First post, by Swishkebab
I have recently acquired a dell xps 720 and the specs are as follows:
Core 2 Quad @ 3ghz (QX6850)
2x SLI 8800 GTX
2x2 4GB 800mhz RAM
680i Chipset
Vista 64, XP 32
Notes on the chipset are, when I first got it the north bridge ran very hot and I could not touch it for more than 3 seconds. This seemed to get better on its own without intervention, but next couple of stress tests the south bridge was extremely hot, while north was cool. I put a fan on the south bridge and now both seemingly run cool. Does this indicate a problem in hardware or is this somehow normal? Seems very odd.
Anyway, cranked to very high @ 1280x1024 no AA, I'm using crysis as the benchmark for all of this and I am a little confused about the performance. Overclocking and using an overkill GPU seemingly does absolutely nothing to improve performance. All medium barely increases performance either?! In more intense combat scenarios with lots of ai etc I get around 13-25 fps. To alleviate this I've tried to overclock the CPU in steps up to 4ghz (north bridge still very cold) and I've seen absolutely no increase in anything but cpu temperature. I can hardly even tell a difference between 4ghz OC and my 2.66ghz core 2 duo. I've chucked in a gtx 780 and that helped but very minimally, perhaps 5 frames better in an optimal situation. Hardly anything noticable in gameplay though. I was thinking of getting a pair of 8800 ultras but seeing as 780 doesn't do anything much maybe I should not. Was crysis really "unplayable" maxed out even with the absolute top end hardware available in 2007? I am of course just talking about playable combat when there are multiple enemies and such things, not 60fps smooth sailing.
Another potentially weird thing is that running 32bit crysis seems to help with several frames in certain areas.Also, Windows XP gets maybe 10-20 more frames on average over Vista DX9 which is perfectly playable if it wasnt for the fact that it is much choppier/stuttery.
Is all of this expected behavior? I'm confused about why overclocking doesn't really do anything as well as the temps of my bridges. Would like to be pointed in a direction to troubleshoot, if something here is amiss.