Number of driver championships
Number of team championships
Number of wins
Number of starts
Number of times miles driven around Earth
Number of track records|
Posted by Rob Ainscough at 01:09 PM on Jul 17, 2008
Post #1
Took me a few days, but finally got a dual boot rig working with new CPU/MB/GPUs. So far I'm impressed. QX9770 @ 3.8Ghz
Drives are setup as 2 drives in RAID 0 for WinXP and another 2 drivers in RAID 0 for Vista x64. Took me a little while to get voltage, frequencies, timing, etc. etc. sorted so that Prime95 is error free. Interestingly, I had to adjust voltage when running Vista x64 as it had some stability issues. So a word to the wise, if you have a dual boot, be sure to get stable performance in both environments. I made the mistake of thinking my voltage/freq/timing would be fine under Vista x64 if it was fine under WinXP 32bit, I was wrong. Extremely impressed with the ATI 4870 cards, especially two of them for CF setup. BUT, I plan to upgrade these to 4870X2 cards come August 13th. (hint hint, I'll have two 4870's for sale). If you are in the market for a GPU and have a PCI 2.0 slot, I'd seriously try and wait for August 13th to get the 4870X2 -- this card will be very scalable across many games and is showing about a 15% speed increase over the 4870 CF setup. Now, this setup is completely unnecessary for GTR2 and rFactor. But there are some other racing sims (not to be mentioned) that do indeed take more processing/GPU power. As a side benefit, I can now play Crysis at 1920 x 1080 4X AA at HIGH everything and get 50-60 fps (Vsync ON) everywhere in the game. ATI have certainly stepped up their game, wonder if nVidia have an answer planned?? GTX 300 maybe? |
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Posted by Garth Buchanan at 01:19 PM on Jul 17, 2008
Post #2
Grats dood! I gotta say though. I always find it funny how people are so worried about Prime95 stability.. since obviously you use it everyday, right? :) I usualy just run a ahndfull of games, and my graphics apps to insure stability. 9/10 times, they will run fine and Prime will crash when nearing the limits of the hardware. But I dont use Prime on a daily basis (does anyone), so i could care less. Is your Xp install 64? If not, does your mobo have the ability to read the 3gb memory hole? |
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Posted by Rob Ainscough at 02:20 PM on Jul 17, 2008
Post #3
Hi Garth, My WinXP install is 32bit so it's limited to a max of 2GB thread size. Vista x64 install is primarily for two games/sim FSX and Crysis. Only Crysis is a true 64bit client so it can use more than 2GB RAM. But there are so few 64bit games and even fewer 64bit games that use DX10. I use Prime95 for stability testing when I'm overclocking and setting up timings/voltage/freq etc. via BIOS. Prime95 will trigger errors that may not show up in some games, but will show up in others. It's a great tool for estabilishing system stability in terms of RAM/CPU. Prime95 does nothing to ensure GPU stability. For GPU stability testing I use 3DMark06 an 3DMark Vantage. If you are getting Prime95 errors then you're risking a possible lockup, reboot, BSOD, or CTD. It's hard enough to make GTR2 and rFactor work reliably even with a stable system, so the last thing I want to do is add even more risk by allowing my system to run with error prone Prime95 test runs. Trust me, it can be real frustrating to be leading a race after 60 minutes only to CTD, BSOD, and/or reboot -- certainly takes away the fun factor. The more variables I can remove from the equation the better, Prime95 lets me do that. There are of course other stability factors, such as drivers (chipset, video, audio) -- oddly finding the right driver combo is a challenge and the most recent drivers are not always the best drivers to use. Example is the June 08 Creative Labs drivers, they caused sound drop outs under WinXP. I went back to the March 08 drivers (which are 20MB larger) and all is good with the sound. Same type of thing happens with GPU drivers. The only time a driver update has consistantly improved is with Intel chipset drivers and Intel Matrix RAID drivers -- it seems they go thru more rigorous testing before being made public. |
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Posted by Samuel Krueger at 06:39 PM on Jul 17, 2008
Post #4
Cool rig Rob... 8) Here's a nice stress test program that uses Prime95 source but the GUI is more informative ... Orthos
here's the main page...
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Posted by Allen Cotton at 12:29 AM on Jul 18, 2008
Post #5
Nice set up Rob, these 4870's rock, and I aint even CF'd mine. |
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Posted by Rob Ainscough at 01:30 AM on Jul 18, 2008
Post #6
The setup is even nicer because I was able to get my work to pay for it :) Woohoo! Samuel, excellent link - will have to check that out. Yeah, these 4870's do rock and the 4870X2 is due out August 13th. Big turn around for ATI, the 3870 and 3870X2 was a dissapointment, but these 4870's are amazing, especially in DX10 games like Crysis, wow!! After just finishing the GT3 Sepang race, I used to get graphic stutters in my old rig, this one is as smooth as glass and I can crank all the details back up. Very happy. |
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Posted by Tom Gregerson at 04:54 AM on Jul 18, 2008
Post #7
you got your work to pay for THAT machine ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? |
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Posted by Rob Ainscough at 11:07 AM on Jul 18, 2008
Post #8
I think you need a few more question marks ;) Errr, yeah -- not unusual for us software engineer types to get our companies to pay for our tools of the trade, especially when we work at home a few days a week. Maybe the graphics cards were a little over kill, but could be justified if I work on any DirectX type projects. |
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Posted by Michael Virt at 02:41 PM on Jul 18, 2008
Post #9
Lucky bastard!!!:) Anyway nice pc Rob, even if I understand nothing from rest of your post:) |
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Posted by Bob Fay at 06:10 PM on Jul 18, 2008
Post #10
Nice Rob. I got a E8400 3Ghz overclocked to 4Ghz with an ATI HD4870 graphics card. The setup rocks. I cant CF since my mobo has an Nvidia chipset, but I'm happy with this for now. |
