9 replies to this topic

[Starchild192]

I just got a shiny new GTX 680 a few weeks back. I have a friend who has one, and it destroys everything. Everything he plays runs flawlessly at max settings. Strangely, I get some serious lag when playing some games.

Borderlands 2 runs fine until the bullets start to fly or until there is alot of stuff to render, at which point the game becomes almost unplayable. The same goes for StarCraft 2. The game runs fine until I have alot of units/buildings and then the lag kicks in.

I talked to him, and he said my CPU may be bottlenecking my 680, and i might want to look at overclocking it.

I have a stock i7 930 Bloomfield with a clock of 2.8 GHz. I really have no idea about overclocking, so if someone could point me to a decent website or article or possibly give me some insight themselves that would be great!

Danke!

Starchild

[Badconduct]

Overclocking should be easy.

But it depends on your motherboard and how good your RAM is really. Also, you will need to make sure your processor has the proper heatsink on it. The stock one won't cut it.

If you are running a brand-name computer, you may need a modded bios.

If you aren't already set up with a good tower, good heat sink and cooling and a good motherboard; you are better off buying a new motherboard/processor/RAM

Also, it's a lot of trial and error and troubleshooting.

http://www.overclock...r-930-to-4-0ghz

Edited by Badconduct, 07 April 2013 - 12:21 PM.

[rustyk]

Definitely try and overclock it, I think you'll see a big difference.

Previous poster is spot on with the advice though. Cooling and your motherboard are probably the most important things. Normally when overclocking you can fix the RAM speed so that's not necessarily too much of an issue.

[Starchild192]

My motherboard is an Asus P6TD deluxe. And thankfully it isn't a brand-name computer. Its mostly just stuff I saved up for, except for the processor. My tower should be fine, its a Coolermaster HAF 932 Advanced.

Thanks for the info!

[rustyk]

Asus make good boards.

This might help : http://www.bit-tech....-overclocking/1

If overclocking, you really want to try and keep vCore as low as possible, since increasing voltage increases heat massively and leads to diminishing returns. You'll probably want an aftermarket cooler too.

Bear in mind, that the newer intel CPU's are really good overclockers, particularly Sandy Bridge. My i5-2500k overclocks straight to 4Ghz without even a voltage increase.

[ArmageddonKnight]

If i were u i would OC as far as i could wiht the current cooling setup. if u start thinking about sinking money into it to OC u might want to think about just upgrading instead. Even a OC'd 930 cant touch Intel Sandy and ivybridge CPU's.
Dont get me wrong the 1st gen i7's were great for back then, specialy the top end ones. But the Sandybridge chips took a good leap forward in single thread performance on which most games are bassed. Ivybridge are just a tad faster, though sacrifice heat efficiency when OC'd so u end up OC'ing to a lower clock than on a Sandy if ur comparing the same cooling system.

Edited by ArmageddonKnight, 07 April 2013 - 01:09 PM.

[rustyk]

You could also use something like FRAPS to monitor framerate. Also, you could download afterburner and monitor GPU usage (and overclock the 680 if you want).
You don't say what resolution you're running at, but I assume it's a single screen 1920x1080 setup.
Thinking about what you said in terms of major lag, it's even possible something else is going on there.
I'd make sure you do a clean driver install if you haven't already. Your processor might hold back the 680 somewhat, but it shouldn't cause big slowdowns. Issues can be game specific though. For example, with Borderlands 2 is might be Physx settings causing the slowdown.
Post on the Nvidia forums and see what they think.

[Starchild192]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I am going to be just trying to get a decent overclock with what I have now, as I am about to be heading off to college and don't have the money to spend on new processors and aftermarket cooling. I was thinking of shooting for either getting to 3.3GHz or 3.5GHz. Do either of those sound reasonable? My CPU runs at about 17 C while idle, which is fairly decent from what my friend says. Will heat be an issue?

[ArmageddonKnight]

That CPU can go up to 4ghz without to much trouble from what i know BUT it owuld require a aftermarket cooler.

3.5ghz is probably the highest ull get on a stock cooler asuming u get a good Vcore.

[frag85]

ArmageddonKnight has the idea. Most Bloomfield chips (first gen i7's) hit 4 or even more on stock voltage, but without a good cooler, going much past 3.5 is probably going to run hot.

I had a 920 that did 4.2 on stock voltage and with a good air cooler (noctua NH-U12P, or a $25 Hyper212EVO should perform about the same) it hardly got above 50C at 4.4ghz with 1.25v.

Going from a 4.2-4.4 920 to a 3570, even at its stock 3.5ghz I saw a performance boost in most games, and I'm running GTX275's at a high resolution. What kind of GPU usage do you see in MWO? You can use MSI afterburner or EVGA precision to look at GPU usage.

Edited by frag85, 08 April 2013 - 12:54 PM.