The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

I have a feeling THEY STILL ARE!!

The Hardware Canucks reviewer of DFI LanParty UT X58-T3eH8, the board you said was much better than the H6 version in terms of chipset and cooling, but was maybe pricey at £279 (but only £219 at Motherboard Pros!) was talking about DFI boards being somewhat intimidating to newbies, and I have to admit I am starting to get intimidated. When I said "THEY said it was simplified" I was actually talking about that one reviewer, not DFI.

And he was expressing his disappointment. Hahaha.

. . . . .

Anyway, with your positive comments:

I am starting to think more about this DFI board - and we kind of ruled out the Biostar when we found - as the manual states - that it drops to 8x in cf mode, which may not matter now but may be more important, as you said, on "next gen GPUs." So that leaves the DFI, with a long history of being a strong overclocking board, and a design that provides 4 slots of spacing, about which the reviewer stated, "For those adamant on needing dual 16X PCI-E slots, this is the ideal board with its gapped layout."

AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST, THIS BOARD ... and my Spedo .... will run ... TWO PALITS!!

Yes, I just realized that with great excitement this morning. My prior darling, the Asus 3-fan board, has been discontinued at newegg, and I would rather not get the turbines - at least not until you prove how well the arctic coolers work.

Look at the picture above and expand those two nvidia boards by one slot each. There remains still one nice slot of separation between the boards, and the overhang is not a problem with the Spedo and its 8 expansion slots!! (So once again I may have to think about sending you a bunch of money and have you go Palit-shopping for me lol.)

. . . . .

So I'm really looking closely at this DFI motherboard, like I say priced very reasonably at motherboardpro.com - but I may need lots of help on handling the overclocking, LOL.

MEMORY TIMINGS SIMPLIFIED
The Hardware Canuck reviewer, 3oh6, in his review of 4 days ago, was discussing JUST the memory timing section, and he said he felt LET DOWN when he got to that part of the bios - he had been expecting the rich set of variables that he had come to know and to love (and which would probably have driven me to drink!) But later in the review as he summed up, he again mentioned his disappointment, but to provide a balanced review, he hastened to add that not only would newbies welcome the simplification of the memory timings section, but that also some of his colleagues had remarked on a positive note how much easier the overclocking was this time around, lol.

Regarding the other parts of the bios, for example the voltage settings, which I guess are normally abundant and very precise - THOSE are all still in place per usual, he reported.

Anyway, he was able to achieve some significant memory overclocking at what he said was the lowest stable voltage of any x58 board he had tested. And his digital multi-meter voltage readings showed that bios settings were very accurately reflected in board values along the whole range of settings.

Other than those great things he said about graphic card spacing, which I mentioned already, here are a few nuggets from his review:

That's a pretty damn nice review if you ask me, wouldn't you agree? So again - the real estate deal may actually close and I may have the money to do this. Do I dare to plunge ahead with this intimidating DFI?

Over there on motherboardpro.com, one reviewer reported: "User: loonym - outstanding board! I have a tpower and a smackover as well and neither can hold a candle to this overclocking monster. There are no better people to do business with than the great folks at mobo pro!! Thanks people "

What do you think Sam. "Overclocking monster!" ... and two Palits? Well we know that one of your LAN party buddies has the earlier DFI with the flame freezer attachment out the back, lol. He's not afraid! (And he's not afraid to carry it around in that gigantic case either!)

How's today's system stability?

Rich

 

From rumours I've heard, the HD5870X2 (or equivalent) may turn up slightly less than 12 months after the X2, so it could potentially be with us early summer.

Today's system stability leaves a lot to be desired due to driver issues, not due to the board. Had a huge stack of different errors with Cat 9.2 and its general bugginess (can't wait to ditch it for 9.3, hoping it's better), and of course 9.1 is unusable as it will crash when a game tries to access a hard disk after more than about 20 minutes of gameplay.

On the brighter side, here's some HAF sexiness:




A relatively nice case to work with, certainly far roomier than the NZXT. Still not overly impressed with Coolermaster's optical drive system that only attaches to one side of a drive - that's a real weak point for vibrations and insecurity, but other than that, very nice. Stock fans are Coolermaster through and through, very little noise, but even less airflow. The 230s aren't too bad, but the 140 is pretty dire really, and will be changed with reasonable haste. As you see, the side 230 has already ben replaced by the four 120mm Nexuses I own. I'll need to get more self-tapping screws to fill the other 120mm fan slots at the top and bottom. Turns out I can add a 120 as well as the 230 at the top, so I may well keep the top one.

 

Dude the HAF kicks so much ass. If nothing better comes along im putting that in my next build.

Oh and Sam you sit like a girl

 

Well booze is obviously hitting the sauce big time tonight LOL!

Is he talking about the green jacket surrounded by Mountain Dew picture. Never mind, he's drunk!

Speaking of girls, Boozer, are you still messin around with the cousins or did you guys get going with the BOAT CLUB!!

That HAF is AWESOME!

I love that picture with the FOUR 120s - that's just what I diagrammed - now I know how it's going to look - BITCHIN!

(excuse the surfer talk but remember where me and russ are from - so cali! - I've got russ on the brain - did he send you those two atos movies?)

Really nice work, Sam!!

By the way, Amazon has the Palit for $525 when it's in stock. I was all excited, but it finally occured to me that there is no way I'm going to be off the headphones for the next year or two. I'm perfectly happy with the Medusa 5.1s, and I'm here in the trailer office where I don't really don't have room for a nice surround sound system like you have.

(Funny, though, on my business desktop at the other end of the trailer, I do have a little sound system like Jeff - two altecs and a good woofer - and for the first time in a month I was playing one of russ' organ songs while checking my email - and when I hit his YouTube links to those American Theater Organ Society videos taking you through the whole history of theater organs -- pretty interesting stuff actually, I remember those really gorgeous movie theaters that my grandmother used to take me to in downtown LA as a kid -- I had to go find the other wav file and turn it off. Two organs fighting it out wasn't a good sound mix, lol!)

And - like you say - next gen is coming maybe within 6 months. So for economy, my new thought is to just do what you did and pick up the cheapest turbines I can find - maybe some ebay specials.

I just got an email from the negotiators - the buyer's lender is wanting a couple days extension on the bank foreclosure deadline to finish getting the short sale loan put together - it's 60% that the deal will close and I'll have the money for the new build so keep your fingers crossed, haha.

Game day tomorrow!

Rich

 

Drunk on Mountain Dew? :O

Haha good luck with the deal. I agree I don't see much to be gained using the Palit over the other cards really, quietness comes after performance for most people. $525 is a lot for an X2, newegg sell the Sapphire I have for $400 with a $10 rebate to knock it down to $390, and the Powercolor is the same but with a bigger $20 rebate.

Interestingly, factoring VAT and exchange rate, the X2s are the same price here, but the XFX and Powercolor are switched - the XFX is the cheapest, at £327, or $399.

 

Mountain Dew is pretty good. I have a can of it right now

Only because of the processor bottleneck I'd think. 2 HD4870 512MBs get like 10-15% lower FPS in 8x Slots. I tried it on my 780G board with the Phenom in at stock. It uses 8x Crossfire. Compared to my 790FX board at stock it is a bit slower. Some games are affected by it worse than others. Crysis doesn't respond well and gets about 20% lower FPS. Other games, like FEAR 2 and Left 4 Dead, don't even bat an eye at it. But I suppose your results can vary.

It's more about the quality of the builds. All the guys in my area have never even given a thought to cable management, airflow, or component selection. That E6600 with the SLI 8800s is the only other nice looking build. It stresses me out to see all the awesome PCs in such disarray XD

The HAF looks f***ing awesome. I like the entire case layout. That can't be yours as it's using an Evga board But the cable management is awesome in that case. I've always liked Cooler Master's drive bays. They are sweet. It looks like it has all the cable routing holes pre-cut. I had to do that myself on the Armor XD

BTW did you guys see that XFX is making ATi cards now? A couple other previously exclusive companies are doing new cards too. Wtf is up with that?

 

Haha, a 3.65Ghz Q9550 being a processor bottleneck. To be honest, I think you're right, but outside Crysis (which we know whores the CPU) the fps is relatively high, especially when details are lowered.
The pictures I've just posted are my system, no EVGA board in there, it's a Maximus II Formula, but agreed, the cable management isn't quite to the standard of the EVGA system.

XFX cards have been out for a month or two, was tracking that since I first heard the rumours last year. Very pleased, XFX are a good company. I think with the rise of ATI in the graphics department other manufacturers are moving over. Palit and Gainward have already done so, XFX have followed suit. nVidia's only patriots worth keeping these days are EVGA and BFG.

Interesting note, moving from the NZXT to the HAF has dropped my GPU idle temperatures by a full 20 degrees if I have the main fans at full speed. :O - They aren't especially noisy either, the worst one (the front) is probably 27dB tops.

 

Oh holy shit, that's YOUR HAF!!!

Haha see I told you you should get it. Finally listened. Are you gonna paint over the logo? haha

 

Not for the moment, I'll make a hash of it and it'll look worse. I'll leave it alone for the moment... I really like the case, it even sounds nice....

 

Yes, lovely case Sam. And if it "sounds nice" nothing more needs to be said - we all know that you have the most sensitive ears at After Dawn, haha.

And I see that Boozer just woke up out of his drunken stupor and realized that you weren't talking theoretically but that you were posting pictures from your own room! Hahahaha.

What!?!! Lowered the gpu idle temp BY 20 DEGREES!! Holy shit - now I'm seriously jealous. Do you think I'll be able to get that kind of airflow with the modded fans I had diagrammed on my - cough - SPEDO?

Changing the subject - Man!! JEFF JEFF JEFF!! (Another mountain dew junkie!) You're the testing expert!!!

You're actually saying that you have two different AMD boards, the 780 and the 790, and they are quite comparable, except for the 8x versus 16x for crossfire? And you were running the same phenom II chip in both?

If your answers are Yes Yes Yes, then I cannot help but be quite impressed. A real-world empirical test showing significant fps impact! That friggin settles that - good job Estuansis! For the future, we'll just have to defer to you and your testing laboratory in regard to any other questions of that nature. LOL

But seriously, I find that fascinating that you were able to pick up a quite noticeable drop in performance - we were expecting to see something - but as you pointed out, Sam's chip is just too damn slow! Hahahaha.

Anyway, if the deal ever closes, and I jump from 2005 technology to become the nehalem guinea pig for us here, like Shaff suggested about 6 months ago, I am wondering if I am going to be able to get the 920 to 4 ghz on that DFI board, assuming I can muddle through the bios without setting everything on fire. And from what I have read, no sense spending $350 more on a 940 when I can get a 920 for $229 at Microcenter - some of the forum guys say it is EXACTLY the same damn chip - one just needs to overclock the crap out of it - and they say it overclocks very well.

(Sounds like the nehalem version of the good old overclocker Q6600. Speaking of that - Boozer told everybody to get that chip when you guys were still thinking core 2 duo - then he told everybody to get the HAF. Why do we always follow Boozer's advice - about a year late? Hahahaha.)

Back on the 940 versus 920, I did read, on the other hand, where the Biostar claims it has the overclocking record on the 940 at 4.8 ghz. Since it starts out a little faster, one WOULD assume you could get it to a faster overclock - otherwise, really, why pay all that extra dough? And it is still quite pricey - $350 is a serious amount more change from a 920 to a 940. Of course, the results from your testing laboratory, Jeff, are now in, and the Q9550 is the bottleneck for 775!

So maybe the 940 is worth it. Does anybody think it would be worth it to spring for the 940? Sam you swapped out the Q6600 to get your Q9550 which you have fairly close to 4ghz, and you DID get performance improvement. What's your feeling on that subject? Did it turn out to be a better overclocker than the Q6600 - it has more cache too doesn't it?

Another question, they were testing some really high performance Dominators on that H8 DFI board over at Hardward Canucks. For a guy like me who wants to stay around the $200 price tag which is still a fortune compared to 775, what speed Dominators make sense - and is that 3 x 2gb for the 1366 instead of 2 x 2? (....although the Hardware Canuck's review couldn't tell any difference from 6 gigs to 4 gigs.)

Rich

 

Yah...I dont believe i'll need a case for quite a while indeed!!! I'm really loving the HAF 932!

Man...I really want a new card! This 8600GT is pretty outdated when you think about it! My onboard video is ati 3300Chipset. Not sure if that would be any better! Though I think it definitely has bluray playback. Where the 8600 does not(I believe). Hmmm, think I just answered that question, LOL. But that will be outdated before too long, probably already is! But I also want a WD raptor! And I only have 250$ to spend! Is it possible to buy a card better than the 3300, and a raptor while maintaining that price?

 

Well, the i7 940 is 10% faster than the 920 in clock speed. The Q9550 and Q9650 are less than 10% apart and used to be substantially different in price (£250 vs £400). The Q9650 has now plummeted to £273 however, not far off what I paid for the Q9550 E0 off ebay, but the extreme remains expensive.
The 920/940 for i7 are much the same, better clock speed but same chip, and again, the 940 is just under double the cost of the 920 (£476 vs £246).
If i7 overclocks are FSB limited by board though, the overclocking on the 940 will obviously be better by 10%. Consider that if the Gigabyte Extreme can get the i7 920 reliably to 4Ghz, with enough voltage, the same board should reliably get the 940 to 4.4Ghz. If the Biostar is better at overclocking than the Gigabyte, it would make sense that it could potentially reach such a sped, but I dread to think what core voltage was being used. That is serious water-cooling-only territory. My mate Jon has an i7 940 and the Gigabyte Extreme, and getting that to 4Ghz pushes 70C load on his tower cooler (He uses a Noctua)
Ultimately though, $350 is a hell of a lot of money to blow on a mior overclocking increase. Unless this real-estate deal sees you richer than ever, you may as well be realistic and save that money for other potential goodies later down the line.
It would surprise me to find no performance gain from triple channel to dual channel memory with an i7, as their best area is video encodes, which are what respond best to memory bandwidth. In games though, you're looking at the same as with 775. I can't tell difference between 700 and 950mhz memory.

The HD3300 is not better than the 8600GT trust me, integrated video is still pretty abysmal at games.
It is perfectly doable to get a raptor and a better graphics card all-in for $250, if after rebates.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136296
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102822
This deal is $235 after the rebates, $270 before them.
The HD4830 is slightly better than the 9800GT, which means it beats the 8800GT, 8800GS, 8800GSO, 9600GT, 9500GT, 8600GTS, 8600GT...

 

Thanks for your reply sam You just inspired me! Now im gonna look even deeper LOL

 

Hmmm...What would you do? Newegg has a deal for the regular raptors(74gb)! Buy two save 40$(159.99)shipped! Or buy ONE of the Veloci's at what I hear are UP TO 35% quicker for a little more. I say a little more because I dont count Mail in rebates. I dont trust them, from all the negative reviews ive heard about them. 179.99!(159.99 After 20$ MIR)
Would appreciate a quick response. A deal like this wont last long. But I know were all busy at times

 

Velociraptors are much quicker, much cooler, much quieter and have twice as much storage. Your call.

 

Ahhh...but what about RAID 0? Have you ever toyed with a raid config?

 

Yes, and I found it utterly benefitless. The situation is worse for Raptors, as RAID 0 harms access time, which is the only advantage the older Raptors have over 7200rpm drives (The Caviar Black and Samsung F1 drives are faster in MB/s, but take longer to access files. RAID only improves MB/s). The one occasion when RAID works is with SSDs, as they're completely useless without it.

 

Thank you sir. I believe you just sold me! However, Im gonna have to put off the GPU Which is fine and good. Perhaps in a few weeks, the 4870 will be down enough to consider. The one im looking at is 179.99 I wouldnt mind seeing it drop to 149.99 before I bite the bullet LOL. Though im sure its worth the 180$ <----Drooling

I might even consider a 1gb version. Not sure. Like to read up on it a bit more. GPU's are still way out of my league LOL
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102810

 

What about 165, 155 after MIR?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161268

 

Not bad, Not bad What are your thoughts on HIS compared to Sapphire? They seem to be identical spec, simply different manufacturers.