B
b-d0nk!
Hi all, I recently put together an AMD64 nForce3 rig, very pimpy with a
6800GT and meaty components, as it sits, it's gaming nirvana, 1600x1200 fps
goodness with any eye candy desired in any game played... I spin in my chair
maniacly laughing at the poor people and their less-worthy riggery! However,
my mocking won't last long as I tell you the story of how I was blindly
duped into purchasing that underpowered silicon turd, the AMD64 3000+!
200Mhz, 210Mhz, 240Mhz, 250Mhz, 275Mhz! The seemingly openended bus rates
this chip could do...it was as if you just typed the number you wanted, lo
it shall be! I couldn't spend the money fast enough...those slag off
bastards NewEgg, turned me inside out by getting me my junk toot sweet. And
when it finally came all together....meh..9x. No one told me you couldn't
bump up the bloody multiplier, or that at 9x, the 3000x was crippled. After
throwing that p.o.s. in the bitbucket, I held a FedEx driver hostage until
the 3200+ with it's 10x multiplier sat in it's place and finally began to
demonstrate it's abilities. Like many, I was coming from the ancient epoch
know as "Barton", where these fast 32-bit dinosaurs ruled the landscape. The
3000+ was no more impresive than that chip in anuy circumstances save two:
Installing WindowsXP was very fast and WindowsXP booted much faster than
Win2K, and also the chip was a minimum of 10c cooler in the same case with 2
less (80mm) fans than before! Amazing.
Here's the point: Unless you have Godly Ram of Speediness, any attempt to
violate your ram by bus are going to result in absurdly loose timings and
potentially lessening the hyper transport multiplier, or even the dastardly
CPU multiplier, making the 3000+ perform unacceptably slow. Is true! Though
I do not have actual Game benchmarks, since I said "too damn slow, instead
of, just how damn slow is this?" ... I can report what differences were
noticed by dropping the 3200+ in place of the 3000+, both with the same
overclocked timings, given below (reported by nTune)
CPU = 3200+/3000+ (2.15Ghz 1.935Ghz)
RAM/HT = 215Mhz (x2 439.6Mhz /x5 1.074Ghz)
AGP = 81Mhz
PCI = 33Mhz
RAM = CAS 2.5 tRAS 5 tRCD 3 tRP 2 (2-3-5-2 @ 400Mhz) doesn't go 410+ unless
CAS 2.5
Auto Voltage for All (!)
As reported by nTune, the scores of it's benchmarks are as follows:
System Performance (3200/3000) = 240 / 216
Memory Performance (3200/3000) = Read 320/311 Write 268/261 Latency 152/152
Graphics Performance 400Mhz/1.1Ghz (3200/3000) = Bandwith 355/322
It would be nice if nMonitor supported the nforce3 Ultra I'm using, but I am
lucky nTune lite works. It has one button testing and results with on the
fly changes that bypass BIOS protections, very handy.
I played Far Cry, Rome:Total War and Call of Duty.
Far Cry is played at 1920x1440 with no FSAA and bilinear filtering and x1
Ansiotropic filtering. With the 3000+ it was...meh. The MAX FPS never seemed
to rise above unacceptable, some retardation of the mouse sesitivoty helped,
so there would be less catch up, but it was a disappointment. Granted, the
Barton 3200/400 wasn't playable at that resolution either, but with a 200Mhz
boost and a 1x multiplyer, it's a whole different experience, I enable
trlinear filtering now, and get adequate FPS, but under 60, one area that
expereinced a slowdown was exterior to "Carrier", granted the scenic vista
was extraordinary, but the 3200 made it playable, I suspect the 3000+ would
not have.
Rome: Total War showed no difference in the campaign map (also played at
1920x1440), but the battle map was a seemingly different experience. It is,
currently, as if each additional unit to the map has zero imapact on
performance of the other units, also, when you "hotclick" on a card and you
magically whisk to that unit, the FPS while flying over the battle field is
a sustained 40+. Also, when a volley of archers, say 500+, has fired it's
flaming missiles, you can pause the game and count each one in it's sooty
arc to target...all the while maneuvering the camera, 40+ fps, phenomenal.
The 3000+ did not reach 30+ in these conditions, but it played the battles
as well.
Call of Duty didn't demostrate dramatic differences like the other two
games, but I am able to run 1600x1200 with any level of FSAA and ansio I
choose with 60+ FPS with the 3200+, I had limits with the 3000+, but they
weren't dealbreaking...I think 4xFSAA and 8xAniso had some slowdowns so I
had to drop to 4xAnsio in those levels. Cry me a river...!
Ok, I have a point, the point is, you would think that the 3200+ has just a
200Mhz boost over the 3000+, that the 3000+, at 1.8Ghz is a better chip cuz
it can overclock just well, if not more, and is cheaper....right? right?
Wrong, the 9x multiplier, in my opinion based on the quasi-rigid
measurements by building the box myself, seems to cripple the 3000+ more
than it's product riating would have you think. By rasing the multiplier to
10x, you get a better results from an overlclocked system, more than just
what you would expect. If you are coming from a fast Barton, a stock AMD64
3000+ will not satisfy you, the multiplier is too low...just keep that in
mind when you are shopping. Peace!
6800GT and meaty components, as it sits, it's gaming nirvana, 1600x1200 fps
goodness with any eye candy desired in any game played... I spin in my chair
maniacly laughing at the poor people and their less-worthy riggery! However,
my mocking won't last long as I tell you the story of how I was blindly
duped into purchasing that underpowered silicon turd, the AMD64 3000+!
200Mhz, 210Mhz, 240Mhz, 250Mhz, 275Mhz! The seemingly openended bus rates
this chip could do...it was as if you just typed the number you wanted, lo
it shall be! I couldn't spend the money fast enough...those slag off
bastards NewEgg, turned me inside out by getting me my junk toot sweet. And
when it finally came all together....meh..9x. No one told me you couldn't
bump up the bloody multiplier, or that at 9x, the 3000x was crippled. After
throwing that p.o.s. in the bitbucket, I held a FedEx driver hostage until
the 3200+ with it's 10x multiplier sat in it's place and finally began to
demonstrate it's abilities. Like many, I was coming from the ancient epoch
know as "Barton", where these fast 32-bit dinosaurs ruled the landscape. The
3000+ was no more impresive than that chip in anuy circumstances save two:
Installing WindowsXP was very fast and WindowsXP booted much faster than
Win2K, and also the chip was a minimum of 10c cooler in the same case with 2
less (80mm) fans than before! Amazing.
Here's the point: Unless you have Godly Ram of Speediness, any attempt to
violate your ram by bus are going to result in absurdly loose timings and
potentially lessening the hyper transport multiplier, or even the dastardly
CPU multiplier, making the 3000+ perform unacceptably slow. Is true! Though
I do not have actual Game benchmarks, since I said "too damn slow, instead
of, just how damn slow is this?" ... I can report what differences were
noticed by dropping the 3200+ in place of the 3000+, both with the same
overclocked timings, given below (reported by nTune)
CPU = 3200+/3000+ (2.15Ghz 1.935Ghz)
RAM/HT = 215Mhz (x2 439.6Mhz /x5 1.074Ghz)
AGP = 81Mhz
PCI = 33Mhz
RAM = CAS 2.5 tRAS 5 tRCD 3 tRP 2 (2-3-5-2 @ 400Mhz) doesn't go 410+ unless
CAS 2.5
Auto Voltage for All (!)
As reported by nTune, the scores of it's benchmarks are as follows:
System Performance (3200/3000) = 240 / 216
Memory Performance (3200/3000) = Read 320/311 Write 268/261 Latency 152/152
Graphics Performance 400Mhz/1.1Ghz (3200/3000) = Bandwith 355/322
It would be nice if nMonitor supported the nforce3 Ultra I'm using, but I am
lucky nTune lite works. It has one button testing and results with on the
fly changes that bypass BIOS protections, very handy.
I played Far Cry, Rome:Total War and Call of Duty.
Far Cry is played at 1920x1440 with no FSAA and bilinear filtering and x1
Ansiotropic filtering. With the 3000+ it was...meh. The MAX FPS never seemed
to rise above unacceptable, some retardation of the mouse sesitivoty helped,
so there would be less catch up, but it was a disappointment. Granted, the
Barton 3200/400 wasn't playable at that resolution either, but with a 200Mhz
boost and a 1x multiplyer, it's a whole different experience, I enable
trlinear filtering now, and get adequate FPS, but under 60, one area that
expereinced a slowdown was exterior to "Carrier", granted the scenic vista
was extraordinary, but the 3200 made it playable, I suspect the 3000+ would
not have.
Rome: Total War showed no difference in the campaign map (also played at
1920x1440), but the battle map was a seemingly different experience. It is,
currently, as if each additional unit to the map has zero imapact on
performance of the other units, also, when you "hotclick" on a card and you
magically whisk to that unit, the FPS while flying over the battle field is
a sustained 40+. Also, when a volley of archers, say 500+, has fired it's
flaming missiles, you can pause the game and count each one in it's sooty
arc to target...all the while maneuvering the camera, 40+ fps, phenomenal.
The 3000+ did not reach 30+ in these conditions, but it played the battles
as well.
Call of Duty didn't demostrate dramatic differences like the other two
games, but I am able to run 1600x1200 with any level of FSAA and ansio I
choose with 60+ FPS with the 3200+, I had limits with the 3000+, but they
weren't dealbreaking...I think 4xFSAA and 8xAniso had some slowdowns so I
had to drop to 4xAnsio in those levels. Cry me a river...!
Ok, I have a point, the point is, you would think that the 3200+ has just a
200Mhz boost over the 3000+, that the 3000+, at 1.8Ghz is a better chip cuz
it can overclock just well, if not more, and is cheaper....right? right?
Wrong, the 9x multiplier, in my opinion based on the quasi-rigid
measurements by building the box myself, seems to cripple the 3000+ more
than it's product riating would have you think. By rasing the multiplier to
10x, you get a better results from an overlclocked system, more than just
what you would expect. If you are coming from a fast Barton, a stock AMD64
3000+ will not satisfy you, the multiplier is too low...just keep that in
mind when you are shopping. Peace!
But it might not have helped too much.