Will this upgrade be worth it?

[matt73]

I am considering an upgrade to a i7 950 cpu but I would also need a new socket 1366 Mother board, maybe the The Asus Rampage Formula III GENE would work great for widescreen gaming in junction with my ATI 5790? It seems like I am always screwing around or fixing some kind of issue with my current set-up and its crashing to desktop on several games I play(arma2 OA w/ACE mod/BFBC2). Its seems very sensitive and unreliable, even things like win explorer, ATI catalyst , desktop manager, TS3, etc, all crash frequently. I use lots of USB peripherials such as steering wheel, game pad, keyboard, joystick, track IR, mouse, display adapter, 2 velociraptor SSD(sata), sound card, vid card, etc. I spend more time screwing around with settings and trouble shooting than I actually do playing. Plus It seems like I should be getting better performace with my 5970 vid card @ 5760 x 1200. Maybe its just me and my amature computer skills/knowledge. But I am thinking that maybe a bigger CPU & MB would hopfully make everything run smoother and I could finally sit down, relax, play and not worry about something crashing or having to troubleshoot this or that. Im just not sure if it would be worth the money or if it will help solve my issues? Any help or advice would be appreciated Thank-you!

[Tamlin]

I don't think that would make a huge difference. Its better to figure out why things crash once and for all. Chances are that it will still crash after you have changed mb and cpu.

A good start, is to go into event manager (you find it under administrative tools in control panel or you can right-click on the CCC icon and select it from there). Look at the error messages that have occurred after the crashes and see if there is a pattern or if it can indicate where to start looking.

Heat is also a very good thing to start checking, since it often causes crashes, but its probably not a problem with your Antec Skeleton Case.

[Skid]

Unless your planning on running a Crossfire or SLI system or are going to do some really CPU intensive tasks (lots of video encoding) there really no reason to get a LGA1366 CPU.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-cpu-overclocking-phenom-ii-x4,review-32087-5.html

My advise would be to wait a little bit and get a new Sandy Bridge CPU, specifically get a core unlocked one with the appropriate motherboard.

But follow Tamlin advice and try and see if you can fix your current system first, if you had a CPU or Motherboard problem your more likely to BSOD then crash to desktop.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Find out what the problem is; although my first idea with lots of programs being "randomly" unstable is bad RAM. So download Memtest (bootable CD version) and hammer the RAM - if it errors on the first pass, you know you've got dodgy memory that needs replacing.

[matt73]

Ok so I tried running test with option 1.) V3.5 (default) and it stopped at (test 5% ) (pass 0%)

I then tried option 3.) V3.4 and it seems to test only 4GB (4056M)instead of all 8GB, but regardless it came up with 3 errors and test is still running (pass 29%) so far it shows 2 errors on slot 0 and 1 error on slot 2

Bits in error- total: 22 Min:1 Max:18 Avg: 9

Error confidence value: 54

Ok now i have 379 errors on slot 0 and 340 errors on slot 1 (pass 34%)

This must mean I have dodgy ram then?

[Tamlin]

Sounds like it (good call PS :) ). You should now try to test the ram with one stick at a time to see which ones that are bad.

[matt73]

Yes I will do that next. What kind of ram do you recommend I buy for my set-up. Money isnt really a factor because I dont want to cheap out on ram this time.
I may also switch back to my original Motherboard, the Asus P7P55D-E PRO, as its easier & more stable Overclocking using Asus TurboV Evo software. rather than Gigabyte easy tune 6 (ET6).

Thank-you all for the advice :) much appreciated!

[Tamlin]

Your mb is 1156, so dual channel would do (triple channel for 1366). Checked the compatibility list for your mb, but not much of a choice there:
http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_ga-h55-usb3.pdf
I am partial to corsair, since I have good experience with them and Corsair is used by so many that mb makers usually have good support of them. If money were no object, these would be my choice:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144&cm_re=corsair_vengeance-_-20-233-144-_-Product

[matt73]

I have 4GB of Corsair XMS3 Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz CL9 DIMM w/DHX sitting here that I purchased awhile back for someone else but they never came through with the money. So all I need is to buy 4GB more today at
http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=24_311_312_611&item_id=017946

Will this be ok ram also?

[Tamlin]

Personally, I try to avoid populating all banks if I can. Thats because some motherboards don't adjust for the increased voltage etc. and they become unstable.
Corsair dominator is good memory. Try with those two chips now and see if its enough. Normally, 4GB is plenty for gaming, but for Eyefinity resolutions, you might need more in some games. Others might give you better answer to that. :)

Try to get back on warranty from OCZ memory, so you might not have to buy more memory. Just run a memtest again on the new set if you are uncertain of them.

[matt73]

When I use only the first memory slot on my MB (slot closest to CPU) to test each individual 2GB stick, the pc turns on but i get a blank screen and nothing happens. however It does work (boots up)when I put it in the second slot when testing each stick though. Is this normal?

[Tamlin]

The slot closest to the CPU is slot 2, the one next to it (second from CPU is slot 1). For dual memory configurations, you use second slot from CPU and forth slot from CPU. :)

[Paradigm Shifter]

Something has just occurred to me - check what your RAM is, and what voltage it's supposed to run at. You might be running it at 'board stock' which isn't what the RAM actually needs. Either way, if it's only sucking 1.5v, might be worth bumping it up 0.1v and seeing if that sorts out the errors. Sometimes RAM will error if it's not getting enough juice.

Other than that, on the new RAM front... I'd not bothered with any of the ultra-high-end overclockers RAM. Some 'normal' Corsair XMS3 should do fine. They do a 'Vengeance' line (or sommat like that - who comes up with these names, honestly!) now, where they have 8GB kits in 2 DIMMs, and 12GB kits in 3 DIMMs. I'd go with those to avoid filling all the RAM slots - a lot of mobos don't like it (stupid, but true nevertheless)...

[matt73]

I see said the blind man. Well I will definetly check this voltage thing out before I contact OCZ, but I went ahead and picked up 2 x 4GB modules of this corsair "vengeance" anyways :) Oh and my Crashing issues are fixed too!Thanks again!

[Tamlin]

I see said the blind man. Well I will definetly check this voltage thing out before I contact OCZ, but I went ahead and picked up 2 x 4GB modules of this corsair "vengeance" anyways :) Oh and my Crashing issues are fixed too!Thanks again!

Its good your crashing issues are gone. Then your main goal is achieved at least. :cheers

[Paradigm Shifter]

If the crashes are gone, that's awesome. :D

So many problems can be caused by dodgy memory... and they can look like so many other problems. :(

[skeeder]

Good fix.

Story for you to be aware. I had a wonderful (at the time) abit-NF7-S board...Ram was bad...so I called Corsair and got a new one...it still crashed...yes...the freaking memory slot was bad. I never fixed it because I didn't want to be computerless.