Discovering Bottlenecks in PCs Built for Gaming? 142
QMan asks: "I, like many others here at Slashdot, am an avid gamer. Recently, I've been thinking about upgrading my gaming PC, but with all the mish mash of components in the box, I don't really know which components are slowing down the rest, and would be an ideal candidate for replacement. I'm looking for advice on how to discover the inherent bottlenecks in my system, whether they be from my video card, RAM, CPU, or other components. I've tried various benchmarking utilities, but they generally give an overall performance rating, but not much info on which device(s) had the most impact in limiting that rating. I'd imagine many of you out there have encountered the same problem, and might have ideas on where to start."
OS? Hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, if you were running Windows 2000 or greater, there are various performance monitors that will give you a good clue about what is actually going on while your game is playing. Otherwise, you are in a guessing game.
Alternatively, you could swap out components and do observation based tests. However, this tends to be subjective, and less reliable.
Bottom line: give us more details, and someone might be able to help.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:1, Interesting)
Please tell us your
- current gear
- OS
- budget
- and the types of games you play
and then we might be able to make some recommendations.
If you're after a magic utility that says "it's you CPU that's slowing an otherwise good system", I'm doubtful that one exists (but there is probably a real market for one).
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
(It's a Windows machine, as the majority of newly released commercial titles don't play well with Linux.)
It's a multi-tiered question. I've built a number of gaming machines in the past, and upgraded various components over the life of each machine. I've always wondered if there is a way to figure out if getting a video card with more texture memory would help much, or upgrading to faster or less latency RAM would help, or all that's needed is just getting _more_ of it. It doesn't really help to get RAM though if the CPU/GPU/HardDisk is the bottleneck. Thats why I was asking the question in the first place. I'm sure a lot of people who upgrade their gaming machines might get help from this as well. This is for all of us who want to upgrade, but are not quite sure which component needs it the most.
For reference, I've been building machines on a medium budget, getting middle to upper class hardware. I've got a gig of 3-3-3 PC3200 RAM, a nice SATA RAID0 array, a GeForce 6800, and an Athlon64 3200+ rig. I know that most components I have could be upgraded, but not intrinisically which ones are the most crucial to performance. I play all sorts of games, from RTS (AoE, Empire Earth, etc) games, to FPS (Quake 4, UT2004), to simulations (SimCity 4).
-QMan
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:3, Informative)
CPU is never the problem- for the past decade or so, the CPU has been so fast compared to RAM that it can't get enough memory.
RAM- you need enough RAM so you don't hit swap. For today's games, thats 1 GB. After that, the number 1 thing you can do to improve system performance is to get low latency RAM. Your CPU will be waiting for RAM, minimize the time that it is.
Video
Low latency ram is garbage (Score:4, Informative)
Well, ok, it's not trash-junk, but it's not up to the hype either. There was a review on TechRepublic [techreport.com] a while ago that I'm pretty sure made it to slashdot (if not, then digg). Basically it showd that Low Latency RAM in itself made little to no difference and more RAM was always the way to go.
That said, Low Latency ram is not entirely a waste of money. Low Latency ram has a better shot at overclocking (like turning DDR 400 into DDR 450 by relaxing the timings and pumping the clock rate.) It's also more likely to be higher quality and thus less likely to go bad on you. As an asside, if you're interested in RAM in general, I've found this site [xtronics.com] very informative/userful.
But I would minimize the value of Low Latency in and of itself.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
RAM- you need enough RAM so you don't hit swap."
Just to be pedantic... if you don't have enough RAM and you do 'hit swap' a fast HDD will help - but it'll still be slow in comparison.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:3, Informative)
I think the main things in order are:
A recent card revision. That 6800 ought to do ok as long as you're not maxing the quality settings.
A video card with a decent amount of RAM. Currently tha
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:4, Informative)
... Which is one reason why loads of people suffer from the infamous 'stuttering' in Half-Life 2.
The game uses a 'soundcache [valvesoftware.com]' to keep the first 125 milliseconds of all referenced sounds in memory. If a sound needs to be played which isn't fully in memory yet, it starts playing that 125ms while streaming the rest of the data in from disk.
If many new sounds are needed simultaneously, or the hard disk is particularly slow, then you get a glitch in the audio.
Have a fairly fast disk, and things improve considerably - and maps load much more quickly too, thanks to the many megabytes of textures...
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:3, Informative)
Hard disk is never the problem- games are not disc intensive. You might speed up laods slightly with a faster disc, but not by much.
This is mostly true, however no matter how much RAM you've got you still need at least a 512MB paging file somewhere on your system. Since the PC isn't a dedicated gaming machine you can expect Windows to fiddle with all kinds of stuff in the background which will invariably draw on the swap file. Since this guy has RAID
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:1)
>>You might speed up laods slightly with a faster disc, but not by much.
This is mostly true, however no matter how much RAM you've got you still need at least a 512MB paging file somewhere on your system.
Untrue. If you have 2GB of RAM and aren't doing things way beyond power user usage (ie, you're playing games, run word and excel, play with email and browse the web) you'd never hit the 2GB limit. If, however, you edit video or
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:3, Informative)
What you're saying makes perfect sense, but who says Windows makes sense? There are many Windows apps, first and third party, that assume you have a swap
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
Otherwise your setup, hard and soft, sounds very similar to my last box which I also tested with no\small swap. Strange that we had such different experiences. I suppose if no\small page file didn't work for anybody tha
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
I'm in the market for a new setup, and am eagerly looking at AMD X2s, but they're still too pricey for me at th
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
As for system instability, are you sure the problem is your motherboard? Are your RAM sticks matched? If not, your mobo will clock them down to the slowest timings which may not be compatible with the faster chip. Also, more RAM requires more power to feed through the transistors.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
I would believe that if I hadn't watched my XP machine with 1GB of RAM paging in an application when I still had 512MB free, and this isn't even in a gaming context.
In my expereince, Windows seems to allocate the paged memory not long after it allocates the RAM.
If someon
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
When I was playing Everquest frequently, the standard consumer was still using ATA100 or slower drives.
I was using Ultrawide SCSI with a very fast (for that era) 9 GB drive.
I would load at least twice as fast as most people then. During that era, load times were quite lengthy, so it made a huge difference.
Many games (esp MMORPGs) use the HD far more than people realize.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
Is there a particular game that you are having trouble w
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
A site that I have always found helpful is AnandTech [anandtech.com]. Every couple of months or so they publish a guide on recommended hardware for different performance levels of computers. The systems they recommend are usually designed so that no one piece of hardware is a bottleneck on the performance.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
As for RAM, you can run tests or pretty much jump up to 2GB if you're running games like BF2.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
You should start recordings for:
Physical Disk >> Reads/sec and Writes/sec
Memory >> Avalable MBytes
Processor >> Priviliged, Processor, and User Time
Now that you have these counters running, fire up a game that you like. After you play a few rounds, you can look back at the charts and see the data. Interpreting the results can be very difficult.
If you are seeing processor usage 100%, then your video card may be holding you back. If you see excessive hard drive activity, maybe more RAM or a RAID0 setup could help.
Just look at the charts and see what jumps and when.
Most games are optimized to use RAM and proc when in-game. But if you see excessive periods where one line is 100% while the other lines are 70~80%, you'll know where the bottleneck is.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2, Insightful)
would NOT be the bottleneck, it would be the CPU.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think this quest for global bottleneck optimization is likely to be successful unless you have a lot of time and a lot of money to buy hardware. The only good way to do it is brute force, mixing and matching every likely combination. If you think about it too much and try to read the tea leaves of performance numbers, you'll go crazy.
It's a whole lot of frustration for something that is always in flux. One driver release could change your results. I guess that would infuriate me enough to give up computing forever.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:1, Informative)
But if you use a little intellegence and some methodical testing, you really
can figure things out about your system.
For instance, you can select a high resolution on your graphics card, then
run quake or some other benchmark. Lower the resolution until the frame
rate doesn't get any higher. At that point, you are CPU limited.
If you removed memory from your system, you could also figure out if
memory was a problem.
I suspect there are lots of
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2)
If resolution effects performance, then you know you are fill rate limited. In theory, with modern games, your CPU should not be involved with the fill rate. Your CPU would only be involved in that if it was using the software rasterizer, or the game
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:3, Informative)
Bottlenecks can be non obvious also like an underpowered power supply.
Re:OS? Hardware? (Score:2, Funny)
I have a Mac. That counts as "or greater", right?
Baseline (Score:2)
RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2, Informative)
Get as much ram as you can afford. Presume you are
running Windows -- so turn off the swap file if you
have 1.5 - 2GB of ram. The difference in performance is
astounding.
Besides that, turn off unneeded services and keep your
system clean of spyware. Most "slow" systems I come across
aren't that slow at all, they are just poorly configured.
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:5, Informative)
Other than the obvious suggested already, disk management is often overlooked. After you uninstall or install a game, defrag the drive. Applying a patch? Defrag. Changing the size of your swap file? Defrag.
Shut off indexing. Shut off any service you don't need or use.
Clean out
Reboot every 48 hours or so.
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:1, Interesting)
run these all the time:
1. Firefox with 30-40 tabs open and numerous extensions.
2. Thunderbird hooked up to 3-6 IMAP accounts
3. Gaim
4. Poweroff
5. AVG anti-virus
6. Sharpreader
7. Daemontools
8. VNC server
9. Openssh server
10. Kerio firewall
11. Auctionintelligence
12. Excel, word, etc.
13. Note
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:1)
my old AMD XP 2400+ with 1GB for a long long time without any issues.
I only upgraded because the old system is being turned in to an all
Linux workstation.
Only regrets are not springing for a SATA drive. Hard drive speed
is really the bottleneck here...
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:1)
RocketDrive...drool...
Well, if I ever feel like installing Oblivion, I might spring for one. Thanks
for the link.
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows will run fine without a pagefile. In fact it does run much better. I've disabled my pagefile and home and left it that way for quite some time.
Some applications, Photoshop being one of them, absolutely require Windows to be running a pagefile. These applications account for less than 5% of the software that an "avid gamer" would be running.
The only proviso is that you must provide more than enough RAM for your s
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, theres a long list of apps that wont work without a pagefile. MS advises against it too. I wouldnt suggest this without telling people that they will run into weird problems.
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
Personally I run Linux mainly but I have a Windows partition on my IDE boot disk. Even with 1GB of ram I purposely left 342mb at the end of each of my 3 scsi disks to have a raid 0 stripe of 1024 (ish) swap, just in case windows ever needs it.
Remember, disk space is cheap!
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:4, Informative)
Windows loves the page file. Windows is constantly paging out programs and data to the pagefile in order to have a block of memory available to launch a new program into. However, Windows still retains the data in ram so long as the ram isn't needed for something else, so if you have to pull up that program or data again, Windows won't have to go to the pagefile to get it. However, Windows still counts that memory as available (since it has already been paged out), hence the reason why the numbers in Task Manager tend to not add up quite right. Overall, the system works quite well, especially for computers with a modest amount of ram.
The problem is that Windows is still aggressively paging out data on high memory systems, when there really isn't a reason to have 800MB-1000MB or more of memory available at any time. The only way I know to really change Window's behavior is to disable the pagefile (which I don't do). What I do recommend is setting the page file to a set size, and using a defragging program to make it one large file at the beginning of the drive. If you have a second harddrive that is fast, it is probably better to put in on the beginning of the second drive.
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
App specific, but look at http://suif.stanford.edu/pub/keepresident/faq.html [stanford.edu]
Basically, the idea is that you tell the OS to always keep at least such and such an amount of the application in RAM. I'm fairly certain that MS apps (e.g. IE and Outlook) already do this for you. It's part of what makes them so spiffy compared to non-Microsoft alternatives.
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
There are also a couple of registry tweaks you can try: DisableExecutivePaging and LargeSystemCache. Arstechnica has a guide at http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/memory-1.ars [arstechnica.com] which is useful. No hard data on whether this actually made any difference or not, of course.
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:1)
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:2)
Re:RAM matters most, hard disks are slow (Score:3, Informative)
This should answer your question:
http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12 [majorgeeks.com]
Heat is killer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Heat is killer (Score:2)
Why is the parent modded Offtopic?!?
Heat can very easily cause performance problems as virtually every CPU manufactured today will slow itself down to avoid damage if it's running too hot.
I need advice on this too! (Score:5, Funny)
One idea... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:One idea... (Score:2)
Don't assume that just because you use a magically delicious architecture for your CPU that you are going to never worry about it again.
An AMD64 2800+ on socket 754 with 512mb of high-latency (generic) ram will not perform at all up to par on some modern games.
Whereas a 4500+ X2 on socket 939 with 2gb of CAS-2 OCZ ram will be blazing fast.
Re:One idea... (Score:2)
Re:One idea... (Score:2)
If you're looking at that, check out the Opteron 175 as well (What I just got).
It's 200MHz slower which is easy to OC (mine's running at 2.4 same as the 4600 and I've never overclocked anything before) but it has double the cache. 1MB per core versus 512K on the 4600.
Both are Socket 939 as well.
The Froogle prices that showed up when I just did a google search on both of these show the opteron as being less expensive as well.
Re:One idea... (Score:2)
B) I'd need new ram (ECC unbuffered)
Negates the price difference for me, unfortunately.
My Personal Experience (Score:4, Informative)
The operating system! (j/k) (Score:4, Informative)
Now what you should do is, first of all, make sure that you have enough RAM. Observe your hard disk drive activiy LED while playing games. If your game stumbles, you'll need more RAM. And let me make this clear, the minimum today for gaming should be at least 1GB. If your games require more, feed the beast with fresh RAM DIMMs.
The second thing you want to do is to open your task manager and then starting and playing your game. The task manager will then create a graph of the CPU usage which you'll be able to look on later. Does the CPU spike for a while? Is it always on the edge? A new CPU will cure!
Otherwise, it is safe to assume that your video card is up for an upgrade.
Really, there aren't many bottlenecks possible in a gaming system. Everything is logical.
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:2)
One of them was Everquest. With my standard settings (rather high),I was managing a nice 60-70fps in open conditions and 35 in "raid" conditions under Windows XP. Same settings, same machine, Nvidia binary drivers and Cedega, 55-65fps/30fps. Max framerate didn't change, was about 120fps with either.
Most game
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:2)
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:1)
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:2)
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:2)
The Linu
IME (Score:1)
Re:The operating system! (j/k) (Score:2)
Benchmarking (Score:3, Informative)
This will let you work out which pieces of hardware are not up to scratch. Then you just have to work out whether they're responsible for whatever 'bottleneck' you're trying to get around.
Re:Benchmarking (Score:1)
None of you are answering the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wanted to clarify the original question because I'm looking for this kind of utility myself and was getting annoyed at everyone simply asking for specs.
Re:None of you are answering the question... (Score:1)
Re:None of you are answering the question... (Score:5, Informative)
It's called trial and error, and it takes time to figure things out for yourself.
Don't try the all encompassing, single pass, benchmark utilities as they are too general.
#1 - Memory - It's been repeated here multiple times - Gaming takes memory - I won't play on a gaming rig with less than 2GB RAM. Disable virtual memory (as stated earlier as well) - try downloading TweakXP from totalidea - it has some nice memory tweaking settings that take the guesswork out of things.
#2 - Benchmarking / Tweaking / Re-benchmarking...
SiSoft Sandra (as mentioned earlier in this thread) is a good start. It has several modules, which can be run individually.
Go through your memory benchmarks - tweak settings in the BIOS (if they are available for tweaking), then re-run - DOCUMENT your changes, 1 change at a time - it's time consuming as hell, yet it's the only way to truly know what changes caused what differences in performance.
Run the disk benchmarks, tune the cache settings in the registry, re-run the disk benchmark, then re-run the memory again to see what impact having changed the disk cache has on memory performance.
Networking - if you are using a motherboard, with an embedded network interface, and it's not a hardware (ie seperate chip) implemented network interface - replace it with a card - software based network interfaces, running from chipset/cpu ruin system performance.
Places like http://www.dslreports.com/ [dslreports.com] under the tools section have some decent tools for examining your system settings, and suggesting changes to optimize throughput.
Playing with QOS settings may also effect network performance.
#3 Video - what games are you planning on playing, what refresh rate does your monitor support?
If your monitor only supports 60hz refresh, then it doesn't do a lot of good to go out and get that 80fps monster video card (unless you plan on replacing the monitor). The only place this isn't true, is in the digital realm of LCD monitors, where the faster you can refresh the image, between syncs, the better off you are.
Monitor - if using an LCD, what's your black to black / white to white delay? Replace the monitor if it's over 8ms - as that may introduce ghosting while playing. (I personally use a Viewsonic VX922 - with 2ms black to black / white to white - it's awesome IMNSHO)
HTH
Re:None of you are answering the question... (Score:5, Informative)
For example, one app/game (say your average FPS) might have the polygons and maps neatly optimised in memory (assuming you have enough) just loaded at the start of the level while you might also play a flight simulator which will be constantly streaming data from the hard drive. For the first game getting a 1337 SCSI hard drive won't help a bit, but it'll probably make things easier on the flight simulator.
For memory, having 2GB vs 3GB on a game that only uses 1GB of memory won't do you any good. Having less than required would be horrific though, especially if you don't have that 1337 SCSI hard drive to cope with all of the swapping from disk. Having extremely quick 2GB memory might help compared to slow 3GB memory, however for games like RTSs where the units are probably all held on display lists on the video card anyway there won't be much streaming of memory to the video card so having faster memory won't help *all* that much (don't get me wrong, it will help, just not as much as you might hope).
I'd guess that most games now-a-days would be a balance between an uber video card and an uber CPU. Of course each different game would have a different optimum balance so I guess you're stuffed there.
Wow, looking back at my message I realised that I said lots of interesting things that didn't help one bit in answering the question except by saying "Nice try mate, but it's not that simple". Anyway I'll stop now.
Re:None of you are answering the question... (Score:1)
1 gig ram, then video card (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:1 gig ram, then video card (Score:2)
Mod the parent up morons. I have karma to burn.
Re:1 gig ram, then video card (Score:2)
My system was awfully slow, with specs similar to the ones you described. Especially load times, and whenever any disk activity happened.
Bottleneck? Motherboard chipset drivers, the disks were working in some goddamn PIO mode eating up a big chunk of CPU time and being slow as hell. Drivers installed, disks work fine, everything speeded up.
The problem with PCs is that they contain mothaloads of legacy hardware and they default to using it - any
Some simple things to do (Score:5, Informative)
1. If you see the disk activity LED lit up a lot, you probably need more memory. The system is trying to extend the memory of the system by swapping data from RAM to disk and back. If you had more memory, the system would be able to keep more data in RAM. You can also confirm this by looking at the memory usage statistics in Task Manager (assuming this is a Windows box).
2. Another thing you can see from Task Manager is the CPU utilization. If it maxed out at 100%, the CPU is probably the bottleneck, so you may benefit from having a faster processor.
3. If neither of these things is the issue and the game you are running has a lot of complex graphics going on, then the issue could be your Video Card.
In my limited experience with benchmarking games, these seem like the three most common bottlenecks.
Re:Some simple things to do (Score:2)
wow.
Do you watch the blinking lights in the communications closets to calculate out how much the network switches are pushing though and whether or now you need to upgrade to full gigabit or fiber to the desktop?
Those methods are just about as accurate. Please don't become my superior and order me to install this...I will rebel and cause a mutiny.
Lights (Score:5, Funny)
Be sure all the fans you buy have LEDs in them, and your front panel should be covered by a motorized door that you can open by remote control.
Then you will have a "gaming rig" instead of just some workstation with a video card in it.
Re:Lights (Score:2)
When I was ordering my new computer I picked everything out and was waiting around until I could justify the purchase to myself. My boss ended up buying it for me (since me geeking out helps the company
Turns out the case
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Which game? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is really no way to benchmark every game out there, so you have to go on the "feel" of the games that you are playing.
If your game experiences sudden large performance hits, you probably have run out of RAM and are hitting the hard disk. Any time you hit the hard disk is bad.
If you want to see if your CPU is maxed out, go to a relatively visually quiet section of the world and start knocking objects over. This shouldn't increase render times, but will show you if you have processor clock to spare.
If you want to see if your graphics card is maxed out, find a relatively static section of the world without NPC's or moving objects, and go from a very narrow view to a fully pulled back vista. Assuming you aren't hitting a we-render-it-so-we-add-physics-to-it wall, you should be hitting the graphics processor pretty hard while staying light on the other components. This should also be able to be sensed in gameplay... if your framerate glitches vary a lot from moment-to-moment based upon your vision cone, you're probably hitting the graphics card. If your framerate glitches are relatively constant within an area or an encounter, you're probably hitting something else.
FSB speed is tough to judge, as that effects everything else. But really the only way to improve that is to get a new motherboard, at which point you should be upgrading everything anyway.
To complicate matters further, which "bottleneck" you hit depends upon what your graphics settings are. Want to max out your graphics processor? Turn on 8x sampling and turn the resolution all the way up. Want to max out your ram? Use the maximum texture size on the largest maps.
General performance guide (Score:5, Informative)
Outside those general things, another thing to keep in mind is the more hardware devices like printers and scanners that you have plugged into your machine the more often the CPU polls those devices during each cycle. Also allowing third party applications to automatically launch and idle while you play will hurt performance.
Hope this help. Game on.
My biggest bottleneck... (Score:3, Funny)
God Mode (Score:5, Funny)
Re:God Mode (Score:2)
Re:My biggest bottleneck... (Score:1)
Dupe articles are fine, but dupe comments, that's a no-no
simple (Score:4, Insightful)
2) get or build a socket shim and appropriate decode modules for your cpu fsb(assuming intel)
3) track down the physical addresses for your graphics device and memory. the bios should map these the same for each boot if you are lucky.
4) get some traces and write some analysis software to correlate bus issues with responses. one good metric would be the time spent waiting for memory vs the time between issues
5) look at the driver for the graphics card to figure out the indication of when the graphics command pipe stalls. extend your trace analyzer to track these
6) dig through the intel performance event documentation and write or run monitoring code which logs these over time
this should give you a general indication of whether its your cpu, memory system, or graphics card that is the bottleneck. it may be none of the above. you may have to dig deeper because interpreting all that data can be difficult.
good luck!
(note that your system may not work at speed with the analyzer hooked up..in that case stop whining, buy reasonably high end parts and forget the whole thing)
bringing a nuke to a knife fight (Score:2)
Many culprits lurk in tray icons... (Score:2)
On my friend's machine, receently, after uninstalling Symantec Antivirus (what a pain, doesn't uninstall itself , 5 pages of manual instructions, screw something up and it relentlessly tries to re-install itself), which was running 10 or so services, his bootup happens almost instantly (compared to 5 minutes with
3DMark06 (Score:2)
Multifaceted analysis (Score:2)
Benchmarking programs are a great start. 3DMark and PCMark from Futuremark [futuremark.com] are great tools for this. 3DMark plays scripted animations that use the latest pixel shaders and other effects. Because it's scripted it mostly taxes the GPU. PCMark benchmarks many components in isolated tests. Both utilities let you compare results with other people'
Why bother? (Score:2)
a troll (Score:1)
I think for the person who needs to ask about tweaking a game machine, the best advice is throw money at the problem, and then hit google. The truely passionate wi
IRQs, RAID, etc (Score:2)
Next look into RAID. Make absolutely certain that you are not utilizing onboard RAID and are instead using an addon card. I can guarantee you that any mobo you can afford with onboard RAID will in fact be software-based RAID ano not hardw