Another upgrade query

MartMax

First of all, I have been having some issues with the graphic card (I think) over the last few months. At few odd times and regularly this late, the monitor shows some dot pixels and lines either during boot or in Windows. I wasn't so sure if those are due to so I tried hooking another laptop to the monitor. The results were good, no such pixels at all so I'm convinced that the graphic card was the one acting up.

My current configuration is as follows:

Asus P5B P965 Socket-775 ATX
Corsair TWIN2X 5400 DDR2, 2048MB PC5400
HIS Radeon X1650XT 256MB iSilence II
Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13GHz Socket LGA775 4MB Cache
Dell 2005WFP Ulstrasharp Flatpanel


I do mainly use the PC for Photoshop and work. Not frequently, I'd be playing some games like C&C and other multi players. So now I thought it's the best time to upgrade. What I have in mind is to replace the graphic card and memory, and go 64-bit with Windows 7:

ASUS Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 (€96.50)
OCZ DDR2 PC8500 4GB KIT Reaper HPC (€59.00)


Any comments and suggestions regarding the problem and upgrade? Is it worth upgrading?

Thanks very much in advance.

Effluo

Just a note first of all on your current graphics card.

That sounds very much like a driver problem.
Download "driver sweeper" from 3dguru.com and uninstall the current driver and then install the most recent one.

There's a good chance that it will solve the problem and even give your card a bit of a performance boost.



So the ram you chose is PC8500 1066Mhz, however the max ram speed your mobo supports is Pc6400 800Mhz.

The graphics card you chose is a 4850 which is a good card but just a wee bit heavy on power.
IT in fact uses up to twice as much as the card you have right now.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-x1650xt_4.html

This could be a problem as we don't know the spec of your power supply.

Also could you respond with what resolution you run your games at.

MartMax

Thanks Effluo for the reply.

Do you think it's driver related, even though it does acting up at BIOS start-up? Forgot to mention that I had it happened in other Windows load (I have few for experimental purpose). The most recent Windows 7 RC partition, same problem.

Regarding the RAM speed, I have to double check that again on the manual at home and Asus website. I always thought the motherboard supports up to 1066Mhz.

I must also check again when I get home what sort of power supply I have at the moment. I think it's OCZ Modstream 450W or something like that. Apart from the above components, I have two hard drives (one is Samsung and the other Western Digital). The other is a Plextor DVD recorded PX-712A IDE.

Will update with the above details later tonight.

Cheers,
M

Solitaire

Intermittent dots and lines on the display sounds more like an issue with the cable (if your'e lucky) or more likely the PSU, controller or crystal inside the monitor are on their way out

Blazer

More likely the memory onboard the GPU is starting to fail.
Old ATI/Nvidia cards are notorious for this...you see distorted pixels on screen when playing games or anything that's pushing the video card.
It's a sign of failing vram.

The 4850 is a nice upgrade from the X1650XT.
It's cheap and graphics are excellent with it.

The ram you picked is not compatible with your board. It will probably work but your board will set it to a default speed of 800mhz rather than 1066mhz.

Get this kit instead

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=343070
It's the 800mhz version of the kit you picked out but more importantly it's running at CL4 which gives you better timings.

Effluo

mart_max wrote: »

I tried hooking another laptop to the monitor. The results were good, no such pixels at all so I'm convinced that the graphic card was the one acting up.

But would this not suggest then that it's related to the graphics card?

MartMax

Berkut wrote: »

More likely the memory onboard the GPU is starting to fail.
Old ATI/Nvidia cards are notorious for this...you see distorted pixels on screen when playing games or anything that's pushing the video card.
It's a sign of failing vram.

The 4850 is a nice upgrade from the X1650XT.
It's cheap and graphics are excellent with it.

The ram you picked is not compatible with your board. It will probably work but your board will set it to a default speed of 800mhz rather than 1066mhz.

Get this kit instead

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=343070
It's the 800mhz version of the kit you picked out but more importantly it's running at CL4 which gives you better timings.

Didn't know that 800Mhz is actually more pricey than the 1066Mhz. So if I had the PC8500 on the board and the board set it to slower speed, it will go slower with CL5 latency? And if I had a PC6400 instead, it will go at 800Mhz but a better latency?

MartMax

Effluo wrote: »

But would this not suggest then that it's related to the graphics card?

I thought you were referring that the driver is bad. Sorry I'm just confused here.

Blazer

mart_max wrote: »

Didn't know that 800Mhz is actually more pricey than the 1066Mhz. So if I had the PC8500 on the board and the board set it to slower speed, it will go slower with CL5 latency? And if I had a PC6400 instead, it will go at 800Mhz but a better latency?

exactly,...the 800mhz would be the winner here...tighter CL ratings..

Effluo

mart_max wrote: »

I thought you were referring that the driver is bad. Sorry I'm just confused here.

I said it could be a driver issue and i was referring to that possibility in that post

MartMax

Thanks guys. So I decided to go ahead with OCZ DDR2 PC6400 4GB KIT Reaper HPC but not from Komplett, it's actually cheaper from Shop4Memory! It's only €61. Perfect.

I have decided to get the new graphic Asus HD 4850 but holding on to find the best price.

Btw, I checked the PSU that I have. It's OCZ Modstream 450W 12U, a discontinued model. Well I bought it about 2-3 years ago.

Blazer

Should be grand then for the 4850.
The 450 is the recommended requirement for one.

MartMax

Finally have the PC6400 installed on my P5B. Didn't get it recognised the whole lot of 4GB initially until I enable Remapping. Almost got panicked to update the BIOS but I hold on to "don't fix it if it ain't broke".

Now looking at the CPU-Z reading, the memory is running at 400MHz, FSB:DRAM ratio of 2:3 and timing of 5-5-5-18-2T. The processor itself clocked at 266MHz bus and FSB of 1066MHz.

I'm not familiar with all these, is this the optimised settings of RAM I can get? Reading the SPD, EPP#1 says 400MHz at 4-4-4-15-2T (2.2V). Can I achieve this without messing around too much i.e. not overclocking the CPU?

Sorry lads, I might be a geeky accountant but these all multiplier things and jargons don't fit my thinking well.

Cheers,
M

Solitaire

You don't neccessarily have to mess with the CPU too much but any fine-tuning of the bus speed (to increase the speed of the RAM) will force the CPU speed up small amounts alongside the RAM. Although that's actually beneficial to CPU and system performance as well unless for some reason the CPU is already fully stressed at its current voltage level (which is never the case with a stock CPU). Changing the FSB:RAM divider can change the speed of the RAM without affecting the FSB or CPU but its for big, coarse changes in memory speed only. Changing memory latencies is also independent of the FSB/CPU.

Of course, Reaper is just normal 800MHz CL5 RAM until you overvolt it. Depending on the part you could hit either CL4 or 1066MHz (probably not both at the same time ) around 2.0-2.2V. Bear in mind that if you exceed the voltage stated on the label on the sticks themselves you invalidate the warranty. If they don't reach the stated speed and timings on said label between 1.8V and the voltage on the label then technically unless there are extenuating circumstances (failing to overvolt the chipset is the commonest) the part is borked and eligible for RMA (more bother than its worth; just keep on fine-tuning with assistance from OCZ). Oh, and data on this label overrides corresponding fields on the box, website, adverts, literature etc.

MartMax

Took the plunge by manually set the memory latency 4-4-4-15 and increase the voltage to 2.1V. Run the memtest and seems no error coming up. Windows 7 RTM is running smoothly, no issues what so ever so far. Haven't done any other test yet. Attached are the report from CPUid, what ever it means, I think there's a negligible improvement over FSB and bus speed by 1Hz.