Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

My good God! I thought I’d drop back and see what happened on this post after being away for a while, I think I left it at pg. 17 of 26! I blame Harvard, huge posts, good ones tho (not that I’ve read the whole lot – you could turn this thread into a book and they’d split it into volumes!)
Thought I’d just update on progress with my system now I’ve finally stabilised everything. Cpu (E6320 1.86ghz) is running quite happily at 2.07ghz (295 fsb), I have had it at 2.11 but my m/b hits it’s fsb wall at 302mhz without pencil modding resistors or attacking it with a soldering iron. I’m quite happy at 2.07 anyway, I’ve no desire to cook the cheap vrm’s on the m/b either!
Fiddling with airflow (mainly hardisks/front fan placement) I now run the x1950 at speeds between 675/702 and up to 730/830 and the core/pcb average load temps are 55/41c. I did put vrm sinks on the back of the card and one of the spare ramsinks from the HR03 on the bridge chip though.
Finally what’ve I got? Well 3dmark @ 2.07, 722/801 and I get 5848, but I wish I could play DiRT with all candy at 1280x1024. I can play high settings with medium shadows at 1280x1024 OR all high settings at 1024x768 with reasonable 25-35 frame rates. A trade off between sharpness and effects detail I wish I didn’t have to make, but then I guess that’s the difference between a £300 upgrade and a £700 one.
Anyway I’m happy for the meanwhile. I find it interesting how everyone’s just got their X1950’s and they’re dreaming up their new system! Don’t think I’ll be able to afford that for some time but I think I’ll deffo be waiting for mainstream PCI-E v2 and the second gen dx10’s before I spend anymore money! (or at least that’s what I’m gonna tell myself!)
So have you guys got round to that BF2 sessh yet?

 

Haha, neither, it's Abuzar.

 

Considering not only am I not entirely satisfied with my motherboard, I haven't even worked hard to find it's max overclock, I find it disturbing a lower clocked processor than yours is running clocked 930mhz higher! That board really is suck, you can get so much more out of a 6320!
5848 3dmarks? Not bad at all! In fact that's worrying because your CPU's only 2/3 the speed of mine, your GPU can only be a couple of hundred marks off mine! Finally we got there! Nice one!

 

I doubt asrock boards are made for OCing.

 

They aren't, they're made to be cheap.

 

Yeah, my motherboard’s like the budgie – cheap. But it does the job for the interim, and I can take the cpu and ram with me into a new board with pcie gfx card, which means I suppose it’s sort of half done it’s job as it is meant to be a halfway board. I was just a little disappointed with the o/c. I reasoned that putting the 6320 and DDR667 together should easily let me hit speeds of 2.5ghz, and it probably would – infact it would probably go a lot faster in a decent board. My ASRock is rated as maxing 340 Fsb, but in reality they can’t achieve above 300 with C2Ds fitted.
For anyone who’s interested head over to VRforums and they have a guide that will let you get a 4CoreDual mobo up to 315 with a pencil mod but i also read that 3dmark scores start coming down after you clock near-to and over the wall (after modding) I’d rather just sell the 1950 and the mobo when I can afford new bits – until then I’m happy as is! Sam, I can’t tell you exact scores (at work) but I think scores are approx: SM2 2100s SM3 2400s CPU 1800s

 

So I would have to buy 2 nvidia cards to take full advantage of the ASUS P5W DH DELUXE? I really want the 2900XT, actully, that card is real good and I should never need to do cross fire, and if I do I would go with like 2 7950s or 2 8800gts 320 megs. I want the 2900 because it has 1GB of ram, and it is tide with the 8800GTX, and its cheaper!

So it is confirmed that I can put one (1) 2900XT in the ASUS P5W DH DELUXE which is SLi and thats it? Right?

 

the P5W DH isn't SLI, but you can put a 2900XT in it.

 

I'm going to have to disagree... It is this:



It has to PCI-e 16x slots, for 2 graphic cards... If im wrong then does that mean you can put a 2900 and a 8800gtx in there?!?

 

One other thing I must add.

You said you cant do cross fire with the P5W DH Deluxe? Look here: http://www.hardware.info/productdb/bGNkapiUmJLK/viewproduct/ASUS_P5W_DH_Deluxe/

The list says that you can do cross fire, but not SLi.

 

Waymon(can I call you Ray now?), you could put both those cards in but I think only one of them would work.

 

Look at what I wrote carefully, from the picture you see it has two 16x slots. It is not SLi though. I wasn't wrong about saying you can put a 2900 in it, I just omitted crossfire. You will not be able to run two different graphics cards at the same time.

 

Did you go to that site I pointed out to you though?

It has a check next to ATi crossfire compatable row, which means it can do that. Just look at the link: http://www.hardware.info/productdb/bGNkapiUmJLK/viewproduct/ASUS_P5W_DH_Deluxe/

If you still disagree, can you explain why you wont be able to do crossfire? Could you put a 2900XT and a x1950xtx in there? Is that what that means?

 

I didn't say it wouldn't be able to do crossfire, it can. Again, read what I wrote carefully, I didn't say one way or the other, I couldn't remember at the time, but you're right.

 

So I can put 2 2900s if I wanted to in it (which I wont, its waaayy to expensive)?

Btw, what do you think of the 2900XT 1GB? I think this is my final list for the upgrade:

Western Digital Raptor X 150GB 10,000rpm


OCZ ATI CrossFire 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)


ASUS P5W DH DELUXE/WIFI-AP LGA 775 Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard


Windows Vista Ultimate 32bitt


Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache


DIAMOND 2900XT1GPE Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB 512-bit GDDR4 PCI Express x16

 

waymon
sammorris
dinc
kardson
maccerm
abuzar 1

Hey guys! Raymond (waymon) by the way, per Abuzar's question, do you also go by Ray?

(C'mon Abuzar, is that your first name or were you just funnin' Sam?)

BTW Raymond, people are wondering about the big matchup. But where the hell did Travis (kardson) disappear to? He had all that major dentistry done, which would slow down anybody. Travis, are you okay, dude, come on back!

Raymond that is a kick-ass web site you found!

...
From the check mark, it says, yes, crossfire. When I followed the arrow, I got to this page:

hardware info web site

...

which is where you must have put in the search criteria to get the list of boards.

...

Very nice find Raymond!

Rich

 

Waymon

Raymond, nice pictures dude! Hey, don't you want DDR3 memory. I thought that was one of the big advantages of the p35 chipset, support for faster DDR3 main memory?

Rich

 

Also, out of curiousity, what's your case (staying with the 900?) and what is your cpu cooling solutions going to be?

 

BTW, Coolit makes a little $25 ram fan for those sticks - snaps over the things - supposed to work good.

 

Well I just googled "ASUS P5W Deluxe 2900XT" and got to that site, its in german though... Or some of it anyways.

As for the matchup, Im ready to go, but we need kardson back. Btw I dont care if you call me ray or raymond, people in school call me both, so I dont mind.

As for the GDDR3 question, do you mean that for the ram or the video card memory? I dont really want to go over 1500 dollars, and that setup just meets my budget on newegg. I am also going to keep the 900, since I got it like a week and I love it.

As for the CPU cooling, I think I might stay with the stock cooler and see how far I can get with overclocking. OR, if my Zalman cooler will fit socket 775, then I'll definetly use that, but I have no clue if it will or wont fit.