The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

And so would faster cores. I was tempted, but my stock Q9550 and 4.1Ghz i5 750 do about as much encoding as each other - the i5 is literally double the speed of the Core 2. Considering the Q9550 and X4 955 are about equal, I reckon the i5 750 would still outdo the X6, and that's negating sandy bridge.
Still, an X6 is the easiest and cheapest 'drop in' upgrade, and I can totally understand that.

 

It certainly is for me. I understand and appreciate Intel's position of power I hope that AMD smacks them back like an upstart kid! LOL! I mean no disrespect here. It would obviously cause intel to work even harder, thereby releasing more competitive products

The consumer almost always wins

 

Indeed, the best time for the consumer in that regard was during the height of competition in the early days of the Core 2 Duo, when the performance that cost £250 a mere 6 months before could suddenly be obtained for less than £150 - the Athlon64 X2 range was slowly expanded on AM2 to try and compensate, but the hammer kept coming down with the E4 series released shortly afterwards allowing people to get in on the Core 2 Duo sensation for around £100 - AMD prices fell accordingly and suddenly you could get those previous £250 CPUs for less than a third of the initial cost. Since then things have progressed a little slower, with the only other notable occasion being the drops in the Phenom II X4's price after the release of the Core i7.
Thinking back to the best you could get in a given year, things really changed more then than they have recently.

 

I don't suppose it's possible to update the bios while a non compatible processor is hooked up? :S

I suppose it's possible, that my bios is fine, but the overclocking settings are mucking things up. Gonna try to reset the CMOS before putting the 965 back in. I'm not sure if my Bios is F2 or F3. It needs to be F3!

 

You can't update the BIOS with a unsupported CPU.

That's your best bet, reset the board and then update the BIOS prior to getting your new cpu. Also keep everything stock setting before you put the new cpu in. That should make the upgrade less painful, hopefully.

 

Yah, I pretty much new my old processor would have to go back in. Done. Apparently it IS BIOS vers. F2. I've never updated a bios from flash or internet before. Only floppy. Wish me luck LOL! :S

 

Pretty painless. I updated from file, it finished in about 30 sec. F3 bios is in, and now the 1090t will finally make its debut LOL!!!

 

Good job!

 

Eh, it was nothing LOL! I seem to have a new fan noise though :S

Nice to see 6 cores running in task manager xD

Forgot the stock voltage was so high! It almost scared me! LOL! I don't think I'll overclock this one much. Probably only 3.7Ghz, just like the 965.

 

3.8Ghz seems to be stable via Prime95. X264 will be the true test though. As some of you know, there is no other test that equals it. Per core performance seems to be VERY close via Super pi. Though the 965 was only at 3.7Ghz. My guess is the Ram or northbridge isn't at the right settings. Though I think they're exactly where they used to be.

CPU never exceeded 41C in nearly 20 min. Northbridge however reached 54C. I really don't like that... The CPU temp dropped VERY fast when I stopped the torture test. The northbridge dropped fairly quickly, but I'd really like to do something for the northbridge.

Clearly the Xigmatek Mega Killer is better than I imagined. I'm getting better temps than I ever did on the 965.

 

Yeah you have to be careful of auto volts, especially with Gigabyte boards. I forget which one it was, but one of my Gigabyte boards on auto voltage put my Q9550 at 1.6V if I even overclocked it as little as 100mhz. Needless to say that got removed immediately - I couldn't figure out why the CPU suddenly idled at 65ºC!

 

I will admit to liking the way the usage meters bounce using 8 cores when i run x264 with Handbrake. I lately have been encoding while also using CPU cycles for BOINC and the SETI project. The i7 950 doesnt break a sweat but i don't OC it anymore either.
When new, i tested to see what i could get away with using stock cooling and i found out not much. At stock speeds, it got hotter than i was comfortable with encoding with 8 cores, let alone an OC. Now i have better cooling, and am not afraid to make it do 8 cores full for hours so i don't care to push it further being this machine does all my encoding, and serves media to 4-5 devices in house, and acts as a DAW for mixing electronic drums, and runs the VM's i use for a networking/operations management classes i'm taking, etc. so on and on...

 

Yeah 130W CPUs like the i7 950 don't overclock far on stock cooling needless to say

 

Absolutely. But the scientific process, with proper testing methods and all, call for a before and after test. That and i thought i had an extra cooler, remembered after the fact i sold it to a friend, and had nothing extra when i built the machine. I didn't wait for replacements, and built using the stock cooler, then was too lazy to change it until i really needed to.

 

Another good test is Angry Birds believe it or not. I've run Prime on an OC'd rig and it pass with flying colors then to run the original Angry Birds just to have her crash. You, (I), wouldn't think that game would be intensive enough to make a difference but it does and unlike Prime it only takes a few seconds before you know.

I definitely want to move up to a 8 or 12 core and will soon.

Way to go Kev,
Stevo

 

LOL! I've had Prime 95 pass, and X264, only to have Dvd Rebuilder have a problem. As well as a program which won't be named. It wasn't the northbridge, and it wasn't the CPU though. Stupid Memory problem. Which thankfully I remembered when setting it this time

 

Oman7,
I would bet the farm that the 54C is the CPU temp, not the Northbridge. For one, 54C is just about right temp to be seeing for the CPU, as would be the 41C for the Northbridge. A lot of 700 series boards had difficulty getting the temps right between the CPU & the NB. If you are going to spend the money on a 1090t, spend the money for one of these motherboards that are on sale for $123.88!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514

2X 16X SLI slots, with your two Dual video cards, awesome!

Check out this case! Tell me what you think!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...139008&RandomID=33461173556713720120923094635

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I thought that first too when I read his post Russ, but the fact that the CPU temp drops instantly when the load is removed suggests otherwise - temperatures change far more slowly for the northbridge than the CPU. I'd try and check that, as that is a very common issue. It's not just an AMD 700 series issue - SpeedFan reads the temps the wrong way round on my P55 board as well, the CPU is Temp3.

Cases will always be a personal thing, but Corsair do certainly make very nice ones. By the looks of it you've finally found one that's also reasonably priced.

 

I'm not big on mid tower cases, but that one seems agreeable.

I've been under the impression, that my build of Everest gets the NB/CPU temps backward. Given the Mainboard/NB temp drops rapidly after stopping stress test, and there's no advanced cooling on the NB, I'm forced to believe they are in fact backwards.

In any case, I'm not too concerned at the current Overclock. 54C is still within tolerance. When encoding, I'll be sure the exhaust is set higher than usual. It does seem to help. I have 3 fans exhausting. 2 on the Mega killer, and the actual exhaust fan. All three are ran through the Scythe fan controller I carefully set their RPM's so that the exhaust is able to keep up with the pre exhaust fans

The bios seems to confirm my beliefs. The System temperature is always higher than the CPU

 

Nice case but too expensive considering there is no PS with it for that price!