Overclocking not doing much wonders

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi guys, started to over clock the cpu... not doing much to be honest. I'm currently sitting on 3.3ghz and I can't tell the difference between stock speeds and what I'm up to right now. YBBN seems to be just as laggy as ever. I would have though that by 3.3Ghz, you would have started to see some sort of changes??? Haven't gone much higher yet because my new Megahalems isn't performing up to expectations!!! Will probably try to reseat it.

[MrMaestro]

I would expect a noticeable difference in FSX for a ~400MHz overclock. My last system was a Q6600 setup and I had that at a 400MHz OC, up to 3GHz from 2.6, and it made a very noticeable difference in FSX.

Haven't gone much higher yet because my new Megahalems isn't performing up to expectations!!! Will probably try to reseat it.

You're not using too much thermal paste are you? Should only be the size of a grain of rice. Once you've got the HSF sorted out post the settings you're using (BCLK, uncore, Vcore, IMC voltage - I think these are the terms anyway, I'm not so familiar with LGA1366 stuff, but whatever's relevant) and some temperature recordings (I use LinX to get it cooking and Core Temp to view the temps) and we can see if anything is out of the ordinary.

Mike

[Heiko Glatthorn]

If you can't see a difference, you have most likely a part which holds back. As far as i can see that would be the 260 GTX which doesn't fit well in such a high end system. You might also try the Bufferpools threshold and HIMEMFIX tweak. Those two did wonders on my PC.

Like mentioned, a 10 - 15% overclock doesn't have such a huge impact anyways, that's true.

[TenBlade]

What speed are you running your ram at? What´s the exact make? What timings are you using?

Bjorn

[cthiggin2]

Ram timing and Latency MAKE a big difference.  You can oc the cpu, but if memory is not correct memory / or / timings are off, then you will be throttled back.

ALSO, how many tsr's are running in the background??? what are the settings in FSX??

So much can play havoc on a system and especially the resource hog that FSX is.

cthiggin

[Atomic_Sheep]

Well the stock cpu is 2.8ghz... running it at 3.3 or whatever I said is the 400 mhz difference you were talking about (when you take into consideration that when its stock its actually around 2.9 due to turbo mode).

My memory is G-Skill 1600 mhz CL9... it's currently running at 1066 but when I overclocked it to 3.3 it was running at 1200... not sure about the timing but they wouldn't have been the 9-9-9-24 or whatever that memory is as quite obviously when it's not running at the full 1600 the timings would be whatever they would be when you reduce the memory frequency.

What's TSR? If you think I'm running out of memory then I'm about 99.9% sure I'm not as I've actually just put in an extra 6 gigs in last night before testing the new setup but my memory was never in danger of getting maxed out with just six anyway... although it did get up to about 5.5Gb total before, but now there isn't an issue.

As for the video card... I'm pretty sure it's not the problem... although on the 1920x1024 display I can see video lag when you pan fast, the video card can handle it when you don't... GPU Z shows it's being maxed out frequently but mostly when I'm panning (usually its sitting happily at 90% or so which is high I'll admit but It's certainly not what the cpu usage is looking like. I'm 99% sure that the video card has very little in the way of lag that I'm seeing, besides I've got the video options reduced a tad to cater for this... was very painful to do but I did it. Sure it's not optimal but it's not slowing down the system all that much imo. I had a look at some FSX GTX260 tests and they showed the SO version should be capable of somewhere around 20fps-22fps at my resolution and I'm quite happy with that but I'm getting single digit fps atm.

But yer, I think you guys are onto something with this memory thing. I'm going to keep overclocking until my memory reaches 1600 but first I need to get decent temperatures first. At stock cpu speed I'm getting 75c at like 20c ambient with my new X2000 case and Megahalems Rev B cooler!!! So something wrong there!

[alainneedle1]

Your memory running at 1066 timing 9-9-9 is VERY slow, the lower the number (timing) the faster the memory will be so if your memory is rated at 1600  9-9-9 you should be able to run it at the manuf. spec.  and you should be able to do 3.6GHz with your CPU.

If you stay at 1066 you should be able to lower the timing ......see these the timing is a lot better  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231331

High MHz + low timing + high GHz = speed.

[TenBlade]

You should overclock your processor to the particular frequency you want, leave the ram for now. That means you should unlink processor and ram, there should be options for it in your BIOS. Or, if linked and synced, there should be options for choosing the divider, so that the ram doesn´t get...dragged up to unstable freqencies when you increase the FSB for the processor.

For each step up for your processor use a benchmarking tool OCCT or Prime95, I use OCCT. You´ll want stable performance in your benchmarking test and safe temperatures.

Then set your ram to the specified numbers. Run tests again. If you´re going to tamper with the timings I suggest you use Memtest, there are two of them out there, get the one you can use from the desktop, the other is a hassle to use. I think the difficult one has a number suffixed, like Memtest95+ or something.

What FSB, multiplier and divider are you at right now?

[alainneedle1]

You should overclock your processor to the particular frequency you want, leave the ram for now. That means you should unlink processor and ram, there should be options for it in your BIOS. Or, if linked and synced, there should be options for choosing the divider, so that the ram doesn´t get...dragged up to unstable freqencies when you increase the FSB for the processor.

For each step up for your processor use a benchmarking tool OCCT or Prime95, I use OCCT. You´ll want stable performance in your benchmarking test and safe temperatures.

Then set your ram to the specified numbers. Run tests again. If you´re going to tamper with the timings I suggest you use Memtest, there are two of them out there, get the one you can use from the desktop, the other is a hassle to use. I think the difficult one has a number suffixed, like Memtest95+ or something.

What FSB, multiplier and divider are you at right now?

Good advise from TenBlade......make sure you have a good CPU cooler also if you'r overclocking.

[Atomic_Sheep]

Well guys, I just overclocked to 4Ghz... memory was running at 1300 or something of the sort... there was definitely a bit more hurry up at YBBN. The FPS was still below 10... but it was still a marked improvement over what I have literally right now i.e. I dowclocked back down to stock speeds of 2.8ghz (2.93 with boost) and 1066mhz for the ram. With these specs I'm getting around 3 fps... so basically I managed to increase the speed pretty much x3. So good start there. Yes, you're all right... the ram was very slow... I was wondering why the textures were taking so long to load, I'm starting to realise the majority of the lag was down to having my ram down clocked so much. It literally took around 2 minutes to fully load the textures after I would pause to wait for them to load on approach to YBBN. Well never actually measured how long it would take but basically, it took a very long time... enough to leave the computer, go get a cup of tea or something come back and it would still be loading... so with increasing the mem frequency, I've noticed a massive increase in the speed with which the textures were loading/appearing. I was thinking that it was my HDD that were causing such slow loading times but now I'm realising that they are decent enough.

I'll probably still be playing around with the CPU in the comming weeks to months as the way that I installed the cooler was a bit dodgy. Basically yesterday, I got my new case which is what I was waiting for in order to plug in the new Megahalems cooler... wasn't sure if it was going to fit in the old case... never tried... don't care, but basically, I spent the whole night till 8am rebuilding the computer into the new case. When I finally turned it on, I was initially blown away by the 30 degrees that I was getting at idle but then I realised that considering the fact that we had frost on the grass in the morning, the ambient temperature was pretty damn low. I had my window open and felt very cold by the morning mind you. But essentially, that was my first clue that something was wrong. Despite this, the CPU was still running 10 degrees below what it was at idle with the stock intel cooler. Anyway... I then started stressing the CPU and the new setup and was starting to realise that something was indeed wrong when I was getting into the 70s with stock speeds and with Prime95 after arounda a minute (after the initial sharp increase of course), the temps crept up to 85-86c... this was with higher ambient temps as the heater was on by this stage but still!

I spent the whole night tonight refitting the CPU cooler... well it was mostly experimenting with different thermal paste application methods because quite obviously the work from the night before didn't work. The Megahalems had literally almost next to no thermal paste on it when I took it off at the start of the night... and the paste that I spread with a business card looked just as I had left it the night before just before I put the CPU cooler up on top! Anyway... I tried several different application methods but the last one that I'm currently sitting on, is admittedly a bit dodgy. I decided to do the double line application with a much smaller than recommended rice sized dot in the centre in order to compensate for the fact that I already had 2 lines. In the end I ended up having one line thicker than the other and after trying to even them out (I'm anal)... I basically screwed it up and ended up blotching most of the cpu with tiny dots in frustration... so I'm not 100% sure about the results which is why I suggested I'll be playing around with it in the comming months and monitoring temps like a hawk. Ideally I want to pull it apart again but whether that will happen we shall see.

Anyway... long story short. I switched on the comp for the first time after the latest rebuild (after also rewiring about half the case as I had realised certain things I hadn't quite worked out the night before e.g. how to connect the fans up to the 3 speed controller which I left untouched last night and also connecting up my blueray optical drive and playing around with cable management a bit more to make it all nice and tidy... anyway... after initially turning on the comptuer... I received a much more pleasant temperature readout than the first time which means that the blotching is doing a decent enough job for now at least. I then realised I forgot to put the fan onto the cooler at which point I realised just how beasty this Megahalems really is. Certainly lived up to its reputation for me! Anyway... plugged in the fan after some more fiddling and am currently sitting on sub 30c temps on all cores (mind you it's a lot warmed in the room tonight than last night as my window is now closed! Hence the apparently small difference in temps from last night as shall be seen in a second). CoreTemp is showing 29, 26, 30, 28 which is a bit wierd... so maybe the blotching method hasn't done the job perfectly which is why I would be interested in redoing it a few more times until I'm psychologically happy but at least but the dodgy Gigabyte temp readout is showing 25c so all this is telling me the cooler is working more or less up to expectation. I ran Prime95 and was getting temps in the 50's from memory... @3.8 or so I think I was getting up to 70's (wasn't running the test for very long). In FSX @4Ghz it was running @ around 55 for all cores on average. So I was pretty comfortable with that.

ANYWAY... long story short... thanks for the suggestions... I'll be trying to seperate the ram from the CPU soon. I remember when I was playing around with RAM and overclocking, I was having the problem of not all my memory being recognised but it wasn't being recognised at random when I wasn't overclocking either so I don't know what was going on. After building the comp in the new case... I put in the full 12 gigs expecting to see just 8 as before (as I was running just on 6Gigs before... couldn't bothered fiddling with it until I had the final setup)... suddenly I haven't had a single bootup with anything other than 12Gb whether I was overclocking or not which was a nice surprise. Anyway... I'll start experimenting with it soon... and see how it goes! A lot more exciting than I was just a few posts ago @3.3Ghz! I think my final target will be 3.8Ghz after turbo boost... I'll be happy with that I think... maybe 3.9, we shall see... depends on how stable it all is I suppose because FSX did crash @4Ghz... not straight away... after I started clicking random stuff like a madman. Anyway... time to sleep and to catch my breath. Will keep you guys posted as to how it all goes. But certainly thanks for the suggestions... ram here I come.

EDIT: After checking BIOS, I think the memory is running at 9-9-9-24 @1060... so it's certainly underclocked.

[MrMaestro]

CoreTemp is showing 29, 26, 30, 28 which is a bit wierd...

That's perfectly normal, at idle the core temps will vary a bit, as long as they're around the same number you're fine. With Core 2 Intel actually stated that it's thermal sensors couldn't be trusted below (I think it was) 50°.

The RAM isn't hard to get going at it's rated speed, just make sure voltage is set manually to its rated amount (1.5V or 1.65 depending on the model) then set the "System memory multiplier" option to get as close to 1600 as you can - it doesn't matter if it's over or under by a few MHz.

If you reseat the heatsink again, the simplest (and I would say best) way to apply thermal paste really is the Grain-of-Rice-in-the-Middle method, don't worry about spreading it around with a card, after the heatsink goes on top the pressure from screwing it down forces the paste to spread out and cover the heat spreader.

Good luck,

Mike

[Atomic_Sheep]

That's perfectly normal, at idle the core temps will vary a bit, as long as they're around the same number you're fine. With Core 2 Intel actually stated that it's thermal sensors couldn't be trusted below (I think it was) 50°.

Ah, good point... forgot about that.

[Crunch]

I'm running the same CPU and motherboard as you are, my memory is a difference brand but the same mhz rating. I've been running my system @ 3.6 since the day I built it. Basically, when you have the memory ratio set correctly you should be about 1440 Mhz with the CPU clocked to 3.6. That is a good place to stick for now, 3.8 and 4.0 are pushing the stability unless you really know what you're doing as more voltage adjustments and higher end cooling will be required. The two voltage settings you should be concerned with at 3.6 ghz is CPU core and memory voltage. I currently have my core voltage set to 1.3v with load line calibration set to low. All other voltages are set to auto. Just make sure your memory voltage is set to what ever the manufacturer recommends for 1600 mhz at tightest rated timings. 

Find out what the lowest latency is for your memory and set it there with the correct voltage. If your memory is rated for 1600 then it should have no problems at 1440 with tightest advertised timings.

Your performance in add on airports in FTX is going to depend on what type of aircraft you are flying as well FSX settings. FTX around large cities will drop your frame rate considerably, adding custom airports on top of it will drop performance further. FTX will drop any computer to its knees if flying high detail aircraft and high density settings.

   

I'm usually getting 50 fps stable when not around cities or large towns in FTX scenery. However I am running a 470 GTX which does increase performance greatly when all other things are in check. The 260 may have a bit of a problem coping with all the custom autogen and textures when set to dense or above. FSX is much more video dependent that many people think.

A good place to test your stability and performance is in default scenery around large cities and see where that goes, you should be able to maintain 50 fps (locked) with default or moderate payware aircraft (IE not something like a add-on 767 etc that are known frame killers), if everything is tuned and set properly. However with the 260 you may not be able to run at very dense autogen so you may have to drop to dense. This is where I sit performance wise using an aircraft like the Lotus sim L-39 in major cities with autogen set to very dense and scenery set to extremely dense. If you can maintain the above mentioned, then adding in FTX, add-on airports and payware heavy aircraft should drop you to the 20-25 range in major FTX cities as long as you're not going bonkers with your autogen density.

[cthiggin2]

Linked / Synce

NEVER have Memory faster than FSB

Lower Latency on Memory - Cas 9 is slow.

But, you're getting there.

cthiggin

[TenBlade]

I suggest you unlink initially while finding the limit and stability of the cpu. 

[florian455]

step by step to 4 Ghz.

http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/538439-guide-overclocking-core-i7-920-930-a.html

[Atomic_Sheep]

Well, I've been steadily overclocking my computer today... my specs at each step:

Ended up with qpi/vtt - 1.155v (x36 QPI, x6 Mem, x14 CPU and x14 Uncore) for my target bclock of 200mhz. I don't see how my Megahalems is going to be able to cool 4.4Ghz so there's no point going higher.

then had to bump that up when I got my memory from x6 -> x8 i.e. running @ spec 1.5v 999 24 auto and bumped up uncore to x17... so qpi/vtt ended up at 1.215v for this to be 5min stable (temps are around 60c with ambient around 18c - guess).

vcore was 1.25v throughout all this.

Then I started bumping up the cpu multi... got it up to x19 i.e. 3.8Ghz which is what I'm sitting on @ 1.25c vcore and then hit a bit of a wall... tried for x20 but after bumping up vcore to 1.26875 gave up for tonight (kept getting BSOD when running memtest95 with each bump in vcore) as I wanted to see what the performance of FSX was at these last stable settings.

So now as you can probably gather, I'm running my memory @ spec and cpu at a multi of x19 with vcore at 1.256 or something... just a smidge over what it was stable at prior to trying higher cpu multis just to be safe.

Anyway... looks like the memory wasn't much of a slow link. I'm getting very low fps still. Flying the ultralight @ YBBN... my lowest readings are around 5.7fps when flying over terminal towards CBD and average of 8 when I'm not flying past the terminal. I tried turning down the graphics to test the theory that my video card is holding me back... I chucked it onto I think it was 1280xsomethingx16 and I gained maybe 0.5fps on average so can't really say that's slowing me down much. With the faster memory, the load times are quicker than what they were at stock speeds but I still have to wait for textures to load a lot of times so I suppose my HDDs are slowing me down after all in that respect. I'll be aiming for 4Ghz tomorrow after I run memtest and prime95 at these current settings for a lot longer than 5 mins. But either way... I don't know how you guys are getting smooth frames in FSX. I've seen a bunch of videos on youtube with 3.8Ghz and 4Ghz with FTX scenery and decent FPS... probably at least 20fps. I'm just not seeing how an additional 200-400mgz are going to make me jump from 6fps to what I want @ YBBN i.e. 15fps. Hmm...

[Atomic_Sheep]

Well... I got it up to 4.0Ghz. Running FSX @ 63c being the highest temp for any of the cores. Sure... with the overclock its noticably quicker... it's just that it's still not playable. As I said before @ 3.8Ghz... I can't imagine there being much difference in an additional 200mhz. Quite dissapointing really... 7-8fps on average around YBBN and drops lower all the time .

Anyway... I'm getting better FPS than before at least... sigh.

EDIT: It's really looking like my video card is the weak link now. Had a look at GPUz and voila... GPU load is around 70-90% but the video memory is where I'm getting eaten. I never noticed that being maxed out before. Quite strange that GPU load isn't as indicative of GPU load as it seems.

[MrMaestro]

That seems very strange. You can't do a direct comparison to John's video though since he's running a much better video card, a GTX 285 vs your GTX 260. And that would make a difference,though, but not to the degree of not being playable, the 260 should still run it well. Plus, since JV isn't recording with Fraps, he's using his iPhone, it isn't lowering the frame rate. Off the top of my head, looking at your signature, maybe the RAID is hurting performance for some reason, I know it wouldn't be a quick and easy task but getting rid of the RAID setup and installing FSX onto a single drive might help. Certainly I wouldn't want you to go to all that trouble if it wasn't going to do anything, so hopefully someone else can chime in on that matter.

Another idea is to pull out half your RAM, so you're running 3x2GB, and make sure you follow the same DIMM slots to allow triple channel operation.

Otherwise, can you upload your fsx.cfg? Maybe there's something not right in it. You can't attach a file to a post so you'll have to upload it to a filesharing site like RapidShare or MegaUpload. Oh and on the point of the cfg also try deleting it and letting FSX build a clean one when it restarts.

Mike

[MrMaestro]

EDIT: It's really looking like my video card is the weak link now. Had a look at GPUz and voila... GPU load is around 70-90% but the video memory is where I'm getting eaten. I never noticed that being maxed out before. Quite strange that GPU load isn't as indicative of GPU load as it seems.

The GTX 260 isn't a bad card, while it's no GTX 285 it should still provide smooth frame rates. At the very least, before buying a new card see if you can borrow a friend's one, as it would be a colossal waste of money if you went out and bought a GTX 480 and it didn't improve things. I still don't think it's your issue, the GTX 260 shouldn't have that much of an effect on frame rates.

[TenBlade]

If all else fails, concider a BIOS update if available.

B.

[Atomic_Sheep]

I'm running F5... the latest one for my MB.

Video card wise... I've started to realise that it is indeed the thing that is hurting me. I've discovered that if I'm using VC with zoom to 1.00... I get MUCH better frame rates than when I'm using 0.4 which is what I prefer to use. With Johns settings and zoom set to 0.4, I get frame rates of 10-15fps @YBBN, with zoom @ 1.0. A GTX 480 is appealing for several reasons... 1st, it will give me an FPS boost for sure... I know what my video card lag looks like and now that I've figured out how to get rid of it i.e. zoom in and not pan around as much means that with a GTX480 I'm sure I'd be able to get very smooth frame rates. With Zoom set at around 0.6-0.7, I get frame rates of around 30fps and probably more (when I'm flying from the crazy YBBN scenery as I was getting just now enroute to Tamworth.

Dynamic bloom, doesn't seem to affect frame rates too much... if it does then its at most 1fps because I seriously can't tell the difference in fps with it on or off which is good news. But essentially... if I pause... the difference in fps is 1 or 2 fps between 1.00 zoom and 0.4 zoom. The problems start happening when I unpause as everything starts to shift. As I said before, it's really during panning that most of the problems happen. I was getting 120fps @ 10,000 feet in cockpit view i.e. no VC flying from Coffs to YBBN. VC's for some reason absolutely kill fps for some reason and I'm not even using anything out of the ordinary. Interestingly enough... at YBBN... VC on and Cockpit view only have around a 3fps difference or so. But yer, if I'm turning and panning... that really kills the fps... just grinds to a halt. So as long as I keep everything relatively smooth, I'm able to get around 15fps at and around YBBN, which is pretty much what I was aiming for in my overclock so I'm pretty happy now that I've figured all this out. With a new video card, I'm sure I'll get better fps, but when I get it and whether it'll be a 480 is a different question. I wasn't planning on upgrading my gpu for at least a year and I'm probably going to stick to that.

The second reason is that if I ever get a 180 degree view setup happening with multiple projectors which is in the dream box at the moment but basically... I'll need a pretty beefy video card to be able to run something like 3-5 projectors (probably 3 but still). Considering the fact that FSX doesn't support SLI, really need to do my research and find out if the 480 will cut it for that purpose or if I'll have to wait for something a bit further down the line.

One thing I do want to try is to stop Kaspyrsky and see whether textures load quicker with it off... I won't be turning it off for good, but just out of curiosity.

[florian455]

Are you using a tweaked fsx.

like BP=0 or AffnityMask and Hyperthreading enabled?

[TenBlade]

And try to add GameBooster, free-ware download which turns off unnecessary background ops.

[Atomic_Sheep]

Are you using a tweaked fsx.

like BP=0 or AffnityMask and Hyperthreading enabled?

I do have a tweaked .cfg file but to be honest, my tweaks did nothing in the way of hampering the performance in the first place... I didn't notice any difference. I'll rebuild my config file for sure just to see whether there is any improvement. I think I do know what you're talking about in terms of hyperthreading... I'm pretty sure I never tried enabling this as the responses from everyone on these forums suggested not to bother. Not sure whether I played with affinity mask... can't remember.

And try to add GameBooster, free-ware download which turns off unnecessary background ops.

I'll have a look into it, thanks.

Overall I think I'm definitely a lot happier with it overclocked. I was getting around 30-50fps today doing that mission where you fly from Amsterdam to London and get that heart attack patient. There is no AI in that mission so that definitely aids fps but I think I've discovered that really, as long as I keep my zoom as close to 1.00 as possible, I can pretty much have very playable fps with ORBX. With standard FSX scenery it's pretty much as perfect as I would ever want it to be, struggles a bit more than I would have liked with ORBX but what can you do. I might try a 4.2Ghz overclock (I found out that my Megahalems wasn't screwed in all the way in my latest attempt to reseat it, so after I did that, I lost a few more degrees which is excellent and makes me much more comfortable with trying for 4.2Ghz) just to see whether that does anything for me but I'm about 90% happy atm. I think I just needed to play around with some ideas to try to get good fps on my machine. Had to give up on some settings but the fact that I've cranked up my weather slider to max made me a very happy man!

[florian455]

Are you using a tweaked fsx.

like BP=0 or AffnityMask and Hyperthreading enabled?

I do have a tweaked .cfg file but to be honest, my tweaks did nothing in the way of hampering the performance in the first place... I didn't notice any difference. I'll rebuild my config file for sure just to see whether there is any improvement. I think I do know what you're talking about in terms of hyperthreading... I'm pretty sure I never tried enabling this as the responses from everyone on these forums suggested not to bother. Not sure whether I played with affinity mask... can't remember.

And try to add GameBooster, free-ware download which turns off unnecessary background ops.

First make sure HT is disabled in your BIOS, is almost always enabled by default.

After you disabled HT,

Put the this in your Fsx.cfg

[JOBSCHEDULER]

AffinityMask=15

it forces fsx to use all 4 cores, then test fsx again to c if there's a better result.

[Heiko Glatthorn]

I pretty much believe that 15 is the default setting - FSX is designed to use all 4 cores. Tried it many times and i can't see the smallest difference between AffinityMask=15 and no entry at all (for a quad core of course).