The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Yeah, i.e. stuff outside HDTach...

 

links?

 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17269/7
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17269/8

 

Actually I have version 1.7 so I'm assuming it should be version 1.8. There's no advantage to having the latest BIOS is there? (I remember hearing not if the one you've got's working)

Orderd Crysis and an Xbox pad (PS3 drivers meant I had to F8 then pick allow unsigned drivers every time) and not a PSU which was probably a bad decision that's going to bite me in the arse.

I done a tiny OC (yuk-yuk) up to 207MHz FSB so that's @ 3.2GHz with no voltage change. Probably doesn't make any difference at all but its not doing any harm.
A weird thing is I swapped my Smart fan to 55C rather then the 40C it was at previously it was at about 53C and 3300RPM idle but now its at 57C 2800RPM while running FUEL how did that happen?

 

Haha the new AMD/ATi drivers kick ass. Lots of improvements for Crossfire performance. Noticeably so in Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. ~20% faster framerates

 

It's meant to be only for AMD CPUs, but 20% extra performance I don't really see how, I'll have to have a look myself. My Windows 7 install is on its last legs now, so no harm in one more risky driver update eh?

Drivers haven't hit the EU servers yet - will do it tomorrow when they're updated.

 

Have you asked/searched questions on windows7forums. I've not heard of such a bad experience. Although, as of late, I have had certain ethernet bugs. Weird kind of bugs. And I believe it to be driver related.

 

To be honest, the sound drivers are wrecked because Creative caught me using illegal ones and disabled them. The network is just a horrific bug with both Vista and 7 that doesn't seem due for fixing any time soon. Catalyst 9.7 is pretty damn dire for performance too, but I did wonder if a fresh reinstall would help there.

 

try the drivers for the LAN?

 

Keith, beautiful picture of the K9A2 Platinum board with four 4890s.


[reprinted without permission from keith]

............

No question, cooling would be a challenge - you're talking about getting rid of 800 watts of heat. But even the reference coolers are turbines blowing out the back. As Sam says, give it enough intake fresh air through some good side fans, and you're in business. My philosophy is you want positive internal case pressure at all times, top compartment and bottom, so as not to draw dust inside the case from all those turbines. It would be noisy - but that's where aftermarket coolers come in.

So with three of those, Sam, you're talking like 6 4870s.

Whew!! Could we rape crysis with the right Catalyst? For me with i7 do you still like the DFI Lanparty H8 for that with three hot 16x slots 2, 4 and 6? Or, if Catalyst, like for 9.8, is starting to favor the Phenom, maybe it makes sense to go in that direction instead of i7 - speaking strictly gaming.

Hey Jeff, with your Phenom II, you sound pretty jazzed about the Crysis improvements. When are you switching to 9.8 so you can tell us if it really works?

Rich

 

Haha sounds like you're letting it get out of hand XD

Yeah you probably need the reformat then. Maybe a mix of Windows problems and just plain messed drivers? Never had a single problem with Creative except that Vista still doesn't properly support surround. 7 does though I'm not sure what the difference is between the two. Don't they use the same universal software buffer sound architecture? Ah yeah forgot to mention I scored some Logitech X-530s like a month ago now

 

What the hell, I didn't say "jizzed" lol, I said "jazzed."

You're trying to get the boot again, hahahaha.

 

i corrected your mistake

 

it's not quite as much as 800 watts, but certainly a lot. The fact that you're limited to 8x bandwidth for quad cards is a downer.
I was considering three 5870s but after finding out you can't use three 16x bandwidth cards without an nf200 chip, I've decided two will have to suffice.
I am still #1ing the Biostar Tpower X58 board for i7.
Even for games, the i7 is still a better option if you're an overclocker, and let's face it, you're trying to overclock a p4 on a non-overclocking board, that's hardcore!

 

Got Warhead up to about 15fps in places at 2560x160 Enthusiast with 4xAA. Trouble is, since most of the game runs off the HDD, my disk just can't keep up with the transfer rates the game needs (150MB/s +) to run with the settings maxed out like that. If I eventually get an 80GB SSD I'll try putting Warhead on it and see how it goes.

The night intro to the original Crysis was better, around 25-35fps at max 4x AA. However, the HDD still can't keep up. Once nomad's chute failed, the game paused for around 45 seconds to load the next sequence. When he hit the water, it was about another 2 minute wait for the game to load the data. 75MB/s just isn't enough - to be frank, the only thing that can really run Crysis maxed out is a hardware RAID5 array.

 

Very interesting. So are you saying the 9.8 catalyst worked on your quad cf rig, just leaving you with a HDD transfer rate bottleneck? What game setting were you using - very high at 2560x1600 with 4xAA?

So back to Raid 5, what kind of transfer speeds can you get? Do you need 10k drives, or will 7200 work?

I have two Seagate 7200 rpm disks already for future sata - the smallest is 640, the new one is 750. I should pick up a couple more 750s - or wait until prices drop some more, and maybe get three more 750s. You need four disks, right? And you can lose one of the disks and not lose your data? Writing is slow (but for gaming who cares?) Do you need a special Raid card, or would a motherboard like the DFI H8 have Raid 5 built in - I think it does, right?

Hahahaha. Yes, hardcore Rich. LOL But for sure I'll be cranking up the d0 920 to 4ghz if I get the DFI.

The Biostar looks really nice, beautiful cooling!

It offers hot 16x slots 1 and 4 - the same kind of spacing the DFI gives on slots 2 and 6. But if you run three boards, you're getting 16x 16x and 4x, whereas on the DFI adding a board at slot 4, you're getting all three boards at 16x due to that extra chipset which supports 48 lanes.

As I say, the Biostar looks beautiful - why is it your number one i7 pick?

 

i dont think gamign at 2560 is worth the sh!t you put up with sam not to mention the money

 

Oh Shaff, you only say that ..... because it's true, lol.

Think IMMERSIVE. I repeat, Think IMMERSIVE.

I tried to find the trailer window to reduce the breeze which was a bit cool, and in the No Mercy final chapter safehouse, after we had all been killed again, I looked all around and couldn't find the goddamm window, lol! (Immersive plus I'm losing sleep and brain cells, haha.)

Sam is gorging on pixels.

He constantly faces challenges to run his stuff full-on.

Hey guys, Shaff, Sam, and all - in terms of the new challenge of transfer rates, and latency, I came across the Western Digital VelociRaptors. Man, they are pricey little suckers - 10,000 rpm, 2.5" in ice-packs to fit a 3.5" bay, 3ms nominal latency, compared to 4.16 latency on the seagates, and $220 price tag.

I guess I could put two of these on Raid 0, giving me 600gigs, and then clone backup to one of the seagate satas from time to time, in case I lose a veloci-raptor. I read somebody talking about what kind of Raid controller you have, and whether it is a one lane pci-e controller, which will be limited to 256mb/sec transfer speed. I think the DFI provides an on-chip Raid controller for two Raid devices - I'll have to go back and read the hardware cannucks review.

Sam you said Raid 5, 4 disks with redundancy, but Raid 0 with two striped disks to hold the cost down is just as fast, am I correct? I'm speaking strictly for gaming reads.

 

id say take the 600 to upgrade ur mobo/cpu/ram/gpu