems kind of logical. I get smoother frames in aion with OC 3.8 with full settings and 4xAA generally, than I do with 3.0 stock high settings and no AA. It gets pretty damn choppy in towns and it annoys me to say the least. In remote locations I will see around 80 fps constant upwards of 100-120 even 150 in some places.

Anyways what I'm ultimately looking for is the most efficient and cost effective way to upgrade my computer in one way or another to not essentially cap out my top fps, but raise my bottom end so that my gpu memory or processor is not getting stressed too hard when experiencing higher loads in dense areas within a mmo. I'm using the 190.62 drivers. Tryed to install the 191.02 or whatever they are a few different times clean installs each time, but when restarting and getting into the OS my drivers keeps being detected and undected I guess, makes the sound as if a device was connected, maybe its crashing and reopening, but I've had that happen few enough times to know there is a message sent by a warning in the taskbar. Find 190.62 works fine anywho.

its the GAME, not your System, the fps etc, and so called bottom end your trying to raise, the only thing I see going on here is its most likely the way the game is coded. there's nothing you can really do to improve it basically, aside from the developers releasing patches for the game to fix issues and framerate problems etc. maybe new Drivers for the video card might fix some problems but thats it. a perfect example is one of the Military Tactical Shooters I play, Joint Operations, This game though fun, can be a real pain in the ass sometimes with graphical lag, its old and outdated graphics by todays standards, and for the last 3-4 years I have had hardware that can full max out the games graphics with 4xAA and max resolutions my display can handle and even with my near top end hardware I have now, the game still encounters lag issues in things like Waterfalls and other things, tanking frame rates of 100-200 fps down to less than 10fps, as soon as you move away from the waterfalls fps goes through the roof. use of some structures and objects in custom maps, causes massive lag due to the crappy use of textures, all in all, its just poor programming and coding that was used in some parts of the game and brings top of the line OC'd SLI systems to its knees. similarly this could be an issue with Aion as it stands now, the game hasn't been out very long either, and has been stated that the developers under estimated the games popularity, so it could networking issues that could be causing the lag, which would explain the CPU's high usage. When your in High populated areas, there is a lot of on the fly processing if you can call it that, data sent from the server of where people are and interactions in that populated environment, which the CPU helps with the networking aspect of your game, its constantly reading and sending data to the server, and having to forward that graphics data to the video card. where as when your on a quest or something in a remote area, there's very little of that to deal with aside from much of the content that is already on your end as far as graphics, textures etc, other than AI interactions of opponents, etc... its a bit hard to explain, but I had the same issues years ago when Guild Wars first came out, and had same problems with "lag" in populated area's despite my system then capable of maxing out the games graphics with ease. I know of many people who play or played WoW and same story, populated areas can slow things down, lag, latency issues, and high CPU usage as a result

I believe the Antec 900 has good cooling for my needs, the case is big and All i have in it is the Gtx 275, 2 sata hard drives (which i was thinking of getting cooling for, one of them i just use with a backup image)

Doesn't really need it, shouldn't, a case fan in front of the drive should be all the cooling it needs.

my creative soundblaster card etc. I don't clean the filter once a month but it hasn't collected that much dust and i usually brush it out anyways. The front bezel feels cold which surprised me.

its metal, what'd you expect, almost all metal cases feels cold when ambient room temp air flows past it, unless your in an environment where temps are 100-120+ all the time?

Just checked the idle temps and everything is pretty much 30c across the board. The fans in my case I manually all switched onto high from low, makes a little bit more noise but I don't mind it.

Anyways the only OC I've done before is to disable C1E speedstep

common thing to do on most desktop systems, especially for gamers and power users on PC's, casual use like old folks just using for internet or some word processing etc, speedstep is fine, but for anything more, its a good thing to turn it off


, and to set the CPU FSB to 425 and the multiplier which was already at 9 got me 3.8ghz. Turned the CPU voltage up to 1.25 from like 1.12 or something I believe.


in one jump like that? Hope not, supposed to increase it in increments, not just go from 1.12 to 1.25 in one jump.



But there is the northbridge voltage and other stuff that probably also plays a roll.

um, yeah!!! contains the memory controller for your motherboards System RAM, so yeah, that might be a factor...

Simply going from 3.8 to 4.0 with 445 fsb nets me a crash before start up everytime, tryed changing the voltage to 1.3 1.35 1.4max (from what I read you dont ever really want to go above that).


So I assumed it had to do with cooling or an auto balance wasn't working with the speed and so would try to terminate the power. My motherboard itself asks you to revert to default settings when this happens usually. Kind of cool, but not so much. I didn't really want to ultimately OC without extra cooling even if temps were low just to be safe, but figured it wouldnt hurt to try to do it incrementally as such and see what I can make of it.

Um, incrementally.... 1.12V to 1.25 isn't incrementally, 3.0 to 3.8GHz isn't incrementally... Stock cooling with stock thermal paste, in a system with a 800Mhz to 1GHz OC, with ValueRAM (Non Overclocking Memory), is not incrementally... its a disaster waiting to happen.

I don't think 30c idle and like perhaps 50-55c load is major so what would an extra 200mhz do. I've only come to the conclusion that maybe its too far, not enough cooling and auto terminates, or the voltages aren't coorsponding and I need to change some other setting. Which = about everything lol.

you pretty much hit it spot on here though.

hmmm win7 only $120 for 64 bit home premium. If that's all it's going to be I'm down. Any idea how much memory it will support? I'm guessing 8gb, possibly 16? as long as it's 8 I think I'll snag it. Not sure if any of you have mentioned trying it but if you have do you like it? I could be on to something lol

$100 for an OEM version on Newegg, $110 for Home Premium Vista OEM.

its 64-bit, 64-bit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

And yes, Am Running Windows 7 64-bit, at least the Beta Release Candidate, not the Retail version. it runs fine, but I'm not maxing out RAM of a 32-bit OS by much, maybe only 100 or so MB over the 4GB max, until I add more RAM, 64-bit Win7 isn't being used to its best yet, my motherboard as with most X58 boards supports up to 24GB of RAM, I only have 3GB, plus a 1GB vid card, 5 hard drives, 2 Optical Drives, looking at buying a BluRay drive soon, so maybe 3 eventually, plus the CPU cache.

the main reason i have 64-bit right (instead of running Win7 32bit, which I have several copies) now is for some of the 3D graphics apps I use, for the 3D models and scenes, the 64-bit CPU and OS allows me to use greater amounts of RAM for when rendering large scenes and the like, the programs I run do not use the GPU to do final renders only Preview Renders (though some more expensive programs do use the GPU for final renders, unfortunately those programs are way out of my financial limits LOL), and so my GPU goes unused most of the time, one of my programs is 64-bit native and allows faster renders due to 64-bit processing, add in the 4 CPU cores, plus Hyper Threading for virtually 8 cores, and you have a fairly fast 64-bit rendering rig with copious amounts of fast triple channel memory...

as to Overclocking, I can do that on my i7 Rig, I just choose not to right now, add in the dirt cheap Crucial value RAM I'm running, not even going to try, when I say dirt cheap, I mean cheap, bought it back in the spring when most other brands and series DDR3 3GB triple channel kits were being sold for 2 to 3 times as much, I spent $45 on sale, most other kits were still at least $80-90 or more.

the big plus I can say for the i7, or X58 systems, not sure if the P55 i5/i7 systems support it, but don't see why not, is that there is an aspect of it that can dynamically Overclock one core and under clock the other 3, for apps that need to only use one core... so it might be possible to OC a single core to say 3GHz from 2.5, while underclocking the other 3 to 2GHz or Less, maybe even the one core to 3.5 or 4GHz.

Increasing Performance with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology

if your really serious about popping in a Quad core into your system, I'd look into maybe seeing if the socket 1156 P55 based motherboards and i5/i7's have this feature, if they do grab an 1156 i5 Quad core, and P55 board, as well as 2-4GB DDR3 and jump on that, instead of dumping faster DDR2 memory and a 775 Quad core into your system, the i5 Quads are cheap, P55 boards are relatively cheap, and 4GB DDR3 isn't much more than 4GB DDR2 right now.


Yep, looked it up, the base i5 750 has Turbo Boost capability.

Newegg.com - Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G10664GK - Desktop Memory

$380 or so...


vs

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,CPUs / Processors,Processors - Desktops,LGA 775,Quad-Core,2.5GHz - 2.99GHz,2.83GHz

or Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz 12MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

not including the cost of some decent lower speed OCing DDR2

Newegg.com - CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-8500C5C G - Desktop Memory


thats not even factoring in an after market Cooler, Thermal Paste, any needed fans...

in the end, jumping on a higher speed Socket 775 Quad with decent OCing memory and the needed things is going to cost more than jumping on say an i5 system with same capacity RAM, at same clock speeds, but DDR3 vs DDR2, PLUS a new motherboard with more capable features and OC features.

honestly if your looking for a more OC capable system your best bet is investing in a newer AMD Phenom II or Intel Socket 1156 P55/Core i5 Quad core platform. you'll spend the same amount of money, maybe less, for greater potential performance than going with an older top end Socket 775 Quad... hell the one 3GHz Q9650 Quad is almost as much as that entire P55/i5 combo linked above.

[Cronos18]

hmm the core I5 + motherboard and ram solution looks amazingly cheap, might be something to look into. As for the moment, I think I might wait till release of Windows 7 64 bit and get it after awhile of being live since I'm not that urgent. As well as try to overclock my E8400 to a stable 4ghz and look into cooling for the time being. I really don't mind the idea of ditching my e8400 and p5q for a setup under $400 for the I5 processor and Motherboard allowing me to upgrade should I want to, and having quad core for future applications/games. Though I do think I'd still yet have my hands on something even better by the time games fully use 4 cores. Honestly, for one reason or another, there was definitly a performance increase noticeable in aion when OC'ing from 3 to 3.8ghz for me. Like I said the fps was a bit better, higher lows and higher highs, as well as I had the settings all + 1 notch from very high to max and 4xAA. The Cpu based on what I think was task manager showed much more stress in highly pop areas = terrible fps. Sure I bet there is coding issues and patches to come to make it run smoother, they are using cry engine 1.0 for Aion atm and it apparntly doesn't support dual core. With all the characters loading and anti aliasing (though I have a option turned on to decrease the detail of other players in higher pop areas) it gets intense especially having the high resolution and screen size is my guess. Aion also unlike wow uses rubberbanding and sometimes this happens randomly usually when the server is near full capacity, but otherwise my MS is around 100, in wow it's 70, down from about 300, I use TcpAckFrequency Registry edit as well as NoDelay.

So that's what I think I'll do, bookmark the links the the items you posted for a Core I5 Solution, Fiddle around and try to get a high but reasonable stable clock speed, and proper cooling for my E8400 and look into getting Win 7 64bit asap, feel like I'm getting jewed hard with 2-gb of memory not being utilized.

[RacerX]

Ok,
I skimmed a bit, so others may have covered this, but don't waste your money on a new CPU, you'll be highly disappointed, even on Win7 64.
If you actually are using up all your ram on 32 bit, the 64 bit will free it up, but that's pretty much it.
don't expect sudden jumps in FPS, or lowered CPU usage, etc.. A lot of W7 64 runs as 32 bit still.
Even the default browser is 32 bit. ( not so much a Microsoft issue, as it is an Adobe issue at this point, so i can't really blame them for doing it)

I'm running my E8400 @ 4.2 100% rock solid (1.25v). i can run it at 4.5 but it gets warm and needs quite a bit more voltage, and at this speed there is no difference in performance for 300mhz.
I use the 92mm Noctua cooler. Idle is around 35-39 load 55. Intel burn in pushes that to 60-65. 120mm coolers are a tight fit on this board, so i opted for that one.

Get a good cooler and that will give you the headroom to crank things up a bit.
i'd consider better ram. i have DDR1100 running solid at 1200.

Used to have DDR 800.
My FSB is 500. Now i'm on an Abit IP35-Pro.
24" monitor, 1920x1200
GTX260 OC'd in bios.
i run all my games on highest settings perfectly smooth.
L4D, Far Cry 2, fallout 3, and some other ones.
Don't have Crysis, which seems to be one of the toughest games for FPS's, so i don't know your game either, but it could just be the game itself. (looks like someone above said that as well).


me, i'd start with better ram and a better cooler.
see what your fsb can go to, and once you are stable, see how things run, then decide if 64 bit will be better for what programs and games you run.
then i'd highly recommend a dual boot if you do Win7, this way your other OS stays 100% intact.

[Cronos18]

Well I just used Intel Burn in V2.3 and after testing 2000mhz (32bit os max it would let me test) for 10 passes, it passed and I checked the temp of the cpu thermal diode with pcwizard (im sure there is better and or more accurate software to do so, not sure if pcwizard is close or not even close to accurate but I can't think of any other programs atm to test with) It reported 61C, the processors themselves were reported as 50, gpu even though not related 45c and hard disks 30c. Usually when idle the Cpu is around 30c as well. I'm still using stock cooling, but I've re OC'd to 3.8ghz with 1.25v and 425fsb. Everything seems to be running great, I've had no bsod or game crashes at all.

I did a few different things to try to fix the crashes but I think I know what worked in the end. I was trying to uninstall drivers from the device manager but I think I was just deleteing actual graphics port, Instead of going into remove programs and seperately delete the driver, then to go into the C>nvidea> and delete all if any drivers are still in there, reset and download/ install new drivers. I know that was really stupid of me, but I figured they worked because for the most part they did.

As for upgrading, I have 2x 500gb 7200rpm drives. One I used drive image xml to burn a copy of this drive onto the other for backup. I haven't tryed to boot to it yet to see if it even worked lol but I think I'm going to get Win7 64 bit irregardless and probably just install it to that drive after reformatting it. I wouldn't mind looking into a good heatsink/ other cooling. As well as higher clocked ram (didn't have any in stock when I purchased the 800mhz from a retail store so i just went with it). but with Core I5/7 becoming cheaper over time, I don't really want to max out the socket 775 solution yet. Considering win7 64 should allow me to use all my resources with either set up that's what I'll go for first. Might OC the processor to 4.2ghz like yourself if I can get it to work. Notice a big difference within aion with the 3.0-3.8. Im running at max settings in aion as well as 8x AA and getting pretty good fps, around 100-150 in remote locations, 60-80 in higher pop areas, and still decent in some parts of towns, but gets pretty bad when you enter a place with a lot of other people (IE trade brokler) seeing it spike from around 20-25 to 40-60. One way or another it runs good enough at the full settings for me to be happy, and the fact that it doesn't crash randomly every so often makes it easier to play longer without going emo over something so stupid.

I think I'll probably mess around with the CPU and try to OC it a bit more, but as for the ram even when I have a 64 bit If I end up going i5/7 and need ddr3 I won't be too happy about it. So I'll just stick it out till I decide its time to convert lol

[Cronos18]

>.>

I think I've been running standard stock clock speed for my processor for a few days with default settings and I haven't got any bsod or crashes. Figured it was related to the video driver but it apparntly probably wasn't.

OC'd back to 3.8ghz yesterday was running fine, played for a good amount of time yesterday and today, haven't installed anything or did anything since then. Then just a few minutes ago I got wow error. Log into aion, after 20 minutes cryengine.dll error. accoridng to windows problem reports and solutions the last error I got in aion was on the 14th and its the 25th. As for wow it doesn't even show a previous error.

Aion Error:
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: aion.bin
Application Version: 1.9.1015.1838
Application Timestamp: 4ad6ef53
Fault Module Name: CryAnimation.dll
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4ad6eebd
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000e02e3
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3
Locale ID: 4105
Additional Information 1: f987
Additional Information 2: 324cc74626eca1b53031df0cc310a7f9
Additional Information 3: 2d53
Additional Information 4: 4f32151ffaadddb088fc24f08535795a

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 1526502999


WoW Error:
Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: WoW-3.2.0-enUS-downloader.exe
Application Version: 2.1.0.785
Application Timestamp: 4a54478d
Hang Signature: 7b4b
Hang Type: 6144
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3
Locale ID: 4105
Additional Hang Signature 1: 27132fcac9da2af30f47bf8753ac73d7
Additional Hang Signature 2: f189
Additional Hang Signature 3: 9a265ec167e600181dd16463298302a1
Additional Hang Signature 4: 7b4b
Additional Hang Signature 5: 27132fcac9da2af30f47bf8753ac73d7
Additional Hang Signature 6: f189
Additional Hang Signature 7: 9a265ec167e600181dd16463298302a1

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 683018145


Windows error (awhile ago, could have been related to something else but not likely.)
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3
Locale ID: 4105

Files that help describe the problem (some files may no longer be available)
Mini101209-02.dmp
sysdata.xml
Version.txt

View a temporary copy of these files
Warning: If a virus or other security threat caused the problem, opening a copy of the files could harm your computer.

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: a
BCP1: BB1FFFF4
BCP2: 00000002
BCP3: 00000001
BCP4: 81ED9CBD
OS Version: 6_0_6002
Service Pack: 2_0
Product: 768_1
Server information: ed7036fe-a3a2-414a-83cc-47489f3e2270


Going to go play aion again, once I get another error Im going to revert the processor to stock speeds and see if that fixes it. If that's the case I really don't think it's overheating or anything but that the speeds are incorrectly set on my part. Anyone know anything about this shit? I could try another registry edit fix, tended to work with regcure each time before I tryed to play need for speed and would prevent me from getting such frequent appcrashes. but that's rediculous, I need a fix not something that prolongs the inevitable.

[RacerX]

Detail out the mobo specs, meaning current speeds, voltages, and settings.
what is the memory running at, and what are the voltages.
make sure the fsb isn't oc'ing the pciex slot, try and keep it at 100.

how does it run around 3.6?