Its time for an upgrade,
Last saturday I took delivery of:
many stuffs. [There's a whole gallery of pics of lumps of computer over there ;)]
Time to see what this chip can do...
Early results were promising:
but almost comically unstable. Ten seconds of 3DMark or Prime95 and a reset was mine.
A bit of tweaking later however:
1Ghz more than stock - not bad I say ;)
I'll probably add more, later :D
Comments
I'm rather jellous.
I know I'm a sad fuck but please would you take a screenie of task manager after you've done something processor spicey (like lightwave or just sodding well opening word). Just to see the four traces of processors. YEAH BABY.
I am vindicated in my choice of MOBO. I've got the same one as you Byrn!
Nice one mate - great minds and all that. I'm glad to see you went with 780/ddr2 instead of the (frankly overpriced) 790/ddr3 option...
Got the replacement card on Saturday, whacked it in and now have SLI :D
Had to drop the o/c to 3.26 as it was unstable. Ran prime for 18 hours faultlessly with that though...
So what did you go for mate?
ahh....
Actually I did go for the 790/DDR3 option.... Just like you told me to wait for.... I didn't notice the missing EXTREME on your MOBO... :-/
Got it running aircooled with the stock airblock and fan for the CPU. It's a bit warm.
The plan is to water cool it this weekend.
As for bits...
Coolermaster RC-1100 Cosmos S
3 x Noctua NF-S12 800 RPM 120mm
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.66GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB)
Asus Striker II Extreme nForce 790i Ultra SLi (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Corsair 4GB DDR3 DHX 1600C7DHX Twin3X (2x2GB)
2 x BFG GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ)
Zalman 1000w ZM1000-HP Dual Heatpipe Cooled Modular PSU +80% Efficiency
Acer 24"P243W
Hyundai W240D-TN 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black
SteelSeries Ikari Laser Pro Gaming Mouse
SteelSeries SteelPad QCK + Pro Gaming Mouse Mat
Ideazon MERC Stealth Keyboard
plus various blocks, radiator and bits for water cooling it all.
When it's all done I'll be trying to blog the build for posterity
Getting a bit impatient now to get playing with it....
Ah, I was indeed looking at the 790i, as I reccomended, but then I noticed that for the cost of mobo/proc/ram/gpu I could get an entire computer based on the 780...
It does mean that you can reuse the ram... its unlikely the DDR2 I have will be usable by the next time. If I had the cash, I'd probably have gone 790, but it would have meant months of extra saving...
2x GX2s? well you won't be short of GPU power ;)
Looks like what I would have gone for if I had the cash :D
something worth mentioning with two monitors is that when SLI is switched on only one display will be enabled IIRC...
Yeah and for the time being I will be sticking to one monitor.
I may well get another at some point in the future, but my bonus has already disappeared on the above.
There is a gadgetout there that will turn two (or three) monitors into one big one, but for widescreen monitors the resolutions aren't that great. I forget it's exact name. That might be a future option if they update it and I feel the need for surround monitors.
Till then I think I'll be ok with one.
Ah, the Matrox triplehead to go or something - yeah, last I saw it didn't go high enough res, and it was fairly expensive...
It's obvious (and been discussed in person,) but if you're going SLI, you have to manually turn it on for most games. The default NVidia profiles are insanely conservative, and allow SLI for about one game in five, which is always so old it doesn't need it anyway. I've respectfully disagreed with the defaults on plenty of games without issue (and a couple of them with issue...)