Same here. Core i5 760 @ 4.07 GHz + 560Ti @ 950/1900/4400. Can't complain really.:rock:

I run an i5 quad core 2.6 overclocked to 3.2 on the stock cooler . I use the intel speedstep so 95 % of the day its running at the slower speed .

Great advice all of it, thanks! :DL

Quite needed too when you've been out of the CPU market for a while like I have. Got good service out of that Phenom. And it's still OK. After all, the "low" FPS of 25-30 is in Kiel harbor with all of the traffic, seagulls, buoys, weirdos on the quay flashing my crew etc. :03:. Once I'm away from all of those distractions, she runs quite fine.

But it's still obviously true that she's not living up to her full potential with that CPU, so I'll eventually have to upgrade.

As to AMD vs. Intel, my personal preference for AMD goes back to the day when Intel was pushing Pentiums that couldn't do math out to market. I know, they're not like that anymore, but that just generally pushed me in AMDs direction, and you tend to stick with what you know. Of course, that's not relevant today and hasn't been for a long time, so I'm not particularly "stuck" on one or the other. I just want the best performance.

The other thing, which is relevant today as opposed to those ancient times, is that AMDs, as mentioned, tend to be quite a bit cheaper than Intel's offerings. On the other hand, Intel's chips run really, really cool from what I gather and I do know from personal experience that AMDs tend to get a bit hot under the collar, particularly if you don't install a good aftermarket cooler.

As to OC stability, I haven't had any trouble with the AMDs other than the temp issue which, as I said, is easy to correct with a good fan and heatsink. Except when I'm experimenting, of course, but the point there is to see when it becomes unstable, so it's really not the CPUs fault. Once I found a good setting for this one, it appeared to be rock solid.

And I hear the same thing about the Intels, stability-wise and OC capacity. Lots of headroom above the "stock" frequency.

For now I'll just see how it goes. If I have to do a rebuild I will, but if I can hold it off for a bit (I do so loathe reinstalling everything :o), it'll work.

Thanks again :up:

Final note, and I'm only including that since it might help somebody doing the same thing that I did, namely upgrading the GPU to get better performance and being disappointed at the results. After this, I'll quit wasting bandwidth on this issue and I thank you all for your input, which has been invaluable. That's why you ask your friends, isn't it?

My problem, other than the obvious one that you were all right in pointing out, which is that my GPU is too good for my CPU, something I'd never run into before as CPUs used to be way better than anything a new GPU could throw at them (unless the MoBo and CPU were so old that you wouldn't be able to fit a new GPU on it in the first place), was that I was comparing apples to oranges.

My old 260 was set, as all new graphics cards are set by default, to the maximum settings that card was able to handle. That wasn't a problem with that one since the 260 and the Phenom 9850 were both cutting edge when I built them. The Phenom had more power than the 260 could handle, even with the nVidia settings maxed out.

That obviously wasn't the case with the 570, which is a much newer card. The factory default settings, which is what it will run at when you install it, was WAY more than my old Phenom could handle. It is also a much better picture than the best a 260 can produce, obviously.

What I was expecting was the same beautiful quality I had with the 260 at a better frame rate. But since the 570 has capabilities far beyond what the 260 can ever do, what I got was an even better picture at frame rates not much different from what I had. I didn't notice that until I compared screenshots taken with both. So when I went into the 570's control panel and adjusted the options for SH5 to fit with what the best my 260 could offer, I got the exact same photographic quality graphics that my old card could produce with enormously better frame rates.

So my conclusion is, now that SH5 runs better than it ever did after the GPU upgrade even though I'm not taxing the new card to its full potential, is that you should never use the factory default settings when you upgrade, at least not if you want to compare, because the default settings are better than what you had. If you want a true comparison, set the profile for the game you're comparing to the same as what your old card could do, THEN look at the difference.

Of course, I will still benefit from upgrading my CPU as well, I'll be able to TRULY get every ounce of additional juice out of my new GPU that way, but the bottom line is that I now have something that looks just as beautiful as the old card did and better at about double the frame rate.

You do know that the brain sees fluid motion @ ~ 30fps right? You don't need anything higher than 30fps. Anything over 30fps is really overkill :yep:

I'd agree here with 30 fps theory. Especially in case of SH where everything is going on somehow slower than in other games, clicking UI buttons is definitely fine in 30 fps etc. But still, misha, you should consider doing 570 a favour and get some up to date cpu. That's an old principle that the system can be only that fast as its slowest/weakest component. Wrom what I've read I think you're about to step in the new world - I mean finding out what nowadays cpu's can really do with performance. I've experinced the same couple of years ago when I was upgrading gpu's every 18 months - litteraly. And suddenly as time went by the boosts I was getting were less and less satisfying. I remember when I upgraded my old Athlon 3400 to Core2Duo. I had 8800 GTX back then and I couldn't believe 20 fps gain in Oblivion which I was playing at that time. Since then I started to be aware of not to underestimate the role of good cpu. More new cpu demanding games started to be released, I read few articles on certain websites, tests, reviews etc. and it is more than clear today that cpu power is important in the first place. In the past majority of the games were purely gpu dependant, but today it's different. Sometimes devs implement decent physical system and combined with top notch graphics it takes both components to be good. And even if it's only gpu demanding game that graphic card will only perform to the extent of the cpu capability. Anyway I belive SH5 is comfortably playable on your system and that's important. But you know what.....that cpu goes like this:oops:and 570 goes like this:zzz:. Get the cpu go like this:salute:and 570 will be:rotfl2::arrgh!::lurk:

Absolutely. What I was trying to do was to get it to run where it had a bottom frame rate of about 30, and I think I've found that now.

:haha:

Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Excellent use of smilies, Swat! :up::DL

A rebuild is definitely next on my list of stuff to do, but now that I've got it to run beautifully by not trying to run the 570 on max settings (which, to be honest, don't make that much of a difference compared to the 260, I had to look really carefully before I noticed and that, by the way, is how I realized that I should have checked those settings from the beginning), I can put it off a bit while still enjoying SH5 more than ever :DL