The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Thanks for the rely sam. I'll start watching prices on the 4850s and 4870s. Is there a certain one you would recommend?

Parker

 

The EP45-UD3P will hold two, but bear in mind the second slot of a UD3P operates at reduced speed, 8x not 16. This doesn't impare an HD4870 too badly, but an HD4870X2 will certainly suffer. I'd recommend you go with an X48-DS4 instead to get full bandwidth if you intend to use two X2s.
If you really can't find the things in the US then I'd happily arrange the export, but be warned you may be liable for customs fees.

Parker: XFX make some good stuff.

 

Thanks sam, your advice is greatly appreciated as all ways.

Parker

 

I second Parker on that, mate!

And thanks for the offer. It appears that nobody has them so far. Maybe by the time my money builds up in a month or thereabouts, they'll be here. Guys on newegg reviewing the asus were saying they'd have bought the Palit if they could have found it anywhere.

Customs fees are - what? - about 15%??

But it will be worth it if they don't show up on these shores pretty soon! It certainly is nice to have a good UK contact! (Seriously why do the aussies have them - isn't it a Taiwan board lol)

Great tip on the motherboard, I didn't think of that. No doubt, for sure I'd want pci-e 2.0 16x for both cards - not going to let anything slow down that 2560x1600. I'll swap the x48 onto the wishlist.

Hey, speaking of slowing down - I've been meaning to ask you - all you guys in fact - about this next subject. The ultra 120 extreme comes from crazy pc lapped for just an extra $19. But I was reading somewhere that Thermalright deliberately dishes the sink non-flat for better cooling. How can that be? While they may have mentioned that on their FAQ at one time, there isn't anything on Thermalright's web site at this time that I could find about that subject. There are lots of YouTube videos showing how non-flat the ultra is. What have you heard Sam?

And one more thing about the ultra - crazy pc sells an additional fan clip - so it's possible to put on two 120s for push/pull. Do you think that's overkill, Sam, or a good idea? I mean, it can't hurt, can it? If I did have two fans, could I use a Y-connector to tie both fans into the same mobo fan port for mobo cpu fan control - or should I try to verify first that the amp rating on the mobo fan port will support two fans, before I risk smoking the motherboard?

Back to crazy pc, it seems to me that for under $20, I'll just let them lap the ultra 120 extreme, saves me the trouble. Yes, it voids the warranty as they explain, but how often is a cooler going to break? I'll take my chances - it's less than $100. Later on, after I know the cpu won't need warranty return, I'll lap that too - all the better to keep it as cool as possible for a nice and stable Q9550 at 4.0 ghz. (All this so I can terrorize Manhattan in GTA4 lol)

Anything wrong with my thinking?

Well, I finally took a few photos of the Dell monster!! Probably tomorrow's post!

Rich

 

The effects of lapping a cooler are a mixed bag. Many people swear by it, but it's a lot of work. What you're doing is making sure the mating between the contact surfaces is ideal. However, that's exactly what thermal paste is for. If the surfaces were perfectly aligned and smooth there'd be no need for paste at all, it's just there to fill in the gaps. Ultimately if you want to see a benefit, both surfaces need to be lapped, the CPU as well as the cooler. Needless to say, lapping the info print off a CPU will void the warranty.
As for push/pull fans, again, some people like them, I don't see it myself. The only example where it'd be useful is the IFX-14 as it has two blocks, but I haven't seen much of an increase between that and the TRUE to justify the extra cost. Imagine a TRUE in your system with a fan on the other side, and think how close it'd be to the exhaust fan of your case. Realistically, they're interfering with each other more than they're helping.
I generally don't attach fans to the motherboard because I like control over noise, but I have plugged a Nexus 120mm into the CPU fan on my board as a guarantee in case something goes wrong with my controllers. It's actually the rear case fan, not the CPU fan. I'd avoid attaching more than one 120mm fan to a motherboard header.

 

Agreed. HD4850s and HD4870s will perform nearly the same in 8x Crossfire as they do in 16x. Maybe ~10% slower. But anything really fast will suffer badly. A 4870X2 will be bottlenecked for sure.

Not only that, but I STRONGLY recommend keeping GPUs to 2 or less. 3 and 4 GPU Crossfire/SLI is still extremely buggy and not really that useful except in extreme cases. A single 4870X2 or 2 4870s will suffice for 2560 until faster cards can be had. Crysis and Warhead are really the only problem titles. GTA 4 really doesn't need that much video power, but a faster CPU will see huge benefits.

Same thing for PhysX. Not recommended due to lack of usefulness and questionable performance. There are very few games that support PhysX and even fewer performance/visual gains. Basically a waste of a video card slot and some extra heat in your system that isn't needed.

Well, having lapped both my CPU and cooler, I can attest to its gains. I get happy temps with a heavily OC'd quad. Need I say more? Also, I'm still using the dot in the center method for my TIM vs the line method. I have noticed zero difference in temps.

All of my fans are attached to the motherboard and spin at full speed. They are all Cooler Master noise reduced fans. Both 120mms spin at approximately 1100RPM and both 90mms are at approximately 1500RPM. With a silent PSU, CPU cooler, and fairly quiet video cards, this all means very little noise. Not silent, but noticeably much quieter than other comparable systems at LANs. Also, my CPU fan is spinning at 1000RPM as per the included fan controller.

 

Also, my new parts have gotten here. Phenom II 940. Experimenting with a DFI LANPARTY DK 790FX-M2RS(GIGABYTE DOES NOT OFFER A 790 BOARD WITH PROPER 16x CROSSFIRE), 4GB mushkin Ascent DDR2-800 RAM, a second Tuniq Tower(lapping already in progress), and some new HDDs!!!!!!

So I'm set to rebuild my main rig. Look for the sig update.

The E6750, 2GB Patriot, and Gigabyte P35 have already gone to new homes as well. So I'm stuck with what I have, lol. I traded them for some new parts for my parents' rig, so check that too. 5000+ BE, Gigabyte 780G board, 4GB RAM, and a PNY 9600GT ;P Will be OCing as he didn't do it at all

EDIT:

Just got the Phenom II installed and the temps are friendly. As far as I can tell, it performs on par with my Q6600 clock-for-clock. Burning in with Orthos Prime blend as we speak. More info as I go... check my main profile page to see the configurations for all 3 rigs.

 

Until I saw that recent benchmark I would have agreed with you. While it's still clear that Quad Crossfire never offers the scaling that Dual cards does, it still achieves some impressive results in a few games now Catalyst 9.1 is out.

HD4870 Crossfire Scaling (1920x1200 - 2560x1600 - minium means scaling at minimum frame rate, not minimum scaling)
COD:WAW Dual: +40-60% minimum, +45-75% average,
COD:WAW Quad: +10-60% minimum, +40-60% average
Crysis Warhead (1280x720, 1920x1200 Enthusiast) Dual: 18-50% minimum, 36-58% average
Crysis Warhead (1280x720, 1920x1200 Enthusiast) Quad: 8-28% minimum, 7-13% average
Far Cry 2 2560x1600 0x Dual: 77% minimum, 82% average
Far Cry 2 2560x1600 0x Quad: 8% minimum, 42% average
GRiD Dual: 78-71% minimum, 54-84% average
GRiD Quad: 18-20% minimum, 14-31% average
GTA4 Dual: 0--6% minimum, 6-61% average
GTA4 Quad: 0-7% minimum, 3% average
Left 4 Dead Dual: 41-58% minimum, 50-55% average
Left 4 Dead Quad: 12-55% average, 3-13% average
Lost Planet:Colonies Dual: 100% minimum, 86-94% average
Lost Planet:Colonies Quad: 41-39% minimum, 36-40% average
Tomb Raider Underworld Dual: -20--14% minimum, -20--13% average
Tomb Raider Underworld Quad: -3-4% minimum, 0% average
World in Conflict Dual: 86-90% minimum, 79-88% average
World in Conflict Quad: 10-24% minimum, 59-80% average
Mirrors Edge Dual: 59-66% minimum, 59-70% average
Mirrors Edge Quad: 14-22% minimum, 18-20% average

Mean scaling: Dual Crossfire 50.8%, Quad Crossfire 30.3%.

 

The LAN Party board is showing some OCing promise. The options are extensive and the chipset cooling is good.

So far so stable. Temps are about 51*C full load Orthos blend And about 54*C load with small FFTs. 29*C idle proves this chip almost as cool as my stock Q6600. I expect this to go down a degree or two when the TIM cures.

 

Congrats estuansis on the phenom install! Looking forward to see how the spider overclocking utilities work, if you decide to mess with them.

Sam, those are some amazing results with the quad crossfire - just two or three months ago we were saying - "Don't bother" - just like estuansis said.

Now I'm remembering the talk, about 6 months ago, about the 5000 series coming this summer - smaller thinner gpus - maybe possible to put 6 on a chip!!

If ATI makes more headway at improving the scaling - a 6 gpu chip might really be something to see - maybe we can conquer crysis 2560x1600 sometime this year!! (Okay I won't really get my hopes up.)

I never got to posting the pictures. I got diverted by firing up the dell 30 to see if I could run cod4 online off the p4, and yes, I can, BADLY! I am getting about 31 fps, 2560x1600, all settings low. (It's quite laggy of course - my scores are ass! LOL)

Rich

 

What's you thig about this card ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 PCIE 2048MB GDDR5??

 

That's my card
Shortly to have two of them. My second has arrived, waiting on the new PSU which should be here tomorrow.
They're fabulous graphics cards. Run anything you throw at them at 1920x1200 (23-28", any HDTV), and the majority of it at 2560x1600 (30")

 

LOL 2 4870X2s. I think Sam went crazy XD

LOL software overclocking!!! Seriously, I'm going to be OCing through the hardware. I'm not really interested in the Dragon(used to be Spider with Phenom X4) over clocking utilities. I want to see what this DFI board can do! 3.6-3.7GHz would be a nice number to hit

I might be OCing the Phenom II tonight. The temps are staying good and it's done over 24 hours Orthos stable. The DFI board is really nice. Just as nice as my Gigabyte X38. It almost makes me want to convert XD

Also, I got the X2 5000+ BE to 3.2GHz stable and cool. It makes for a nice mid-range rig to gauge my own performance. And it plays Crysis at 1680 x 1050 with high settings LOL I'm seriously tempted to take that one for myself and build another PC for my parents XD Check it out in my profile. Not a bad little rig really.

 

Ah it plays Crysis, but you try playing Warhead on Enthusiast... :O

 

Haha, I know. The machine plays both Crysis and Warhead all high with the CCC config. But enthusiast smacks it against the wall, lol! I handles most stuff admirably at 1680 res though and some stuff at 1920 res. I'm tempted to get it and a decent 22" monitor to go with it. It's a sweet little rig all its own

Oh yeah, it handles the FEAR 2 demo maxed at 1680 with 4xAA and 16xAF. Again, the 9600GT is an impressive budget performer

 

The CCC mod actually drops the image quality, in relatively subtle ways, but no pain, no gain and all that. 1680x1050 Gamer at default is too much for a 9600GT to play well.

 

Well with the CCC medium config it looks mostly like high/very high. And it gets better performance than high, but not quite like medium. Averaging 32FPS in Crysis and about the same with Warhead. Depending on the on-screen action that is... My 8800GTS managed about 35FPS with the high config and some other custom tweaks I did myself. All of these results at 1680 res.

It does drop quality a smidge, but it helps performance considerably. And the medium/high configs still look miles ahead of real medium or high eye candy wise. Mostly they tweaked foliage fade-in and distant LOD a bit. Minor pain, but HUGE gain, IMO. I'm even using the CCC config plus more extensive tweaks with my HD4870s. At 1920 res though.

 

Just got my BeQuiet! DarkPower Pro 850W home (The shop that sold the Zalman is still snowed in) after having ordered it from ebuyer at 9:40pm last night (It was signed for at my uni at 9:20 this morning) and wow - I've never seen so much packaging in my life.
In the big cardboard box is the DarkPower box, which is covered in cellophane.
Inside this box is a neat velcro-hinged display window that shows the fan-side of the PSU and lots of sales blurb around it. Opening this box reveals another plain black box. Inside this black box are 5 smaller black boxes. (Pass the Parcel, anyone?), two adjoined with the PSU and Mains C19 lead in, the others with all the modular cables. I like how only the ATX cable is hardwired to the PSU, everything else is optional. The ATX cable is also a 20 + 4 as separate cables, showing the unit is designed with older systems in mind. Why you'd buy an 850W unit for a PC with a 20-pin ATX and no need for a 4-pin +12V connector is beyond me though...

 

LOL

Glad to hear you finally got it unpacked

Has the second 4870x2 reached you yet

 

IIRC, he's had it sitting there for a few days now.

Too bad us guys in the US can't get BeQuiet! stuff. I'd have had a 650W by now vs my 620HX.