Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

Sure thing. Best of luck with the new build...

OK, I have a question, primarily directed at Waymon, but anybody else who feels they can chip in, please go ahead.

I'm rapidly growing tired of having to drop detail level in games to be able to run them at 2560x1600, but I still want to stick with using a 3870 because of the image quality, and because I actually own two of them. The other's still in its box - I think you can see where this is leading.

What's my best option for a good board that can take care of crossfire, carry on my 75% overclock for my Duo, support new 45nm CPUs ideally without needing a future BIOS flash, and will work with my Thermalright Ultra-120A without needing chipset cooling modifications?
I'm currently thinking the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P for obvious reasons. Is that OK, or is there anything more suitable? Note: I'm not willing to shell out big time on a motherboard, I want this process to be cheap!

 

Well that board has a PCI-e 16x slot, and a PCI-e 4x slot so you will be limited, although I am not to sure how much... Also, the P35 chipset is old, how about a X38?

How about a GIGABYTE GA-X38-DS4? I saw a review in PC Gamer, and it looked pretty good. It has 2 PCI-e 2.0 slots (not that that would make much of a difference from 16x) and a X38 NB...

I am not to sure of the price though. On newegg it's listed as $185USD but that's for an open boxed model.

Do you prefer Gigabyte models? Or any other brands?

 

I've no real objections to going with an Asus board again, but the after-sales support is a bit daunting if it fails after the 12 month retail warranty expires. Since both the Asus boards I've had that failed prematurely had nforce chipsets and failed due to the chipset IC going bad, I'm not putting Asus too much in the hot spot for that. The Gigabyte DS4 would be nice, but it's £105, and it also has a cooling system that I'm thinking might interfere with my cooler. The DS3P is only £85. You have to bear in mind that I'm nearly flat broke right now, and I'm only doing this because my second 3870 has already lost a third of its value and I refuse to sell something and lose that much when it's never been used, so I'm not willing to fork out much for this. (I can't afford £85 for a mobo as it is, I'm relying on selling my old one to make up the difference). I'll also have to put off my PSU change if I do this too, primarily because going with two cards means I'll want an HX620 or TX650, and they're also too much money. Sigh, if I knew I had a secure summer job like the last few years I wouldn't be worried, I'd just make up the difference in July, but this time round the council are being cagey about whether they'll give me the job or not because of budget cuts.

What sort of performance loss will I get with using the second card in a 4x slot?

Addendum: I spotted a benchmark using the Asus P5K board which showed impressive results. How does the p5K compare to the P35-DS3P?

 

Could you sell both of your 3870s for a 3870x2? That way you wont have to upgrade your board with one that has 2 PCI-e slots.

I am not sure how much of a performance decrease there would be in putting a 3870 in a 4x slot... Sorry sam.

 

I'm not selling one card because I'd lose too much, so I'm definitely not selling two!
Also, I don't want to use a 3870X2, because for one it's really loud and will get very hot even with a Thermalright cooler, and for two you can't disable the second card, so the power consumption is through the roof.

Hmm, I found this:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Gigabyte-GA-P...yZ108978QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Will that do?

 

It looks good, but from my understanding the second PCI-e slot works at 4x when 2 cards are in there.

I think all P35 boards that are CF compatible have 1 slot that's 16x and the other that's 4x.

You can get, but I am not sure how much you will bottleneck it with the slower speed PCI-e slot.

 

The gains I've seen using the 4x speed look no different to those using a board that can run the second slot at 16x. After all, an X1900XT-X can run at 2x and still pull 90% of its frame rate...

Sigh, going to have to RMA my Sapphire card before I can do this though, turns out that the reason it didn't work in my server is because it no longer works at all!

 

Sorry about that Sam.

Anyway from what I've seen a 4x slot actually does affect framerates a lot. I think there was something at THG.

 

I'm not sure if this will happen, but suppose I have a bit more to spend, such as if I use a BuyNowPayLater system - after all, I'll have a reasonable amount to spend in 8 months or so's time...
If this scenario happens, what board should I be looking at that offers me everything I listed previously, but with a pair of 16x lanes?

The GA-X38-DQ6 looks nice, but I'll have to remove half the chipset cooling to make that work. Then again I suppose I could always use a chipset cooler like a Noctua or HR-05...
Hmm, what are your thoughts on this one?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-110-GI&tool=3

 

Looks better, I like the X38 and PCI-e 16x slots... That's what I was mainly looking for.

 

That's good, I may potentially grab that one...

 

Did you order it sam? I really want to know how it turned out!

I am waiting for that CF 3DMark06 score!!!

 

Haha, well I only have a humble dual core, so my score won't be close to yours, but it should be good for a laugh.
What's your 3dmark with your CPU downclocked to 3Ghz? I want to see how I'll compare to the top scoring PC at my LAN (3Ghz Q6600, 8800GTS G92)

I haven't ordered the new board yet, but I have a confirmed buyer for my old one, so I'll need to within the next few weeks. I've not orderedit yet because I need to have one of my 3870s RMA'ed first. Hopefully the replacement will have a decent cooler! Once that procedure's on its way, I'll order in an X38-DQ6.
Trouble is though, I'm going to have to remove the CrazyCool system on it, and I don't know whether that can be done in such a way that the chipset won't overheat. I'm buying a replacement chipset cooler but I won't be able to pick that up until the LAN where I'm selling my old board...

 

Oh, ok. What are you using for chipset cooling? HR-05?

I have 3 published 3dmark06 scores.

3Ghz CF:
http://www.madonion.com/compare?3dm06=4688667

3Ghz 1 Card:
http://www.madonion.com/compare?3dm06=4688512

Highest Score:
http://www.madonion.com/compare?3dm06=4689751

 

That's bizarre, because I made 11,492 with one card and my Humble Core 2 Duo at 3.15Ghz. I think I'm looking at about 11,300 at 3G, but then my GPU is overclocked. When the 3870 is stock, and at 3.15Ghz I got 10,700 or so. The 4200 mark gain is pleasing, if I can keep both cards overclocked to some degree that should see me make about 15,500 or so I reckon.
The chipset cooler I think is a Noctua NH-U6.

 

So you gonna play Crysis now? What games you play the most?

 

I'm not going to be playing that much Crysis, because that doesn't even run properly at 1280x1024 with four 3870s, let alone at higher resolutions with two. However, my frame rate at 2560x1600 was more than acceptable with shadows and shaders low (they look crap anyway) so who knows...
Crysis doesn't seem to work well with crossfire though, so I'm not getting excited about it now.

The games I play the most (the ones that are demanding anyway) are Supreme Commander:Forged Alliance and Call of Duty 4, so I'll be looking forward to see what a pair of cards can do in those. COD4 seems like a sure bet, not so confident on SC:FA as it needs a 4Ghz Quad Core to run above 15fps at high settings...

 

Really? I play it at high settings and get good frames - until the game heats up a half hour in...

Crysis + CF works fine for me, although I did have some problems in the beginning, but a VGA BIOS flash and a few configs later and the game runs great all very high settings.

 

well a pair of 3870X2s can't run it at 1280x1024 very high at more than about 18fps, not that great really. Maybe that was before the patches...

 

Yeah, the patches made a huge difference! Also, CF works pretty good now - although in Crysis good is classified as frames above 25.

I get around 30+ in all of my levels so far, with rare drops below 20 in a great while. I will get a video on youtube in a short time (sometime this week) of Crysis as some people have requested it.

According to Tom's Hardware, the 3870X2 gets 29.6FPS at 1600x1200...






EDIT: BTW, the 9800GX2 one of my friends has is f*cking insane!!!