The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Well, I don't wanna say nothin - it's not my place. But don't people get banned for having computers that dirty?

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Sam, hardware binge? Yeah, I guess you're right. But still, $600 is $600.

Well, actually there's more to it than that. If I get the rig, it's from a family member (who got me the 9450) and I don't want to say "no I don't want the i7, Sam wants me to get something else."

You know what I mean.

But at one time he actually thought I would fix the i7 for him, and he'd use that one as his photo server. However, I explained that the processor on the server wouldn't be participating in the photo editing at all, just serving up the files, so the last time we were on the subject, he suggested that I could have the i7.

But if he says "You know what, I think I'm gonna keep the i7" then I'll say, "great, no problem, Sam has another one in mind for me."

LOL

Hey, that doubling up of power supplies sounds interesting. If you weren't suggesting it, I'd say it was something Kevin dreamed up to start more fires, or to make his computer even dirtier - if such a thing is possible.

Okay, here's your last chance to NOT bridge the PSUs. I found this Lepa power supply: LEPA G Series G1600-MA 1600W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Power Supply which is made by enermax. It runs at 1600 watts steady, and can handle up to 1700 watts maximum load.

Not a great warranty, only 3 years, and doesn't weigh very much if that matters, but reviewed decently at HardOCP.

However, if we're still doing the double psu, then I measured my case every which way, and I think I can make it work. We could do it with a couple of 850s, but it seems to make more sense to get to that power level, 1700 watts, by putting the largest one I can find in front, so it will vent to the outside like normal.

To that end I was pleased to stumble across this 1200 by thermalright: (If we complement it with a second psu, then we really won't be running that much juice through it, because of the other psu.) The model is Thermaltake SP-1200M 1200W ATX 12V 2.3 & EPS 12V 2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply.

The really nice thing is it's only 6.3 inches long and doesn't hit my fan at all. My current toughpower 750 is 6.5 inches, and I have about a quarter inch of room. But most of what I am looking at is 180mm, meaning 7.1 inches, forcing me to push the fan over and drill some holes. With this power supply I wouldn't have to do that.

If you don't like that one, then there are a couple more that are 7.1 inches, like a Thermaltake Toughpower Grand TPG-1200M 1200W ATX 12V v2.3 & EPS 12V v2.92 SLI Certified CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

or an ENERMAX MAXREVO Series EMR1350EWT 1350W ATX12V / EPS12V v2.92, v2.8 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Power Supply

or this PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk III Series 1200W Modular Power Supply features 100% Nippon Chem-Con Capacitors and Metallic Modular Connector. All of those are 7.1 inches long so I would have to drill a few holes. Not too big of a deal.

Now, for the second smaller unit, I believe I am going to have to sit it on its side, and place it oriented sideways, up on a little shelf right behind the front middle fan, which puts it above the bottom 5.25 bay, so I don't have to do any hack sawing. The case is about 9 inches wide, and the one I like best is only 5.5 inches long, which leaves 3.5 inches for the power AC plug on one end - the end next to the front side cover - and room on the other side, the back of the psu, for the power cables which can go through my cable management on that back side of the rig to feed two gpus only.

So for the little secondary psu, the one I have in mind is the Thermaltake SMART Series SP-650PCBUS 650W ATX 12V 2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply which has a 5 year warranty, and like I say is only 5.5 inches long. It's new on newegg, with no reviews.

The main thing I like is the short form factor.

If you don't like that one, here's this one: CORSAIR HX series HX650 650W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply which at 6.3 inches is .8 inches longer than the other and will be a bit harder to manage, but I can do it.

So 1200 plus either of those, is 1850, is that enough wattage for you?

If not, then for the second psu, we could get the CORSAIR GS700 700W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply which would give us 1900 watts, at 6.3 inches long,

or even the CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 850W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power Supply which would give us 2050 watts.

Rich

EDIT:

Are we sure about those Power colors?



Because this is a really good product. I just went to my email and there was a notification that these were back in stock. I did that because I was wondering if they ever really become available. I guess they just don't stay in stock.

The product is highly binned, comes factory overclocked, and for most, it runs at 1200, if not 1250, if not 1300. It does have the 4 gigs of memory, but not the 384 bit bandwidth of the new Titan, or the Tahiti.

By the way, no way am I going to consider the Titan, no matter how nice it looks on paper - $2,000 is madness enough, $3,000 is mortgaging you, Jeff, Kevin, and ddp.

But for $2,000, I can get 3 of these classys (with tax) and I believe they'll handle me nicely for the next 3 years - or for the same money, two 7990s. The only thing is, the quad cf 7990s generate a lot more heat, and burn a lot more energy. With 3 classys we could work with that one seasonic 1250 power supply.

So are we sure about quad? if we are, then let's charge ahead, lol.

 

I can understand not wanting to turn down an offer from family, but in all honesty, this is a grand investment plan you have here, and using an original i7, especially if overclocking, is going to make life a lot harder to achieve what you want. Given the considerable amount you're willing to spend, you may as well keep the i7 for something and get a higher-grade CPU for something else.
Either that or you're welcome to tone down the level of expenditure so that it fits in a more reasonable power envelope, but you'll be knowingly compromising the performance of the new build for the sake of your family member's pride, not just in not buying as many GPUs, but also for running a slower CPU. Remember that an i7 3770K is almost 70% faster than an i7 920, and that makes a difference.
The LEPA unit is seriously powerful at 133A 12V combined, but I have never been that impressed with the longevity of Enermax units, and the deviation in voltage at full load is rather high, even if the unit doesn't fall outside the 5% spec.
Reviews on the Thermaltake SP-1200M are too sparse to say enough about it - no detailed review means it's not certain what is underneath doing the work.
A detailed review of the TPG-1200M indicates that the unit really isn't solid enough to be recommended for full 1200W use, suffering from high ripple and considerable voltage drops on the minor rails during crossload testing.

The thing with the GTX680 Classified is, it's ultimately still a GTX680. You have the extra memory covered, and a 5% increase in clock speeds, but that alone is not going to make the GTX680 superior to the HD7970GE. At a full 50% more expensive than a 1Ghz HD7970 from Gigabyte, or 36% more expensive than a radial-cooled MSI model, that's a hefty price to pay for DVI ports.

 

The following was taken on original 925mhz HD7970s shortly after their launch in early 2012 - figures are relative performance to indicate scaling.

AvP: 100/185/278/346
Arkham City: 100/117/121/128
Battlefield 3: 100/188/267/354
Crysis 2: 100/195/196/197
DiRT 3: 100/188/N/A (At time of testing, DiRT 3 with three or four GPUs triggered a driver fault)
Hard Reset: 100/181/234/317
Metro 2033: 100/167/227/273
Skyrim: 100/185/185/190
Shogun 2: 100/170/N/A/325 (Not supported with 3 GPUs, 2 or 4 required)

As you see, there are some odd artifacts with quad crossfire, and the same was observed when I used it historically with HD4870X2s. Some games work great, others do not and never will, the more GPUs you have the more of a gamble it is - but even that rule is not black and white, as shown by the odd situation with Shogun 2.

I don't have a similarly proficient review of three GPUs from nvidia yet to compare with, will have a look tonight and see what I can find.

 

Wow, that Toughpower Grand isn't so grand after all. Well, if one can't count on Toughpower Grand gold no less, then that discounts the entire Thermaltake family in my mind, including the little one with no reviews.

You didn't mention the PCP&C. I didn't catch the weight of that unit, but that is a name that has always stood for quality in PSUs. Heard anything about that one? At 7.1 inches, I like it better than the Seasonic at 7.5 inches.

(I found the weight - it's 6.3 pounds - more than the Lepa at only 5 pounds - but on the other hand, the Seasonic is a nice hefty 10 full pounds. You know how they used to ask, "How heavy is the power supply?" But anyway, I'm being silly - if I have to move the fan a quarter inch, moving it a half inch is the same thing - drill a few holes, tape over the exposed holes, no big deal. Certainly not a big deal compared to putting a second power supply INSIDE the case. So if you like the AMAZINGLY NICE AND HEAVY 10 POUND Seasonic Gold the best, that's good enough for me, lol.)


7970 GRAPHIC CARD SCALING

Sam, those are some amazing numbers.

AvP, Battlefield 3, Hard Reset, Metro 2033 = scaling pretty nicely all the way to 4.

Crysis 2: nice scaling and no benefit from more than 2
Skyrim: nice scaling and no benefit from more than 2
Dirt 3: nice scaling, and no benefit from more than 2 - in fact crashes
Arkham City: weak scaling, and no benefit from more than 2

Shogun 2: nice scaling to 4, but 3 not supported (yes weird)

I can sort of see why you are targeting in on crossfire, and not tri or quad cf.

Yes, if you can find it, that same kind of info would be very helpful on the gtx680.


TO GO GREEN, OR NOT TO GO GREEN

I am not sure that I am the greenest person around - I sometimes do leave the lights on, but in general during this past cold winter, I have worn sweaters to compensate, including at times a scarf and even a pulldown wool cap. Jeff would laugh living in Alaska as he does - no Montana, or is it North Dakota. I forget - some place REALLY cold, that's all I can remember, lol.

But the problem with cards that pull giant amounts of power, like the 8800s did, even in idle, also like the 4870x2 did - the problem goes beyond the increased operating cost. One must factor in the heat buildup, and the corresponding noise pollution from fans going at full blast, and from even having to occasionally turn on the A/C. I don't have to tell you, you lived it for two years.

Today, by contrast, you don't even have to run the side intakes.

You probably don't believe you're hearing this from the guy who ran two modded kaze intake fans full blast to support gaming in that beautiful piano-black sonata mid-tower case. Things became so peacefully quiet after I got the fan controller. Best $14 ebay investment ever.

But then, getting ready for business, I went into the software and maxed out the 8800 fan, and later the HIS fan, so I could hear, to make sure everything was working. Then I got back up, walked over to the front of the spedo, and cranked up the kazes and the loud rear 80 array, and grabbed the headphones.

I would still be in that case with an added hole in the floor and modded feet, allowing the 2nd HIS fan to poke through, if I hadn't remembered about the garaged spedo sitting patiently in the box brand new for 4 years. LOL

So here I am - do I plunge headlong down that noisy hot path once again, or try a different approach?


MAYBE ONE POWER SUPPLY AT A TIME IS BEST

Getting back to power supplies, I am almost thinking - "A second power supply inside the case? Really? Sitting on its edge, adding heat, blocking the middle front fan? Do I for sure want to do that?"

The techie modder in me, the guy who would have added feet to the sonata, says "Yes, let's make it work!" The guy who bought the fan controller to bring a few moments of peace to 3000 rpm kaze-land says "Are you sure?" Or maybe he says "Are you nuts?"

I am almost thinking now - let's design the graphics solution around the lovely 10 pound Seasonic Gold. With that in mind, if we feel we're pushing past the limit of 102 amps, 1250 watts, then let's not add the additional hardware.

Looking at your numbers, gpu compute at 24 amps per gpu, that's 96 right there as you said. We have to add in 3 disk drives, at 12 watts each is 3 amps, and I would say 2 amps total for fans. So there's only 1 amp left over for the cpu. You said we only need 6 for stock 3770, but I calculate we only have 1. And while the 3770 is faster, to think that I'm never going to want to overclock it - well I just don't know about that. With 4 gpus, doesn't it seem that I might find myself cpu bound some day and wanting to overclock the thing?

So if we toss out the idea of a second psu inside the case, which is what I'm thinking now, and design with the seasonic in mind, then we have to toss out the idea of quad, and stick with 3 gpus max. If we do that, I can run the sick energy hungry nehalem for now, and then upgrade later to a 3770 or whatever comes afterward.


IF THREE, THEN WHICH THREE?

So if we're back to 3 cards, which three do we want?

As I said, there are no blower 7970 GE cards. They all have very sexy multi-fan cooling solutions.

Three cards like that inside the case, tossing heat all around, would create a nice little hot box. And if I am forced to run 3,5,7, that could create temperature problems for me on at least one of the three, if not all three.

It seems to me that I want a blower style.

So I'm back to the super expensive classified at $599, about $2000 after tax and shipping. It sure is not the price difference, there isn't any. And I lose a gpu. But I gain back operating efficiency, less noise, and less heat. And for 30" gaming, hopefully 3 will last me for a few years, with maybe a cpu upgrade during that time.

I get a very well-designed blower solution - quiet, cool, energy efficient, and which, when overclocked without any voltage adjustment, comes pretty close to the 7970 Ghz, while still pulling less juice.

Overclocked to max beyond the factory overclock, but with no overvolting, running almost continuously at boost with its additional power headroom beyond stock 680, at least from one bench I looked at, it seems to draw about 3 amps less than a stock 7970 GE.

While the performance increase of about 8% beyond its factory overclock helps a lot, it is still beaten by a good 10% in 30" crysis framerates, but pulls even in Metro 2033. Of course you could then overclock the 7970 GE and you would go flying past, but that +3 amp differential would increase. Noise too.

So at tri sli, we've got 9 amps room of less power draw, and a turbine design dumping heat out the back of the case, just like my current HIS IceQ 7950s, allowing for the classified gtx680 2-slot cards to be placed right next to each other (unlike the HIS) so mobo layout is not too significant on whether these will work, meaning that 3,5,7 is okay - I don't need to go find the more ideal 1,4,7 layout.


BUILD QUALITY SEEMS EXCEPTIONAL

And in all the reading I have done about it over the last few days, I have acquired a great deal of respect for the build quality. You can go through the reviews - absent are the typical problems. The problems I'm talking about are like the problem reviews that plagued even the HIS IceQ - and if I had read those later negative reviews, I probably would never have bought the product.

I was initially attracted to the HIS for the turbine - the blower. And the IceQ brand had meant high end to me - from seeing it around over the years. I totally raved about the build quality of the HIS IceQ 7950. I still feel that way. But apparently I was super lucky to have gotten two really good units - I was shocked later to see others who seemed to have had much worse experiences.

It really began to look hit and miss. What a shame. Not good for one's rep.

But regarding this "classy" as many call it, it appears to be all "hit" and no miss. They guard their rep very carefully.

Evga must not only cherry pick the best chips, but they must also do some burn-in on every unit to keep the vast majority of the reviews quite positive. Perhaps the extra testing is why it seems that they don't build very many at a time.

Man, do I sound like a fanboi or what?

Well, yes, I am impressed.

I went over to look at the green guys because I had wanted the MSI Lightning 7970, but the damn fools didn't put a dual link dvi port on the card. What a bunch of idiots.

They got totally locked into that eye-finity thing and said "screw you" to high res non-displayport gaming.

Other than that, they build a solid piece of hardware, I believe. So there it is, over on the green side, and yes, it does have the dual link dvi port.

But over there in greenville, somehow I stumbled upon the Evga card, and in my mind, they pulled ahead of the Lightning.

It's your fault Sam, for saying very recently that, while Nvidia is still a sneaky company with questionable ethics (ala activision - my words) their products are now reasonable quality, reasonable power draw, and reasonable performance.


FINAL THOUGHTS

So here we are - I very much like your 10 pound power supply.

The more guarded side of me doesn't like the idea of trying to cram an extra power supply into the case. With good reason you don't like any of the other power supplies, and to that I can only say - "good thing we have an invaluable hardware reference like you around to rely on."

So, as far as "grand investment plan" goes . . . .

. . . . with the thought of sticking that extra power supply somewhere inside, quad cf looks less and less like fun and excitement, and more and more like horrendous power suck, noise, and giant amounts of heat - reminding me of the negative side of what you went through.

Today's cards handle eyefinity. I only want to game on one monitor, albeit 30", but that's "only" 4 megapixel, not 6 or 7. At today's performance level, three cards running full blast should work out okay - with the right choice of architecture - providing me with "best of the best" as you said, or darn close to it.

Am I wrong? (I can't believe how fanboish I sound.)

Rich

 

I thought Jeff lived in Wisconsin :S Minnesota, wisconsin, north dakota. They all get pretty cold during the winter. I lived in minnesota for a few years.

Still trying to decide what to do with the GTX 260. I may save it for a build, and sell it that way. If I can build a cheap, agreeable system, and make 50 - 80USD on it, I could be happy with that I'll think about it...

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yeah, his public profile says he's from Wisconsin.

 

Yeah, I knew Montana was wrong - Wisconsin, Thanks for the correction. I have a friend who went over to No Dakota recently to get some trucking experience. So you actually lived in Minnesota? - wow - cold. You're near Portland now, right? That must seem comparatively much warmer.

Is putting it in a build more money than just selling the part?

 

Oh yeah! I experienced -45F while in Minnesota. That's a bit too cold for me. My fathers ex girlfriend had a funeral while it was -70F! Apparently they couldn't be outside for more than a few minutes at a time :S

Yeah, I'm a bit less than 3hrs from portland. Where I was born and raised.

 

Holy crissssakes -45. I was right the first time, Alaska. Or the North Pole!

Your father's ex girlfriend had a funeral BECAUSE it was -70 - HERS!!!

Sheesh, can people actually walk outside for a minute to get into the car, without freezing to death as they turn the key. Would the car even start anyway?

Thank you very much, but I'll stay in California - in fact I'm so cold thinking about -70 that maybe I'll buy the two 7990s and turn this trailer into a sauna with all the heat coming out of the case! I can see why you hurried back to the west coast. How long did you live there, 48 hours?

Rich

 

I was young, broadening my horizons. Lived out there for over 2yrs, moved back to oregon, my dad needed help, so I moved back to minnesota for 3yrs, and then we both moved back to oregon in 2006. Haven't looked back. Whew! LOL!

I believe it was her fathers funeral.

Yeah, my PC tower puts out plenty of heat(not to mention my stereo, monitor, and HDTV). I've had the heater vents closed all winter :S I open the window occasionally if it gets above 75F in here. I went out of town 2 weeks ago, came back, and it was 62F in here. Felt great! LOL!

 

It got down to 51 here - in the house!! I had so many layers on I couldn't move. Southern California it wasn't. I think it some kind of a breeze that blew down from Alaska. It only started warming up about a week ago. Yes, today was about 62 - almost bearable. Last week it hit 71 in the house, finally!

So you and your dad moved back in 06, nice. Are you guys roommates? What does your dad do?

Anything with computers - like I mean, does he also play angry birds, and burn sh*t up? hahaha

Rich

 

I sent you a private message Rich. This is getting a bit off topic

 

Hence why I was concerned about your current 750W.

Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the din of a PCP&C PSU. Something about how good it is? PCP&C have been a very reputable brand in the past despite the absurd noise, but they're now owned by OCZ, one of the worst manufacturers for build quality in every industry they've been in. Facing imminent financial collapse, I'm not sure I want much to do with them.

What about this one?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127652

Very unlikely, since the GTX680 itself is obviously manufactured by nvidia, and the actual hardware standard underneath is slightly lower for nvidia versus AMD, even if the rest of the card is built better. The fact that it only scores 4 eggs on newegg places it in the same ballpark as most other cards. The low scores may all be due to the fact that you can't overclock the Classified (despite the box saying otherwise) because it's well publicised that GTX680s have poor overclocking headroom - EVGA have used up what little there is in this offering - which hints at long-term stability problems, but rather worryingly some reviewers allude to the fact that this version of the firmware caps the fan speed at a low setting but high temperature. In a less than perfectly ventilated environment, this is going to cause problems for Triple-SLI.

With regard to displayport, it is worth mentioning that all 30" displays released since 2008 have featured Displayport, and if you're not using 30", you don't need dual link. Unfortunately, users of the old 30" Cinema, 3007WFP/WFP-HC, L3065 and XHD3000s lose out. 30" monitors are too much of a niche market to warrant catering for people with older hardware in this genre. I agree, what MSI have done is bad, but it doesn't surprise me. The introduction of the 'basic mode' port on the HD6 series in the reference design was the beginning of the end for proper support for older 30" monitors on the AMD platform.


As far as weather is concerned, we had a couple of warmer days in the middle of the week at 61°F and 55°F respectively, but as recently as a week or two ago we had it drop down to about 25°F overnight and 35°F during the day.
During the winter my room is typically around 75-80°F (if I'm video encoding I need the window open to keep the temperature down to that level, but otherwise it remains closed). During the summer when it's 70°F outside or so, my room is typically kept up to around 90°F with the window open, once it exceeds that, the A/C gets put on.

 

90F in your room! THEN you turn the AC on. Geeze LOL! I find 78+F to be unbearable in my room.

 

I think I became tolerant to high temperatures for all the years I didn't have the A/C. That was only purchased in the latter period of owning quad crossfire (Summer 2010)

 

I guess I can appreciate that. Working in the facility I do in the summer(VERY hot).

I'm rather tolerant to the cold. Though my hands aren't. They never have been. Or my ears for that matter. Cold nose, no big deal. I can even wear shorts in the winter. But my ears(where there's wind), and my hands... very finicky!

 

As I've aged I find I've become a lot less tolerant of cold (although it may be due to being more accustomed to heat as shown above) - but only when still. Walking about outside never used to bother me, but for the first time last month being outside in the 30s Fahrenheit my skin started cracking and peeling off on the back of my hands :/
Has stopped now, but that wasn't exactly a welcome sign of things to come!

 

Yeah, I would say generally when one's skin starts to come off, I get concerned.

hahahaha - That is too funny!

You owned quad crossfire so you had to go purchase an A/C unit!!!

I REST MY CASE!!!!!!!!!!!

Am I friggin blind? I started to say "where did you dig that up" and then I went back and looked at that graphic on the page before, with the blower style that "aren't the ghz edition" or so I said at the time.


Wow, duhhhh



There's the MSI that you pulled up, right smack in the middle. And in checking right now, it is indeed core 1010. Great!

You know - it's newegg's sorting. I've had that happen before. They have a sort where you start to pull up 7970, and then it starts to give you choices, like GE or maybe Ghz edition, and when you choose that, no blowers come up.

And I had spot checked only the first one of that graphic above, and yes, it is only core clock of 925.

But I see your msi that you pulled up, is indeed core 1010. What about the third? No I checked, not the third. They have a separate ghz edition with two blowers.

So - if the MSI is core 1010 - that is the official ghz edition, correct?

Hmmm, maybe not.

Here's what one reviewer said:

So apparently that is NOT the ghz edition - but why not - it has the 1010 core speed?

Good job anyway for correcting me. Most reviews say the turbine is LOUD. Regarding the classified, yes they lock the fan at no more than 55% to keep noise down, but for most that works okay. However, you have a good point - and there are unlocked bioses available on overclock.net to allow increasing that fan speed if it gets to be a problem.

But anyway, I will thoroughly check out that MSI blower. What does that guy mean he flashed to the ghz edition - what did he gain by doing that - additional voltage unlocks?

Rich

 

Gets to sub zero temps in the winter here. Was about -20*F last week. I am very tolerant of cold temperatures. I usually wear lighter clothing than most in the winter or I get too hot. Likewise I can't stand heat. I can tolerate it as we rarely run the A/C, but I hate every second of it with a vengeance. It gets very hot(90s all week not uncommon) in the summer and very cold in the winter.

I would also stay away from PCP&C units. They use ancient internal designs in many units that haven't changed since about 2005-2007. Without their legendary build quality of past years, they just aren't trustworthy any more. The design has stagnated while the actual quality has decreased.

 

Trust me guys, Sam and Jeff, after your comments, I will never consider PCP&C.

If a good PSU pops up in the 1600 watt range, that you guys feel is as solid as the Seasonic 1250, then I might take another look at quad cf, despite the excessive heat and noise.

After all, I already do have an A/C unit installed here in the trailer, which I paid to mod in years ago, and I'm not planning to get rid of my lovely 5.1 Medusa headphones for many years to come.


DELICATE 5.1 HEADPHONE REPAIR

In fact, some delicate soldering, nothing more than re-melting actually, under a magnifying glass, fixed the one set of headphones that I use all the time, getting the right rear to start working again. It fixed the spare left rear also, however in that case I actually started to change out some wires, in order to replace the speaker, then I switched gears and put the original back since I had acquired the suspicion it was just a loose solder joint - and yes, that was the case, the original speaker works. That was 3 or 4 hours of extremely painstaking detailed work, quite a hassle really.

Regarding the spare, where I put back the original speaker, comparing the two sets, the spare appears to be totally mis-wired, and that might explain why it never clearly separated out the rear right and rear left like the other set has always done. Shame on Medusa for screwing up the multiple-speakers-in-each-earpiece manufacturing like that.

If I ever had to, I suppose I could re-wire it to match the one that is correct, but that would be an all-day project, with a high chance of failure - the wires are EXTREMELY delicate. For now, all speakers play on the spare, which means full sound with no holes, just NOT perfect 5.1 separation. So, since my base box permits plugging in two units at the same time, I could let someone use the spare, and that person, spectating, would never be able to figure out how come I am so good at guessing which side the enemy, soldier or zombie, is coming from, lol.

Before I ever get around to that all-day project, which I guess I would never do unless the main set died, it is more probable that some day I will invest in a pair of $300 psyko's with the air tubes, which come down from the top, with the very best separation of all, according to reviewers who own both types.

Regarding my Medusas, especially the spare, it amazes me that the thing works at all - some of the wires appear to be completely bare, and they do not seem to necessarily be ground wires as best as I can tell. So why don't they short out against each other? Maybe you guys know more about it. Maybe they, in fact, ARE ground wires, but it appeared that they were not, which was terribly confusing to me.

Additionally, I did end up picking up a box of 10 little 30mm 32-ohm speakers straight from China, costing all of about $10 for the entire bunch, so I am covered in case a speaker actually ever does fail.


NEW 7990 ANSWER TO TITAN

Back to graphics cards, I think that it will be interesting to see what AMD does regarding the 7990. From what I read they wanted to wait to see how fast the Titan was, and then plan a response. I also read that they have some working units, but decided not to show them for the time being - again probably wanting to study Titan a bit more. One of the marketing gurus came over from Nvidia, and wants to "poke" his former employer with an updated 7990 response, as I read.


MICRO-STUTTERING SOLVED WITH RadeonPro

Also, I want to explore RadeonPro. According to some very recent google research over the last couple of days, Tom's reports that RadeonPro virtually eliminated micro-stuttering on AMD crossfire to their gigantic surprise.

Adaptive vsync apparently works well on nvidia (according to Tom's and also according to many of the 680 reviews I read in researching the Classified and the Lightning - some of them talking about how the adaptive vsync really smoothed out their gameplay - others commenting on the TXAA improving the image quality to 8xAA levels with only a 2xAA performance hit) but none of the AMD vsync options appeared to help with the micro-stuttering problem in the Tom's article, as they illustrated in their graphs. However, the RadeonPro utility introduces a concept called dynamic vsync, and like I say, the Tom's testing showed that the micro-stuttering essentially disappeared.

I confess, I can't read their graphs - I see lines jumping up and down, but I don't understand what I am looking at. As Sam pointed out before, they certainly aren't well labelled. But I don't want to blame Tom's for that - I think I'm coming in at the middle of the discussion and I have some catch-up to do.

If I can get back to the beginning of when Tom's first started to study the problem (after multiple reader inquiries) then I am confident that I will find the explanation for their test-bed methodology and for what exactly the graphs are illustrating.

In any event, I am certainly glad that somebody decided to investigate micro-stuttering. I have the feeling that AMD was relatively mum about the subject, because the raw fps numbers remained high - highest in fact - and the dirty little secret of the unpleasant micro-stuttering "bug" only threatened to cast a pall on their shiny victory.

As a marketing person myself, this is pure speculation. But if so, I don't blame AMD in the slightest.

I, too, would have remained silent while continuing to research for an answer. In sales and marketing you have the right to push the best points of your product, without pointing out the negatives, as long as by not doing so, you aren't blatantly cheating anyone. Some gamers are much less sensitive to this, much less irritated and annoyed, than others. I, too, have no wish for AMD to go the way of 3dfx and end up being slaughtered by Nvidia or Intel.

Tom's isn't the only one to have studied this. If you go the wiki article on micro-stuttering, you will find various references, including a Swedish review that also included some similar charting, showing that the 7000 family, in particular, is highly susceptible to this phenomenon.

If the RadeonPro works, that will be a godsend. That's what Tom's said at the conclusion of their article - I believe it was a 7990 review pitting PowerColor against HIS and against Evga on a 690 (I found the link.) They said that AMD should be extremely grateful to the RadeonPro author, John Mautari, for solving this severe bug in multi-gpu gaming. If it works, I quite agree.

I had never known what Jeff was talking about - micro-stuttering - until I enabled crossfire, and that was after sailing through all the Crysis games and Far Cry 2. For some reason I never noticed it on Sleeping Dogs. I had even started to conclude that my lack of sensitivity made me invulnerable to the problem. Haha. But it started to make itself apparent in Far Cry 3, not in driving around, like in the quad 4-runner, or in the wave runner, but while walking around the map.

At what seemed like a steady 38-42 fps, there was very clearly something unusual and irritating happening that was the OPPOSITE of the normal smoothness (with a single card, even at a low 32 fps) which I had experienced and had come to expect from my HIS 7950 gameplay.

To enable the utility, you create a simple profile for each game, according to Tom's mostly just indicating your average frame rate, like through something like Fraps. Okay, that's easy enough to do. In my case, I guess all I need to do is to game for 15 minutes, then exit and take a look at the fps line on the MSI Afterburner graph. Expanding the window along the entire width of the monitor, I can get up to 40 minutes of charting, and I shouldn't have any trouble imputing an average frame rate number.

Mautari has a "donate" button on his website. If the micro-stuttering disappears for me, I'll be very happy to show my gratitude by supporting his fine work with a $50 contribution.

The other imminent project, is to change out the cooler on my 9450, and see if I can pick up the additional 8% cpu power getting from 3.343 to a 3.6 Ghz clock. I have never tried any more overclocking since I was in the mid-tower case.

Surely, especially with the new looser silver stone mesh filters that have dramatically increased my spedo airflow, I have much better ventilation in this full tower case than I had before in the Antec Sonata.

And with a cooler changeout - maybe even to the full size Silver Arrow extreme which requires a back plate, or maybe at the very least to one of the two Arctic push-pin coolers that I picked up for L.A. - the 7 or the 13 - it would seem that the 3.6 Ghz should be achievable.

Rich