The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Hmmmm. Well, if you're going to do that, I better switch back to Corsair 1000 on the wishlist.

Well, today was supposed to be gaming day but turned into torrent day. After 3 years of owning Bit Torrent, I finally figured out how to open up the listening port. It was the uTorrent client that helped me figure that out, from the razor torrent web site I went to, and the little speed test utility it has with a port checker. From that, and a bunch of reading later, I was led to download the apple airport exe (my brother had a mac over here and that is the wireless router), use the admin utility to log on, map the listening port, etc. So if anybody wants to know anything about NAT address translations, I am more of an expert now than I ever wanted to be!!

Also today, I read the Tech Report on nvidia's attempt to give us 3d gaming. What does anybody think about that? Apparently it really works well on L4D, but not much else, LOL.

 

Funnily enough we're in the process of trying that in our house at the moment. I've found IZ3D which allows a similar effect with ATI hardware (since it basically CPU renders the effect, which has a hard hit on performance).

 

Yeah, the 3d has always seemed kind of gimmicky to me, but they said that Nvidia must have worked closely with Valve, because apparently it is quite fluid and realistic on L4D. In The Tech Report testing, when they started right out with Left 4 Dead, they couldn't get some of their buddies to take the glasses off for an hour or more - but as soon as they switched over to the other games everybody got bored quickly - it was a big turn off off.

Back to the dual 4870x2 issues, Sam, I am positive you have read the Jan 15th article in The Tech Report on the GTX 295 regarding the overheating issues with the Asus 4850 - nice cooler for single card configuration, but it doesn't work in crossfire:

I mention that because, in the 5th line of the quote, they say ".... you'll notice that it has a fan, not a blower, onboard." So I am beginning to get the idea that crossfire - in addition to all the other challenges it poses - makes one look closely at the particular type of cooling each crossfire card has - especially the second card which can become "starved for air."

I know you have already thought about this - but with the BSODs you are getting, have you been able to log your gpu temps on the second 4870x2?

Rich

 

Ironically, by far the best cooler to use with the HD4850 in dual configurations is the stock cooler, as its single slot, and gets plenty of air with two cards there.

One of the most important things to consider when using dual graphics is slot spacing. You need to allow one slot's worth of air to reach a card or it will almost definitely overheat. With single slot coolers this is easy, as the PCIe slots only have to be one space apart, but with dual slot coolers, you need two gaps between them. With a triple slot card, basically, you're screwed.
Interestingly enough, there are almost no i7 boards with double spaces between their PCIe slots, I count one DFI and one MSI, that's it. Neither Asus or Gigabyte or Biostar seem to provide a board with the spacing needed to use a dual slot card in crossfire, which seems a little short-sighted really, as i7 is perhaps the best CPU to make use of dual graphics technology.

You will note that the P5E3 Premium used in TheTechReport article only has single slot spacing.

The temps have not been a problem for me as I have double spacing on my board. The Auto fan speed controller is very temperature sensitive, and I can get a BSOD with both fans spinning very low (35 and 30%). I have also tried forcing 75% on each with no effect. On top of this, I can run the OCCT graphics stress benchmark for 15 minutes, which whores the cards so much even the auto fan speed reaches 100%. This suggests it isn't a heat issue. Right now I'm confident it's the board, and I have a X48-DS5 at university ready to collect (or so I'm told), along with the 1000W Corsair HX, just in case.

 

Well Sam, then would anybody really want to run two triple slot Palits in crossfire? From what you're saying, it sounds like both boards would be right up next to each other, starving the second set of fans.

Seems like you have eliminated heat as an issue - your fans don't really speed up past 35% - and on the stress test when they both reach 100% you don't have that problem. So you suspect the board. The x48-DS4 is the board you have advised me to get with full 16x on both pci-e slots. I see you're getting the DS5, which as far as I can tell is the same as the DS4 except with 8 3gb satas instead of 6. Any other difference?

 

I think the DS5 has better power regulation and temps compared to the DS4. DS3, DS4, and DS5. I've used versions of the first two and found the DS4 to run cooler and OC better than the DS3.

 

Ah, good information estuansis. They're probably both the same price - and newegg has neither of them.

 

Rich: They would in a 775 system, in an i7 system, they wouldn't even fit.
I eliminated the heat issue by turning my side case fan to intake from exhaust, dropped my idle temps in Vista (with forced lower fan speeds) by 31ºC.
The reason I got the DS5 over the DS4 is actually purely because I couldn't find the DS4 in this country. Lots of places sold it, but none could guarantee delivering it within a few days. The DS5 is actually substantially more than the DS4 (£195 versus £165) but since I needed the board by the weekend, that's what I had to settle for.

 

An interesting picture...
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4826/s5000647mb1.jpg

 

Wow, is that the beautiful Zalman with the heat pipes - it sure is longer than the Corsair. The photos of the guts of the Zalman from last year were really impressive. The only thing that puts me off Zalman is the six 12 volt rails and having to balance out the load - the Corsair HX1000 moves to two rails vs the one rail of the 850 - I wish it were still one rail - I think we decided architecturally it is basically two 500 watt PSUs in one box - but anyway two is easier to balance than six.

All this time I thought your side fan was intake - mine originally also was exhaust and I converted it to intake about six months ago after reading about side "intake" fans on the tempest and other new cases, lol. Your temperatures dropped through the floor with that change - 31 degrees centigrade - wow!

Regarding the Palits, so you're saying Sam that on a 775 board as opposed to i7, it would be possible to fit two Palits. But still, there is that issue about the second board possibly being starved for air, correct?

. . . . . . . . .

To reference the Tech Report article - the Palit uses two fans sucking air in from the top, not blowers which might suck in air from the sides or the end. Is that what he meant when he said blower?

Wait a minute!

The Palit fans are completely shrouded, like the Sapphire design that the Tech Report reviewer liked better than the Asus in terms of not being as susceptible to the problem of being starved for air - he mentioned that the sapphire, whereas in single card configuration does not cool as well as the asus, is better-engineered.

The sapphire is the typical reference HD4870 and 4870x2, with a completely shrouded fan at one end of the card blowing through the sinks out the back of the case. I wonder if that is what he meant when he said "blower."

The asus 4850 fan is also shrouded, now that I look at it - but perhaps not the complete shrouding of the sapphire. As long as there is plenty of air available, the design cools very effectively, and very quietly. The sapphire is perhaps more completely shrouded. The air makes more noise than the asus as the low pressure sucks it through the shroud, but on the other hand, the shrouding gives the air no chance to move in any direction other than into the "blower" and through the sinks and out the back of the case.

I wonder if shrouding the fan this way turns it into a blower, at least in the mind of the Tech Report reviewer. I could see that the shrouding would promote a more aggressive, albeit noisier, suction effect.

I recall that one discussion on newegg about the asus 3-fan 4870x2, ASUS EAH4870X2, on an asus deluxe i7 mobo, sitting in the second 16x pci-e slot under a two-slot sapphire 4870, and apparently working okay that way. I see now that each fan of that board is fairly well shrouded - again perhaps more well-shrouded than fan of the asus 4850 - I'm not sure, but maybe.

So if the Palit is more of a blower, because of the shrouding, than the open air Asus, maybe it could handle very little space between the two cards. However, you said

Does any mobo provide enough room for two Palits?

Rich

 

On most 775 boards (not all) you could fit two Palits, but look at the shape of the cooler, it's flat topped, they wouldn't see ANY air, and would almost certainly overheat. Then don't forget that's six slots used for video cards, unless you had a system with the PSU at the bottom, the second card would also be starved for air, and if you did have your PSU at the bottom, all the red hot air from the X2 is being thrown into it. As they say on the internet - "Do not want."

You're correct, blower refers to the typical radial style fan in coolers that exhausts air through a peripheral slot. The clue is the huge number of blades, or more like fins, that make it up.

As it happens, yes, some mobos do allow the space as there are boards with three PCIe slots, one at the very top and one at the very bottom, and you could do it this way, again, provided you had a bottom mount PSU that wasn't too fussed about getting quite hot.

 

Ah hah, yes I see the picture now - the Sapphire utilizes a blower type fan design - with the blades spaced along the outer edge like spokes holding a large inner axle.

Looking at the Palit, I can see we're back to a twin fan design, not blowers. So spacing is extra critical. But you're saying it can be done. That sounds good.

If I understand you, then it would be essentially a triple sli motherboard, separate out the Palits and leaving the middle slot empty. If so, then which 775 motherboard do you like for two Palits like that?

Regarding the PSU, I was a little confused - wouldn't the great amount of heat coming out of the boards tend to be thrown more up, rather than down, especially with a top exhaust vent fan?

For top vent, the Antec 1200 has a 200mm fan, which equates to roughly the same surface fan area as the dual top vent 140mm fans of the Tempest. Also I would hope that more than 50% of that hot air would go out the rear card vents, especially with a 3-slot design. Are you saying it's inevitable that the PSU - even at the bottom - would end up pulling in a lot of that hot air?

On the 1200 that's still in the box on a shelf in the garage, I'd be using a bottom-mounted PSU - the Corsair HX1000 that you like. I can't remember if it's the Antec, but one of the cases I was considering has a metal lid over the PSU to keep it separate from the rest of the case.

Anyway, should I presume you have confidence in the Corsair's ability to run a little hot?

Rich

 

Heat rises naturally, but the force with which it is extracted from these cards in order to keep them cool definitely means it will be thrown downwards. The fans on the card may still 'suck' towards the GPUs, but given how long the 4870X2 PCB is, it practically partitions most cases, leaving nowhere for the air to go but remain in the chamber it has created.
A great deal of air will probably exhaust through the rear slot in the card, but why do you think the sides are exposed?
I have confidence in the HX1000's ability to run hot, but it runs loud. I'm aware the 4870X2 is hardly a quiet card, but even two of them with their fans at 100%, the Corsair can still clearly be heard over the top. Throwing that heat at it isn't going to make that any better.
I'm going to stick the 850W Zalman back in later today to see if the system runs as well as it does now with the X48 board (I have every confidence it will). If it does, then the Zalman is the PSU I recommend for this, purely on how much less noise it makes.

 

Hopefully this will work:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=1cb7b0eb71924889e62ea590dc5e5dbbe04e75f6e8ebb871

This is a recording I produced when I run the OCCT Graphics stress test. I cut the graphics fan speeds to minimum when the test finishes so you can hear the PSU fan better, as it starts to slow down back to idle (this is the Corsair).
It's quite funny when the mic gets in the way of the exhaust air from the X2s...

(Skip through the first few minutes, they're me setting up the test, oh and using the good old fashioned 'finger' test to check the speed of my case fans
The most useful parts of the file are from 4:40 to 5:40 and 7:45 to 9:00)

 

Hi Sam,

I listened to the test.

But first let me say congratulations - you say things are working great with the x48 card. That is terrific!!

Are you saying that no more BSODs in 8 minutes under stress - for how long have you let the test run?

Listening to the sound test, I heard some hissing, which got quite loud, but I perhaps should have turned my bass down because the overall rumble of what I think was the air passing over the mic obscured the other sounds. Sorry, I really couldn't tell what was gfx and what was Corsair.

But I have a suggestion:

If you do that test again, it would perhaps be really helpful if you narrated your way through it, cockney accent and all - just kidding Also, it just occured to me, why would you put the mic inside the case - don't we want to hear what everything sounds like outside the case?

But either way, with mic inside or outside, I visualize the narration going kind of like this:

Just a thought. Lol.

I did some more reading about the zalman, and watched a video review of the 1000 - same architecture as the 850. The basic thrust is that the heat pipe design keeps the PSU cooler, allowing the fan to run at lower quieter revs.

I have to admit, the heat pipes are impressive. If you find that the noise reduction is significant, then I guess I'll be able to work out the load balancing.

Rich

Hey - I'm on newegg again and reading some reviews. Get a load of this one:

Hahahahaha! I think a guy named Sam once mentioned the same kind of thing! LOL

 

Working great isn't exactly how I'd put it. Let's just say I know what the cause of the problem is (at least with the X48 board). It's the core temperature of the chipset. The higher the NB volts, the higher I can overclock, but also, the higher the NB volts, the faster I need my case fan to be, or the 'entering powersave' comes back.

Perhaps I should explain what's going on in that test better. for almost all of it, the mic is actualy outside the case. The distortion of the air going past the mic was an accidental demonstration of just how much air the X2s put out.
The 'hiss' as you described it, along with the very high frequency whine is the X2 fans, the fan noise you hear during the last part of the test slowly descending in tone (i.e. fan speed) is the Corsair PSU.

Rich - the Geforce 8 & 9 series were famous for cutting out graphical quality and shader rendering to give them the artificial edge in performance. The GTX200 series don't seem to have followed suit outside Crysis.
Also, 4850X2 - if you want loud, you have it right there.

 

Is this about getting the Q9550 to 4ghz? Can you put a chipset cooler on that northbridge?

Yeah, per the 4850x2, there were quite a few reviews on Newegg that talked about loud! Hahahaha!

I was admiring the purple line on the Tech Report benches - Jan 15, 2009 article on GTX 295. I still game only with headphones - and my current stock p4 hsf fan is loud when temps start rising! I picked up the little arctic cooler which I'll need if I do anything with this narrow case - it's still in its box. But I did have the idea of eventually putting the 4850x2 machine out in the sunroom as a second gaming machine for guests - where there wouldn't be headphones. I'd end up with two gaming machines like Estuansis. But LOUD LOUD? Ok, maybe I'll pass. Hahahaha!

 

No loud machines here Most of my fans are 120mm and are pretty quiet. And the 80 & 90mm fans are all lower RPM Maybe not silent like what Sam is aiming for, but not loud at all.

 

I gave up on 4Ghz a while back. 4Ghz isn't a particularly easy goal for the Q9550 with people who have P45 boards and only one graphics card.
There are three things that reduce how far you can overclock a 45nm Core 2 CPU:
1. It being a Quad core - that alone knocks about 500mhz off.
2. Using the X48 Chipset - it isn't as good an overclocker as the P45. However after discovering that in some instances crossfire performance literally halves using the P45, I'm glad I stuck with it.
3. Using multiple graphics cards - I think I'd sooner have the benefits of Quad CF over a couple of hundred extra mhz of CPU.

The reason these restrict your overclock is because they all add to the strain on the northbridge, which means the further the system is overclocked, the less stable it will become, and thus it requires more voltage. I can get 3.87Ghz as I did with my X38, more stable than it was back with the other board, but it requires 1.5V on the NB, which apart from being a bit excessive as far as long-life goes, it also massively increases the internal temperature of the northbridge, and the 50dB 2400rpm side fan has to be brought in.
I tried directly cooling the chipset with a 92mm fan I found, but to no success, as all it was doing was recirculating the air from the topside of the X2s - which even at idle, basically mean it circulates hot air, not cool air. When i turned it up to max (3500rpm) and put my hand over it, it was literally like using a washroom hand dryer.
Unfortunately there is no way of aftermarket cooling most Gigabyte boards with Thermalright products (I haven't checked other brands yet) as while you can stick an HR-05 on the actual chips, there's nothing that yet fits the Vregs, so it's either go without, or cut the stock cooler in half and leave the vregsink intact - not sure I have the heart to do that and void the warranty on a brand new £210 motherboard.

You will note that Sophocles only uses one card, but uses the best of the overclockers for X48, the Rampage Formula, and with a Q9650, a better overclocking CPU, I belive he stuck with 4.0Ghz.

The good news about the 4850X2 is that unlike the 4870X2, it will work with two Zalman VF900s, so you can stick those on to quieten it down. That's the lower power consumption at work there - do that with a 4870X2 and it would overheat at the drop of a hat.
The 4850X2, while not having heard it myself, receives complaints from people who regularly call pretty noisy products 'near-silent', so it must be pretty raucous - if it's anything like Sapphire's HD3870 (which only had one fan, remember) it'll be hideous.
Also remember the 4850X2 is a bit light on the 3D performance when you get to 2560x1600 in some games.
42fps in Warhead at 2560 res? I'm going to assume that's Gamer detail...

As far as noisy CPU heatsinks go, consider that my Q9550 is overclocked and overvolted, and yet I can accidentally leave the fan at minimum speed, play demanding multi-core games for several hours, and not even notice. When you consider I can barely hear the fan from 4 feet away at maximum speed, let alone half that speed, I only own the regular Ultra-120, not even the extreme, and have removed/replaced the cooler without replacing the thermal paste maybe 6 or 7 times, I think you can see why I like them so much

 

Maybe possible at gamer detail. Agreed that it can't be full DX 10 very high. I wish I could get those frames if that were so