Graphics card upgrade...

[J1NG]

Hey guys,

Hoping to do one last upgrade from the current setup. Would like the opinion of you guys on this one.

1x PCIe graphics card? (ATI, NVidia, or even Matrox... )
or
2x SLI graphics cards? (NVidia only)

New setup is along the lines of:

2x 265/270 Opteron (Need to buy)
4GB LL Registered ECC DDR1 PC3200 RAM (2GB each CPU) (Already waiting for CPU upgrade to fully take advantage of)
Supermicro H8DCE (SLI, PCI and PCIe slots) (Need to buy)

Thinking about making this the only system in the house (except for a legacy system, used for Win98/Win2k only stuff, featuring the Matrox Marvel G200 ), so will need to be able to handle some gaming at least.

No, I'm not jumping to the new socket ones yet, because there is no ATI Crossfire/Nvidia SLI comptabile system out there, and currently I'm more interested in ATI Crossfire, but do give opinions if anyone has them. So primarily wondering what people recommend for a gaming setup (graphics cards wise). Should I go NVidia SLI with a cheaper set of cards? Go for a cheap NVidia/ATI/Matrox now, and then buy next gen NVidia in SLI? Or just go with the single ATI solution?

J1NG

[az]

What the hell are you doing that needs a computer like that?

[J1NG]

Currently, 3D Modelling, Photoshop'ing, some Database stuff, some experimental - err - stuff , coding, some web stuff, video editing, and (why I wanted the gaming cards) some gaming too. Oh, and generally I change what I do quite often. I'm not buying this just to type a few documents in Word you k'now?

J1NG

[Mehen]

If you can - wait for a DX10 card.

If not go with something like a 7900GT or X1900 series card. I wouldn't spend TOO much $$ right now.

Wait for Crysis/UT2k7 to drop a lot of $ into video.

(From a gaming perspective)

[Gurm]

Or you could do what I did, and find some sucker who blew up his eVGA card and didn't know that it has a lifetime warranty, and pick it up off him for $20!

[Evildead666]

Or you could do what I did, and find some sucker who blew up his eVGA card and didn't know that it has a lifetime warranty, and pick it up off him for $20!

Damn! Well Done !

[gt40]

Or do one better and get a firegl x3 for free

[Elie]

Hey guys,

1x PCIe graphics card? (ATI, NVidia, or even Matrox... )
or
2x SLI graphics cards? (NVidia only)

New setup is along the lines of:

2x 265/270 Opteron (Need to buy)
4GB LL Registered ECC DDR1 PC3200 RAM (2GB each CPU) (Already waiting for CPU upgrade to fully take advantage of)
Supermicro H8DCE (SLI, PCI and PCIe slots) (Need to buy)

J1NG

That's almost as fast as my workstation....

HP Xw9300
Dual Opteron 275's
2 GB Ram
ATI X1900XTX 512 MB ram
700GB Raid 0 SATA II array
80GB boothable SATA II drive
Running the entire Adobe Studio proffesional Suite, which includes PS CS2, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Audition and Encore

J1NG, you should be perfectly fine with your setup!!

OH! and go with Nvidia only if you need openGL rendering as part of the 3D application, if not, ATI is the better choice, tons of bandwidth.

[Gurm]

Damn! Well Done !

Well I think he was itching for an excuse to upgrade to a 7800GTOWHAMMAJAMMA and his wife was balking at the $300+ pricetag, and saying it was "dead" and "look honey I got $20 for it!" helped his cause. Still, he could have SOLD it for $100 after RMA'ing it himself. *sigh*

[spadnos]

Hey guys,

Hoping to do one last upgrade from the current setup. Would like the opinion of you guys on this one.

1x PCIe graphics card? (ATI, NVidia, or even Matrox... )
or
2x SLI graphics cards? (NVidia only)

New setup is along the lines of:

2x 265/270 Opteron (Need to buy)
4GB LL Registered ECC DDR1 PC3200 RAM (2GB each CPU) (Already waiting for CPU upgrade to fully take advantage of)
Supermicro H8DCE (SLI, PCI and PCIe slots) (Need to buy)

Thinking about making this the only system in the house (except for a legacy system, used for Win98/Win2k only stuff, featuring the Matrox Marvel G200 ), so will need to be able to handle some gaming at least.

No, I'm not jumping to the new socket ones yet, because there is no ATI Crossfire/Nvidia SLI comptabile system out there, and currently I'm more interested in ATI Crossfire, but do give opinions if anyone has them. So primarily wondering what people recommend for a gaming setup (graphics cards wise). Should I go NVidia SLI with a cheaper set of cards? Go for a cheap NVidia/ATI/Matrox now, and then buy next gen NVidia in SLI? Or just go with the single ATI solution?

J1NG

This is nearly identical to my development system:
SuperMicro H8DCE
2x Opteron 275 (recent upgrade)
4G Corsair RAM (CM72SD1024RLP-3200, I think)
NVidia 7800GT video (I also have a Quadro FX3500, but it was actually slower when tested under Linux. (I didn't change drivers, so that may have something to do with it) GLXGears shows 13500 FPS or so, and I can run Wolf:ET at 1920x1200 with everything turned on and only rarely drop below 90 FPS, where it's usually pegged.

It's "holy crap" fast. I work on an open source project that has several megabytes of source code, and a full make after make clean takes ~20 seconds (use -j 8 or just -j to get a parallel make).

BUT, do *not* buy a PC Power & Cooling Silencer series power supply. They don't work with this board. The Turbo-Cool series does seem to work. I have done extensive testing on 6 motherboards (of two revisions, 1.01 and 3.1), with 6 different power supplies, and I can post more info if you'd like it. Actually, there are issues with power supplies from other manufacturers as well, so I shouldn't pick on them, but it was a surprise.

Other than power supply issues, and a friend having problems with having 3 PCI cards installed (he needed to disable onboard sound), the board has been excellent, and perfectly stable.

SuperMicro does have a dual Socket-F board now, the H8DAE-2 (Info Here) That looks to me like the Opteron 2000 replacement to the H8DCE.

Good luck. It should be a nice system as long as you avoid the power problems

- Steve

[J1NG]

OK, thanks for all the details guys, think I'll be plunking down a few for a cheap graphics card (Heck, I could even try the Matrox Marvel G200 in this... hmmm... ) for now and wait for the next gen of NVidia in SLI for the board for the gaming then.

Thanks all.

J1NG