The (new) Official PC building thread!

as with any new chipset, they usually have some growing pains until they mature. given time, bios updates will usually solve a majority if not all of the problems. I don't expect my rampage formula to be perfect right out of the box. I'll have to be patient and wait for some bios updates I'm sure. when it does mature, I'm sure I will be happy with it and glad I didn't opt for a P35 or X38.

 

I thought you had the VS catalog delivered every month on an automatic order. hehehe. ;P j/k...

Good for you buddy. Hope all goes well and all your luck is GOOD!!

...gm

 

lol greensman

Mort and I are building pretty much the same machine

looks like the E8400s and the E3110s are available on-line now, everyones back in-stock

 

which cpu you going with? did you decide to go with a TR ultra 120 extreme instead of a zalman 9500?

 

ZoSo are you stealing Morty's build specs or what?? I'm really curious about the new mobos you guys are looking at; X48 right??

I don't have the TR 120 Extreme but I do have the Ultra model and I'm very pleased with it. I've looked at adding TR coolers for the mosfet, SB, and NB areas but my mobo and cpu seem to be staying cool enough w/o it. If I was really serious about taking my OC further then I'd have to make those changes.

good luck fellas.....

.....gm

 

Abuzar, Shaff: I'm siding with theone, but for a different reason, the P35s overclock brilliantly. I should be installing my X38 board today, so we'll see how well it fares. Also remember that an X1900XT-X, not exactly a low end card, pulled 85% of its frame rate when running at only 2x on the PCI express slot. Scale that up to double, I'd say an HD3870, being double the speed, would pull circa 85% in a 4x interface, and that's only one of the cards, the other one is still getting its full bandwidth, so you're going from 100% to 185% instead of 200%. Boo bloody hoo - how much more expensive are X38 boards than P35s? Don't get me wrong, I did go with the X38, and that was one of the reasons why, but also because it was too much to stomach only changing my motherboard for a near identical one, despite losing DDR3 support (I'm not too fussed about that) I feel the X38 board is going to be more futureproof.
Heh, two users have posted in the 16000s on my LAN Party forums with their new toys, they both have Q9450 CPUs, one has an 8800GTS G92, the other a 9800GTX. Their CPU score is mental though, the new 45nm Quads are so powerful they're making a mockery of 3dmark - graphics performance can just be compensated for by the speed of the CPU, and in real games that isn't how it works.

 

yea my mobo is cooler than it has ever been right now.. i cant figure out why the drastic drop in temps.guess i wont have to worry about the extra NB,SB coolers

 

After some first-hand experience, I'm no longer going to recommend crossfire to anyone. After a couple of hours of fiddling I managed to get my 3dmark score to increase a little bit, but games still run much slower than my old X1900XT, well under half the frame rate of a single HD3870. I've tried drivers of all sorts and nothing improves this situation. Additionally, you can't overclock when in crossfire, or you get artifacting, if you so much as add a mhz to the core or the memory.
Additionally, nothing I can run in a window (and therefore check GPU-Z whilst running) shows anything but 0% usage for the second GPU.

 

is this wiht your x38 sam?

and have u updated all bios, all catalyst updates?


for millions of people on hundreds of forums are goign fine with crossfire..... tis a shame it didnt go well for you

 

On the X38-DS4. Tried the BIOS it came with F1, flashed to F3. Tried catalyst 8.2 and 8.3, made no difference. The only difference is that games no longer randomly lag badly like they did initially, which I solved by installing my chipset driver. Despite this though, the second GPU seems to be used solely by 3dmark. Since my file server stopped working though, I can't test many games with it. However, I know HL2:Episode Two is supposed to work with crossfire, and I've conclusively confirmed it doesn't. The only thing I haven't tried is using two crossfire bridges rather than one, but I'm sure that isn't the issue.
ATi don't provide support for crossfire either, so I'm in the dark really, and can only go on other peoples' experiences.

 

that such a shame.

try with cod4 asi have herd it scales well with sli/Xfire


also, the cooler on the 9800GTX IS differnt to the GTS:


and try on your 2560x1600

 

The tests were done using 2560x1600. As for Crossfire, COD4 does work pleasantly well for once - frame rate rises from 25fps to 45fps, a stunning improvement. So far, however, it's the only game to show an anything less than monstrously negative impact, so my opinion of crossfire is still mixed.

 

COD4 2560x1600 Max 4xAA: 25fps single card, 45fps Crossfire
Crysis 1680x1050 All high no AA: 25fps single card, 34fps Crossfire
that isn't approximate either, it just turns out both those tests earn 25fps single.

Based on those results, I'm much happier, the games where it matters I have significant extra performance. 36% isn't a huge bonus for Crysis, but it will certainly help.

 

The Crysis single fps is bang on. Exactly what i was getting.

You did say you can't overclock in Crossfire, not true.

 

Not true directly, but you can't overclock far before horrible artifacts. The single cards can go much further on their own.

 

I got my asus rampage formula today. what a beautiful piece of hardware. if it works any thing near as good as it looks, I'm going to be very happy. I removed the NB and SB heatsinks, throughly cleaned off the oem thermal compound and reseated them with AS5. I'll never understand why they use that garbage thermal compound during assembly at the factory. very nice NB heatsink. it attaches with spring loaded screws and has a copper backing plate they screw into. it's ready for the cpu, cpu hsf and assembly onto the mobo tray.

 

I'm quite impressed with my X38-DS4 as well, it certainy looks the part, but best of all it's the first motherboard I've had for ages where I can hold my finger on the chipset heatsink and it not hurt... The thing runs pretty cool.

 

Hey guys I did a new build yesterday.

E2180(OC from 1.8Ghz to 3.2 completely stable on stock cooling)
GA-P35-DS3L
Seagate 250GB HDD
Lite on DVD Burner
MSI 3850 OC(My old card)
Ultra GRID case
Ultra XVS 700W Modular PSU

The 3DMark scores on the video card running at stock speed and the CPU at 3.2 Ghz were 9494. Didn't get to run any other tests.

 

Not too shabby. The E2180 is an astonishing overclocker, but I'm pretty sure it's 2Ghz normally, the E2160 is 1.8.

 

Actually it WAS the E2160. My mistake. It only cost 65 bucks too.