Hi Pwn3d4lif3.....


firstly what GFX card is it..?? a 3870 or a 3850..??, even if its a 3870 that ranks slightly below an 8800GT (as AstaLaVista pointed out) what resolution are you playing at.??

secondly .....forget Crysis on that rig, Warhead would run much cleaner, the original Crysis was built as a bench & NEVER meant to be maxed.... in truth any machine struggles with that game even with the best cards money can buy..

grab a copy of Crysis Warhead, for the true ''sandbox'' experience at playable framerates.... your looking at ''med - high'' setting for the 3870, ''med - low'' settings on the 3850.... (on warhead @ 1280x1050 or less IMO)



SK

Originally Posted by Pwn3d4lif3

I also play Crysis, and problem with that game, is that it isn't using all of my RAM or memory? It only uses so much, and just leaves the rest alone. Anyway way to make it use more?

Short answer: No. The vast majority of current games will rarely use over 2GB just for themselves. It's just how they're coded.

Also the game supports Dual processors. I have Quad, is there a way to make it use all four of them?

Crysis should automatically utilise all four cores.

For games that don't, you can alt-tab to the desktop, open task manager, right-click on the process, go to 'set affinity', deselect all but one core and OK it. Re-open affinity and re-select all four cores and then alt-tab back into the game. All 4 cores should now be used

Originally Posted by skunksmash

secondly .....forget Crysis on that rig, Warhead would run much cleaner, the original Crysis was built as a bench & NEVER meant to be maxed.... in truth any machine struggles with that game even with the best cards money can buy..

lol, true Even with my machine specs I can play at 1920x1200 HIGH settings with about 30FPS avg but with HORRIBLE lag. To get smooth game play I have most settings at enthusiast, x4AA + vysnc running at 1280x720 - BIG difference from 1920x1200 In the original Crysis, shaders are the biggest framerate killer.

Also just with any games, is there a way to just make the games run faster at all without killing the graphic, cause I know my PC can handle the graphics, it just seems like my PC isnt using everything that I put into it.

It depends on the game. Some games are heavily GPU dependant and your only option is to lower details etc. Other games are heavily CPU dependant and only overclocking will really help with that. With your machine specs, the only realistic way to improve your framerate is to lower details Detail vs performance is all trial and error.

Originally Posted by Pwn3d4lif3

Alright.. Wondering about the Ram though, whats the point of taking away a gb of ram? I'm not sure how that would gain performance...?

Sorry Asta, but removing 1Gb will actually hurt performance. Your RAM would currently be in Dual Synchronous mode which yields a higher overall bandwidth. Removing 1GB would put it into Asynchronous mode which would give a lower overall bandwidth ie slower data transfer. But with a x32 OS, you'll still only be able utilise only 3.25Gb of the total 4GB.

However having all 4 slots filled can be a PITA when overclocking because of the extra strain on the motherboard and extra voltages needed.

And my cooling, umm I am not sure lol. Is there a way somewhere on my computer that I can check so I can tell ya?

Since it's a Dell job, check the model specs on thier website. Chances are it will be the stock intel HSF. In other words, not overclocking friendly. The same would also apply to the BIOS. Manufactuers 'lock down' the options in the BIOS leaving you unable to adjust all the settings needed to actually overclock...


Lastly, without knowing exactly what card you have, I'd suggest you put most of your game texture settings to medium.

Cards with 512mb ram = Medium
Cards with 512mb+ = High

When the texture sizes are higher than the amount of the cards VRAM, performance will suffer badly. My 4850's only have 512mb and in a lot games, HIGH texture settings really slow things down