PC CPU, OS and GFX Optimisation Help

[mjclark]

Hi! I'm just mixing and matching all this hardware I've accumulated and it's raising many a question:

1) XP 64-bit vs XP 32-bit
Will I really get better performance from my AthlonX2 64 dual core if I install XP 64-bit rather than the normal 32-bit OS?
Also, XP is still my preferred OS and so would I be better off installing the 64-bit version on all dual core PCs (since x64 is now the standard architecture)?
I know the x64 version can address all 4Gb of RAM rather than just the 3Gb that x86 version can address but again will that make any real difference?

2) GeForce 7900GS (256Mb VRAM) vs 8500GT (1Gb VRAM)
I understand that the 7900 smokes the 8500 in terms of GPU power but does the vastly greater VRAM on the 8500 change the balance, or does the XP 4Gb RAM limit negate this (and would the full amount of RAM be used on 64-bit OS?). On a system with 4Gb system RAM, how important is VRAM anyway?

3) AthlonX2 64 vs Pentium D dual cores
X2 beats Pentium D every time right? Or does it?

[Fudoh]

XP 64-bit is a mess in every regard. If you want XP, go with 32-bit. if you want W7, go with 64-bit.

[burgerkingdiamond]

question in a similar vein... When I play Crimzon Clover I get a lot of extra slowdown. It's pretty bad on my desktop which is a mini ITX mobo with 2GB ram and built in graphics (it's no powerhouse. I built it into an NES case so everything is minimalistic, but it does MAME just fine), and only slightly better on my laptop (not sure on specs. just a basic HP, cost $500).

What is the bare minimum hardware (in size and cost) to be able to play CC at full speed without any extra slowdown?

[Fudoh]

CC runs fine on my Dual-Core Atom nettop with Nvidia Ion graphics, so it's likely not a performance issue, but maybe a software problem.

[burgerkingdiamond]

CC runs fine on my Dual-Core Atom nettop with Nvidia Ion graphics, so it's likely not a performance issue, but maybe a software problem.

Can you explain what you mean by software problem? It's not so bad in Simple mode, but it gets progressively worse from Simple -> Original -> Unlimited. And this is with the settings turned down to a minimum (less Stars exploding out of everywhere).

[dieKatze88]

Depending on what you're doing, that Pentium D chip may be much newer than that Athlon 64. Check that it is in fact a Pentium D, and if so, which ones. the Athlon 64 and the Pentium D are both going to give you awful heat output regardless, but if you have an early Athlon and a late Pentium D, go with the Pentium D. Just make sure you've got the CPU cooler to cover it.

Also, make sure you're not confusing a Pentium Dual Core with the Pentium D. If you are, use the Pentium Dual Core chip because it's actually a Core Duo and not a Netburst based chip. The Pentium Dual Core will smoke the Athlon.

[nZero]

Guess I'll take a shot at the other two.

2) GeForce 7900GS (256Mb VRAM) vs 8500GT (1Gb VRAM)
I understand that the 7900 smokes the 8500 in terms of GPU power but does the vastly greater VRAM on the 8500 change the balance, or does the XP 4Gb RAM limit negate this (and would the full amount of RAM be used on 64-bit OS?). On a system with 4Gb system RAM, how important is VRAM anyway?

I won't speak for the 7900GS, buuuut... the 8500GT is going to be completely fillrate limited (read: slideshow) in any situation where you would be using that much VRAM.

3) AthlonX2 64 vs Pentium D dual cores
X2 beats Pentium D every time right? Or does it?

Yeah, IIRC the Pentium D 950 (3.4GHz) was completely dominated by the Athlon X2 4200 (2.2GHz) in gaming back in the day. There are probably situations where a high-clocked Pentium D wins at media encoding and file compression. P4 architecture was just very inefficient. That said, if you ever reach into a slightly newer antique parts bin, a Core 2 Duo is going to give similar (albeit less extreme) gains over the X2.

[shmuppyLove]

Hi! I'm just mixing and matching all this hardware I've accumulated and it's raising many a question:

1) XP 64-bit vs XP 32-bit
Will I really get better performance from my AthlonX2 64 dual core if I install XP 64-bit rather than the normal 32-bit OS?
Also, XP is still my preferred OS and so would I be better off installing the 64-bit version on all dual core PCs (since x64 is now the standard architecture)?
I know the x64 version can address all 4Gb of RAM rather than just the 3Gb that x86 version can address but again will that make any real difference?

Depends on what you're doing, but I've read a number of times that emulators specifically run much better in a 64-bit environment, and that generally there's a 15-20% improvement overall, regardless of the amount of memory on the system. But, you should switch to Windows 7 -- XP is old and 64-bit wasn't that well supported for home users - it was really meant for enterprise/developers, and driver support especially wasn't great.

2) GeForce 7900GS (256Mb VRAM) vs 8500GT (1Gb VRAM)
I understand that the 7900 smokes the 8500 in terms of GPU power but does the vastly greater VRAM on the 8500 change the balance, or does the XP 4Gb RAM limit negate this (and would the full amount of RAM be used on 64-bit OS?). On a system with 4Gb system RAM, how important is VRAM anyway?

VRAM has nothing to do with the system memory or whether you're using 32- or 64-bit, it's local memory that the video card uses for textures, buffers, etc. Generally more is better, but only between similar cards. Saying the 8500 is better than the 7900 because it has 2x the VRAM is nonsense.

Both those cards are pretty old, so in modern games I don't think you'd get very good performance even with the 7900, but it depends on a lot of things. If you're running current games at higher resolutions (1680x1050 and up) and you like to have the detail cranked, forget it. If it's for older games or emulators, or anything that doesn't use 3D acceleration, I don't think you'd notice any difference. But the 8500GT will use a lot less power and be quieter and cooler, so would be preferable in that case.

3) AthlonX2 64 vs Pentium D dual cores
X2 beats Pentium D every time right? Or does it?

I would say "every time" is a no. It's going to depend entirely on which specific parts you're comparing and also which application.

Also:

CC runs fine on my Dual-Core Atom nettop with Nvidia Ion graphics, so it's likely not a performance issue, but maybe a software problem.

The Ion chip in some netbook/SFF/nettop platforms is a dedicated GPU and about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,004.2x more powerful than the pitiful integrated controllers that Intel saddled the Atoms with. I've seen those Atom dual-core Ion machines even play fully 3D-accelerated games like CoD at lower resolutions with very acceptable frame rates. You'd have no problem with doujin games. No idea what CC requirements are like, it might be using Direct3D or something to pull some fancy graphics tricks that the Intel GMAs don't support very well, and are relying on the CPU to process, which is going to kill overall performance.

Phew!

[mjclark]

VRAM has nothing to do with the system memory or whether you're using 32- or 64-bit, it's local memory that the video card uses for textures, buffers, etc. Generally more is better, but only between similar cards. Saying the 8500 is better than the 7900 because it has 2x the VRAM is nonsense.

As I understand it, XP 32-bit can only address max 4Gb shared RAM so any increase in available VRAM will be at the expense of available system RAM and therefore brings no advantage. XP 64-bit can address higher limits of memory (chipset permitting) but I'm getting the idea that VRAM is nowhere near as important as GPU specs in which case the 7900GS wins hands down. This thread has also confirmed my understanding that XP 64-bit was a bit of a botch job (like Pentium D) since they hadn't really got the hang of it yet, poorly supported and best avoided.
A new question has now arisen:

4) XP vs 7
So here's my AthlonX2 64 3.00Ghz with 4Gb RAM - will I get better performance with XP ( much less resource intensive than 7) or with Windows 7 ( much better suited to 64-bit environment)?

[shmuppyLove]

As I understand it, XP 32-bit can only address max 4Gb shared RAM so any increase in available VRAM will be at the expense of available system RAM and therefore brings no advantage.

You're somewhat correct; certain devices will 'map' themselves into main memory, which is why the full 4GB is not addressable in 32-bit -- there's a 'hole' near 4GB reserved specifically for this. And I'm not 100% sure about this (though I have built many desktops with many configurations), but I don't think there's a direct 1-to-1 mapping of VRAM over system RAM -- so a graphics adapter with 1GB of VRAM won't occupy more space in system RAM than one with 512MB. Or, as a more extreme example, an adapter with 2GB of VRAM doesn't mean you only have 2GB of system RAM addressable.

Additionally, in a 32-bit environment (or even a 32-bit application in a 64-bit environment), the maximum addressable memory for a single process is only 2GB (I have seen this reported in Microsoft KB articles numerous times). So it's still conceivable that, for example, a GTX 560 with 1GB of VRAM can perform better than one with 512MB of VRAM, even if it does 'consume' more system RAM, because the application will still have 2GB available to it. Even if the above case were true (which I'm pretty sure it's not).

But I'm not a hardware design expert / electrical engineer / etc etc, just a PC enthusiast and technician for many years, so someone more knowledgeable may have more to add.

[Fudoh]

So here's my AthlonX2 64 3.00Ghz with 4Gb RAM - will I get better performance with XP ( much less resource intensive than 7) or with Windows 7 ( much better suited to 64-bit environment)?

depends on your apps. Don't forget that you have to use native 64-bit applications to get the performance you expect. When I built may last PC (2009), I opted for 32-bit XP instead of 64-bit W7 because I use so many 32-bit only apps and didn't want to upgrade the major ones I use. I use XP on an Intel Quad with 8GB of Ram. 4GB are available to Windows, the other 4GB are mapped to a ramdrive with some temp folders and the windows pagefile on it. Works like a charm.

[mjclark]

Thanks! I'm definitely sticking with XP 32-bit then and going for the superior GPU 7900GS. It's mainly for emulators and I'm already noticing improved performance in Makaron (everything running at 100%) and Dolphin (still not quite 100% but noticeable improvement on the 8500GT). Here's hoping it'll run Demul 0.5.7 eh?
Also smart idea about the ramdrive - the hardware fairies havn't left any mobos that'll take more than 4Gb RAM under my pillow yet but I'm sure they're on their way

[Ex-Cyber]

I don't think there's a direct 1-to-1 mapping of VRAM over system RAM -- so a graphics adapter with 1GB of VRAM won't occupy more space in system RAM than one with 512MB. Or, as a more extreme example, an adapter with 2GB of VRAM doesn't mean you only have 2GB of system RAM addressable.

Yep. There's no reason to map all of VRAM into the CPU address space because it's not directly the CPU's job to fill it. Instead, the CPU loads stuff into system RAM and then asks the GPU to copy it to VRAM. This is done mostly because individual reads/writes to VRAM are very slow in modern systems (because you need to go across the PCI/AGP/PCIe link which typically is slower than system RAM and has more latency for each operation). The GPU will do the copy in longer bursts, getting it done faster as well as freeing up the CPU to do more CPU stuff. Everyone wins, except the bit of extra RAM used as the shared buffer.

[mjclark]

Ok- I'm still trying to get my head round the GPU vs VRAM payoff.
It sounds like where there's low system RAM then a card with a lot of VRAM will take the load off the system thus improving general performance (but on my XP system there's 4Gb RAM so that's not an issue) whereas a more powerful GPU will always give improved graphics performance and quality, but at the expense of system performance if there's insufficient resources.
As I said, in practice the 7900GS with only 256Mb VRAM is giving better results in Makaron and Dolphin than the 8500GS with 1Gb VRAM so that's the answer but I'm trying to grasp the concepts involved more clearly as I'm going to be coming across issues like this more and more now that my hardware stock is moving on a generation!

[shmuppyLove]

Ok- I'm still trying to get my head round the GPU vs VRAM payoff.
It sounds like where there's low system RAM then a card with a lot of VRAM will take the load off the system thus improving general performance (but on my XP system there's 4Gb RAM so that's not an issue) whereas a more powerful GPU will always give improved graphics performance and quality, but at the expense of system performance if there's insufficient resources.
As I said, in practice the 7900GS with only 256Mb VRAM is giving better results in Makaron and Dolphin than the 8500GS with 1Gb VRAM so that's the answer but I'm trying to grasp the concepts involved more clearly as I'm going to be coming across issues like this more and more now that my hardware stock is moving on a generation!

I really don't think it's as complicated as you're trying to make it ...

Bottom line - Unless you're going to build a top-of-the-line cutting-edge rig and run Crysis 2 at 2560x1600, you don't need 1GB of VRAM. And if you did, you'd probably have 8 or 16GB of RAM and it wouldn't matter anyway, even if (and it doesn't) VRAM "stole" from your system RAM.

Also, please please please don't create a RAM drive for your pagefile. Hugest misconception ever in the Windows world. Windows doesn't work separately with RAM and a pagefile, it works with one large chunk of "virtual memory". Your total virtual memory is the amount of physical RAM + the pagefile size. The system will only use the pagefile if it starts to run out of physical RAM -- it's intelligent enough to know that paging operations are much much slower. The best way to improve the performance of paging operations is to move your pagefile to a separate physical drive (not a separate partition!) - that way, operating system and application drive I/O and paging operations can operate independently and don't have to compete for read/writes on the same drive.

[mjclark]

Hmmm then-
5) Ramdrive pagefile vs HDD pagefile
Remember the issue here is that we're dealing with XP which can only address 4Gb of physical RAM.
On 7 you're explanation makes complete sense since it can address higher upper limits of RAM, but surely on XP making a ramdrive with all the extra RAM above 4Gb and assigning the pagefile to it seems like a sensible way to utilise the extra RAM and turn it into system memory.
Or are you saying that actually with XP it's only worth installing 4Gb RAM and if I want to increase pagefile size then I should assign it to physically seperate HDD space because then it's more accessible?
Also it's becoming very apparent that size of VRAM isn't really significant so why do nVidia and ATI even bother to manufacture cards with differing amounts of VRAM? Is it just one of those "selling points that are actually meaningless" things like CPU designations used to be?

[Fudoh]

Ramdrive: what shmuppyLove says it right as long as your OS can adress your complete physical RAM (e.g. XP with 4GB or W7 with 8GB), but in my case it makes total sense since Windows can only adress half the physical RAM by itself. I've got a SLC SSD for partition C which has read read/writes of about 200MB/s, but the Ramdrive rates at 10 times this speed. Also several programs give shit about your physical and virtual ram size and just start swapping right away (Photoshop for example), so putting those temp files onto a ramdrive severly speeds up programs like this.

[mjclark]

Ramdrive: what shmuppyLove says it right as long as your OS can adress your complete physical RAM (e.g. XP with 4GB or W7 with 8GB), but in my case it makes total sense since Windows can only adress half the physical RAM by itself.

Yeah that's what I thought - we're looking at strategies for optimising XP here. With 7 it's a whole different kettle of fish

[mjclark]

Ramdrive: what shmuppyLove says it right as long as your OS can adress your complete physical RAM (e.g. XP with 4GB or W7 with 8GB), but in my case it makes total sense since Windows can only adress half the physical RAM by itself.

Yeah that's what I thought - we're looking at strategies for optimising XP here. With 7 it's obviously a whole different kettle of fish, and actually simpler, but it looks like XP is still the right choice for clean performance

[gray117]

... With a relatively low spec [no offense - in fact it probably makes perfect sense in the power/noise/heat ratio as long as that video card runs quiet] for games you are probably not going to see much benefit from anything other than xp 32. {Incidentally I don't believe xp32 can assign more than 2gb of the available 4gb to any single app}

Within that spec I can't see why in terms of games you'll want to go over that ceiling however.

Any older game that would require a performance bump would probably benefit more from a better graphics card [even if it does get bottlenecked] than either of those listed.

That 7900GS is by far the better performer - the extra ram for textures can be poached - the overhead that both these cards will be typically up against is poly count/lighting and shader execution before texture resolution. All of the geforce 8000 series were crap apart from the 8800 which was pretty much the sweet-spot card back then.

As noted xp64 can be a son of a bitch for drivers and support. Of course back in the day, I loved it for getting 4gb ram onto particular video/3d apps but for games it would have been more hassle than it's worth. It was always the better choice than vista though - that dog...

win 7 64 - turn off all the bells n' whistles crap and it should be a decent fit - but if you've got xp32 and spending money on win7; it's a little hard to recommend just for games performance on that spec. If you're trying to do graphics work however it could be worth it.

If you've got two hard drives - use them - with a smallish virtual memory on each. As long as they're both equal speeds; Windows on one, apps/games on another. That will probably help a smidge.

[mjclark]

... for games you are probably not going to see much benefit from anything other than xp 32...
...That 7900GS is by far the better performer
...If you've got two hard drives - use them - with a smallish virtual memory on each.

That's all I needed to know!
Thanks for the top answers guys!

[BuckoA51]

Old(ish) thread but I'll chip in with my two cents anyway. I have to say I don't see any point whatsoever in running XP these days. I set up my rig to dual boot XP and Windows 7 64 bit and I don't think I've booted XP more than once. There's no noticeable performance difference that I can see between XP and 7 and 7 has much better security. I've also been able to get every game I've tried working on Windows 7 64, older ones with a bit of faffing about but nothing too complicated. Running 32 bit applications I really cannot see any performance difference at all between 32 bit and 64 bit.

[mjclark]

Old(ish) thread but I'll chip in with my two cents anyway. I have to say I don't see any point whatsoever in running XP these days. I set up my rig to dual boot XP and Windows 7 64 bit and I don't think I've booted XP more than once. There's no noticeable performance difference that I can see between XP and 7 and 7 has much better security. I've also been able to get every game I've tried working on Windows 7 64, older ones with a bit of faffing about but nothing too complicated. Running 32 bit applications I really cannot see any performance difference at all between 32 bit and 64 bit.

What are your specs?

[BuckoA51]

My main PC's pretty powerful (Core i7 and GTX 580) however I've run Windows 7 on much more modest systems ( a dual core intel machine with a GTX9600 card that is used as a HTPC) and even something as old as a Intel® Centrino 1.5ghz single core tablet. As long as you have a good amount of RAM, Windows 7 will run fine and not noticeably slower (or quicker) than XP. ( on the tablet Windows Aero would not work due to the graphics chip not being powerful enough, but it's not exactly necessary).

[mjclark]

As long as you have a good amount of RAM, Windows 7 will run fine and not noticeably slower (or quicker) than XP.

This is getting very interesting.
How much RAM for 7>XP?

[BuckoA51]

Really depends what you are doing but the minimum RAM for Windows 7 is 1GB or 2GB (64 bit). Actually, Windows 7 will boot (just) with 512mb but don't expect good performance. The minimum RAM for XP on the other hand was a paltry 64 megabytes. XP runs like a dog with anything less than 512mb in my experience though. For Windows 7 adding an extra gig above the minimum is never a bad idea.

[shmuppyLove]

I honestly wouldn't recommend Windows 7 with less than 2GB. The netbooks they ship these days with 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 Starter make me want to rage. Bad enough they're running Atom processors and 5400RPM hard drives; I just worked on one on the weekend, and even just after booting, it was using 85% of physical memory. Launch a web browser and you're already into the paging file.

[BuckoA51]

Careful how you measure the RAM that Windows 7 is using, it's not as straightforward as you might think, you definitely won't exhaust all of 1GB just by firing up Internet Explorer, see http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/windows- ... asure/1786 for a little more detail. Having said that, yeah, more memory always helps.

[shmuppyLove]

Well no you won't ever exhaust it - Windows will always reserve some physical memory - but as a result the system will be paging like crazy, which significantly reduces your performance and responsiveness. Especially when you have multiple applications open that are all trying to access different areas of the drive simultaneously, while Windows is constantly paging in and out. shudders

[BuckoA51]

No, that's not correct, at least not in the usage scenario you described. Read the link I posted above, you're confusing memory pages with page file probably, and committed memory with actual memory in use. Windows 7 has been written to make use of whatever RAM is in a system so, depending on how you interpret what your memory meter tells you, you may see the RAM close to 100% full all the time. This makes sense if you think about it, why have memory and not use it for something?