[SOLVED] Is my ram a bottleneck for my system?

[nikita8624]

Yeah i know i know, its a pretty weird set up, but thats all i have got.
So, my PC specs are:
Asus P5B-PLUS motherboard
Xeon e5450 running at 2.4 Ghz
8gb DDR2 RAM 533 MHZ
GTX 950 2.0 GB
Lets take a Dark souls 3 for example, i am getting 30-45 fps on high settings 1400x900 resolution, i tried cnahge presets and resolution to 800x600 and there is almost no difference, ofc i am getting +4 fps in some areas (even when i look into the floor or into the sky), but gpu and cpu are not even 80 % loaded. Then i tried launch this game on my laptop which has i7-4510U, gt 840m, and 8 gb ddr3 ram 1600 mhz, and even there i am getting 60 fps when i look into the floor or the wall. I have the same situation in MGS V, cpu and gpu are not even 80 % loaded at max settings in 1440x900 resoltion, and i am getting 35-45 fps (55 on the motherbase), changed resoltion and settings to minimum and didnt get any fps increase.

Currently i am thinking to build up a new pc, but as i have a limited budget i am not planning to buy a new videocard. So, just to be sure, Is there a problem with low memory frequency?

 

[Darkbreeze]

For that CPU and graphics card your memory configuration is fine. For what it is. You are not going to see any kind of significant improvement in performance, especially for gaming, by adding more memory however faster memory would likely result in a performance increase. I would not spend much money on it though. If you can't get 16GB of 800mhz or faster compatible DDR2 for less than 30 bucks it's not worth it, at all, and probably not even then.

You would be much better advised to put any money you might be inclined to put into this build, into something newer. I'm surprised that your current system is capable of supporting that graphics card or running any games, or even current browsers, at all, to be honest, without having some kind of problems. Upgrading would be wise.

 

[Dunlop0078]

Going from 1400x900 to 800x600 and not seeing a difference in FPS is a classic sign of a CPU bottleneck as well as your GPU not being at 100% usage if vsync is off. Your RAM is very slow and im sure that is not helping CPU performance, but I would say your poor performance is more the fault of the CPU.

 

[nikita8624]

Going from 1400x900 to 800x600 and not seeing a difference in FPS is a classic sign of a CPU bottleneck as well as your GPU not being at 100% usage if vsync is off. Your RAM is very slow and im sure that is not helping CPU performance, but I would say your poor performance is more the fault of the CPU.

But why when i run dark souls on my laptop, even on low settings 800x600 i am getting 60 fps when i look into the wall and cpu works at 1.4-1.9 ghz because of throttling, i just dont get it.

 

[nikita8624]

For that CPU and graphics card your memory configuration is fine. For what it is. You are not going to see any kind of significant improvement in performance, especially for gaming, by adding more memory however faster memory would likely result in a performance increase. I would not spend much money on it though. If you can't get 16GB of 800mhz or faster compatible DDR2 for less than 30 bucks it's not worth it, at all, and probably not even then.

You would be much better advised to put any money you might be inclined to put into this build, into something newer. I'm surprised that your current system is capable of supporting that graphics card or running any games, or even current browsers, at all, to be honest, without having some kind of problems. Upgrading would be wise.

i am going to buy a fully new components - mobo, psu, cpu and ram, planning to build on ryzen 1600 or 2600.

 

[Rdslw]

I endorse other responses, Your system is very old and more/less balanced.
Xeon cpu's are not meant to be used for gaming. And ddr2 bandwith is low, you might be limited by that, OR with just OPTIMIZATIONS missing for that very old platform.

each platform reacts differently for ram speeds.
in most cases Faster RAM can give you ~30% of CPU performance (from fastest to slowest supported ram),
but if you invest in that platorm now, it will be a killer waste of money, as DDR2 is already treated as dead and prices go up instead.

 

[BFG-9000]

It's certainly the reason you can't run the Xeon at its stock speed of 9x333 = 3.0GHz.

Only mobile Intel chipsets of the time allowed running the memory slower than the FSB. That's really too bad because the Core 2 architecture really didn't require much bandwidth--for a quad at 3.0GHz the worst-case maximum memory bandwidth it can actually use is 3.85GB/s which your RAM can even supply in single-channel. The FSB however does a lot more for performance than memory bandwidth here--after all the two dual-core chips it's made of can only communicate with each other and the memory controller across the FSB. So your current system is technically hobbled by both lower-than-stock CPU speeds and FSB speeds, not the RAM speed.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The fact that it's outdated by 12 years, might have a little something to do with it too.