Finding the bottleneck

[David]

Since the last few weeks I`m back into boxing my old team and I`m back to beeing annoyed with my systems performance. For the last few days I`ve been looking into a reason why my computer is as slow as it is.

Currently I`m running a HKN setup with 5 characters. The 4 slaves have no details at all with a 800*600 resolution and my main runs at 1900*1200(or something like that) with all details off (only textures, spelldetails,enviroment,playerdetails and viewdistance on highest). I can move in a fairly good way thorugh dalaran and such but I`m having trouble with FPS in a place like HoR.

I thought I had a nice system but when I bought it I was on a budget(tho I had to buy it or there was no boxing) so I ended up with a 70-80euro videocard which I think couses problems.

My system is as follows

AMD phenom 4x 3gig
4x2gig ddr2(think 1066)
9800 GT 1gig (think colorful or something, shit brand it is)

I`ve ran a test with some random test tool last saturday on my videocard and it scored a 149 where the score of the card should have been between 250-600.

Am I correct when I think my grapicscard is a bottleneck in my system, I`m pretty sure that my mainboard, cpu and memory should be more then enough, even tho it isn`t i7 or really expensieve.

I`m also having problems with games like SC2, MW2supreme commander (niceesters) which are on lowest details and still run shit. I actually don`t play much more then wow on my system besides testing with some games sometimes.

I was thinking of putting in some cash and buying a worthy grapics card however I`m wordering in what way it will fix my problems. I don`t want to spend a lot of money and not improving a bit.

This is the one I wanted to get:
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2,048MB

I was hoping to do some 10boxing in the future as well but I guess this system alone won`t do it. I think that I cannot upgrade my mermory any higher. I only have 4 slots and I haven`t found any ddr2 higher then 2gigs a slot.

Anyone who had similar problems or anyone who has any idea what my bottleneck might be? I`m pretty sure it should run wellm it`s not like it`s shit.

Thanks in advance.

Edit:
- I did a 3dmark06 this weekend, I scored just over 5000points there. I have no idea what good is or not but I`m pretty sure that 5000points is shit.
- I`m trying to get going with ISboxer but it runs terrible. Even when I turn of the options for the instant window swapping. I think even the mouseoverhealing slows and lags like hell

[zenga]

Might be a good idea to mention the OS you are using. I promise i won't make jokes about it.

[David]

Windows 7 64bit, I know linux must run better haha

I can give more detailed system info when I get home when needed. At work atm.

Besides that it might be nice to know that I had to reinstall wow once again because my clients kept crashing. Usually there were some zones that crashed me. Like ghost form in front of ICC (so no releasing when dieing lol), dalaran, orgrimmar ah and during some flight paths. Allways the same error number but a different cause. I think it are parts of models or something.

Lookedup the error and it was a general error with a LOT of couses, nothing solid. However reinstalling the game works for now.

[Harrypott]

Sounds like your video card, I gather from other forum posts a quad core CPU and 8gb of ram should be fine. That leaves video card or a solid state hard disk. 9800gt is fairly old I think?

When your machine starts to struggle does your hard disk light flash more than normal? If so then a solid state hdd might help. Would seem unlikely your paging to disk if u have 8gb if ram tho.

Would expect your system to be able to run sc2 fine as well, u may possibly have a hardware issue too.

[David]

I usually use around 5.6gigs of ram and there is still a lot of paging going on. Is there any good way of testing hardware? I did some googling for tools but I din`t find anything solid.

[mikekim]

probably the easiest would be to run your windows experience index and let us know what scored the lowest (control panel - system and maintenance - performance information and tools).
you should be looking at at least 5.2 - 5.9 on each component

[Iru]

You may also want to try some obvious stuff like blowing the dust out of your box, especially around the GPU fan. GPU performance degrades significantly under heat

[David]

probably the easiest would be to run your windows experience index and let us know what scored the lowest (control panel - system and maintenance - performance information and tools).
you should be looking at at least 5.2 - 5.9 on each component

Processor = 7.3
RAM = 7.3
Graphics Aero = 4.4
Grapics for 3d = 6.3
Harddisk = 5.9

Using 2 normal sata disks, one is 5200 and one is 7200 if I`m correct.

You may also want to try some obvious stuff like blowing the dust out of your box, especially around the GPU fan. GPU performance degrades significantly under heat

Going to try that now. However performance never been really good but it did get worse.

[mikekim]

looking at your scores, the gfx card is the major bottleneck. (sorry should have realised that you mentioned you had win 7 where the scores go up to 7.9, rather than the 5.9 - vista scoring that i quoted earlier)

I have a 5850 toxic 2gb in my primary system and that is a stunning card.

a 5870 should take your gfx score up to 7.5+

you will get mid to high 6's on hard disk if you upgrade to a ssd (low end 6's on high speed hd's)

have you tried downloading the latest drivers to see if that improves speed?

[David]

i tried with the orginal geforce drivers and with the forceware drivers. Trying to cleanup my system now, it is kinda dusty. Might as well check if i have enough power for all the devices in there lol

Edit: 620wats here, going to check if it is enough