Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

PWM FRIENDLY MOBOS DON'T EXIST

Just like you, Raymond, I'm thinking of my next machine. I acquired a huge education this weekend on cpus - core 2 duo, versus P4 architecture, etc. etc.

But I have given up on trying to find a pwm friendly core 2 duo 775 motherboard - I'm just going to buy the damn little Mcubed and let it sit at the bottom of the case. I found an Abit board with support for 6 fans, but the user manual showed that they were all 3-pin headers, except for the 4-pin pwm cpu fan. Sure abit allows you to control the speed of the other fans through voltage, not pwm, but it's basically a bios setting that goes from 40% to 100% (it is temperature dependent however, I will give them that.) But what about pwm?

The mobo manufacturers don't think it will sell any more boards for them, except Rich will buy one, so that is that. I found one other board, a Gigabyte, with 3 fan support, 2 of them with pwm. The speedfan site lists hundreds of boards that supposedly are pwm friendly. (They all have the added date of Nov 30, 1999, which is Alfredo's default date for everything, lol - some of the boards just came out.)

Looking at socket 775, there are still a ton of boards, and I could spend a solid week trying to find one that will run 4 pwm fans. I don't think there is any such thing. It's just so much easier to spend the $100 or $150 and buy the BigNG T-balancer from Mcubed and have it shipped here from Austria.

What do they get for Crysis? $50? Are you picking up a DVD or downloading from their web site.

 

waymon

By the way, I was just thinking about all the boards I have looked at this weekend, Raymond. Some of them were really set up for overclocking, with awesome copper coolers all around the chipsets - one of them is called the roller coaster design - loops of copper - I kid you not! The abit was highly reviewed - got some editor's choice awards. I know you want to overclock, and Sam says you should aim at 50% with the core 2 duo, but the $75 board he mentioned didn't seem like it had a lot of cooling on it when I went to look at it on Newegg to see if there was any pwm fan support.

The other boards were running $150 to $225, and the abit was priced a little lower at $185. I don't know if that will break your budget, but if you can make it up with the overclocking and effectively score a more expensive cpu that way, (course you're already factoring in quad 4 2.4 - pretty heavy merchandise - 50% that's 3.6 Ghz quad 4 - no cpu bound for you for a few years, huh) maybe it sort of pays for itself.

Plus the reviewers were specifically talking about the ease of the overclocking without having to amp up the volts that much, for some reason (I didn't pay 100% attention, looking for f'ing pwm support.) I got the idea that for some reason you don't have to juice the chipsets etc that much to ramp up the clock, don't remember why, Sam probably knows.

What's your take on all that Sam, higher end mobos with a lot more copper cooling, and easier o'cing. - Rich

 

If you're going to overclock, you'll need a well-cooled motherboard, without question. As for the frame rates for the later games, they'll all run on the X1950XT, but you'll have to turn a few things down. Even I will. Even an 8800GTX owner will.

 

Makes sense, Sam

What about that abit - do you like it? The pro model - sorry I don't have the exact model number handy. They don't make many boards. Their flagship board, socket 775, $184. Highly reviewed.

I see you changed your signature.
Rich

 

sam, what do you think of this board?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128046

 

Kardson

Travis, how are the removed teeth working out? Have the meds been helping? Are you back with the living? Ready for the BF2 matchup with Raymond? (Did you guys ever private message and xchange email so you can jump on the same server?)

You've still got the stock Gecube, so in that regard it's just going to be you and me, so I have one more question about cooling for you, or for anybody else here who wants to help out. I'm going to have a well-ventilated case by the time all the parts arrive, including the kama bay. By the way, did you originally mean for me to mount the fans in the lower hard drive bay, and let them draw from wherever, pointing back to the graphics card, without worrying about a path to the outsid? Is the front of my case "leaky" enough that this would have pulled fresh air in? If not, is that why some reviews say that front fans only recirculate hot case air?

Anyway, I always thought, maybe correctly, that you wanted me to suck fresh air in from an opening in the front, which is why I abandoned the idea of putting fans down below.

Anyway, I'm now waiting for the kama bay to arrive. I'll be using up 3 of my 4 5.25" upper bays (I moved the burner to a different computer - just burned a graphics cd for Sam) with the kama bay 120mm scythe (only 800 rpm - I might upgrade per Sam to 1600), so all kinds of fresh air will be pouring in the front.

But thinking back to the Gecube - is there any room under the stock TEC cooler to thermattach 412 little heat sinks to the memory chips? (I already picked up the Thermattach 412 per a post of yours - thanks.) If so, what little heat sinks could you link me to?

Thanks,
Rich

 

Yes, there is room under the x1950xt's TEC cooler to place heatsinks on the Vram. There is one chip (that is in the middle I think) that you have to place the heatsink off to the side a tiny bit, it will cover about 7/8 of the chip.

 

Hey thanks, Raymond. I imagine frozen PC has the little sinks - I guess I'll go over there and see, unless you have a different suggestion. -Rich

 

Waymon

Check this out.

passive ram sinks from frozen cpu

(Bottom of page.) Nothing is better than copper, right, so I might as well go $7.99 for the thermaltake

...................

instead of $11.99 for the zalman
...................
Or is there something I'm missing?

They talk about the zalman being very lightweight and designed to work on both sides of the board. Do I need to be concerned about the copper ones falling off because of the weight, and is there vram on both sides of the board anyway?

Rich

 

Well I have those exact same copper heatsinks, the ones from thermaltake, and they've been staying on pretty well... They also fit under the TEC cooler, so you dont have to worry. I would go with the copper ones.

 

If there's one thing that dis-satisfied me with my Thermalright HR-03 cooler it's that the sticky compound on the RAMsinks was terrible, and half of them are now on the bottom of my case floor. However, with them on or with them off, my GPU is still stable and it overclocks exactly the same!
If you go with copper ones, get some good stuff to attach them with (but make sure you get it right, they might not come off!)

 

waymon
sammorris

Thanks guys. Ok I'll get the copper. Do you have any idea if the thermattach is sticky enough to keep the things on? Hey Raymond, I don't know how I missed your other link about that $228 gigabyte mobo - the cooling looks really nice. How has it been reviewed?
Rich

 

sammorris
waymon

Hey guys - just out of curiousity - I hit the link that was supposed to pull up all threads updated during last 24 hours - other than by myself. Sam has a post on here today - and I think you also do, Raymond. But under Pc hardware - other - I see sam is on two other threads, power supplies and something else, but there is no mention of your thread, right here, the x1950xt question, Raymond. What gives with that? - Do you guys know?

 

sammorris
waymon
kardson
dinc

Hey guys,

If you haven't already come across this case - I thought you might find it interesting that the pelt is back!

Sam - you said they were used in mini-fridges. Well, you can now update that, dude. They are now used in computer cases:

Here's a review:
air-conditioned computer case

and here's a composite picture:

....

(The cooling information is a little confusing - 120watt power consumption, but then they say 52 watts - must be a typo because the fans don't consume anything. By the way, they have two fans just in front of this tec cooler. The normal radial fan sits above, and without the tec just pulls ambient air in. Below that sits a squirrel cage intake blower that comes on when the tec turns on, blowing air past the hot side of the tec, out the bottom past some ridges that divert it to the sides! They have a normal case fan in the back, and of course the psu - only 460 watts but they say "true watts" - which has a couple of fans.)

And just a couple quick things about mobos: Here's the one that Raymond just linked us to:
gigabyte mobo

....
and this is the roller coaster from msi:
msi roller coaster

which is mentioned again in this review of the abit:
abit review mentions msi roller coaster again

................
and finally here is the abit: (very highly reviewed - editor's choice somewhere - great for overclocking they said.)

....

-rich

 

Hmm, I'm really not to sure about that old mobo I wanted... Right now I need 2 pci slots, one for my wireless network card and one for my sound card, and then I would like to have at least 1 more if I ever needed to upgrade to something else, like a physx card...

This is kind of a dumb question, but If I bought a SLI mobo, could I use one of the slots as a PCI slot? - Or are those only limited to graphic cards? As I said, I wont be doing cross fire with the 2900XT, ts just to expensive, but every board I look at and like has SLI, and a very small amount of PCI slots...

Btw, this is the mobo I've now been looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128012



It has one PCI-e slot, and 3 PCI slots, which is perfect.

Also, one other part I was really liking are the 2 PCI-e 1x slots under the video card slot, and since the 2900 takes up 2 spaces, it wont cover a very needed PCI slot. You know what I'm saying?

But yeah... The only thing I dont like about is is that it doesnt have the copper heatsinks all around it, which I kinda want because I would like to overclock my quad core from 2.4Ghz to 3Ghz... But I need the extra cooling. (I also think the heatsinks on the mobo make it look a lot cooler too!)

Any other ideas on a mobo?

EDIT: I like this one too:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131025




and this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128044




One last thing: A 680i SLI mobo can run crossfire right? OR do I need to find a specific cross fire board, or a mobo that will be compatable with ATi. Basically, are all mobos backwards compatable with ATi and nVidia?

What one should I pick? I think the ASUS P5W DH DELUXE is the best out of all...

 

A SLI motherboard wont run crossfire and a crossfire mobo wont do SLI. Oh and you can't use PCI-E slots for PCI, only PCI-E peripherals which are not limited to GFX cards.

 

Can a SLI mobo run 1 ATi card then? Or are their different kinds of mobos for different cards?

 

Harvrdguy: I wouldn't know about the stickiness of the RAMsinks, but if you get some Thermal Epoxy they won't be falling off any time soon.
No idea about why this thread doesn't appear in a search I'm afraid...
I think what they mean in that case is that it uses 52W of power but can get rid of 120W of heat.

The silly thing about the MSI rollercoaster is that it's obviously focusing on good motherboard cooling, now surely that goes hand in hand with good CPu cooling? What's the point in doing all that for the motherboard when there's only room for a stock-sized cooler?

Waymon: You can use PCI express slots for PCI express devices at or below the rated speed. (e.g. a 16x slot can take 16x, 8x, 4x, 2x or 1x, whereas a 4x can only take 4x, 2x and 1x), but you can't use PCI in them. You'll need to get PCI express 1x devices instead.

The Gigabyte Motherboards are very good, and as you can see they offer you the right number of slots, and nicely 6 S-ATA ports.

Let's clear up the dual graphics card issue:

SINGLE SLOT: one ATI, or one Nvidia. This is the case for any chipset
TWO SLOT: one ATI, or one Nvidia, in conjunction with a non-graphics 16x device. If a board has two PCIe 16x slots, don't assume it's SLi or crossfire unless it mentions it!
SLI: Two nvidia, or one nvidia or one ATi
CROSSFIRE: Two ATI, or one ATi, or one nvidia.
I'm not going into triple graphics or what have you, it's not common enough,

With regard to the motherboards, it's usually best to buy the one that suits you best, if the cooling's not sufficient change it yourself, for something like a Thermalright HR-05.

 

Like sam already said a crossfire mobo will run one Nvidia card fine but it wont do SLI, and a SLI board will run one ATI card fine but it wont do crossfire. Just clearing that up.

P.S. I didn't know your name was Raymond. Not very common these days.

 

so what's your first name abuzar, or is it abuzar?