More Power to the Tower

[Maggi]

teehee ... look, what I just found:

AM2 CPU-EZ Upgrade Board Vcore Mod

[Mehen]

I think Unreal3 is going to be dx9, but I could be mistaken.

It's not so much the dx10 feature that you're missing, its the raw horsepower.

Even dx9 games like supreme commander, Oblivion, etc are extremely taxing.

Depends on what you are playing I guess, you might very well be right in waiting for a second or even third gen dx10 card.

[Maggi]

I think Unreal3 is going to be dx9, but I could be mistaken.

It's not so much the dx10 feature that you're missing, its the raw horsepower.

Even dx9 games like supreme commander, Oblivion, etc are extremely taxing.

Depends on what you are playing I guess, you might very well be right in waiting for a second or even third gen dx10 card.

Afaik, the Unreal3 engine will fully support and utillize D3D10, but as I said before, it'll have a DX9 render path anyways

As for the horsepower, obviously my 7800GS is not the top of the line, but for me it's most likely powerful enough to fulfill my gaming needs, which are mostly covered my racing games, using my Momo steering wheel and my 3D shutter glasses.

Also the glasses work best at refresh rates of 120Hz and above with VSync being forced on, hence my resolution will be limited to 1024x768@120Hz anyways, but the 7800GS is powerfull enough at that resolution to let me enable visual eyecandies like 4x AA, 8xAF, MS transparency AA and forcing trilinear mipmapping without getting a massive performance hit.

My favorite racing games are GTR, GT Legends and rFactor btw. and using 3D glasses really helped to improve my driving skills ...

For arcade racing, I mostly run NfS Most Wanted online with friends via Hamachi and usually we don't do any races per se, but instead we just cruise the open town, having fun doing donuts, long jumping, "the chicken game", hide'n'seek and those kind of things ...

[Mehen]

Afaik, the Unreal3 engine will fully support and utillize D3D10, but as I said before, it'll have a DX9 render path anyways

That's Crysis, UT3 is all dx9.

[Maggi]

That's Crysis, UT3 is all dx9.

true, I also looked it up on their homepage

dunno why, but I really thought UT3 would also be DX10


however, my RAM came in today

so all I'm waiting for is my AM2CPU board, the CPU itself and the PSU

I was hoping they'd all come in today, so that I'd have the full weekend to assemble and install everything, but it sems I gotta wait until next week.

Cheers,
Maggi

[Mehen]

Funny thing, my brothers 9800XT died yesterday, he ordered a X1950PRO agp (basically ATI counterpart of the 7800GS) - I guess you really just can't get out of agp eh oh well

($210 Canadian - ncix.com on sale and w/ $30 mail-in rebate)

[Maggi]

Funny thing, my brothers 9800XT died yesterday, he ordered a X1950PRO agp (basically ATI counterpart of the 7800GS) - I guess you really just can't get out of agp eh oh well

($210 Canadian - ncix.com on sale and w/ $30 mail-in rebate)

Good choice ...

In theory the X1950PRO should kick my 7800GS' bottom, but I'm bound to NV since they are the only ones still actively supporting Stereo3D rendering.

However, the PSU and the AM2CPU board shwoed up yesterday, so all I'm missing now is the CPU ...

Hopefully it'll come in until Saturday, so that I could assemble the rig over the weekend



Cheers,
Maggi

[Maggi]

btw, I noticed my Heatpipe being slightly different from the link I posted above and I found out that it's rather this one:

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1962

probably a bit noisy, but the performance is quite in the ballpark that I'm after



Maggs

[Maggi]

Hey Gang !

The new system is up and running smoothly ...


First stability test and benchmark at stock clocks using Doom3 showed an increase
from former +40fps to ~97fps



I'll keep you posted ...

[Maggi]

Howdy ...

Yesterday evening, I made the first attempts to OC this puppy with quite a few interesting results.

First off, the Mobo is one heck of an OCer, I had its FSB raised to 300MHz from default 200 ...

The RAM was good enough to run at 430MHz with CL4, while being spec'd to 400MHz with CL5.

The CPU wouldn't let me above 2200MHz from default 2000, but I guess that's just a matter of VCore modding to overcome the default cap at 1.3V.


Cool'n'Quiet is teh showstopper for OCing, since it effectively reverts all CPU multiplier adjustments to its default 10x ...


This surely isn't as straight forward OCing as it used to be in the glory days a few years ago, instead it has become a rather complex task with quite a few more items that depend on and affect each other.

I had the system rock stable at default multipliers and dividers with an FSB of 215, resulting in a CPU clock of 2150, HT speed of 1075, RAM @ 430 CL4 while CnQ was fully enabled and active, effectively halving the clocks and reducing VCore from 1.3V down to 1.1V.

Until I take the plunge and start fiddling with the VCore cap, I'll leave it at default clocks (CPU 2000, HT 1000, FSB 200, RAM 400 CL4) and just enjoy the enormous performance gain compared to my former system ...

So far, I noticed the HD performance doubled from ~30MB/s to ~60MB/s and a few quick tests showed 3D Mark 2001 jumping from ~15k to +23k.

However, I'll do a couple of benchmarks over the next few days to fully evaluate the difference between my former OCed XP2400+ and this new toy.

...

On a side note, now that I've gone DualCore, I noticed a new option in the advanced NVidia control panel performance options: "Threaded Optimizations"

I guess, that's meant to be the multicore support for the gfx driver, but I couldn't see any performance differences between "on" and "off" so far ... does anybody of you have some more background information and/or experience on that topic ?

...

Lastly, the biggest improvement I see now is when I'm hosting a LAN game for GT Legends or GTR while using my 3D shutter glasses and Kiax for live chatting while driving ... no more intermittent stutters or slowdowns and very smooth gameplay ...


Btw, if you have GT Legends, GTR2 or rFactor at your disposal, you really should go and grab the Nordschleife !!!
(that's the main page for rFactor, but you'll find the other releases in the "board" section)

Here's a teaser that could make you addicted ....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3q-WnRG1a8I

and here are some in game screenshots

http://tobi.sinfin.de/ns/media.html

[Maggi]

Just a little update:

I found out the heatpipe being slightly different to the one I linked in my starting post, but the right version is now reflected in my signature ...

Also, I'll try the VCore mod over the weekend, so please wish me luck that all goes well and that I can OC this puppy to some higher levels.

Cheers,
Maggi

[Mehen]

Goodluck and keep us posted!

[Maggi]

Hi Guys,

sorry for my enduring absence, I'm just too busy at work and at home ...

However, I finally made that Vmod and the CPU is now happily running on an FSB of 250MHz (200 was default).

Using CnQ makes the core frequency hover between 1250 & 2500 MHz, depending on the load I put onto it ...

I doubt that I really reached the max the CPU can do, but until now, I'm still using the standard thermal pad that was stuck onto the HSF.

Maybe sometimes, when I got more spare time to spend, I'll rip it apart again and use proper thermal compound for better cooling.

Anyways, the performance is great to say the least and judging by the benchmarks I ran for stability testing, my overall performance is now 2-3 times higher than on my former Thorton 2700+ CPU ...

w000t !

Maggs