hey,opinions please

well as some may remember am not to clued up on all pc stuff so could some of you please take the time to tell me what you think.


ive had this dell xps gen 5 for a couple years now and thought id spend some £££ on her,now in a sec ill give you the spec.what i need to know is do you guys think its still a strong pc comperd to stuff these days,i know its deff not the best lol.i put the new card and ram in it for the crysis game,it plays it on med settings but at times it drops to 17 on fraps.also i know you can go into bios with the gen 5 and clock it to 3.4 or even 3.6,can anyone tell me how to get into bios for a litttle look,i could also do with checking cpu temp.anyway heres the spec:



Operating System System Model
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600) Dell Inc. Dimension XPSGEN5
Enclosure Type: Tower
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
3.20 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: Dell Inc. 0GC068
Bus Clock: 800 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. A04 11/29/2005
Drives Memory Modules c,d
316.95 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
219.48 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

PHILIPS DVD+-RW DVD8701 [CD-ROM drive]
TSSTcorp DVD-ROM TS-H352C [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

ARRAY [Hard drive] (319.99 GB) -- drive 0 3072 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'CHANNEL A DIMM 1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'CHANNEL A DIMM 3' has 512 MB
Slot 'CHANNEL B DIMM 2' has 1024 MB
Slot 'CHANNEL B DIMM 4' has 512 MB
Local Drive Volumes

c: (NTFS on drive 0) 316.95 GB 219.48 GB free



Marks a disabled account; Marks a locked account Microsoft Shared Fax Driver on SHRFAX:

Controllers Display
Standard floppy disk controller
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 27DF
Primary IDE Channel [Controller] NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS [Display adapter]
CRN 19.7 [Monitor] (19.7"vis)
Bus Adapters Multimedia
Intel(R) 82801GR/GH SATA RAID Controller
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C8
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C9
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27CA
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27CB
Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 27CC

 

This is confusing. You have 2 year old Dell with an Nvidia 8800 GTS? Please explain.

 

I think he upgraded it. I have a friend with a 2 year old Dell, and he stuck an 8800GTX in it.

 

So what exactly do you want again? The reason why the framerate's dropping is probably because you have a P4?

 

ok i know its a older processor(Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs) but do you think its still a good strong pc,or i sthe cpu nearly no good?opinions on the over all spec of my pc please,i also need to get into bios if someone could help,need to check cpu temp,as i think it might be the problem on crysis

 

It all depends on what you want to use your computer for. If you want to play games like Crysis on max, I think it's time for you to get a new computer. You should see quite a bit of performance increase.

 

hmm ok mate thanks.bios?no one will tell me lol

 

Although I'm sure it's not great for it, I'd be surprised if the P4 held you back much - with an 8800 gtx and 3 gb ram you should be pretty good to go. But, certain games are more CPU intensive than others, and this might be a good example. Try playing around with different video drivers.

 

mate whats gettin to me is when i run crysis single player on med and have http://www.fraps.com/ runing it drops to 15-17 at times but its mostly at 28-35.so i alt tab and go to nvidia moniter and the cpu and gpu are under no stress,but it still struggles a little.all drivers are upto date.

 

If that's so then I'd agree that the P4 isn't giving enough juice. If it was a Core 2 Duo on the other hand then I think you'd find you're more than fine. I think the CPU is bottlenecking your system.

 

Wish I could help, but I don't have a Dell. Somebody on here should know how to get to the bios on this. Anybody?

 

The Dell startup screen should say "Press F2 to enter setup" or something similar in one of the corners (upper-right in mine, but it's a different line). When you see that, press it immediately and it will load into the BIOS. You might have to try more than once because it goes by rather quickly. Once you know what key it is, you can hit it slightly before the "Press F2 to enter setup" shows up and it'll still enter into the BIOS. The setup of the BIOS varies from system to system, but there should be a processor settings section. Note that the processor's multiplier and FSB may be locked, so it may not be possible to overclock it.

I'd say you're doing pretty well to be running Crysis at Medium with those FPS. I'd only think about replacing it if the dips are really bothering you (or other games are also running slow) - otherwise this is a great system. The processor probably is usually the bottleneck in this system, but for most modern games it should still be plenty powerful enough. You've upgraded it enough that, other than possibly the processor, it should be fine for another two years.

You could also look into upgrading the processor to a P4 3.8 GHz or a P4 Extreme Edition 3.73 GHz (make sure the BIOS allows overclocking on this one before getting it) instead of buying a whole new system - nothing else needs upgrading. The processor would probably still be the bottleneck, but it would be less so, and the 3.73 GHz one can be overclocked a decent amount (Dell sold them factory overclocked to 4.26 GHz in the XPS 600 Renegade, and I'm sure they could go higher than that). Unfortunately Core processors require a different connector on the motherboard.

 

thanks for the help mate.

 

it seems i cant clock it, i did seen a few posts/reviews that said this sysytem can be.i cant find the cpu temp anywhere,can anyone help me find this or a program that could help

 

Maybe try notebook hardware control? http://www.pbus-167.com/

 

this should work?

 

doesnt seem to work,remember my xps is desktop.can anyone else help?

 

The minimum requirement for Crysis is P4 2.8 the recommended is 2.2 Dual Core which in the way they rate my dual core at 3.2 (1.6X2) they recommend a 4.4 single core. I think your CPU is the bottleneck as said. Run a scan here minimum means it will run but not well and that sounds like what is happening for you.

 

Dells will not let you overclock on the gen 5 XPS systems.

My brother has a 3.0Ghz hyperthreading P4, running at 3.46Ghz, and it hangs in Crysis as well. He has an XFX 320mb 8800GTS.

My lappy has a dual core, and it definitely plays better, even with my quadro.

My suggestion, is to probably get a new motherboard and processor, which uses the same memory as your older system.
If not, you can always buy a new system, or hold off on Crysis.

Temperature monitoring programs.
I8KFANGUI, for Dells
Core Temp reads CPU internal temps
RivaTuner will read your GPU temps and clocks.

K-TRON

 

ok mate thanks for taking the time to reply,the I8KFANGUI seems like its not for my desktop xps,sure it will work?

 

A 3.2Ghz P4 coupled with an 8800GTS is not enough to get past Crysis on medium-low settings, I would think.

And no, you can't just drop in a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad, even if it's socket 775 motherboard. You would need a new motherboard.

 

yes i know that.i am asking for help to check the cpu temp.please read it all .19 hours into crysis and on they settings it isnt to bad

 

cpu temp anyone?

 

what do you mean? How to monitor it?

Edit: Fount this: http://www.hmonitor.net/

 

only show the gpu temp,thanks