Support NeoGAF

[Fredescu]

explain to me just how bad of a buy it is.

OEM machines are completely an unknown quantity. They make these machines to be as cheap as possible which can often mean cutting corners on standards. This means you might have trouble upgrading the PSU and video card as you plan to. On top of that, they will be using the cheapest possible motherboard, and the processor is the slowest possible quad core. For the same price you can build a better system.

especially considering that i've explained what i think assembling a PC from scratch is worth to me

You don't have to build it yourself. I know NCIX US will let you choose your parts and then build and it test it for ~$50 and ship it to you assembled.

people like shit that is easy. fuck, that's why consoles exist in the first place. not everyone wants to build their own gaming machine. in fact, the vast majority of gamers don't want to build their own gaming machine. sorry?

Literally the only solution is to spend way more than you need to on a machine that may or may not do the job.

 

[opticalmace]

explain to me just how bad of a buy it is.

especially considering that i've explained what i think assembling a PC from scratch is worth to me. seriously, you wonder why people don't adopt PC gaming as a true standard, yet you just laugh in the face of someone who doesn't want to take advantage of $130 dollars off a decent piece of hardware and become part of the "master race".

i don't take that moniker seriously, i just want to play some fucking games.

The CPU is worth $100, Win 7 $100, Ram and HDD (it doesn't even say what manufacturer/model) maybe another $100 or so. Then you get some bits (case psu shitty vid card etc) but they're all crappy and you'd have to upgrade most of them anyway.

At $300 it would be a good deal, but at $400 it's not worth it if your goal is to game.

 

[Jeramii]

GUYS (and maybe girls)!!! I ordered it!

only thing that sucks, but i'm not going to complain to much about is the fact new eggs credit card will only ship to your billing address.... i do all my billing through my parents house (because i'm a college student and move around when i find better deals). so its shipping 4 hours away from where I live.

however. I guess I can't complain because that is one minor step to protect from fraud (i suppose).

total was just around $1100

 

[·feist·]

*adds another to the ignore list*

yeah ima ask for advice and ignore it.

These threads are something else, sometimes...



20 pics of the Asus TUF Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ Bulldozer motherboard

 

[Baller. PhD]

people like shit that is easy. fuck, that's why consoles exist in the first place. not everyone wants to build their own gaming machine. in fact, the vast majority of gamers don't want to build their own gaming machine. sorry?

Peasant.

Yes.
eSATAp is a hybrid of standard eSATA and USB's ability to power devices. As long as the device is a low power eSATA one (like the pic below), or, better yet, has an eSATAp port, you're good.

You can buy an eSATAp cable from Newegg, Amazon, etc.

Thank you good sir.

I can't believe how hard it was to find this information on Google. I guess I wasn't searching with the right criteria. . As always GAF never fails.

 

[confused]

yes, i am an entitled gamer.

i like to buy shit and play games on it. i noticed a machine with 4 gigs of ram and a decent processor was on sale in my area, at a great discount!

heaven forbid i ask the internet's preeminent gaming forum if it would actually do what i suspect it could: play games!

i am over this, btw i am buying the PC and i already have a card and PSU lined up.. it's just the way everyone's offended by the question that is fucking embarrassing.

people like shit that is easy. fuck, that's why consoles exist in the first place. not everyone wants to build their own gaming machine. in fact, the vast majority of gamers don't want to build their own gaming machine. sorry?

Stop being a dick. You made a thread, people gave their opinion, you got snarky.

If you have already made up your mind on something, don't bother asking GAF.

And when you do feel the need to ask GAF, don't be an ass when people give you an answer that isn't what you were hoping for. You're really coming across as a whiny douche.

 

[Ezahn]

@ezhan : that build looks good to me, but 110+ euros for a power supply is a lot of money, especially if you are spending only 77 on a case.

A power supply is either sufficient, reliable and quiet or it aint , paying extra for something higher end won't make a difference.
A case on the other hand has stuff like build quality, rubber HDD mounts or lack thereof, dust filters (or lack thereof) , layout for cablemanagment and fan placement, quality of the built in fans to worry about.

A cheap or bad case will be noisy and might have inneficient airflow and /or shoddy build quality.

I bought a 100 dollar antec sonata II and it's a vibrating, noisy , non modular piece of shit with a loud psu fan.

(not saying that case you picked might not be good, I honestly don't know about it, just saying where your priorities for spendings might lie).

Thanks Sneaky!
I'll look into better cases (HAF 932?), and cheaper PSUs. But I saw some good reviews of the CM 690 II, I think it's only smaller and that could affect the airflow, sure.

 

[Corky]

Thanks Sneaky!
I'll look into better cases (HAF 932?), and cheaper PSUs. But I saw some good reviews of the CM 690 II, I think it's only smaller and that could affect the airflow, sure.

How about the Fractal design R3? I've heard alot of good things of it and it is a relatively cheap case. I bet there are people here on gaf that would gladly vouch for it.

But yea do yourself a favor and don't skimp on the case


- should I wait for Z68 and/or AMD Zambezi Bulldozer?

I don't really see why, the i5 2500k is an amazing cpu for it's price and I doubt the bulldozer line will revolutionize the midrange market .

- could that build be ready for a quick SLI in the future?

Yeah I think the a corsair 750w is enough for two 570s. But better to be sure before buying, maybe somebody else can chime in.

- I never oc'ed and maybe I'll never do it, so it is worth it to buy some cheaper component and be happy with stock speed for life?"

Nowadays you can OC with just the push of a button. I didn't see a cpu-cooler in your list, if you plan to OC ( again it's as simple as pusing a button unless you wanna go all crazy ) you might want to buy a better cooler than the stock one.

 

[Jeramii]

Stop being a dick. You made a thread, people gave their opinion, you got snarky.

If you have already made up your mind on something, don't bother asking GAF.

And when you do feel the need to ask GAF, don't be an ass when people give you an answer that isn't what you were hoping for. You're really coming across as a whiny douche.

i can understand where he is coming from that he asked the question and got ridiculed right off the bat...

but its true. you ask gaf, you will get lots of friendly advice... and a lot of one liners, or attempts to shut you down. don't take it so personally.

gaf is a great source of some brilliant people with brilliant advice... but like anywhere else on the internet. there is many polar opposites (to the brilliant or nice people) so stay calm man, not all of us are here to shut you down.

 

[Keikaku]

I just installed my SSD and it's working great, though it's a pain getting all my games back and running on it again.

I'm trying to figure out if there is a way that I can get Steam games to take advantage of the SSD and I came across this topic: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1006386&page=2

I'm referring to post #18 on page 2 and I wanted to check something with you guys. Now, as I understand it, all of the data for any games you get off Steam can be placed on another HD, with a sort of "pointer" link to it on your SSD. Presumably, this would mean that Steam itself would load pretty quickly, and show your games as being present, but they would be loading off the other non-SSD, right?

Anyone, with any sort of answer, would be most welcome. How do I get the most out of my SSD with regards to Steam? Is the above forum post the best shot I have?

 

[Ezahn]

How about the Fractal design R3? I've heard alot of good things of it and it is a relatively cheap case. I bet there are people here on gaf that would gladly vouch for it.

...and thanks Corky!

Good advice on the Zambezi-waiting issue.
Fractal is really cool looking and seems like a good silent case, maybe a little small (6970 couln't fit into it... I'm not buying that card but what can be said for the future... ^^).
But I like it and the price seems right.

Yeah, 2500K could be the right choide, middle range and with some overclocking potential to try my luck since you say it's so easy peasy. ;-)

And the PSUs... yeah, it's a little pricey. RAM looks ok for that mobo? I had orrible, orrible experiences in the past.

 

[Corky]

And the PSUs... yeah, it's a little pricey. RAM looks ok for that mobo? I had orrible, orrible experiences in the past.

I know man, having bad ram is like the worst thing ever. I can't really say much about Gskill since I've only used Corsair lately, but it's a household brand so I guess it's all good. But what I wonder is the voltage, it says 1.25v for the ram, is that right?


edit : here's what I found with regards to 1.25v on the toms forums-

The reason that low-voltage memory is coming out is that the next generations of CPUs will require it (Intel's anyway, don't know about AMD). Sandy Bridge "E", Ivy Bridge, and beyond will need the lower-voltage RAM. They are simply releasing them early and testing them out on current CPUs and chipsets.

RAM is independent of the overclocking on Sandy Bridge systems. You keep the RAM at stock and overclock the CPU itself.

Just get some standard 1.5v memory. DDR3-1600 CL9 is plenty fast for current Sandy Bridge processors. You can get CL8 or CL7 memory, but in my opinion it's a waste of money.

 

[Ezahn]

I know man, having bad ram is like the worst thing ever. I can't really say much about Gskill since I've only used Corsair lately, but it's a household brand so I guess it's all good. But what I wonder is the voltage, it says 1.25v for the ram, is that right?

Yeah, 1,25v, that's making me suspicious but a friend reccomended those "since they have lower voltage"... my ignorance is not helping. ^^

 

[·feist·]

...and thanks Corky!

Good advice on the Zambezi-waiting issue.
Fractal is really cool looking and seems like a good silent case, maybe a little small (6970 couln't fit into it... I'm not buying that card but what can be said for the future... ^^).
But I like it and the price seems right.

Yeah, 2500K could be the right choide, middle range and with some overclocking potential to try my luck since you say it's so easy peasy. ;-)

And the PSUs... yeah, it's a little pricey. RAM looks ok for that mobo? I had orrible, orrible experiences in the past.

It fits.

Fractal Design Define R3 + one ATI 5970:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5yG-_AS6To


Fractal Design Define R3 + two ATI 5870 cards:

 

[Baller. PhD]

...and thanks Corky!

Good advice on the Zambezi-waiting issue.
Fractal is really cool looking and seems like a good silent case, maybe a little small (6970 couln't fit into it... I'm not buying that card but what can be said for the future... ^^).
But I like it and the price seems right.

Yeah, 2500K could be the right choide, middle range and with some overclocking potential to try my luck since you say it's so easy peasy. ;-)

And the PSUs... yeah, it's a little pricey. RAM looks ok for that mobo? I had orrible, orrible experiences in the past.

I've got an R3 and it's the shit. By far the best case I've ever owned considering the price. I've got a triple-slot GTX570 and it fits with room to spare. If you add extra fans (and you should) you can hear a woosh coming out of the back, but it's extremely low-dB and WAY quieter than you will get with other cases in that price range. If you're in the $100 ballpark for a case there isn't a better one on the market as far as I'm concerned. HIGHLY recommended.

 

[opticalmace]

Are full towers always better than mid-towers for cooling? I mean, is there a point in which extra space makes it harder to flush the air out as fast?

I have an Antec 900 at the moment and it has been more or less fine, but I miss the space of a full tower (had an old Thermaltake from 2002 or 2003).

Is a full always better?

 

[SneakyStephan]

Are full towers always better than mid-towers for cooling? I mean, is there a point in which extra space makes it harder to flush the air out as fast?

I have an Antec 900 at the moment and it has been more or less fine, but I miss the space of a full tower (had an old Thermaltake from 2002 or 2003).

Is a full always better?

Full tower allows for less restricted airflow so I assume it's always better.

Main thing that's always a gamble when buying a new model case is if the fan bearings are any good...
Same with a PSU.
So many cases (and psus) have their fan bearings wear out within a year and they start to grind a bit and you get more vibration.

Industrial quality ball bearings should be like a fucking huge market for pcs considering the ridiculous prices these companies ask for their metal boxes (cases) and power supplies.
Instead you always get shitty ring bearings.

Even my sammy lcd tv suffers from it, 2 years in and the bearings are worn out and the fans make more noise than my pc does...
Wish I could break that 1500 dollar waste of money on the head of the engineer who designed that pos.

 

[Cuthbert 80]

Hi Guys,

I believe I have severely bad overclocking performance on my Powercolor HD 6950 2 gig(with unlocked Shaders) right now. Its a non-reference model and used one section of the "Exodus" level on Crysis as a benchmark as its extremely demanding.

I was able to get a slightly stable 910mhz Core Clock, 1500 Memory and I upped the voltage to 1.156. If I raise the voltage any higher I get heavy artifacting(snow) and any lower voltage would lock and freeze my PC.

With my shitty overclock, I'm like "ok lets try another game like Half Life 2 Orange Box" thinking its old and I can max it out 1080p with supersampling.......well, ermmmm, the graphical artifacting got incredibly worse with the same settings I had for Crysis. 50 secs or so, idle on the main title screen, it would lock with an annoying sound loop. Forcing me do a hard restart. Other games like Mirrors Edge would have horrible artifacting too with the same settings.

Only way around this(it seems) is to heavily back down my overclock even though its a shit overclock to begin with. The amount of time i've put in trying to resolve these issues (+ a million and 1 other) is really making me feel like giving up on PC gaming. I am a noob at all this shit(as you could probably tell lol)
Any help guys?

Edit: GPU Temps no more than 65C Load and 36 Idle

Specs:
i5 750 CPU OC'd to 3.3 ghz
GA P55M UD2 Motherboard
Umm, some G.Skill 4 Gig Ram
HD 6950 Powercolor Non Reference GPU with Unlocked Shaders
Corsair TX650 650w PSU
Windows 7 64 Bit Home Edition

 

[CrankyJay]

Well he'll be running games off the 1TB HDD...I wouldn't want to RAID 1 a games drive. For Steam games, I'd consider RAID 0. For media and less easily replaceable data, I'd consider RAID 1.

I run BFBC2 off RAID 1...haven't noticed any issues.

 

[Schlomo]

Only way around this(it seems) is to heavily back down my overclock even though its a shit overclock to begin with. The amount of time i've put in trying to resolve these issues (+ a million and 1 other) is really making me feel like giving up on PC gaming. I am a noob at all this shit(as you could probably tell lol)
Any help guys?

Don't give up on PC gaming, just give up on overclocking your GPU. I have almost exactly the same system as you and also didn't get far trying to overclock the 6950.

 

[Ezahn]

I've got an R3 and it's the shit. By far the best case I've ever owned considering the price. I've got a triple-slot GTX570 and it fits with room to spare. If you add extra fans (and you should) you can hear a woosh coming out of the back, but it's extremely low-dB and WAY quieter than you will get with other cases in that price range. If you're in the $100 ballpark for a case there isn't a better one on the market as far as I'm concerned. HIGHLY recommended.

Tnx Baller, that's an extremely useful short review.

And tnx @feist for the double 5870 awesomeness! ^^

Only 2 external drive slots are not that much but maybe I can live with it...

 

[TheExodu5]

I run BFBC2 off RAID 1...haven't noticed any issues.

You won't have any issues, but it will be slower. There's just no need for it, since game data is easily replaceable.

Hi Guys,

I believe I have severely bad overclocking performance on my Powercolor HD 6950 2 gig(with unlocked Shaders) right now. Its a non-reference model and used one section of the "Exodus" level on Crysis as a benchmark as its extremely demanding.

I was able to get a slightly stable 910mhz Core Clock, 1500 Memory and I upped the voltage to 1.156. If I raise the voltage any higher I get heavy artifacting(snow) and any lower voltage would lock and freeze my PC.

With my shitty overclock, I'm like "ok lets try another game like Half Life 2 Orange Box" thinking its old and I can max it out 1080p with supersampling.......well, ermmmm, the graphical artifacting got incredibly worse with the same settings I had for Crysis. 50 secs or so, idle on the main title screen, it would lock with an annoying sound loop. Forcing me do a hard restart. Other games like Mirrors Edge would have horrible artifacting too with the same settings.

Only way around this(it seems) is to heavily back down my overclock even though its a shit overclock to begin with. The amount of time i've put in trying to resolve these issues (+ a million and 1 other) is really making me feel like giving up on PC gaming. I am a noob at all this shit(as you could probably tell lol)
Any help guys?

Edit: GPU Temps no more than 65C Load and 36 Idle

Specs:
i5 750 CPU OC'd to 3.3 ghz
GA P55M UD2 Motherboard
Umm, some G.Skill 4 Gig Ram
HD 6950 Powercolor Non Reference GPU with Unlocked Shaders
Corsair TX650 650w PSU
Windows 7 64 Bit Home Edition

I've said it plenty of times: GPU overclocking is very flakey. The GPUs today are often nearly pushed to their limits, considering the cooling they come with. So much so, that it's not out of the ordinary for someone to get a GPU that is instable at stock clocks/voltages.

If you do want to keep overclocking, I'll offer you some advice: hold back on the memory clocks. Overclocking the memory will give you little performance benefit and increase instability. Overclock one component at a time, by starting off with the core. And what you get, you get. It's the luck of the draw.

 

[SaintR]

Hi Guys,

I was able to get a slightly stable 910mhz Core Clock, 1500 Memory and I upped the voltage to 1.156. If I raise the voltage any higher I get heavy artifacting(snow) and any lower voltage would lock and freeze my PC.

With my shitty overclock, I'm like "ok lets try another game like Half Life 2 Orange Box" thinking its old and I can max it out 1080p with supersampling.......well, ermmmm, the graphical artifacting got incredibly worse with the same settings I had for Crysis. 50 secs or so, idle on the main title screen, it would lock with an annoying sound loop. Forcing me do a hard restart. Other games like Mirrors Edge would have horrible artifacting too with the same settings.

Edit: GPU Temps no more than 65C Load and 36 Idle

Specs:
i5 750 CPU OC'd to 3.3 ghz
GA P55M UD2 Motherboard
Umm, some G.Skill 4 Gig Ram
HD 6950 Powercolor Non Reference GPU with Unlocked Shaders
Corsair TX650 650w PSU
Windows 7 64 Bit Home Edition

First of all Actually that's not a bad overclock at all (mine are 880 core 1390 mem 1.175v). Second, the 6950 is an excellent card without overclocking.
Now that being said what most people do is unlock 0the shaders(like you did) and raise the voltage to that of the 6970...so essentially you "have" a 6970 without creating any timing differences with the 6950. However, like you stated you having issues increasing voltage, but I think you getting caught up in clock speeds(but I'm down in getting highest I can get to ). Try lowering them, then increase voltage see how the games run then . Besides that's the beauty of overclocking...trial and error.
Also you don't need to give up an anything, you have a very capable card to begin with

edit 2:sorry for the original cut-off post...my daughter wants attention lol

edit 3: see above as well for excellent advice

 

[sk3tch]

You won't have any issues, but it will be slower. There's just no need for it, since game data is easily replaceable.

RAID 1 is actually faster for disk reading. Writing could be slightly slower...depending on the controller. It's worthwhile if you're someone with only two disks and your games/OS reside on the same storage array. Personally, I'd rather "pay" $xx (price of one HDD) in cost to lose a disk to RAID 1 for the increased reliability and read performance than have two discrete disks and more storage.

Has anyone used the nVidia 3D Vision kit? Is it worth spending $150 on? I already have a compatible monitor and video card.

 

[TheExodu5]

RAID 1 is actually faster for disk reading. Writing could be slightly slower...depending on the controller. It's worthwhile if you're someone with only two disks and your games/OS reside on the same storage array. Personally, I'd rather "pay" $xx (price of one HDD) in cost to lose a disk to RAID 1 for the increased reliability and read performance than have two discrete disks and more storage.

Has anyone used the nVidia 3D Vision kit? Is it worth spending $150 on? I already have a compatible monitor and video card.

I didn't realize reading was actually faster...I only looked at I/O benchmarks. My bad then...it's certainly a valid option in the case you described. If it's a games only disk array, then don't bother, but if it's mixed in with irreplaceable data (possibly including save game data), then it may be worth it to you.

 

[WanderingWind]

Okay! So, I unplugged everything and replugged it back in and voila, it turns on. However, it won't recognize the HD, the LED lights on the front are red (and the ones on the motherboard on startup also flash red) and eventually, the computer turns itself off, even if I'm in the BIOS menu.

Does this sound like anything you've heard of?

EDIT: The dude at Micro Center said I could reuse my old HD as long as I formatted it. Also, it's plugged into the SATA 3 input on the mobo. Would that cause any issues?

 

[sk3tch]

I didn't realize reading was actually faster...I only looked at I/O benchmarks. My bad then...it's certainly a valid option in the case you described. If it's a games only disk array, then don't bother, but if it's mixed in with irreplaceable data (possibly including save game data), then it may be worth it to you.

Yeah the Samsung f3 7.2k drives are tits...and even better in RAID1 especially considering they are ~$60 each. With Microsoft's draconian activation policies I baby my Windows 7 installs. And 1TB of total storage is fine for me. I have a Synology 6TB NAS for the pr0n collection.

Honestly, in RAID1 the general performance of my PC is good enough that I do not plan on investing in an SSD until they are significantly cheaper. And I have owned/used some good ones and in different scenarios (Apple's Toshiba SSD in Mac OS X 10.6 on the latest 15" MBP and Intel's 510 series in Windows 7 SP1 on the Alienware M14x).

EDIT: and I took the plunge with nVidia's 3D Vision kit...~$130 on Amazon...should be interesting. Good GAF thread on it here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=370999. I'm looking for any more recent impressions, too...like how is the support? Seems pretty good.

 

[ithorien]

*adds another to the ignore list*


These threads are something else, sometimes...

My PS3 YLODs and I miss juicy drama.

I've got an R3 and it's the shit. By far the best case I've ever owned considering the price. I've got a triple-slot GTX570 and it fits with room to spare. If you add extra fans (and you should) you can hear a woosh coming out of the back, but it's extremely low-dB and WAY quieter than you will get with other cases in that price range. If you're in the $100 ballpark for a case there isn't a better one on the market as far as I'm concerned. HIGHLY recommended.

I fully approve of this message. Love love love the case. Love it. I have the two case fans and an extra Noctua, the 212+ cooler and a 570, can't really hear it running under my desk.

HIGHLY recommended +1

 

[Maztorre]

Hey guys, thanks for all the advice earlier, I've settled into a build I think I'll stick with:

Asus ATI Radeon HD 6970 DirectCU II 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Operation Flashpoint Red River Game
Intel 320 Series 80GB 2.5" SATA-II 25nm Solid State Hard Drive - Retail with FREE Operation Flashpoint: Red River Game
Coolermaster HAF X Gaming Tower Case - Black (RC-942)
G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM)
Coolermaster GX 750W Power Supply
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366)
Akasa BayMaster Card & Drive Reader (AK-ICR-10)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM

I switched out the P8P68 for the Z68 instead because of the SSD caching in the new model. I also dropped my SSD size down since the maximum cache is 64GB of the SSD.

Any feedback would be great.

 

[ithorien]

Hey guys, thanks for all the advice earlier, I've settled into a build I think I'll stick with:

Asus ATI Radeon HD 6970 DirectCU II 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Operation Flashpoint Red River Game
Intel 320 Series 80GB 2.5" SATA-II 25nm Solid State Hard Drive - Retail with FREE Operation Flashpoint: Red River Game
Coolermaster HAF X Gaming Tower Case - Black (RC-942)
G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM)
Coolermaster GX 750W Power Supply
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1155/1156/1366)
Akasa BayMaster Card & Drive Reader (AK-ICR-10)
Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM

I switched out the P8P68 for the Z68 instead because of the SSD caching in the new model. I also dropped my SSD size down since the maximum cache is 64GB of the SSD.

Any feedback would be great.

I'd go with Corsair/Seasonic, $10 more (same price after rebate).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006&cm_re=tx750-_-17-139-006-_-Product

 

[sk3tch]

I switched out the P8P68 for the Z68 instead because of the SSD caching in the new model. I also dropped my SSD size down since the maximum cache is 64GB of the SSD.

Any feedback would be great.

If that's the only reason, I'd skip it. The SSD caching will be made available to all 6 series chipsets (Sandy Bridge) - it's software-based. EDIT: my bad - this is not true, from that Anandtech article:

Originally called SSD Caching, Intel is introducing a feature called Smart Response Technology (SRT) alongside Z68. Make no mistake, this isn't a hardware feature but it's something that Intel is only enabling on Z68. All of the work is done entirely in Intel's RST 10.5 software, which will be made available for all 6-series chipsets but Smart Response Technology is artificially bound to Z68 alone (and some mobile chipsets—HM67, QM67).

Also, if you are near a Microcenter they have a sweet combo deal on an ASUS mobo and an i5: http://www.microcenter.com/specials/promotions/0517BUNDLEpromo.html

 

[Binabik15]

Hey GAF, I´m thinking about OCing my i5 750 to have a fast clock speed for the PS2 emulator, I really want to try that thing. I have 4 gigs DDR3 1333 GEIL RAM and an Gigabyte P55UD3 mobo.

I guess I should get a better cooler than the stock one (tell me which one to buy, please), anything else? I might switch out the case fan while I´m at it, recommendations? My pc is pretty cool right now with the stock CPU fan and the one case fan, but more and better case fans might help me feel more relaxed about OCing.

 

[ithorien]

Hey GAF, I´m thinking about OCing my i5 750 to have a fast clock speed for the PS2 emulator, I really want to try that thing. I have 4 gigs DDR3 1333 GEIL RAM and an Gigabyte P55UD3 mobo.

I guess I should get a better cooler than the stock one (tell me which one to buy, please), anything else? I might switch out the case fan while I´m at it, recommendations? My pc is pretty cool right now with the stock CPU fan and the one case fan, but more and better case fans might help me feel more relaxed about OCing.

CPU- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065&Tpk=212 plus

Just don't buy it at Newegg (first time I've ever said that), can find it cheaper elsewhere. If you have a Microcenter nearby, it's 24.99.

 

[MedIC86]

Ok i need some advice:

i would like to buy a Phenom II X6 1090T.
Does anyone have a more specific idea then Q2 for the Bulldozers to come out (my mobo can support AM3+) so is it better to wait or not? i dont want to wait for like 3/4 months because i want to upgrade before the summer. i somewhere read 6 June or is that bs?...

Also the bulldozers will be a lot more expensive then the 1090T...

 

[chaosblade]

Hi Guys,

I believe I have severely bad overclocking performance on my Powercolor HD 6950 2 gig(with unlocked Shaders) right now. Its a non-reference model and used one section of the "Exodus" level on Crysis as a benchmark as its extremely demanding.

I was able to get a slightly stable 910mhz Core Clock, 1500 Memory and I upped the voltage to 1.156. If I raise the voltage any higher I get heavy artifacting(snow) and any lower voltage would lock and freeze my PC.

With my shitty overclock, I'm like "ok lets try another game like Half Life 2 Orange Box" thinking its old and I can max it out 1080p with supersampling.......well, ermmmm, the graphical artifacting got incredibly worse with the same settings I had for Crysis. 50 secs or so, idle on the main title screen, it would lock with an annoying sound loop. Forcing me do a hard restart. Other games like Mirrors Edge would have horrible artifacting too with the same settings.

Only way around this(it seems) is to heavily back down my overclock even though its a shit overclock to begin with. The amount of time i've put in trying to resolve these issues (+ a million and 1 other) is really making me feel like giving up on PC gaming. I am a noob at all this shit(as you could probably tell lol)
Any help guys?

Edit: GPU Temps no more than 65C Load and 36 Idle

Specs:
i5 750 CPU OC'd to 3.3 ghz
GA P55M UD2 Motherboard
Umm, some G.Skill 4 Gig Ram
HD 6950 Powercolor Non Reference GPU with Unlocked Shaders
Corsair TX650 650w PSU
Windows 7 64 Bit Home Edition

First of all, it seems a little silly to give up on PC gaming just because of overlocking issues. The vast majority of PC gamers probably never overclock their components.

Anyway, the first issue I see is that you unlocked a non-reference 6950. I've read doing that is extremely dangerous and wouldn't even consider doing it myself. I guess if it still has the switch you couldn't hurt it too much at least.

Regarding the overclock and unlocked shaders, the only real option is to back down. I assume you ran stability tests as you were going, so I won't bring up issues there unless you tell us you didn't.

And I wouldn't call that a bad OC. At 900MHz that's a 100MHz increase which is pretty good for most GPUs, especially a high end one like the 6900 series. If you think that's bad, my 5850 won't go anywhere. It's right on the edge at stock, if I increase the clock by 25MHz I start getting artifacts in Windows. So yeah.

I'd back down to the point it's stable with no errors or artifacting in something like Furmark or the OCCT GPU test just to be extra safe, but using games like Crysis works too if you really want to cut it closer.

Hey GAF, I´m thinking about OCing my i5 750 to have a fast clock speed for the PS2 emulator, I really want to try that thing. I have 4 gigs DDR3 1333 GEIL RAM and an Gigabyte P55UD3 mobo.

I guess I should get a better cooler than the stock one (tell me which one to buy, please), anything else? I might switch out the case fan while I´m at it, recommendations? My pc is pretty cool right now with the stock CPU fan and the one case fan, but more and better case fans might help me feel more relaxed about OCing.

How much are you looking to spend? You can get some faster (1600) RAM for $40. Won't make a huge difference, but 1333 RAM is becoming a bottleneck these days.

The Hyper 212+ is the most recommended cooler since it performs great for about $30, give or take. There are better coolers, but expect to spend $60+ on those (I used a Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme for a while and it was really nice). I think the Noctua NH-D14 is considered the best air cooler at the moment, and it's $90.

Ok i need some advice:

i would like to buy a Phenom II X6 1090T.
Does anyone have a more specific idea then Q2 for the Bulldozers to come out (my mobo can support AM3+) so is it better to wait or not? i dont want to wait for like 3/4 months because i want to upgrade before the summer. i somewhere read 6 June or is that bs?...

Also the bulldozers will be a lot more expensive then the 1090T...

I believe they are supposed to be out sometime in June. I've seen everything from being launched (paper launch?) around E3 to being launched around the end of the month.

And Bulldozer will probably cost more initially, but I think once they phase it in to replace the Phenoms the prices will be similar to AMD's current lineup. The only reason they wouldn't be is if AMD manages to knock it out of the park performance-wise. Even if they match or slightly beat what Intel has available now, they can't really price themselves out of the market. Totally guessing, but I think the top Zambezi CPU will probably be $300-$350.

 

[K701]

Had this for a lil while now...

Lanboy air
Phenom X6 1090T
Asus DirectCUII 6970
blah blah blah blah here's the pic.

Samsung md230x6 with flashed firmware to enable bezel compensation when mixing inputs (Fuck you Samsung USA)

 

[Maztorre]

sk3tch, ithorien, thanks for the advice and links, unfortunately I'm in the UK so I can't take advantage but good to know. I noticed that SSD caching was a software implementation but if you're fairly sure it'll roll out across Sandy Bridge then I have no real reason to use the Z68.

 

[MedIC86]

Holy mother of...

 

[sk3tch]

sk3tch, ithorien, thanks for the advice and links, unfortunately I'm in the UK so I can't take advantage but good to know. I noticed that SSD caching was a software implementation but if you're fairly sure it'll roll out across Sandy Bridge then I have no real reason to use the Z68.

sorry I corrected myself...I was misinfored because I had an M14x which has the mobile Sandy Bridge platform that WILL get the SSD caching via software (see my post above for the quote from the article you linked) - they are not bringing it to any other standard mobos than Z68 (and future boards). Kinda lame. Anyway, my apologies. Go Z68.

You also may want to look at Samsung Spinpoint f3 7200RPM drives...cheaper/faster than WD in the US, at least.

 

[Maztorre]

sorry I corrected myself...I was misinfored because I had an M14x which has the mobile Sandy Bridge platform that WILL get the SSD caching via software (see my post above for the quote from the article you linked) - they are not bringing it to any other standard mobos than Z68 (and future boards). Kinda lame. Anyway, my apologies. Go Z68.

No problem, and thanks for researching before I opened my wallet!

 

[Binabik15]

How much are you looking to spend? You can get some faster (1600) RAM for $40. Won't make a huge difference, but 1333 RAM is becoming a bottleneck these days.

The Hyper 212+ is the most recommended cooler since it performs great for about $30, give or take. There are better coolers, but expect to spend $60+ on those (I used a Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme for a while and it was really nice). I think the Noctua NH-D14 is considered the best air cooler at the moment, and it's $90.

I can´t find the 212 on my usual site (German), I´ll have to look around a bit.

They sell 4 gigs of Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 CL9 for 40€, though. How much of a boost are we taking about? Because 40€ is 1/6th or 1/7th of a new GPU next or next-next year.

Edit: Not looking around for long, it seems. 22€ from an Amazon seller.

 

[The Bookerman]

Insane.

 

[chaosblade]

I can´t find the 212 on my usual site (German), I´ll have to look around a bit.

They sell 4 gigs of Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 CL9 for 40€, though. How much of a boost are we taking about? Because 40€ is 1/6th or 1/7th of a new GPU next or next-next year.

Edit: Not looking around for long, it seems. 22€ from an Amazon seller.

Ah, I can't do much for you regarding pricing then. But 1333 vs 1600 is really minimal. It was just the first thing that came to mind and RAM is pretty cheap right now. I still have 1333 RAM too - that's to say, it's not a big enough deal I feel compelled to upgrade. But if I were going to expand my RAM or something I'd get something faster.

I can't seem to find the article, but there was a comparison on RAM speeds and anything below 1600 showed varying performance losses. Small, but they were there. I think the difference was most minimal regarding gaming, IIRC.

 

[AppleSmack]

hey guys,

I'm planning to overclock my MSI GTX 460 1gb Cyclone, which is already factory overclocked. Anyone have a good guide to how to do it and stable clock numbers. Oh and make sure to take into consideration that Im 100% new to this. I have never overclocked hardware in my life.

 

[Diseased Yak]

Question: Will SLI/Crossfire benefit me at all @ 1920x1080 resolution?

I'm trying to Google the answer to this and getting conflicting reports. I don't understand the mechanics behind why dual+ GPUs has diminishing returns the lower your resolution...

 

[spicy cho]

...and thanks Corky!

Good advice on the Zambezi-waiting issue.
Fractal is really cool looking and seems like a good silent case, maybe a little small (6970 couln't fit into it... I'm not buying that card but what can be said for the future... ^^).

I have the define R2 and the 6970 fits into it fine, but anything longer than that won't most likely. The R3 can most definitely take a 6970.

 

[Cuthbert 80]

First of all, it seems a little silly to give up on PC gaming just because of overlocking issues. The vast majority of PC gamers probably never overclock their components.

Anyway, the first issue I see is that you unlocked a non-reference 6950. I've read doing that is extremely dangerous and wouldn't even consider doing it myself. I guess if it still has the switch you couldn't hurt it too much at least.

Regarding the overclock and unlocked shaders, the only real option is to back down. I assume you ran stability tests as you were going, so I won't bring up issues there unless you tell us you didn't.

And I wouldn't call that a bad OC. At 900MHz that's a 100MHz increase which is pretty good for most GPUs, especially a high end one like the 6900 series. If you think that's bad, my 5850 won't go anywhere. It's right on the edge at stock, if I increase the clock by 25MHz I start getting artifacts in Windows. So yeah.

I'd back down to the point it's stable with no errors or artifacting in something like Furmark or the OCCT GPU test just to be extra safe, but using games like Crysis works too if you really want to cut it closer.

Hey chaosblade, TheExodu5 and everyone else who replyed, thanks for your input. Didn't wanna come across as some cry baby just because I couldn't get a decent overclock on my GPU lol
Me thinking of giving up on PC gaming doesn't just stem from getting a lousy overclock, that's just merely 1 problem........we all know there are many other issues with PC gaming/compatability/etc lol

I guess when I look around on here and many other forums, it seems that almost every other bloody person with a 6950 gets at least 940 Core and maybe 1450 Memory rock solid STABLE with not much of an increase in voltage, hence the reason for my frustration but hey.......guess I'm just one of the unlucky ones.

BTW, AMD's adaptive multi sampling AA is pretty damn fantastic. I'm really surprised i've not heard many rave about it?!! I don't know exactly how it works but I find it extremely close to Supersampling without the ridiculous performance hit. If anyone hasn't tried with a decently overclocked 6950.......
Crysis 1(dx9) + Adaptive Multi Sampling AA + 4x Ingame AA (disable egde AA in autoexec) + high/very high Config/TOD = Excellent image quality with excellent performance

 

[Extollere]

Bought the GTX 460 SE (Stupid/Suck Edition) or whatever for 100 bucks Works pretty awesome for what I need. Can play most games in 1080p ~60fps with a little AA too. Very happy.

 

[Binabik15]

I´m OCing my 5850 right now (just a bit, but over the 775 core limit from CCC).

I use the Crysis integrated benchmark after a GAFfers recommendation to test stability, but here´s a stupid question: how can I get it to run through the level more than 4 times in a row?

Edit: Nevermind, it seems I got a crappy chip that won´t go over 835 core speed without crashing the Crysis benchmark ;_;

Playing BC2 now to see if it´s at least stable at 835/1125.

 

[Corky]

Bought the GTX 460 SE (Stupid/Suck Edition) or whatever for 100 bucks Works pretty awesome for what I need. Can play most games in 1080p ~60fps with a little AA too. Very happy.

wow only 100 bucks? That's more than worth it man, awesome purchase imo. Or maybe it's just me who has a warped reality of component prices given my location.