! RAMBLE ALERT !
So, I was supposed to build a new PC last year or so, but obviously a lot of happened last year, and I didn't.
Though the cool thing now is, that my current PC is 10 years old. That's sort of what I was going for, a PC that lasts bloody forever.
AND IT RUNS STAR CITIZEN!
Well, doesn't run it all that well, but it does run it! My PC is older than the public portion of the project and still manages to run it. Just imagine that.
Naturally, I've done some upgrades over the years, it is a PC after all. At one point I had my GPU bottlenecking, so I got a new GPU, it's RX480 which was new at the time so, even that was a while ago.
Funnily enough, last week I was going over my ram speeds, Stick #4, Stick #2 reported 1600Hz, Stick #3 1333Mhz (I must've been drunk), but Stick #1 got nothing.
"Hmm... Is it broken? Nah, still says I got 16GB ram here."
...
"Waitaminute. I got 2x4GB + 1x8GB. I GOT AN EMPTY RAM SLOT!"
Which was just as well, since SC has been maxing out my RAM. Now the reason it was empty was pretty obvious, when I build this I wasn't too sure about the clearance under my CPU cooler and the empty slot was indeed under the CPU cooler. Also explains why I hadn't noticed it before. Well, DDR3 is dirt cheap nowadays, so I figured "Sure, why not." and ordered a new 8GB stick (which I made sure would fit under the CPU cooler). Since I had to remove the CPU cooler, I figured I'll change the thermal paste as well. Haven't changed it since 2011. Sure, the tube says it'll only last 5 years, but I've checked the thermals every now and then and I don't tend to fix what's not broken so... Yeah. But yeah, changed the thermal goop while I was at it.
The kinda FPS I got before this was something like 15-20 fps at Everus Harbor and slightly more playable 25-30 FPS in space. Yeah, it's kinda low but then again until recently everyone's been kinda limited by the server anyhow. Oh right, and the larger cities I've been mostly avoiding since the frame rate drops to like 20FPM - 10 FPS.
After the upgrade, I initially got only something like 10-20% improvement, which was, well, it was an improvement. I tweaked the virtual ram a bit though, I found out that
1) Maximum Size (40GB) wasn't all that relevant, I didn't touch it one way or another
2) Dropping Initial Size to 8GB A) Reduced my actual ram usage as well and B) Reduced FPS.
3) Bumping the initial size to 30GB gave a nice framerate boost
After that, my RAM is now sitting at 16.9GB to 18GB, so nowhere near fully utilized, but apparently going from 15GB to 16.9GB matters a lot.
My GPU is around 50%-80% utilized.
My CPU is hitting 100% pretty much all the time @3.8GHz. <- Bottleneck.
Well, I got my trusty i7-2600k, so I overclocked it a bit, to a rather conservative 4.2 GHz. This provided another boost to FPS. It still remains the bottleneck though, so I might try 4.5 GHz someday.
Now I'm getting something like
25-35 fps at Everus,
Way over 30 fps in space and 10-20 fps in cities. (Remember, I used to get frames per MINUTE before on the lower end)
I mean, sure, it's no 60 fps but for a 2011 machine, I'd say that's pretty neat. (And of the games I play it's pretty much just SC that's at such low FPS.)
And, yes, I'm still going to build a new machine, but there is just something about keeping such an old machine alive and well that I find totally awesome.
So, I was supposed to build a new PC last year or so, but obviously a lot of happened last year, and I didn't.
Though the cool thing now is, that my current PC is 10 years old. That's sort of what I was going for, a PC that lasts bloody forever.
AND IT RUNS STAR CITIZEN!
Well, doesn't run it all that well, but it does run it! My PC is older than the public portion of the project and still manages to run it. Just imagine that.
Naturally, I've done some upgrades over the years, it is a PC after all. At one point I had my GPU bottlenecking, so I got a new GPU, it's RX480 which was new at the time so, even that was a while ago.
Funnily enough, last week I was going over my ram speeds, Stick #4, Stick #2 reported 1600Hz, Stick #3 1333Mhz (I must've been drunk), but Stick #1 got nothing.
"Hmm... Is it broken? Nah, still says I got 16GB ram here."
...
"Waitaminute. I got 2x4GB + 1x8GB. I GOT AN EMPTY RAM SLOT!"
Which was just as well, since SC has been maxing out my RAM. Now the reason it was empty was pretty obvious, when I build this I wasn't too sure about the clearance under my CPU cooler and the empty slot was indeed under the CPU cooler. Also explains why I hadn't noticed it before. Well, DDR3 is dirt cheap nowadays, so I figured "Sure, why not." and ordered a new 8GB stick (which I made sure would fit under the CPU cooler). Since I had to remove the CPU cooler, I figured I'll change the thermal paste as well. Haven't changed it since 2011. Sure, the tube says it'll only last 5 years, but I've checked the thermals every now and then and I don't tend to fix what's not broken so... Yeah. But yeah, changed the thermal goop while I was at it.
The kinda FPS I got before this was something like 15-20 fps at Everus Harbor and slightly more playable 25-30 FPS in space. Yeah, it's kinda low but then again until recently everyone's been kinda limited by the server anyhow. Oh right, and the larger cities I've been mostly avoiding since the frame rate drops to like 20FPM - 10 FPS.
After the upgrade, I initially got only something like 10-20% improvement, which was, well, it was an improvement. I tweaked the virtual ram a bit though, I found out that
1) Maximum Size (40GB) wasn't all that relevant, I didn't touch it one way or another
2) Dropping Initial Size to 8GB A) Reduced my actual ram usage as well and B) Reduced FPS.
3) Bumping the initial size to 30GB gave a nice framerate boost
After that, my RAM is now sitting at 16.9GB to 18GB, so nowhere near fully utilized, but apparently going from 15GB to 16.9GB matters a lot.
My GPU is around 50%-80% utilized.
My CPU is hitting 100% pretty much all the time @3.8GHz. <- Bottleneck.
Well, I got my trusty i7-2600k, so I overclocked it a bit, to a rather conservative 4.2 GHz. This provided another boost to FPS. It still remains the bottleneck though, so I might try 4.5 GHz someday.
Now I'm getting something like
25-35 fps at Everus,
Way over 30 fps in space and 10-20 fps in cities. (Remember, I used to get frames per MINUTE before on the lower end)
I mean, sure, it's no 60 fps but for a 2011 machine, I'd say that's pretty neat. (And of the games I play it's pretty much just SC that's at such low FPS.)
And, yes, I'm still going to build a new machine, but there is just something about keeping such an old machine alive and well that I find totally awesome.
