The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

My mobo has the optical out. Im not sure where my cord is LOL!

 

Mine never came with one lol.

 

I bought my optical cord a while back to hook from my moms dvd player to here tv for, NO DOUBT better audio than she was getting. Well...I never hooked it up LOL! Now im not sure where I put it.

 

Nothing I own will actually take it in PS2/PS3/PC output it but they have nowhere to send it.

We only have 1 MINI-HiFi these days and my dad bought it years ago because he was told Mini-Disk would be the next big thing. It wasn't obviusly. I think that has an Optical In but its got crap-ass speakers.

Anyways back on topic FUEL isn't panning out to be that bad a debug mode scene of people taking advantage of the launch of a non-final version is really starting to kick off.

 

That is a 3.5mm stereo jack to two phono adapter (male to male).

My six year old hifi is still being used as the sound from the games consoles (360, PS2, gamecube) and TV in the living room here, but the CD player is dead, the tray loader mechanism doesn't work any more. Still, outlasted my friend's turntable midi system.

 

Currently my PC speakers are in the Earphone Port of my TV and everything feeds into TV.

 

6Yrs eh. Another die hard LOL! Thanks for the info

 

Ditto, outside the PC area.

The directly interfaced PC (main work PC and gaming PC but not file server) setup is currently fed as follows:

Linksys AM200 Modem -> Linksys WRT54GL Router (Tomato firmware) -> Netgear GS608 Downstairs switch -> PCs

The two systems share the same keyboard, mouse, microphone and speakers (or would if the USB drivers in vista were working, I'm hoping to fix that with win7) and all run via an Aten CS1782 Switch:

A three keypress combination seemlessly switches all I/O from one PC to the other.

The file server is networked via the switch and accessed via Windows Remote Desktop.

 

I use a similar I/O switch to that. My dual core is hooked directly to the 22" and the 2 Quad core PCs are hooked to the switcher. and through that the 24". 2 Keyboards and 2 mice ATM.

 

Back to an all-Gigabyte fleet now, with an X48-DS4 in my gaming PC. So far so good, no sign of the crashes the Maximus exhibited. Can only get the CPU as far as 450x8.5, but that's only as far as I had it set on the Maximus anyway, and I'm still using the F1 BIOS that makes the CPU show up as a Pentium 3... haha. £110 with a free 4GB flash MP3 player from intel, not a bad deal. It's £15 less than I paid for my X38-DS4 in April 2008, and £40 less than the Maximus II Formula is worth, and that's only a P45...

 

I somehow figured a Gigabyte board would end up going back in your system. My X38 DS4 has never had problems doing Crossfire and I can't see why an X48 board would be any different. Funny that the X48 DS4 ended up having better cooling eh? Sometimes shooting for the highest end gear possible isn't always the best choice. Good luck on the DS4 board. I might recommend a re-application of Arctic Silver if temps are really a concern, but I doubt they will be. The HAF 932 is quite capable of keeping that board cool.

 

Well, there are very few options for X48. It's either Asus, Gigabyte or DFI, that seems to be it. Asus were out for reasons I already explained. That left DFI or Gigabyte. The DFIs have had issues with ES graphics cards before so that was a risky choice. The gigabyte, apart from being familiar territory, was also £25 cheaper. I was very nervous about getting a Gigabyte board after the problems the others had exhibited, but so far it's performed very well. I considered TIM replacement for the CPU and board but it looks like it isn't necessary. Upping the NB voltage actually lowers the temps, meaning that Auto voltage must be really high for these boards. Despite this, you don't tend to hear of any chipset failures, and I've certainly not had any with them. It isn't just the case helping though, at +0.25V MCH the DS5 I had would cut the PCIe bus off even before it left the BIOS, sometimes so quickly you couldn't get into the BIOS and change it back fast enough. On this board it's been running for hours and it hasn't happened yet. Ultimately, I hate to sound like such a fanboy (and had Biostar made an X48 board for a reasonable price, that's probably what I would have bought instead) but to me, there was only ever one brand to buy.

Just tested L4D briefly on the first level of Blood Harvest, got a solid 140-220fps throughout, looking good. (2560x1600 max, 4xAA)

 

Well as you know I've had a great personal experience with my DFI board. It was the best deal at the time and I have no regrets. But on the whole I also agree that Gigabyte are far and above the best. I mean that's their whole point is that their boards are dependable and durable. I'm a far ways off from dumping my X38

Anyways good luck with quad crossfire. I really hope the DS4 works out for you.

 

Having seen a few in action I really like them, and would have been more than happy to settle for one if it weren't for Anthony's experience with my old engineering sample HD4870 and his P45-T2Rs. BSODs and crashes a-go-go. Swapping his card with James' system (965P-DS3), no problems either way, the gigabyte worked fine with the ES card and the DFI worked fine with the retail card, I forget which brand it was. Ultimately he grabbed one of those uber-cheap 192 core GTX260s back before the prices of all those GPUs crashed (i.e. when 512MB HD4870s were about £130 and HD4870 1GBs were about £160, he got the 260 for about £120, which was a pretty good deal and he's happy with it at least). I'm not sure it's really sufficient to run his HP L3065, but there you go. He's more a C&C Generals and Starcraft player than an FPS-eating graphics enthusiast.

Thanks for the well-wishes, I'm already liking the board even though it can't overclock for nowt because it's on its stock BIOS. Well, not truly fair, I've got it at 400x8.5 (3.4Ghz) at the moment. It runs really well and after all the stability issues I had with the Asus, I'm past caring about the extra mhz, I'll maybe try tweaking a little while later. Right now I'm basking in the comfort of my stable quad crossfire system. It's only taken what, 6 months? lmao

 

Yeah to each his own. I'm aware that a lot of DFI boards are picky with certain components. Namely mine loses most of its OC ability with 4 sticks of RAM in. I can still OC the same but the same settings are never quite stable. All runs fine gbut it won't pass Orthos. Fail on Core 3 after about 5 hours. I know others have had worse issues but mine is fine with Crossfire and with my Creative sound card.

AFAIK the only big advantage to the X48-DS5 is the tons of USB ports. The DS4 has gotten rave reviews though and is one of the more popular LGA775 boards for Crossfire. Also AFAIK ALL Gigabyte boards have dual BIOS chips so you can re-flash to the original if it fails. I strongly suggest you try a BIOS update and see what it can really do. The extra megahertz can make a big difference seeing as your current GPUs are CPU bound with anything but a heavily clocked i7.

 

The X48-DS4 and X48-DS5 have identical I/O to my knowledge, I think the only difference is the cooling. Both have Dual LAN and 8 rear USB ports with two headers.

 

At least DiRT 2 shouldn't have as many graphics bugs as FUEL:

 

LOL, heres a little something I cooked up a few minutes ago. I was playing Left 4 dead, and realized what better way to practice on "Adobe Fireworks" than some left 4 dead imagery! Yes, I love this game LOL!

 

Ah embedded gifs, the least reliable image upload system ever!

 

I knew it. Owning one of those "starfleet warp cores" has gone to your head!!

Anyway, Keith talking about his Logitech speakers, reminded me of my Logitech situation right now regarding a mouse they are replacing for me. So, changing subjects, I'm thinking of getting a real mouse. Meaning like spending $50 or $60 and getting something really decent. Maybe Logitech, or maybe Steel Series. Or what do you guys recommend?

I started using my little laptop Logitech V220 ($28 - bought 3 so far for 3 different laptops - usb wireless optical 1000 dpi mouse) for Left 4 Dead just for kicks - and it is SOOOO much better than my cheap wired microsoft clone mouse, I can't believe it! It fits my hand perfectly, and it is totally responsive, no hiccups at all with the wireless usb.

Anyway, the purpose of the little story: I know you, Sam, like wired mice. I absolutely hate the wire. When I switched back to the wired mouse the other night, after the disabling of the team-mate occurred (my friendly fire is way down - on expert with some really good players last night, I had the lowest friendly fire of only 1 incident, versus 5 for a great player named Hail Bob!, when the game closed out and we all escaped on the boat - handling the finale upstairs btw - not on any of the two rocks) the "back-push" of the wire was driving me nuts.

So, Sam, are you still against wireless instead of wired? And what does anybody else think? And how about laser versus optical? I can't imagine anything tracking better than this optical at 1000 dpi. Crouched down, I can place my cursor right on a zombie's head and blow it off at 100 yards, but I know laser has its fanatics who swear by it.

What mouse should I get, guys?

Finally congrats Sam on stable quad cf - I note you're back on gigabyte and all is stable. Very good! Jeff is recommending a second bios with more oc to reduce cpu bottlenecking, but I certainly see why you're in no hurry to stress things out after the headaches you went through before. I second his motion - good luck on continued success with the DS4.

Rich