Hey guys, My performance in rFactor2 is a little iffy, with drops down to ~20 FPS on certain tracks when running more than 10 cars with non-maximum (though fairly high) graphical settings. I know I can lower the settings more to squeeze some more performance out of my system, but I also want to be aware of where the greatest bottleneck is. Here are my specs: i7-870 NVIDIA GeForce 260GTX core 216 superclocked with 898 MB GDDR3 16 gigs of DDR3 @ 2000mHz Hard drive @ 5400 rpm Win XP 32 bit I know that for one, since I'm running a 32 bit OS, I only get 3.2 gigs of my 16. Additionally, my GPU is fairly old, and my hard drive as slow as a slug. I imagine the biggest bottleneck is the GPU, as the hard drive should only effect load times, and rF2 should have enough RAM to work with even as such (hence, no need for an OS upgrade). The only real thing I expect would warrant an OS upgrade is the small performance improvement in graphics driver support. So, if I were to choose one thing to upgrade, it should be the GPU. Does my assessment seem to be accurate?
Yeah it's that GPU. Turn the eye candy down. Extra memory never hurts (why do you have 16GB installed on a 32bit OS? Do you dual boot to Linux?) so if you have a 64bit version of Windows lying around, try that too.
I'd say that you have a fairly balanced system there and if you were to improve any one part, you'd probably not see a BIG improvement.
GPU needs upgrade, indeed. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html Windows 8 64 bits will help you a bit (it helps me), particularly in order to seize the amount of RAM you have. Even so, don't blame your system, after all I'm ready to say the main bottleneck is the lack of optimization of the software itself.
Agreed. I would however stay with Windows 7 and take the 64 bits version from that. Just my personal opinion as I hate Windows 8.
Your biggest problem is your graphics card, then your HDD and 32bit OS. You will get better performance from a better graphics card without a doubt but you need to upgrade to a 7200RPM drive at the very least and upgrading to a 64bit OS will help too. I have an i3-330 processor, 4GB DDR3 ram and a GTX545 (1GB DDR5) graphics and I'm getting 60 FPS on full detail and 70-80 FPS on high detail and as you can see my specs are nothing to write home about. The processor and Ram wont give you much if anything at all in an increase in FPS.. So your answer is, the bottleneck is caused by the graphics card mainly but the slow HDD and 32bit won't be helping either.
Seems like most of you agree with my assessment with regards to the GPU. Thanks! Yup, I use Windows for one thing: rFactor 2. Agreed, I don't think I'd be able to stand Win 8... Not that I can really stand any Windows OS to begin with, but Win 8 is especially bad. XD I also think I can get Win 7 for very little through my university, so that may be worth it. Any thoughts on whether I should upgrade? Perhaps it would make the most sense to lower my graphical settings and keep using it until it is so outdated that it is not usable for rF2 anymore. rFactor 2 is the only game I play, and I'm happy with the performance of my card produces for my Cuda and OpenGL development, so the upgrade would really only be for rF2. On the other hand, I am thinking I want to get AC when it gets released, and at the very least I would need Win 7 for that one. I suspect it would also be massively beneficial for me to have a better GPU for that. I don't really want to be a stickler for graphics, but it definitely does help with the immersion. The other factor is, I suspect there is basically no way I can upgrade to a 3 monitor setup with my current GPU. Maybe SLI. Problem there though, is that treating multiple devices with Cuda is rather tricky (at least relative to a single GPU), and there is no nice automation as there is with SLI in OpenGL. Suggestions?
People must stop posting synthetic passmark benchmarks, those are incredibly inaccurate and insignificant when compared to real world results.
Your bottleneck is your entire system (GPU, CPU, Harddrive) except ram, upgrade to windows 7 64 bit while you're at it. How much are you looking to spend?
Not much. A couple hundred at most. I use a different 7200 RPM hard drive for my main OS, and I really don't mind waiting around a bit for things to load so I wouldn't particularly call that a bottleneck. I know the CPU is aging a little but let's be honest, there are plenty of people even on these forums running rF2 without much trouble with Core 2's here. It seems though that my GPU is the main thing that is actually worse than other people here. Is there anything I am missing that makes you specifically mention my CPU and harddrive? Also, any recommendations for specific GPUs? I should specifically mention I'm only in the market for Nvidia cards.
Your CPU is an old design and architecture, even for that time period the 870 wasn't anything too special, and even less so if you don't have a decent overclock on it. Overclocked to hell 920s and 930s were where it was at, also 950s were good deals used, the rest 970-990 were just insane rip offs, 960 i cant remember price. You are right though, In your situation, as in most (games unfortunately seem to always be much more GPU dependent than CPU) i would get the GPU first. 5400 rpm drives are very, very old and slow. My computer from probably 2001 has a 7200 rpm harddrive. Not only that, but it probably has a super duper small amount of cache on it, apart from 5400rpm being super slow, it's not even all about hard drive rpm. If you look at all the 7200rpm hard drives made in the last 10 years you will see a HUGE difference between them all, yet they are all 7200 rpm, it's goes much, much further than simply looking at the rpm. My 7200rpm harddrive from my 10 year old computer is much, much, much, much slower than my 7200rpm harddrive on my main pc. Also, it's not just about loading levels, your harddrive is constantly working with the game during actual gameplay, not to mention background stuff. GPU ya get a new one. Can you give me an average and max amount? I almost always buy used, keep that in mind too, negotiating on craigslist, and looking on eBay are very helpful and money saving. Hard to recommend nvidia cards as they are so overpriced for their performance compared to amd cards, but if going nvidia I would not go lower than a 660 ti (wouldn't get the non-ti model). On eBay they seem to go from 180-230ish (used obviously), there is a deal right now for a brand new one for $220, think it's on tigerdirect or newegg. If you change your mind and want to spend more (while staying with only nvidia) then get a gtx 670, don't get the 680, insanely overpriced, minimal gains over 670, even less so after overclocking. A nice 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 hard drive is one of the fastest, most popular, best rated, conventional consumer hard-drives around. Great quality, reliability etc. as well. New is probably $55-80 bucks, used is probably $40-60.
Though your hardware is a little old, the main thing that is limiting your performance right now is the GPU as you suspected. There are a couple of other tips I would suggest though. 1. Don't worry about upgrading to a 64bit OS as you are not going to see any major improvement, you will basically only get access to the additional ram that you have installed and that won't help game performance. 2. Get AMD's RAMDISK software, it is free and when you set it up in Windows it will allow you to utilize the extra RAM above the 3.5Gb mark for things like the swap file and temp folders, making your system perform better. This should also give you better performance for Windows in general as you won't be accessing the drive as much. 3. Pay attention to your PSU as you want to be sure that it has the correct power connections in order to even use a faster GPU. 4. As far as triple screens go, you are not going to be able to do it with that card unless you get something like TripleHeadtoGo, as nVidia's cards below the 6XX series were not able to support 3 monitors on a single card.
Everything in your system looks pretty much well balanced, I wouldn't consider upgrading anything , wait until you can do a complete new system build As lots if little small steps/upgrades here & there will work out more expensive in the long run
WinXP 32bit means 3.5gig of RAM regardless of how much more you have installed. I saw a massive increase of performance going from 4gig to 16gig in Win7 64bit. So sort that out and then see if you need to upgrade the GPU.
I say sell the tower. Either CPU or GPU upgrade is a mismatch. You buy say a GTX660Ti and the old intel barely pushes it. You buy say a 2500K Sandybridge or Ivybridge is not going to do a lot for a GTX260 either. Both options are poor bang for buck.
I'd rather not sell the tower just because the case, PSU, and RAM are actually decent... I have a Silverstone Raven RV02 and a Corsair TX650, both of which I am more than happy with. Additionally, I did in fact do a HDD upgrade a year ago or so, but I don't use it for Windows XD Perhaps I can spare a few gigs for Windows software on it... Additionally, I believe I can get an upgrade to Win 7 for $20 through my university, so those two might be the first steps. If I do a CPU upgrade, I'd rather not go with the 2500K sandybridge because that's already outdated and not really too much of an upgrade from my current processor especially since the vast majority of the stuff I do on my system involves many threads. If anything, probably a 3770K, but that's a little out of my reach right now, especially considering I'd need to upgrade the motherboard while I'm at it, and it seems I'd definitely want to upgrade that GPU of mine if I also do a CPU upgrade. But, I'm going to wait on any hardware upgrades until I get around to the things I mentioned above and see if there is a significant change in performance. Thanks for all the help guys! It's almost shocking how quickly computers get outdated these days XD
