Thread: E4400 causing bottleneck?

I recently upgraded my rig (replaced the motherboard and GPU)
I currently have:

CPU: Intel E4400 Core2Duo @2.2Ghz
MOBO: Asus P5Q SE
RAM: 3gigs total (a 2gig stick of Trancend jetram 800mhz and another 1 gig stick also 800mhz
GPU: Palit Nvidia GTX275
HDD's: 3 x 500gig Seagate 7200.12 and 1 old 200gig Seagate (all SATA)
PSU: 550W Coolermaster ExtremePower
Case: Antec 900
Screen: Samsung 2333SW 23" 5ms response

I had a entry level biostar motherboard and an ASUS 9800GT 512mb before and scored +-8500 on 3DMark06 default settings. Now I'm getting only 10400 on my new build.

I am suspecting my CPU of causing a bottleneck. Most games run fine though at max setting on 1920x1080 but sometimes I experience a bit of lag.

Thanks

Yes, it's getting bottlenecked.

It helps if you OC the chip. I got 3.0ghz from my e4400 2.0ghz.

E4400 is 200x10 and your board will do FSB1600 (clock400), so if you could head towards between 266x10 to 300x10, that will improve things.

For a stock E4400 I would expect your CPU score component from 3DMark06 to be between 1,800 and 2,000. Is this right?

E4600 is 2,100+ @ 2.4GHz
E5200 is 2,200+ @ 2.5GHz and 3,000+ @ 3.3GHz
E7200 is 2,300+ @ 2.56Ghz and 2,900+ @ 3.1GHz

you get the idea.

See if you can get that cpu score somewhere between 2,500 and 2,900 with your overclock. The rest of the 3DMark06 components will then fall in line.

For you GTX275 you'd be looking for these results:

SM2.0 8,000+
SM3.0 8,300+

Then CPU 2,500+

The final 3DMark06 score will depend on what overclock you go with, but considering your score can be obtained with a better clocked dual core and a 9600GT, I'd say somewhere in the 13,000 to 14,000 range is where you'll end up.

I'm estimating that. I don't have a GTX275 or E4400 on hand. I only have 9600GT, 8800GTS, GTS250, GTX285, HD4850 and HD4890 video cards to benchmark with, plus those processors listed above.

Thanks for the reply and all the info.


I tried overclocking earlier and did 280X10 but it failed to boot so I set it back to 260X10 and still no luck. So i just went back to stock but the temps are now around 52 degrees Celsius where it used to be 40 at most. I'm using the stock cooler by the way as I'm a bit short on cash after the upgrade.

Can I overclock it with my stock cooler? I've tried 280X10 and 260X10 but both failed.
Also note that this was my first ever overclock so I might have made an error.
Any help?

Apart from increasing the clock, what other settings are you changing?

If nothing, then best look at the following in BIOS:

Change FSB:MEM to 1:1 or the lowest MHz it will go.
Decrease your multiplier (just for now), say to 8
Go to an easy overclock, such as 266 or even 250.
Up the volts to 1.375 for cpu and +0.05 for mem (again, just for now).

See what you get.

You might have to clear CMOS first, though.

Your stock cooler will work fine for what you're trying to achieve.