Upgrading a Q9650?

[mrmcgee21]

So I 6 box in everquest currently and somehow this game is completely working over my Q9650. Every monitoring program I have used says that all 4 cpu cores are constantly at 100% usage ( this is with almost nothing running in the backround ) when I play EQ, the games runs "ok" but thats at the lowest settings. Currently I have this thing OC'd to 4.05 ghz as well, so my questions is where do I go from here? I want to upgrade what what is there above this processor that will even be a noticeable difference? the i970's appear to be very close in every benchmark I read, so that leaves some kind of duel xeon solution possibly? But I'm not very familier with building xeon systems.

My system specs are
Q9650 @4.05 ghz
8gb DDR3 ram @ 2000mhz ( usually have about 2gb free with 6 EQ's running )
GTX 265 ( usually isn't even moderately hot when playing EQ, temp's are a full 10 degrees hotter in WoW which to me says its not being used much at all )
2 WD Raptors in Raid 0

Any feedback would be much appreciated, thanks.

[Sajuuk]

Dual Xeon solutions are very expensive. You could go to an P55/X58 (i5/i7) solution or wait for sandy bridge (the new chips coming out within sixish months).

[coud]

You could buy a intel xeon 6 cores and using isboxer you can limit each character to use each of the 6 cores. Its an expensive option though.

[burningforce]

As Sajuuk mentioned, Sandy Bridge is coming out soon, so might want to wait for that.

Not sure with everquest as I do not play it, but I would check these things before unloading cash on a new system.

1 - overheating - You said your vid card is not overheating, what about the rest of the system?

2 - hardware failure - Can be the source of many. many hardware interrupts in the system causing high processor usage. Try to find some programs that can test all the hardware like prime95, memtest+, etc, and run them 1 by 1 overnight for many hours.

3 - system incompatibility - might be some hardware that is running weird due to another hardware you installed. also check software problems, turn off virus scanning or make the virus scanner not run or scan the everquest folder/drive.

4 - event viewer - if using windows, checking the event viewer can benefit you. Might tell you the source of the software issue or hardware issue.

5 - unstable overclock - I see you are overclocked, have you tried bringing the system down some and test for errors again? have you had any other high processor usage with any other program that is taxing the system?

6 - everquest problem - or it might just be an everquest problem, have you backed up everquest files that are needed and uninstalling and reinstalling? Not sure if everquest uses player made modifications, perhaps that might be the problem if using those mods.

your system is a beast, but like I said I do not play everquest so I do not know how much strain it has on the system.

[mrmcgee21]

Thanks for the info on the sandy bridge thing, I will look into that. As to burningforce's check list-

1) deff not overheating, I have all throttling turned off but the cpu runs at about 60C which is a little warm but well within regs

2) I have tested both of these things extensively overnight, as when I first built my system I had some issues getting it to run stable-

3) Everything is compatible on my system, if it wasn't I don't think # 2 and #4 on the list would be true either.

4) Look at this after reading your post, I only have 1 error reported in the last 2 days and it was something trivial after checking into it

5) Well, this is basically covered in #2

6) EQ doesn't really allow any mods you can use custom made UI's but they are extremely basic XML files that don't really have any functionality, just rehash what the standard UI already does. I'm running a basic UI though right now, as for my EQ files I don't think anything is wrong there, I don't get any in-game errors or anything like that and my hard-drives aren't really working very hard at all in terms of finding/loading files, at any rate I will defrag my drive tonight.

I did get a solution from Lax though that has helped immensely and that was to run WinEQ for EQplaynice as Isboxer doesn't do what EQplaynice does in terms of lightening the load on the cpu. However I'm still interested in the whole "whats next" thing after my Q9650, I'm kind of disappointed that a CPU I bought nearly 3 years ago is basically still top of the line ( I know that sounds weird haha)... seems like the pc industry is stalling out.

[burningforce]

hmm weird mrmcgee21...

besides the extreme versions of cpus, your cpu is top of the line and still beats i5/i7 in some scenarios. But if you can not wait for the sandy bridge desktop models in early Q2 of next year, I would invest in either a i7-950 (or i7-930) and O'C the crap out of it. Get some good memory and OC that, you seem to know your way around the computer, so this should be a breeze

Here is info on sandy bridge if you are interested. early reports suggest that not "all" cpu models will be overclockable, just the "K" series cpus will be overclockable.

Sandy Bridge Preview - http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/t...-wins-in-a-row

Sandy Bridge Architecture write-up - http://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/i...ecture-exposed

hope you get your problem fixed

[MiRai]

Do not purchase a dual Xeon system [at the moment] just for gaming [multiboxing or not], I was tempted to go that route myself but after finding some benchmarks that just turned me off to the price:performance ratio, I will definitely be waiting for Sandy Bridge.

Using EVGA's SR-2 and putting 2x 5680 Westmere Xeons overclocked to 4.37 GHz against a single
980X Gulftown overclocked to 4.72GHz.  $3400 in processors versus $1000... the results were not
amazing.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mot...-sr-2-review/1

You can argue that they didn't test more games, use crazy 17-way SLI, or whatever... but I would guess that the cost of such a system won't be justified by 6 boxing 11 year old Everquest or even 10 boxing WoW.

Sure you could buy a budget system with dual Xeons, but if $3400 in processors alone can't decimate a 980X [which is going to be replaced by some nice Sandy Bridge CPUs], then I would urge you to hold out as well. Or who knows, maybe the new AMD processors will finally make Intel price their new CPUs competitively [LOLOL].

[mrmcgee21]

Haha, thanks for the infoz. Looks like I will be waiting for the sandy bridge cpu's, but I bet they want a fortune for the K versions of them, just like the Xtreme crap with the Core 2 line. I think for now I've found a bandaid like fix to tide me over until next year.

[burningforce]

certain K series cpu's will be expensive yes, but there is talk going around that the i2500K will be $200+. So that might be the new i7-920 while the i2600k ($400+) might be the i7-950. But only time will tell, although I am interested in the AMD lineup as well. If things go right for AMD, we might just have Intel and AMD pricing their cpu's fairly low to outdo each other . at least one can hope so

[Wink-]

I am in the same boat as the OP. My rig is very similar to his. Same processor a 1gb ati 3870 graphics card. I run 6 EverQuests and my processor is pegged. I can run 5 wow's like a dream. I am running them with ISBoxer and it is manageable for now but I am looking for an upgrade. Do you think i7 Quad Cores would hyperthreading would make that much of a difference over the older Q8600? I was thinking of upgrading my video card to ati 5770 but graphics doesn't seem to be the issue. Maybe more RAM but I have 8gbs. Anyone have any luck boxing 6 on EQ using ISBoxer? I figured my rig would eat up a game that requires a p2 400mhz processor!