Possible bottleneck on system performance

[RobbyP]

Hey guys, I just recently picked up my XFX 8800GT from the firesale a few days ago, and I was wondering whether or not my gaming performance will be bottlenecked by my CPU (due to my E6300's small L3 cache size), or by my 2 GB of PC6400 (slightly expanded specs below). I'm thinking about picking up another 2GB of pc6400 to throw in my rig, especially since I just got my hands on a free copy of Vista Business (thank god for MSDNAA..). I'm trying to hold out on upgrading with a new mobo/cpu/ram until Nephalem or until early next year. Any thoughts / suggestions?

[Mars]

Depends on the games, and the resolution.

I'm still on S939 with a 2.8 GHz Athlon X2/8800 GTS G92, at 1920x1200, the majority of games are still GPU limited if I crank up the AA/AF.

[MpG]

I'm going to guess that you're system is fairly well-balanced, likely limited by your GPU at higher resolutions. On the other hand, if you're going to run Vista, 4GB of ram would be highly recommended.

[RobbyP]

Alright, I'll pick up another 2 sticks of RAM tonight.

Here's another question for you guys, then: 4-5-4-15 or 5-5-5-12 for gaming?

[sswilson]

Only way to really tell is to try each setting on your system.

Performance of different memory timings can be tricky. A tighter timing might be perfectly stable, but offer less performance due to a missed cycle (my layman's terms... :) ).

What I do with timings is to compare super-pi scores to determine if a tighter timing is offering any benefit. There's normally a point where a tighter timing drops the super-pi score so it's time to bump it back up one.

[RobbyP]

Yeah, I had some memory-intensive testing I was going to put my PC through eventually, but I just don't have the time anymore to tweak performance like I used to. I'm gonna grab another decent 2x1GB set of pc6400 and throw that in my rig. I don't see a point to parting with ram to up to pc8500 just yet.