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[drkOne]

Building a new PC for myself, right now I'm going for:

Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz
Asus P7P55D Pro Intel P55
Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x 2GB)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W

Just debating over what Graphics card to get, options right now would be (but I'm open to any other suggestion):

- Keep my Powercolor HD 4870 512MB (unlikely)
- Upgrade to HD 4890 1GB (£150)
- Upgrade to HD 5850 1GB (£250)

Main question would be, gaming at 1080p, would the 4890 hold until I can upgrade to the 5850 for a fairer price?
My budget got a bit over the top, and I thought I could probably do with 4890 for a while.

So, can I just go with a 4890?

 

[Lkr]

im all set up:
Phenom II X3 720 BE
M4A785TD-M EVO
GeForce GTS 250
GSkill Ripjaw DDR3-1333
Vizio VA26L


so much faster than my old Pentium D. Should I overclock or unlock the 4th core, however?

 

[Firestorm]

Getting a 4890 until you get a 5850 for a fairer price seems foolish seeing as you'd be spending more in the end. You'd have to wait for the 5850 to hit 100 GBP to break even.

 

[brain_stew]

Thanks, what's the difference exactly? Sorry for asking a question that you've probably answered a dozen times. It gave me an error that it can't test my ATI card, but I suppose I'm just doing it for the CPU test (1 hour ok?) anyway.

Prime95 is a very old program, it just doesn't stress modern CPUs all that much. People tend to stick with it through force of habit, I guess, but things move on, OCCT is a much more fully featured program anyway and will bring up CPU errors much quicker than Prime95. Don't worry about the GPU testing, I'd recommend using OCCT's standard test (not Linpack) on the "mixed" setting for ~4-6 hours if you can. Should be fine after that.

 

[SundaySounds]

Don't know if this has been posted or not but thought it was awesome.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TggHtINGIyc

Holy balls that was amazing.

 

[Lafiel]

Posted in this before for PC build advice, but since it's been taking weeks for my GPU to get fixed, and certain components have dropped in price. I am now torn between these two PC builds.

CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965 $214 or AMD Phenom II X4 955 $190
Motherboard - Gigabyte MA 790GPT-UD3H $152
case - Antec Sonata III $181
HDD - Samsung SATA 1TB $95
DVD drive - LG $38
RAM - 4GB DDR3 1333 kingston $117

$773 with 955
$797 + 4gb of ram 1tb hdd antec case & 965 CPU.


Motherboard - ASUS P7P55D-LE $151
CPU - Intel I5 750 $234
RAM - 4gb DDR3 Patriot Signature $118
Case - Antec Sonata III $181
HDD - Samsung 1tb $95
LG dvd drive $43
$817

These are Australian prices btw, if you think this looks expensive.
Which one should i go for? is i5 really worth the small extra cost over the 955 & 965 builds? since it factually has much better performance then both CPUs.

 

[Firestorm]

For $20 more the i5 is a nobrainer.

 

[drkOne]

Getting a 4890 until you get a 5850 for a fairer price seems foolish seeing as you'd be spending more in the end. You'd have to wait for the 5850 to hit 100 GBP to break even.

Buying a 4890 right now (£150), selling it later (let's say for £100), and getting a 5850 (£150) = £200 spent
Buying a 5850 now (£250) = £250 spent

Maybe they are unrealistic numbers, but even if I sold the 4890 later for £50, I'd still spend the same in the end. If money wasn't a problem I'd go for the 5850, but I wanted to know if I could get a 4890 and get the job done for a while longer.

Edit: And I put the 5850 there as an upgrade after the 4890, but it's just a possibility, if the 4890 can hold me until I can get a 5870 for around £150-200 or something, I'd probably go for that.
It's basically just whether or not the 4890 can do 1080p on High-Max with most games right now, and if it'll be able to do that until I can get a better GPU with a £150 budget.

 

[TouchMyBox]

Building a new PC for myself, right now I'm going for:

Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz
Asus P7P55D Pro Intel P55
Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x 2GB)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W

Just debating over what Graphics card to get, options right now would be (but I'm open to any other suggestion):

- Keep my Powercolor HD 4870 512MB (unlikely)
- Upgrade to HD 4890 1GB (£150)
- Upgrade to HD 5850 1GB (£250)

Main question would be, gaming at 1080p, would the 4890 hold until I can upgrade to the 5850 for a fairer price?
My budget got a bit over the top, and I thought I could probably do with 4890 for a while.

So, can I just go with a 4890?

Unless you can sell your 4870 for a nice price, upgrading from a 4870 to a 4890 sounds like the biggest waste of money to me.

 

[drkOne]

Unless you can sell your 4870 for a nice price, upgrading from a 4870 to a 4890 sounds like the biggest waste of money to me.

Yes, I'm getting the 4890 for around £40 after selling my 4870. So 5850 would be £140.

 

[Romance Pie]

Building a new PC for myself, right now I'm going for:

Intel Core i5 750 2.66GHz
Asus P7P55D Pro Intel P55
Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x 2GB)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W

You should save some cash and go for a 2X 2GB pack of ram since p55 chipsets don't do triple channel like X58 boards

 

[drkOne]

You should save some cash and go for a 2X 2GB pack of ram since p55 chipsets don't do triple channel like X58 boards

Wow, totally missed that the P55 was dual channel with 4 slots. Thanks for that! :x

 

[Dash]

Another complication has arisen into my potential build. I was originally going to go with the i5 750, but intel's new line of clarkdale processors are supposed to be launched any day now (officially January 7th, but I read that some retailers were supposed to start selling them today?). Here are their specs: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/11498-clarkdale-specs-revealed-in-leaked-intel-cpu-roadmap-/.

Apparently they're overclocking monsters, easily getting above 4Ghz with just air cooling. However, they are only dual cores (4 threads with hyperthreading), and they have an on-chip graphics card which I'm not really interested. Since they overclock so well, they will certainly be better for PCSX2 and Dolphin over the i5 750. However, do you guys think that modern games will start using quad-cores more efficiently in the coming years? The fact that they're dual core is the only thing keeping me from delaying my i5 750 purchase.

 

[SapientWolf]

Another complication has arisen into my potential build. I was originally going to go with the i5 750, but intel's new line of clarkdale processors are supposed to be launched any day now (officially January 7th, but I read that some retailers were supposed to start selling them today?). Here are their specs: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/11498-clarkdale-specs-revealed-in-leaked-intel-cpu-roadmap-/.

Apparently they're overclocking monsters, easily getting above 4Ghz with just air cooling. However, they are only dual cores (4 threads with hyperthreading), and they have an on-chip graphics card which I'm not really interested. Since they overclock so well, they will certainly be better for PCSX2 and Dolphin over the i5 750. However, do you guys think that modern games will start using quad-cores more efficiently in the coming years? The fact that they're dual core is the only thing keeping me from delaying my i5 750 purchase.

I've seen people get i5's to 5GHz on air.

 

[Lkr]

well I suck at overclocking, so I'm gonna go for the 4th core. should i use prime95?

 

[Dash]

I've seen people get i5's to 5GHz on air.

I'm sure it happens. However, these new chips are 32 nm and use far less watts than the 45 nm i5 750, not to mention that they start at a higher stock speed. Given that most games don't take advantage of quad cores, and I really want to get the most out of PCSX2 and Dolphin, I'm really torn on whether to wait or not.

 

[SapientWolf]

I'm sure it happens. However, these new chips are 32 nm and use far less watts than the 45 nm i5 750, not to mention that they start at a higher stock speed. Given that most games don't take advantage of quad cores, and I really want to get the most out of PCSX2 and Dolphin, I'm really torn on whether to wait or not.

You don't want to buy a dual core. Nearly every 3D engine made from 2009 forward is optimized for more than 2 cores. The Clarkdale is their mainstream (i.e. non-gamer) offering. The i7 is the enthusiast cpu and the i5 is the price/performance king right now.

 

[Terrifyer]

well I suck at overclocking, so I'm gonna go for the 4th core. should i use prime95?

Any reason you can't do both? and I'd recommend OCCT for stress/stability testing.

 

[Dash]

You don't want to buy a dual core. Nearly every 3D engine made from 2009 forward is optimized for more than 2 cores. The Clarkdale is their mainstream (i.e. non-gamer) offering. The i7 is the enthusiast cpu and the i5 is the price/performance king right now.

Oh I wasn't aware of that. I keep hearing about how there's only a select few games that take advantage of quad cores. I would agree that the Clarkfield does seem kind of mainstream-y given that it has an on board GPU, but I still like their low power consumption and higher stock speeds.

 

[Lkr]

Any reason you can't do both? and I'd recommend OCCT for stress/stability testing.

I don't know if I'd be pushing it too far by having an unlocked 4th core and OCing

 

[Lkr]

ok, I have set the multiplier in AMD Overdrive to 15x. However, when I hit apply and go back to information, it says the following:
Core Speed: 840MHz
Multiplier: 4x

WTF?!

 

[wolfmat]

Oh I wasn't aware of that. I keep hearing about how there's only a select few games that take advantage of quad cores.

That's generally true, but you don't buy a PC for past releases, usually.

At some point, the "make threads on different CPUs, configure and synchronize them in some smart way" part of realtime programming will be mostly automated. When that's the case, you want as many cores as possible (until Amdahl's Law says you've approached maximum speedup).

Right now, that's still science fiction. The current middle ground is 4 cores. More and more people program with them in mind (meaning they partition their programs into at least 4 pieces that can compute independently at the same time without data access conflicts).

 

[Gully State]

How would I go about testing if my PSU is starting to fail? My video cards both are giving me red lights and crashing when I put test them one by one on my PC...

 

[Lkr]

ok, I have set the multiplier in AMD Overdrive to 15x. However, when I hit apply and go back to information, it says the following:
Core Speed: 840MHz
Multiplier: 4x

WTF?!

ok, i think this was because of cool 'n quiet.

Right now I'm running prime95 torture test overnight. only thing im confused about is voltage. i have stock voltage at 16x multiplier. If I want to bump it up, is it bad to do if I don't need that voltage? I'm confused as to how to calculate voltage

 

[Terrifyer]

ok, I have set the multiplier in AMD Overdrive to 15x. However, when I hit apply and go back to information, it says the following:
Core Speed: 840MHz
Multiplier: 4x

WTF?!

You should really be doing that in the BIOS, but I'm pretty sure that's just cool n' quiet or whatever which lowers your cpu multiplier when it isn't needed...this is something that can be disabled in the BIOS as well.

I'm using a 550 BE (the dual core phenom II) unlocked to all 4 cores and I have it overclocked, so you should be able to do both. I think the only problem is that the locked core may not be as stable as the other ones, so it may limit your overclocking potential.

 

[Lkr]

If my 4th core is defective, will BIOS automatically disable it, or am I screwed?
Right now I'm testing at 3200mhz and all seems fine. 45.6C under full load. I want to go farther, but I'm not sure how to do voltages

 

[Terrifyer]

If my 4th core is defective, will BIOS automatically disable it, or am I screwed?
Right now I'm testing at 3200mhz and all seems fine. 45.6C under full load. I want to go farther, but I'm not sure how to do voltages

You should only increase the voltage if your cpu isn't stable. Higher voltage leads to higher temps and increased wear on your cpu, so you want to keep it as low as possible. You can always start out with something a bit higher than what you think you will ultimately need, then lower the voltage one step at a time to get it as low as it will go without causing your overclock to be unstable.

According to the specs for your cpu the max safe voltage is 1.425V (you can certainly go a bit beyond this though without breaking anything) for your cpu, so that's something to keep in mind. If you want to learn more about overclocking and all of the various settings, then I would definitely recommend reading a guide on it somewhere, as I'm probably doing a terrible job of explaining it.

EDIT: If you've been using overdrive up to this point, you should really switch over to the BIOS config, especially to change voltages.

 

[Wallach]

Maybe someone knows the answer to this:

I've got an older ECS A770M-A board lying around I'd like to do something with. I wonder though if I could drop a AMD Athlon II X4 630 into this thing? The board is supposedly AM2+ compatible. Any certain signs I could look out for that might tell me they would be incompatible prior to purchase?

Edit - Actually, just what AM3 procs can I toss in an AM2+ compatible board? Anything the mosfets can handle? I'm feeling risky. :lol

 

[Shambles]

Last night my Power supply started to make a faint burning smell. I turned it off for the night and blew some compressed air in it this morning, thinking it was just some dust that was burning. But I've been running the computer for an hour or so after that and the smell is back. what should I do?

Unplug the PC from the wall and go buy a new PSU.

 

[x3sphere]

Another complication has arisen into my potential build. I was originally going to go with the i5 750, but intel's new line of clarkdale processors are supposed to be launched any day now (officially January 7th, but I read that some retailers were supposed to start selling them today?). Here are their specs: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/11498-clarkdale-specs-revealed-in-leaked-intel-cpu-roadmap-/.

Apparently they're overclocking monsters, easily getting above 4Ghz with just air cooling. However, they are only dual cores (4 threads with hyperthreading), and they have an on-chip graphics card which I'm not really interested. Since they overclock so well, they will certainly be better for PCSX2 and Dolphin over the i5 750. However, do you guys think that modern games will start using quad-cores more efficiently in the coming years? The fact that they're dual core is the only thing keeping me from delaying my i5 750 purchase.

Games already use quad core. Titles like Dragon Age and Left 4 Dead get nearly double the FPS with a quad.

I am sure upcoming games like Starcraft II will like quads as well, seeing as RTSes generally seem to be computational heavy. Anyways, I would not buy a dual core today, the i5 and i7 overclocked is enough for Dolphin and PCSX2 - most games will run fine. For the games that don't, well, things will improve with optimization over time.

 

[kmfdmpig]

Oh I wasn't aware of that. I keep hearing about how there's only a select few games that take advantage of quad cores. I would agree that the Clarkfield does seem kind of mainstream-y given that it has an on board GPU, but I still like their low power consumption and higher stock speeds.

I'd also look at it this way:
The majority of high level processors sold today are 3 or more core, so it would be foolish for games going forward not to take advantage of that. I think you'd be a lot better off with a core i5 or i7 then the new Clarkfield, which is simply a lower tier processor.

 

[TouchMyBox]

If my 4th core is defective, will BIOS automatically disable it, or am I screwed?
Right now I'm testing at 3200mhz and all seems fine. 45.6C under full load. I want to go farther, but I'm not sure how to do voltages

If the 4th core is no good, windows won't boot more than likely. Then it will restart, you'll go back into the bios menu and disable the fourth core and windows will boot once again. You should unlock the 4th core while having your cpu set at it's stock clocks as unlocking the 4th core will more than likely lower your potential OC ability a little bit.

Unplug the PC from the wall and go buy a new PSU.

Listen to this man, if you fuck around with PSUs, PSUs will fuck around with you by blowing all your shit up. Go buy yourself something quality.

 

[JRW]

Finally got my mobo/cpu/memory , Ill finish it up after work tonight my question is right next to the CPU is an 8-pin ATX connector labled "ATX 12V_2X", do I need to use this? My current PC has a 4-pin connector next to the CPU which im using but not sure if my PSU even has an 8 pin for this. Or can I just use the standard 24-pin ATX connector thats on the mobo?

CPU: i7 920
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX-58 UD3R

 

[Swag]

So I have to send my HIS 4890 back because it seems the problem I was having with my computer is indeed a faulty Graphics Card. Plugged in a different GPU and it worked perfectly, however I was an idiot and didn't get an extended warranty through Newegg so I have to go through manufacturer, sad part is their based on China :lol .

 

[brain_stew]

Another complication has arisen into my potential build. I was originally going to go with the i5 750, but intel's new line of clarkdale processors are supposed to be launched any day now (officially January 7th, but I read that some retailers were supposed to start selling them today?). Here are their specs: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/11498-clarkdale-specs-revealed-in-leaked-intel-cpu-roadmap-/.

Apparently they're overclocking monsters, easily getting above 4Ghz with just air cooling. However, they are only dual cores (4 threads with hyperthreading), and they have an on-chip graphics card which I'm not really interested. Since they overclock so well, they will certainly be better for PCSX2 and Dolphin over the i5 750. However, do you guys think that modern games will start using quad-cores more efficiently in the coming years? The fact that they're dual core is the only thing keeping me from delaying my i5 750 purchase.

They're dual core chips, not even worth considering.

 

[Zaptruder]

Man... I've been having so many problems with this new comp that I just built.

Finally got them sorted out.


i7 860 @ 3.8 GHz, 5850 Xfire OC to 850/1150, Vertex SSD. Seems like a champ.

But I had to contend with quite a few issues.

For starters the hardware build wasn't quite as smoothed as I had hoped. Picked up a megahelm cooler. Massive bastard. 2 120mm fans for a push/pull... unfortunately the tall heat spreaders on the ram prevented me from installing the second 120mm fan.

Once I got that setup, it became immediately apparent that one of the big reasons that I built the new pc had recieved a good kick to the ground; with the fact that when in Crossfire, you're only able to use the video outputs for one card.

So to use my three monitors, I have to disable crossfire.

One of the monitors (I believe its a cable issue) has problems displaying as well... it gives me a corrupted output, until I change its refresh to 59Hz... changing it back to 60Hz after is fine, with no noticeable difference.

But I have to do this every time I disable Crossfire.

With crossfire, I have it set to a single monitor... at least I don't have to alter the display settings every time I change that.

But it does resize all my windows into a 1024x768 area, so I have to reposition all the icons and window sizes.

Also had quite a bit of trouble overclocking my CPU... eventually got it right though, and got it steady enough to run a couple hours of prime95. Good enough for stability.

One of the more annoying and stranger bugs I've been getting is an oversized mouse cursor... like it'll blow upto 4x it's size, pixelated and all... at random. Once it blows up, it stays blown up until I reboot. Or until I turn on cursor trails... which in itself causes a few issues (such as no cursor in Dragon Age (probably other games as well). It wouldn't be so bad, except it flickers like mad at random. Sometimes it's stable, but other times it'll flicker noticably and annoyingly and very quickly between the standard cursor size and the oversized version.

It seems to have gone away now.


Biggest bitch I've had so far was with getting Dirt 2 to run... I've got two copies (which I'll trade the second for with a game on steam if anyone is interested (Pm me with offer)) because they came with the 5850s.

Absolutely awesome game, especially with the Logitech G25 wheel... when you can get it to run.

First time I installed it, it was running ok. Went in to change a few settings; resolution, etc... and it bugs out. Play around with it a bit more to get things right... and suddenly it just stops working. It'll boot, but without displaying anything on screen.

Played around with all the settings in the catalyst driver; disabled Crossfire... that changed things up, but still didn't help; it'll load up the first AMD ad video... and then stutter and blackout after that. Even deleted it and redownloaded all 10 gigs again. Didn't change a thing.

Figured I'd google for a fix, found a ATI fix/patch/different version of catalyst for Dirt 2. Only it didn't seem to be working for the people that tried it.

Gave it a shot anyway... still wasn't working. Tried going through all the settings again and eventually found the culprit to be the Catalyst A.I...

Got it working again after about 3-4 hours.

Fucking ATI drivers man... really frustrating stuff. I much prefer the ability to set stuff up per application if I want to with Nvidia. I can kinda do it with Catalyst, but it's not integrated nearly as well (I can setup a particular profile, and get that profile to launch a shortcut when activated... as opposed to having catalyst autodetect when the application is running).
Plus the whole general lack of polish and shine for multi-gpu users makes the whole high-end PC gaming very much the domain of enthusaists only... paying this much money to deal with so many buggy problems... you really have to love it to do it.

Fortunately, once you get everything set up right, overclocked, stable, with workarounds for critical issues... it's satisfying.

Next step will be to hit that 4GHz mark... which is proving elusive so far (as far as stability goes). I think I might need to rewire the case... there's a big IDE cable obfuscating the airflow to the CPU/GPUs... going to need to replace the DVD drive with a newer one (I scavenged this one from an older comp)... although that's going to eat up a SATA port... and I had planned to install 8 HDDs in the machine. Oh well.

 

[Spl1nter]

They're dual core chips, not even worth considering.

what about if I am looking right now at the amd x3 435 as the cpu for my build?

 

[zon]

Plus the whole general lack of polish and shine for multi-gpu users makes the whole high-end PC gaming very much the domain of enthusaists only... paying this much money to deal with so many buggy problems... you really have to love it to do it.

You are using (fairly) new graphics cards made by ATI in crossfire. You should expect issues, not be surprised by them. That said, I am planning to upgrade to these cards too, I'll start with only one 5850 and get a second one next year. The drivers should be better by then.

 

[Gully State]

Man... I've been having so many problems with this new comp that I just built.

Finally got them sorted out.


i7 860 @ 3.8 GHz, 5850 Xfire OC to 850/1150, Vertex SSD. Seems like a champ.

But I had to contend with quite a few issues.

For starters the hardware build wasn't quite as smoothed as I had hoped. Picked up a megahelm cooler. Massive bastard. 2 120mm fans for a push/pull... unfortunately the tall heat spreaders on the ram prevented me from installing the second 120mm fan.

Once I got that setup, it became immediately apparent that one of the big reasons that I built the new pc had recieved a good kick to the ground; with the fact that when in Crossfire, you're only able to use the video outputs for one card.

So to use my three monitors, I have to disable crossfire.

One of the monitors (I believe its a cable issue) has problems displaying as well... it gives me a corrupted output, until I change its refresh to 59Hz... changing it back to 60Hz after is fine, with no noticeable difference.

But I have to do this every time I disable Crossfire.

With crossfire, I have it set to a single monitor... at least I don't have to alter the display settings every time I change that.

But it does resize all my windows into a 1024x768 area, so I have to reposition all the icons and window sizes.

Also had quite a bit of trouble overclocking my CPU... eventually got it right though, and got it steady enough to run a couple hours of prime95. Good enough for stability.

One of the more annoying and stranger bugs I've been getting is an oversized mouse cursor... like it'll blow upto 4x it's size, pixelated and all... at random. Once it blows up, it stays blown up until I reboot. Or until I turn on cursor trails... which in itself causes a few issues (such as no cursor in Dragon Age (probably other games as well). It wouldn't be so bad, except it flickers like mad at random. Sometimes it's stable, but other times it'll flicker noticably and annoyingly and very quickly between the standard cursor size and the oversized version.

It seems to have gone away now.


Biggest bitch I've had so far was with getting Dirt 2 to run... I've got two copies (which I'll trade the second for with a game on steam if anyone is interested (Pm me with offer)) because they came with the 5850s.

Absolutely awesome game, especially with the Logitech G25 wheel... when you can get it to run.

First time I installed it, it was running ok. Went in to change a few settings; resolution, etc... and it bugs out. Play around with it a bit more to get things right... and suddenly it just stops working. It'll boot, but without displaying anything on screen.

Played around with all the settings in the catalyst driver; disabled Crossfire... that changed things up, but still didn't help; it'll load up the first AMD ad video... and then stutter and blackout after that. Even deleted it and redownloaded all 10 gigs again. Didn't change a thing.

Figured I'd google for a fix, found a ATI fix/patch/different version of catalyst for Dirt 2. Only it didn't seem to be working for the people that tried it.

Gave it a shot anyway... still wasn't working. Tried going through all the settings again and eventually found the culprit to be the Catalyst A.I...

Got it working again after about 3-4 hours.

Fucking ATI drivers man... really frustrating stuff. I much prefer the ability to set stuff up per application if I want to with Nvidia. I can kinda do it with Catalyst, but it's not integrated nearly as well (I can setup a particular profile, and get that profile to launch a shortcut when activated... as opposed to having catalyst autodetect when the application is running).
Plus the whole general lack of polish and shine for multi-gpu users makes the whole high-end PC gaming very much the domain of enthusaists only... paying this much money to deal with so many buggy problems... you really have to love it to do it.

Fortunately, once you get everything set up right, overclocked, stable, with workarounds for critical issues... it's satisfying.

Next step will be to hit that 4GHz mark... which is proving elusive so far (as far as stability goes). I think I might need to rewire the case... there's a big IDE cable obfuscating the airflow to the CPU/GPUs... going to need to replace the DVD drive with a newer one (I scavenged this one from an older comp)... although that's going to eat up a SATA port... and I had planned to install 8 HDDs in the machine. Oh well.

ATi drivers do suck. Ever since I downloaded 9.11, I've been having issues such as Borderlands rendering improperly or the GPU crashing (which I admit might be coincidental- but I'm getting the light for D1601- critical temp fault. However, both GPU-Z and catalyst show that my GPU temps hover at 90C max under 100% load). But Borderlands rendering improperly is definitely a driver issue.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

whats the best air cooler for the i5 right now?

 

[Vallarfax]

I wanted to post what the specs of my current machine are and ask you guys at GAF if you think it necessary for me to upgrade at this point or if I should wait for new technology to be released/current to get cheaper. Here's the computer I built 2 years ago almost to the date:

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core Processor Model ADX6000CZBOX - Retail

PHILIPS 20X DVD±R DVD Burner 2-Tone SATA Model SPD2513BD - Retail

Rosewill RP500-2 500W ATX12V v2.01 Power Supply - Retail

GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 / nForce 430 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

EVGA 256-P2-N615-TX GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Support Video Card - Retail

A-DATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model ADQVE1A16K - Retail x2 (4GB)

Since it's being built I recently bought a really cheap ASUS video card as a bit of an upgrade even though I went from DDR3 down to DDR2.

ASUS EAH4650/DI/512MD2/A(LP) Radeon HD 4650 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Low Profile ... - Retail

Any thoughts? Should I try and muscle through the poor performance in new games and wait for newer technology, or should I just scrap this one and build my new computer now?

 

[Dash]

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll be sticking with the i5 750.

 

[Lkr]

I have 4 cores now

Gonna run OCT for 5 hours now

how can i find temps with 4 cores? overdrive won't display now

 

[HisshouBuraiKen]

Well I just purchased the parts for a new storage/media/gaming machine, although I missed so many deals because I didn't buy on Black Friday/Cyber Monday T_T

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard
XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB
OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ700MXSP 700W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) x 2
Antec Three Hundred ATX Midtower Case
Rosewill RFA-120-RL 120mm 4 Red LEDs LED Case Fan

Grand total thus far is $767 after rebates, but I still need to buy hard drives, which I think I'm gonna get from zipzoomfly instead of newegg because they do free fedex ground, and a llot of newegg reviews suggest going with fedex for HDDs.

So hopefully there'll be come christmas deals and I can keep this under $1k, because I want 3TB of storage + a small OS drive.

 

[Minsc]

ATi drivers do suck. Ever since I downloaded 9.11, I've been having issues such as Borderlands rendering improperly or the GPU crashing (which I admit might be coincidental- but I'm getting the light for D1601- critical temp fault. However, both GPU-Z and catalyst show that my GPU temps hover at 90C max under 100% load). But Borderlands rendering improperly is definitely a driver issue.

Just the opposite, don't have a single complaint for my 5870 so far. Have no interest in Borderlands though, luckily. I wonder what my card runs at... 90C seems high-ish, I'll have to find out later.

 

[SuicideUZI]

Next step will be to hit that 4GHz mark... which is proving elusive so far (as far as stability goes). I think I might need to rewire the case... there's a big IDE cable obfuscating the airflow to the CPU/GPUs... going to need to replace the DVD drive with a newer one (I scavenged this one from an older comp)... although that's going to eat up a SATA port... and I had planned to install 8 HDDs in the machine. Oh well.

I also have the i7 860 and tried going to 4Ghz from the beginning but it just wasnt happening. I'm even using the CORSAIR Hydro Series H50. My idle temps were acceptable but when I ran Prime95 the temps just shot straight up to the 90s, I dunno if its something I did wrong or what because I've heard other people being able to get 4Ghz out of this processor with reasonable temps. Right now I have it at 3.5Ghz with no probs.

 

[birdchili]

whats the best air cooler for the i5 right now?

based on reading a bunch of the Internet: Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B.

 

[Wallach]

Just got back, figured I would juice up this other box more than I originally intended. Picked up:

i5 750
Gigabyte P55M micro-ATX board (their micro P55 chipset)
4GB of DDR3 1600 (XMS3)

Will probably use a 9800 GTX+ in this until after the new year sometime, but that should more than suffice for now.

 

[TouchMyBox]

I have 4 cores now

Gonna run OCT for 5 hours now

how can i find temps with 4 cores? overdrive won't display now

hwmonitor is your friend

Oh, and people with Borderlands ATI 9.10 issues? Disable catalyst A.I.

 

[Ionic]

I'm breaking out of lurking to get some opinions on a new build I'm working on for myself. I'm really a PC gamer exclusively so still being on this Pentium 4, 2GB of RAM, 8800GT build is blasphemy. Anyway, I'm not sure about a couple of the components. Namely the motherboard and case. Tell me what you guys think so far.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=16898347
(Wishlist will change over time as I tweak it)

I know I have two cases in there. I'm trying to decide which one would be best. I really like the look of the RC-690, but the HAF 922 has great features. It would also be swell if you could help me out on if I chose a good CPU cooler. Lastly, I keep wondering if a 1980 x 1200 monitor is worth it over the 1920 x 1080 I have in the cart. I'm trying to keep it under $1,700 which shouldn't be too hard. I have a mouse, keyboard, and speakers already. Help me get off of my crusty old computer.