Even as a proud PC gamer of 15 years I have to admit... I'm terrified of overclocking. Phew. Glad to get that off my chest. I really think overclocking would help me out in PS2. I was getting 40 fps in large fights with high settings. I since tried out "Ultra" (by accessing graphic settings only possible through editing the config file; NOT accessible from in-game menu because they've got them hidden) and I still get 40 fps in large battles. That means my GPU isn't limiting me at all. My GPU went from "bored" with PS2 to "Alright, I'm working about as hard as I can." I.e. 70% load to 96-99% load. This includes max shadows which happen to be very CPU based. That means it all comes down to my CPU, which from day 1 in PS2, has been proverbially shitting itself. I have not overclocked it, so with Intel's "Turbo Boost", it ramps up to 3.7ghz on its own but I've heard some people have got 5.0ghz stable OC on the i5-2500k (what I'm using). I'm certain with my Zalman heatsink, I could OC the i5 to 4.4-ish and not have to think twice. But I have no idea how and I'm super uncomfortable with the thought of screwing it up and killing the thing. Always have been. What am I to do? I could let it go and wait for the optimizations. I know what you must be thinking, "40 fps and you're whining?" Well, yeah, it's a bit spoiled I guess but I'm sure it could go up.
You must not feel fear grasshopper. I dont play ps2, nor did I OC my processor. However my significant other has our system OC'ed and it would wonderfully. We have an i7 920. This might help you step into the unknown. It sounds like they wrote it just for you. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/07/how-to-overclock-the-intel-core-i5-2500k/1
Rofl, it IS like it was written for me! Jeez, it even guides me through taking it to 4.5 which is almost exactly what I mentioned in the OP haha. Amazing. Thanks! I may give it a shot.
On a side note, I ctrl+alt+deleted to check out my processor while playing the game and I found that a windows process called "TaskHost.exe" was using TWENTY FIVE PERCENT of my processor with no other programs even open. In other words, completely idle, a frigging quarter of my processor was being hogged by this stupid windows process. I never noticed this before, as in the past, my processor typically idled betwee 1% and 3%. So, why all of a sudden is my computer using this much processor? Well, I snooped around using a process tracking program called Process Explorer and for whatever reason, it seems Windows is actively watching my computers performance and watching for crashses and such. This is useless to me and never even used to run. Well apparently it decided to turn itself on (maybe through an update). I shut that garbage off and needless to say I got a massive FPS boost. Imagine not being able to use 25% of your processor? Honestly, since the game only runs on a couple cores mainly, it's closer to around 50% of my power. Thanks Windows for being retarded.
While I have this process running as well, mine stays idle. The description seems straight forward enough. "host process for windows task". This would make me believe there is something using this process causing it to spike cpu resources.
Absolutely right. The process itself isn't at fault. It's a process responsible for running OTHER processes. It's a "manager" process of sorts. If it's taking up anymore than 0% of the cpu, that means it's currently running something else with it. My TaskHost.exe process happened to be running a windows utility process in the background, which was using 25% of my cpu. Once I identified what utility process that was, I was able to kill it. After that, my TaskHost.exe is running at 0% cpu. I can't stress enough though, TaskHost.exe itself must never be shut off; only the other processes "under its wing" can be shut off.
