The (new) Official PC building thread!

That's pretty good, how about the global CPU temperature?

Just goes to show that lapping the heatsink has just as much of an effect for the Freezer 7 as the Thermalright.

 

yeah i had hot linked, so i upped them myself

 

cant remember where i read this but someone had taken the heatspreader off and placed an LN2 coolign on top.

MENTAL

 

Where are these benches from? They're complete crap.
There is no way the 8800GT is twice as fast as the HD3870, that's completely bogus. Yes the 8800 is slightly faster, but nowhere near that much.

Okay, Tom's Hardware have upped some benchmarks, but unfortunately they too suffer the same flaws as the first benchmark in that crucial comparisons are missing (as is often the way with THG these days, their benches are less and less impressive by day, I stick with them though because they don't make the figures up)

They compare the top 3 performance cards, the 9800GX2, HD3870X2 and 8800 Ultra. They do not, however, compare the cards to the high end single offerings (8800GTS G92, 8800GT, HD3870) nor do they compare the 9800GX2 to a pair of 9600GTs.
However, I will do my best to compile a frames-per-second per pound analysis of the data. I will subtract 10% from the readings for the 8800 Ultra and declare that approximately equal to the 8800GTX, which is still sold.

 

anandtech are one of the most reliable sites on the net for reviews.

and sam, since the first months o review drivers have added a lot of OMPH to the 8800GT. it is that fast, check other sites, for recent reviews and ye shall see.

i think tweektown compare alot of cards withthe GX2 aswell

 

No matter how much the card has been boosted, not even the 8800 Ultra is 90% faster than the 3870, let alone the GT.

 

you guys and your GPU's...lmao
sure am glad i dont require one of them big bad boys...

got 1 of my 3 MIR's back yesterday. from crucial. thinking i should have the one from evga and coolermaster within the next week.. once i get them im gonna get the corsair PSU HX620 most likely. maybe the HX520.
would that be a big enough improvement over the coolermaster extreme power 500w? its only 20w more. or do i need the 600+??

 

My PC with it's 3.15Ghz Duo (1.8 originally) and an HD3870 uses 225W full load, with three hard disks running. You'll be fine with the 520.

 

how about this one. stil corsair but the 550vx.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004

 

That's also fine, it's just not modular.
I'm omitting test results with Anti-Aliasing on this one, as I'm not happy with nvidia's method of producing it. In numerous games it has no noticeable effect on the frame rate, and AA simply can't be done effectively like that, it just isn't posible, for that reason I'm going to assume it hasn't been rendered properly and I'm removing it from the equation.
I'm also not considering Crysis, as none of the benchmarks are conducted at a frame rate that is at all playable, plus as we've seen, nvidia cards don't exactly render Crysis in its entirity.

Current prices:
9800GX2: £422.87 (BFGTech, Scan)
HD3870X2: £264.36 (HIS, OcUK)
8800GTX: £231.46 (EVGA, Scan)

9800GX2 total score: 916.9 Price/Performance ratio: 0.4612
HD3870X2 total score: 703.4 Price/Performance ratio: 0.3758
8800GTX total score: 621.2 Price/Performance ratio: 0.3726
(note, lower is better for this one!)

 

is that the only major difference in them? that really dont matter much to me. idlike to get the most power for the price, but also have a good PSU

 

shaffaaf,

I've seen it done with P-4s, Pentium Ds and some AMDs, but I would be real careful about that. First off it "will" void your warranty. Sounds like some extreme overclocking forum stuff, and some of those folks are idiots who would put a finger on the cooler and pee on the wall socket to get a higher OC if they thought it would work! LOL!! I wouldn't do it!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Nope, the 550W VX is still a great unit, I recommend it.
Okey dokey, my 9800GX2 summary is done on the previous page.
Unsurprisingly it gets beaten on bang for the buck by the HD3870X2...
Oh, and shaff?

 

Need some help guys - I know this is sort of the wrong area - but I get good feedback from you chaps.

Im having a problem with the modem on my laptop - its a compaq R3479.

Here are some screencaps that are hopefully helpful to you:-

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c62/pja77uk/one.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c62/pja77uk/two.jpg

The first shows device manager with the problem areas and CPUz motherboard info.

The second shows the error Im getting and the CPU info from CPUz.

This is what Everest says about my motherboard:-
Motherboard Name Hewlett-Packard Presario R3200 (PS702EA#ABU)

And this is what Everest says about the two troublesome devices:-

SM Bus
Field Value
Device Properties
Driver Description SM Bus Controller
Hardware ID PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00D4&SUBSYS_006D103C&REV_A4
Location Information PCI bus 0, device 1, function 1
PCI Device nVIDIA nForce3 150 (CK8) - SMBus Controller

Device Resources
IRQ 10
Port 2000-203F
Port 2040-207F


Base System Device

Field Value
Device Properties
Driver Description Base System Device
Hardware ID PCI\VEN_104C&DEV_8201&SUBSYS_006D103C&REV_01
Location Information PCI bus 2, device 4, function 2
PCI Device Texas Instruments UltraMedia Firmware Loader Device

Device Resources
Port 7400-743F


Basically the issue is that the modem is saying its in use - when it so isnt.

I believe its due to the problem with the SM Bus as I believe that controls the modem codec, but I have searched high and wide for the correct driver and just cant.

Can anybody help??

If you need any more info Ill try and provide it.

PS - I do not have a driver disc (obviously), and I think I accidentily deleted the restore partition when I last reinstalled windows (whoops).

 

Pepp77,

There's no way that you can accidentally delete that partition unless you wiped the entire root of the drive, then it removes everything. Try the recovery that shows at the bottom of the screen on boot-up! If it's not there, then it's been deleted!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

By accidentily - I meant I wasnt paying attention and completely formated the harddrive to a single partition - its definitely gone lol. I managed to find most drivers and this one hasnt been an issue until now when I need to be able to use the modem for my job.

I reinstalled about 6 months ago.

 

I just got my corsair DDR2 1066 dominators. they are ver 4.1 and as far as I can tell the IC is PCS. I've never heard of PCS. anybody? I may have to go to www.asktheramguy.com and see if these are worth a hoot before I open em up.

 

Sytyguy: I spotted that link as well, but I wasn't sure if it was relevant to nforces or not.
Mort: Is it these guys?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patni_Computer_Systems