Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

I think I will just keep it a 4Ghz only when benching - and thats it. 4Ghz produces a good amount of heat, even with the watercooling. 40C idle and 60C load is what a stock cooler should have a stock clocks, but to be running the C2Q @ 4Ghz with 1.6v, and getting to 60C will probably do some amount of damage in the long run.

But to answer your question sam, I think I will oce it to 3.6, or maybe even 3.0 and keep it at the stock "auto" volts in the BIOS, as that's what I had before.

BTW sam, just out of curiosity, how do you make the name appear above the quote? Like "Originally posted by _______"?

 

Hey Waymon, that is an immense system. You must be running hundreds of fps in most games. You should get a bigger monitor!

 

Waymon: Sounds reasonable and is probably what I'd do if I had one (3.0Ghz that is). As for quoting an individual person, don't click reply, but click +quote on the right hand side of the message you're quoting. Or do the usual quote procedure but inside the brackets put quote=theirname
You do the /quote as usual.
MaccerM: You know what's funny? He probably isn't. Crossfire doesn't work for very many games, so in a lot of them he'd get similar scores to a single 3870. The CPU may be imba-fast but that will only help your fps so much. Ultimately he still won't be able to run Crysis very well.

 

It's not just the heat, it's also electro migration. No amount of cooling will save you from that if you turn up the voltage very high.

 

I wonder what the people that have insane clocks on their QX9650s have for a voltage? Like the ones that run 3dmark06 @ 5Ghz, or 6 with LN2?

Sam, so far I haven't had a problems with Crossfire and games, with the exception of Crysis which didn't support it from day 1, but the patch should fix that. In addition, 3dmark06 in Vista required a Crossfire Hotfix download from Window's site; but other than that I think thats it.

I have played: Company of heroes, Crysis, Supreme Commander, C&C 3, Simcity Societies, and COD 4.

With the Ati hotfix for Crysis, crossfire is enabled and does show a performance boost, but textures in the background flicker, and I do sometimes get weird artifacts, but as I said earlier, the patch should fix that as so many people over at incrysis.com have been nagging for SLi/CF and Quad Core support.

Sam, what games do you think won't work with CF?

 

Haha, if I had the money I probably would! This 19" 1280x1024 monitor is good enough for now... I was looking at the Scepture 24" 1080p screen, and that's the one I am favoring right now. On the otherhand, my dad got a 52" 1080p LCD for Christmas, so I might hook up the pc to that... Not sure if he'll let me though.

 

Quite a few. Have a google on it. A large proportion of games weren't tested for reasons like you mention for Crysis, rendering errors, or worse, crashes. On the games it does work on, it often doesn't offer much of a performance boost. For some games it works tremendously well, but for a lot it doesn't, which is why I never recommend it to anyone.

Note:
52" HDTV: 1920x1080
24" PC monitor: 1920x1200
30" PC monitor: 2560x1600

 

Yes I'm sure they get immense clocks with very high voltages. The fact is that they spend thousands of dollars on it and are sponsored by companies where money doesn't really come into play. Also at those voltages their CPUs wont even last a month. It's just done to set records. Of course I'm assuming you would want your CPU to last more than a year?

 

....I wonder how much the 45nm chips will cost...

Sam, this is the monitor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824112011

It claims it's resolution is 1920x1200, so why do they call it a 1080p monitor? It doesnt have 1080 pixels...

 

They have a chart out. They're really cheap for what you get. Of course that's the "official" price. The official price of the 8800GT 512MB is 200 and you saw how that went.

 

Waymon, it is a 1080p compliant monitor. It's actually better than 1080p as the vertical pixel count is 1200 vs 1080. The reason for this is the different aspect ratios. For instance a standard TV is 4:3, I.e 1024x768 or 1024 ÷ 4 = 256 x3 = 768. Widescreen aspect (HDTV) is 16:9, which is 1920x1080 and your standard PC monitor is 5:4, like 1280x1024 (i.e 1280 ÷ 5 =256 x4 = 1024) or in this case 1920x1200. So they mean that it supports full HD resolution but it’s actually higher than that, the difference between 1080 and 1200 is the aspect ratio between 16:9 and 5:4.

 

Waymon: Because it can handle 1080 resolutions. Since it has an extra 120 lines, you'll just see thin black bars at the top and bottom when playing 1080p material. Smaller monitors with resolutions of 1680x1050 obviously can't do 1080 properly, so they aren't given the "1080p" designation. As Maccer says, the reason for 1200 pixels is because PC monitors are 16:10, i.e. they have 60% more pixels along then up. TVs are 16:9, having 66.6% more pixels along than up.

 

Oh, ok then! I think that's my main choice, since the dell 30" is out of the question. (Damn you sam!)

Would any of you guys have experience with booting for a cd and flashing a card's BIOS? I did it last night, but after I created a bootable DVD (not cd, as I had no cds that were empty) with Atiflash and the Bios for the 3870 on there already. However, when I boot from the cd after restarting my pc, a cmd prompt opens and I am unable to see atiflash and the BIOS file on the cd. When I type "dir" I get several directories, and few random files I dont recognize, but that's it. When I enter the command to do the flash (atiflash.exe -f -p 0 3870.bin), it says "command not recognized".

Also may I note that my cd drive is F:\, and in the cmd prompt when I boot from the disk it says it's A:\, but I dont have a floppy drive installed...

Any help with this? I know it is a bit complicated since I can't figure it out. The other alternative was to boot from a USB stick, which I might try, as that's the way other people got their unlocked 3870 bios loaded.

 

Can you see the bios rom/flash exe files on the dvd in windows explorer? How did you make the boot dvd? Also did you finalise the dvd when burning?

 

Waymon: Lol and to think there's a new improved 3008WFP model in the pipeline.
I can't help you on the bootable DVD front I'm afraid, I've never done it myself. The disk letters usually change, but if the files aren't there, then I don't know what happened.

 

MacerM, I can see the files on the DVD in windows, and I created it with Nero. I specifically chose the "create bootable disk", and just added the files in the following step. I let it finish 100%, the cd drive popped open by itself and that was it.

 

Right Waymon, assuming you have done your boot dvd correctly, (and I think you have as it boots the system) you should find that your bios rom files are on drive z: when you boot up. So boot it up, at the A:\ type z: then z:\dir and you should be able to see your bios files and update from there. This z: business I think is something to do with the fact that the boot sector and the data sector are different tracks on the dvd (whereas a floppy is a single drive) so dear old DOS treats the two tracks as separate drives. In the event that this doesn't work, another way round would be to boot off the first dvd and swap to another that has the rom files on but this shouldn't be necessary. Here is a link for reference; http://www.bay-wolf.com/bootcd-bios.htm
Let me know how you get on!
(This is why I still have a floppy on mine!!)

 

Got my DDR800 through, clocked my cpu up to 2.8ghz at 1.406v in linked mode with the memory timings at 4-4-4-12;



Well happy with that! I ran it at stock speed of 1.86 with the tight timings and got 8579 so by putting 940mhz on the cpu I got an extra 2823 points! 33% performance increase on a 50% overclock is quite a jump for a test that is primarily a graphics benchmark.

Ran orthos and had to take vcore up to 1.412v to get it to run, then 1.418 to fix some stability issues. Orthos torture test makes the temps of both cores go up to 53c. The thermal spec of the chip is 60.1c but I believe that's the temp of the 3rd sensor in the heatspreader? I am unable to identify this temp using speedfan 4.33 and the temps of the cores themselves are usually higher than the third sensor?
Does anyone know the safe temps for the cores themselves? I have read that the temps are typically 5-15c higher on the cores - any ideas?

 

Safe temps in speedfan: c. 65C
Safe temps in Coretemp: c. 80C

 

Ok, great. So do you reckon 53-55c core temp is 'safe' for me to run 24/7? That is only the torture test temps tho, the 3dmark cpu tests take it up to 48c.
Have bunged it up to 2.88Ghz 1.425v and got 11,582 on 3dmark.
Off the point a little, I was annoyed with my Freezer 7 when I re-mounted when changing boards I found that only half of the copper base was in contact with the cpu. I had to take some pliers to it to bend the mounting feet up a bit so it actually made full contact. Didn't really think I'd have to check that on a new cooler. Did you have any problems with yours?