Investigations into Athlon X2 Overclocking
by Jarred Walton on December 21, 2005 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Half-Life 2 Performance
Our last game is Half-Life 2. The Source engine will be used in a variety of upcoming games - most of them first-person shooters, of course - so it remains an important benchmark. High dynamic range lighting effects may reduce the overall performance, but I'm not convinced that HDR is the panacea that developers are pushing. That's a topic for another day, however.
Half-Life 2 is one of the few titles that remains largely processor limited. Performance scaling is about 35% for all of the resolutions tested, with the exception of 1600x1200 and above - particularly with anti-aliasing enabled. At most resolutions, value RAM with overclocking can be about 6% slower, worst-case. Note that if you're not overclocking, value RAM is only a couple of percent slower.
Our last game is Half-Life 2. The Source engine will be used in a variety of upcoming games - most of them first-person shooters, of course - so it remains an important benchmark. High dynamic range lighting effects may reduce the overall performance, but I'm not convinced that HDR is the panacea that developers are pushing. That's a topic for another day, however.
Half-Life 2 is one of the few titles that remains largely processor limited. Performance scaling is about 35% for all of the resolutions tested, with the exception of 1600x1200 and above - particularly with anti-aliasing enabled. At most resolutions, value RAM with overclocking can be about 6% slower, worst-case. Note that if you're not overclocking, value RAM is only a couple of percent slower.
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Puddleglum - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Neermind.. read this in the closing thoughts:"There is one other point to mention on the memory: overclocking with four 512MB DIMMs was almost a complete failure on the setup that we used. Other motherboards, or perhaps a BIOS update for this motherboard, might improve the results, but for now we would recommend caution with such attempts. If you want to run 2GB of RAM, two 1GB DIMMs would be a much better choice."
Good info.
bobsmith1492 - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Actually, switching supply efficiencies can change dramatically with load; I wouldn't count on the draw at the wall as a good indicator of system load change. The efficiency may change from, say 70% at half-load to 85% at 3/4 load, which, on a 400 watt supply, would show up as: 285.7 watts draw (lower power) and 352.9 watts draw (high power). Now, the system is drawing 50% more power, while the meter is only showing 23.5% more power draw.Something to keep in mind anyway as I don't know exactly what the difference in efficiency for that particular supply is....
Cerb - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
It would be nice to know. However, if it's like the 470w one, it is 'close enough' at all loads.http://www.silentpcreview.com/article173-page4.htm...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/article173-page4.htm...
bobsmith1492 - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
Yeah, from 2-400W it's pretty close. Nevermind me then. :)WRXSTI - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - link
I cannot wait to get a 64 X2 chip! Maybe by next year is better...Futurebobis - Thursday, December 1, 2022 - link
Yo, sup past people