Teej

While it's nice to have...I wouldn't pay much extra for that. In 3 years, that gtx580 will probably sell on ebay for under $50.

Yeah, same here. I shutdown or reboot as rarely as I can get away with. I still don't follow what Louisv is saying. There's no more (or less) heat with S3 vs power off...and the fans don't run any more or less. The only real difference is saving a few minutes of boot up time every time.

What do you mean by this? My temps (i7-950 @ 4.0) after sleeping are not different from if I'd had it "shut down" for the same amount of time. The only thing even close to what you're saying is I remember some Asus boards about 10 years ago would (erroneously) report a temperature ~ 25C too high after coming out of sleep mode.

What actually had me confused for a few minutes was when you download and "run" the utility...I wasn't paying sufficient attention and thought that was actually updating the firmware. It just installed the updater on the PC. Heh. Glad I went into target to verify.

Strange. I doubt (but wouldn't bet my life) it's not the 3.0 ports...unless something has the extra physical bits, they'll just act as 2.0 anyway. Of course, there's no benefit to plugging 'em into 3.0 either.... So, since you have the same mobo I do...do your throttle LEDs go out when you "shut down" or use S3 or S4 suspend? Mine do, but it sounds like I'm nearly the only one.

There is no support in beta 3 for 64 bit trackir because 64bit trackir didn't exist when beta 3 was built. As Wags said....wait for the next beta. You're wasting time trying to get it to recognize it now.

My 460 at stock clock scores 7.4. Boosting it brings it to 7.5. Also, for perspective, my i7 overclocked to 4.0 scores 7.7 on the CPU portion. RAM maxes it out at 7.9.

Great. That helps give some general data for folks! That pretty much clinches it that the game is _primarily_ GPU bound, at least at this stage of beta. In fact, I think it's likely the video memory holding it back. Mine generally maxes out the video memory. With the settings you describe on the ramp in smerch, I see my in game counter flip between 48&53 fps, with FRAPS reporting a solid 50 before the plane taxis past. I didn't stay long enough for the plane on the first test. I then boosted my 460 up (from the stock ~ 675/1350/1600) to 800/1600/2000. Now I saw it locked in at 60fps (again, I set it to not go higher) before the A-10 goes past, and it drops to 50 as he rolls across my view. Now...my question...am I doing something wrong? With HDR & TSAA on it looks like I'm sitting in a mild fog bank. Much lower contrast on everything, in and out of the pit.

I know your results will be different. I'm intrigued by where the bottlenecks actually exist. You can have a system where neither the video nor CPU appear to be limits (in that neither approaches 100% use except at spikes)...but you gain frames by improving either one. Heh. Edit: I take it back. At worst case spots, I am GPU limited. GPU util pegs when I'm sitting on the runway at Batumi.

How 'bout a bit more detail for a full comparison? Among the VTB we've been using the "sitting at the end of the runway" after unpausing, head in normal flight position (it starts out at more like 40fps, then decreases as the zoom pulls back) in the takeoff training mission as a discussion point. With everything truly maxed out...hit the 'high' button, 1900x1200, "1024 every frame" cockpit, 16xQ MSAA, full screen, HDR, TSAA all on....I get 28 on my 460. A bit of reduction in the eye candy is almost not visible and gets me up to 33-34 at that same point...and that spot is lower fps than almost anything I see in flight. I usually peg it out at 60 (which I set as maxfps) If I create a mission with a "takeoff from ramp" at batumi, then when it puts me in the pit I'm at 46-47fps prior to engine start.

Well the OC didn't cause the video card to go...the external bus clock / voltage was never touched.

Well, no matter how "stable" my system seemed to test out...I would get weird crashes (by which I mean not simple lockups or BSODs) every now and then when the system wasn't under any kind of stress. Looks like it was my video card. Fortunately it's not even halfway through its warranty. We were doing some VTB flying last night and I had 3 crashes that started with graphic anomalies. This persisted despite taking out all OC changes. This morning, I hadn't pulled my system out of suspend even long enough to check email and it started crashing (while still being stock-clocked). So I bought a replacement/upgrade and I'll have a nice spare when my warranty gets dealt with. Clock was boosted for a while again through a nice session of FC2 & DCS with no anomalies.

I also think the stiction is heavily dependent on grip style. You'll notice it more the more of your weight is pushing down on the stick. Even I notice it then. Flying it as I normally do...it's perfect.

It has nothing to do with your previous post. :D Apparently I was flipping through the pages in e-leet and slid the QPI freq up from 200 to 207.8 without realizing it. I had then gone to the voltage page and taken out a notch or two here and there and clicked 'apply', thus setting the system to 4.159. I then launched LinX and let it churn for a while. No problemo. Heh.

Hit MK on the UFC to take an overhead markpoint?

Apparently I fat-fingered my mouse and stress tested the system at 4.159 ghz. I think it's good to go at 4.0 ;)

Update...may or may not help Mower.... I suddenly realized that with the overclock, Windows was now reading "6GB ram, 3.99GB available". Then I thought...wait a tic...last time I rebooted I saw ~ 4G as well. WTF. Tweaking in the BIOS I found that any host freq over 182 made one of my sticks of RAM unavailable. WTF again. A little searching suggested setting "MCH Strap" to "DRAM Ratio". Did that. All 6G in post. All 6G in windows. Go back in and say, "well...might as well test..." set RAM back to 8-8-8-24 and rebooted. LinX shows a 12% gain in GFLOPS (was running 50-51, now running 57). Burn test continuing at the moment.

Anyone managed to take out their wingman with a HARM yet?

It's only money, man. Follow your wife around on the job, record her violating a perp, send me footage, I'll sell it to the tabloids to get the heat off of you and we'll split the $. Problem solved. :D

Turned off spread spectrum, hyperthreading, speedstep, turbo mode, etc? I wouldn't put VTT past 250.

I don't think I like the 275...but lemme either check the source I was reading or maybe someone else will chime in. That's getting added to 1.1v (at least on my board) which means your actual VTT is now 1.375...so don't raise it anymore at this point. Lemme get a link and follow up in this post. Here's the major source I used: http://www.evga.com/forumsarchive/tm.asp?m=100494809

Right. With vdroop off I would expect you would be able to pull it below 1.3. Certainly don't go above that w/ vdroop off. I don't believe anything I've posted exceeds specs for the parts in terms of voltage, so I feel pretty comfortable with it.

Well...I hope you mean 1.2775 and 1.3...because if you put 2-3v on an i7 it would probably let the smoke out. That said...you have to look at it this way... With vdroop ON you set the maximum voltage. Under load, the cpu voltage will decrease...so you have to set a higher than desirable level - much as I was doing when I ran it at 1.37 and even up to 1.4 for a little while. That's not a good thing. With vdroop OFF you're setting the minimum voltage and expecting the system will rise up a bit above that. So by setting mine to 1.25, it generally runs at about 1.28, touching up to 1.29 under 100% load. The key takeaway is that you have to set the vcore higher than you'd like when using vdroop ON. Even with vdroop off, it's not going to let it go all the way from 1.2x up to anything "dangerous". If you set it to 1.29, it would probably float up to about 1.33 or so (guess) which is still well below Intel's max volt spec. I have several non-auto voltages, FWIW On mine, I have vdimm set for 1.65 (spec for the memory) QPI PLL Vcore got a slight bump to 1.125 QPI CPU Vcore did as well, 1.875 (stock is 1.8 and the allowable range goes well past 1.875) CPU VTT got bumped to 1.250 - From what I've read, you need to make sure this is within ~ 0.45 of vdimm (ie if vdimm is 1.65, this needs to be at least 1.2) ICH Vcore nudged to 1.1 (from 1.05)

I saw that too, Rsharpe...but didn't make the connection at the time. Completely forgot until you mentioned it. Mower: I assume since you have the X58 it has the option for vdroop and stuff? I'd suggest turning vdroop off...hyperthreading too, if they're on. It's really not gonna help A-10, whether it "hurts" or not (and I'd say adding 5+ degrees C on mine counts as "hurting" when I don't often run apps that can take advantage of HT) and start at about 1.25v. This is WAY BELOW intel's max spec (~ 1.3675 or something like that) so you won't cause any problems right there - that's not overvolting it. You might need to bump up (or be able to bump down) a little from that...but leaving it on auto may not let it float up enough to stabilize your system.

I hear ya. That's not bad.