i7-965 w gtx285 15fps!

[EtherealN]

Well Viper3two, one of the things they are doing with those chips is that you actually pay a small premium on the RAMstick, and in return they have actually audited the specific memory chips that goes into the assembly of the RAMstick. The standard was developed by nVidia and Corsair, if I recall correctly, which partly helped get motherboards support for them and also caused the marketing name "SLI-ready" on many of the sticks. It has absolutely nothing to do with SLI in graphics cards though, I think they were just looking to expand the SLI brand name. :P Sort of like "HD-ready" which isn't HD. :P

 

Most products today seem to be happy with just the E.P.P name though.

 

Graphics cards however will most likely have the warranty voided if you tinker with them through the included software. They are mainly an enthusiast tool because it was previously extremely difficult (compared to CPU's and RAMsticks) to get them to overclock. One should note that the settings possible in that software most definitely goes high enough to melt your GPU. (Though if you've invested in a mega-awesome watercooling kit with gold-plated waterblocks it might be possible to survive it. :P )

 

(EDIT: And yes, there are gold-plated water-blocks for computers on sale out there. :P )

[mckee14]

LOL :)

 

EthereaIN: jup, sorry, i meant stresstesting - like memtest, superPI, FurMark and stuff like that.

 

viper3two: overclocking is not hard to do, once you got the basics. i just like to point out possible(!) problems occuring, because sometimes ppl forget to mention that you CAN destroy something. today, you almost need to do it on purpose, tough ;)

 

some years ago, ppl had to destroy single parts on the videocard to open up other pixel lines, or "draw" new contacts with a pencil to boost them up heh. these day, all the goodies are software-based and easy to do.

 

sure, if you have RAM designed to run at 1600, then go for it. and there are many parts on the market which are designed for oc'ing, so you don't loose guarantee. like my corsair RAMs, they where at 1.8V from stock, but proofed and certified from corsair for up to 2.2V... so i set them to 2.2V and started to play with the timings heh.

 

bottomline - you can oc', but don't do it just blindly :). and to be honest, besides of the processor speed, it does not make a really huge difference most of the times. your proc is already very fast, so no "need" to do it right now. you can wait some time, and then instead of buying an new one, give it a boost for another 6 months. that's what i always do - toast the stuff when it anyways would be time for new heh

[EtherealN]

One note on that though - when doing performance tests (admittedly only using 3Dmark Vantage) I had massive CPU performance gains when upclocking the RAM. But on the other hand I had just thrown my FSB from 1333MHz effective to 1700MHz effective and thereby my CPU from 3.16GHz to 4GHz, so it's easy to see how RAMsticks running at 800MHz would be a bottleneck for the system.

 

One of these days I'm going to have to clock back to standard FSB and see if I still get any noticeable difference from upclocking the RAMsticks. That would be very interesting.

[viper3two]

Thanks guys for more input. I think I will definately do alot of reading and understanding before I start playing with this, and I really want to play it safe and not melt my new components :megalol: . I will see if I can grab Prime95 and 3dmark just to see what the numbers are. Really, the box is pretty powerful without pushing it any, it -way- outperforms my q6600/8800gts.....it is so smooth now it is just like flying a new sim. Gone are the noticable freezes and lagginess. Heck even in FSX I noticed that the turbulance was shaking the plane a little, I had never noticed that before. Appreciate everybody's input in this....just glad that you helped me figure this out, because I just couldn't believe I spent almost $3g in hardware and got 15fps!

Thanks!!

[EtherealN]

Awesome that you got the results you were looking for. :)

 

Make sure to run a good temperature monitoring tool while running Prime95 though, and depending on wrapper you might have to manually load several instances of it to make sure it is operating fully on all cores. (I use a program called Orthos which starts Prime95 within itself and automatically assigns it to both cores, I am however uncertain about the development status of Orthos for CPU's with more cores than two.) I recommend using software from your motherboard's software suite to do the temperature monitoring, since they are usually better at giving correct numbers. (The program RealTemp for example consistently gives me readings 4 degrees too low.)

 

And finally of course, there really is no "need" to overclock that machine you have, but it's always nice to have the option should a need arise in the future. You can save a good few dollars through just inserting a more efficient cooling system and overclocking components rather than purchasing an entirely new system. Or, as in my case, purchase a comparatively cheap system and bring it up to par through overclocking. :)

 

Another component of your i7 that you can read a bit on is the Hyperthreading. I saw some tests where there was a massive gaming performance hit to having it active, for reasons I am slightly unsure of myself. However, that was not for all games and many other applications would take a similar hit from having it off as the games took from having it on. An idea for further reading if you want to delve even deeper into learning how your system works though. :)

 

Happy flying. :)

[Slayer]

I notice you turned up your AA and AF. There is a little documented problem on some Nvidia cards where turning AA and AF too low will actually cause a performance loss. I've seen it myself on my 8800 GTX cards. For me it would happen if I put them at 2x. When I bumped them to 4x or higher my perfomance went back up. Maybee you were having a bit of this also.

[Frakin Toasters]

"In Vista unless the game specifically has a setting built in to disable Vsync, you cannot turn it off." Sorry but that is completely inaccurate information, i've been using Vista for ages now and have only just enabled vsync as i've got a new TFT monitor, the rotors looked really bad in-game without vsync, so i enabled it in the nvidia control panel. I have never had it enabled until now in any game.

[Kuky]

^^^

That's correct... V-sync DOES NOT work in Vista and even turning it on in graphics driver settings does not make it work.

[DragonRR]

Just to add my 2 cents or 2p since I'm British :)

 

After overclocking I would strongly recommend you run Prime95 on all cores as mentioned previously for 12-24hrs continuously. If there is a SINGLE error you need to downclock the CPU or increase the voltage a tiny bit.

 

People often complain about issues with game "x" and say that they've run Prime95, that their system is 100% stable. More often than not they've run Prime95 for an hour or so which only proves their system is "quite" stable. Don't forget that people running massive overclocks to get a high score in 3D mark/whatever don't always have a stable enough system to run games, they just have a system capable of doing the benchmark itself.

[Kuky]

To REALLY stress test the CPU try out Intel Burn Test.

[viper3two]

Just to update, tonight I have been playing with the settings and have a good steady 3.6 overclock I believe. I ran prime95 for about an hour, temps are in the 60-62C range with no errors so far, no bsod's or lockups. shutdown temp on this is 100c, so I have plenty of clearance right now with the 3.6. I will run this probably overnight tomorrow night and see what happens. Ethereal I read the same thing this evening about having HT enabled, so I will probably tomorrow sometime turn it off and do a comparison on fps's using the same missions and settings. And definately Slayer....I have no idea why, but when I set NVidia to 16x aa and 16xaf, I get more fps than with 8xaa and 8xaf. Strange, but it is faster.......

I shot a video of me putting this thing together and going to shoot some of the testing with it, hopefully in a few days/week or so, I will get a chance to put the vid together and get it up on youtube or somewhere. I will post the linky when I get it done.

Thanks to you guys for the help...I really found what I was after, and it is working awesome now!!

Edited March 5, 2009 by viper3two

[viper3two]

one more update and Im goin to bed lol, work is just 6hrs from now :sleep:

I turned HT off in the bios, and messed around with e-leet a bit and got a 3dmark06 score of 19806....a far cry from my 11200 on the old rig......I'm smilin!

[Slayer]

Just to update, tonight I have been playing with the settings and have a good steady 3.6 overclock I believe. I ran prime95 for about an hour, temps are in the 60-62C range with no errors so far, no bsod's or lockups. shutdown temp on this is 100c, so I have plenty of clearance right now with the 3.6. I will run this probably overnight tomorrow night and see what happens. Ethereal I read the same thing this evening about having HT enabled, so I will probably tomorrow sometime turn it off and do a comparison on fps's using the same missions and settings. And definately Slayer....I have no idea why, but when I set NVidia to 16x aa and 16xaf, I get more fps than with 8xaa and 8xaf. Strange, but it is faster.......

I shot a video of me putting this thing together and going to shoot some of the testing with it, hopefully in a few days/week or so, I will get a chance to put the vid together and get it up on youtube or somewhere. I will post the linky when I get it done.

Thanks to you guys for the help...I really found what I was after, and it is working awesome now!!

 

The reason it's faster is because its doing something called SLI AA, It doesn't show this as a seprate "mode" with the nvidia control panel but at some point it turns on. In Nhancer you can see this hidden functionality.

 

Don't stop until you hit 21K :P

[hitman]

If your getting 100c temps on shutdown, perhaps you should invest in a new cpu cooler. I wont go above 80c unless I have to.

[EtherealN]

I think what he meant by 100 degree shutdown temps is that that is where his comp will shutdown. As a bit of a safety measure so as not to get where a really unlucky dude I read about on sweclockers went - he started Prime95, fell asleep, woke up the next day to find his cores sitting "stable" on 121 degrees C. :P

[viper3two]

yep thats what I meant, I read somewhere that 100c will shut it down, you should never exceed 85c for any period of time. Im still plugging away, going to tweak the vid card next a little and see if I can get to the 21k mark! I am so close to the 20k mark right now. I am going to take tonight and do a little wire management on the box and make sure the airflow is good in it before I start pushing it again. The max temp I have seen on the cpu while pushing was 64C yesterday.

One thing to note, I have been testing with the Shooting Range mission, and just for fun I brought up a blank mission when I had it clocked to 3.6......90 FPS in the pit!!...and in the 120-130's outside....It was incredible. Like was mentioned before, a heavy mission has alot to do with the FPS.

Still playin, will post back when I get over the 20k mark in 3dmark06. Just a little more tweaking and I am sure I will get it.

PS. I don't think I could sleep with Prime95 running lol, I'd be afraid of the same scenario, wake up and see your brand new cpu smoldering hehehe.

Thanks again

[EtherealN]

Heheh, yeah, same here on the Prime95. When I do my burn-ins (that is a common name for the really really really long torture tests to really confirm your final configuration being absolutely stable) I usually load up on coffee and a book and keep the thing under close supervision. :P

 

On airflow, what kind of computer chassis and CPU cooling do you use? I am extremely happy with my Cooler Master 932 HAF chassis and Zalman 9700 CPU fan/heatsink assembly. The chassis is just obscene - I have a proper windtunnel goin on next to my screen. :D It also has some really kickass features for airflow-efficient routing of wires through the motherboard backplate being slightly offset from the right chassis door, giving about an inch of space in there to route cables through.

[hitman]

yep thats what I meant, I read somewhere that 100c will shut it down, you should never exceed 85c for any period of time. Im still plugging away, going to tweak the vid card next a little and see if I can get to the 21k mark! I am so close to the 20k mark right now. I am going to take tonight and do a little wire management on the box and make sure the airflow is good in it before I start pushing it again. The max temp I have seen on the cpu while pushing was 64C yesterday.

One thing to note, I have been testing with the Shooting Range mission, and just for fun I brought up a blank mission when I had it clocked to 3.6......90 FPS in the pit!!...and in the 120-130's outside....It was incredible. Like was mentioned before, a heavy mission has alot to do with the FPS.

Still playin, will post back when I get over the 20k mark in 3dmark06. Just a little more tweaking and I am sure I will get it.

PS. I don't think I could sleep with Prime95 running lol, I'd be afraid of the same scenario, wake up and see your brand new cpu smoldering hehehe.

Thanks again

What version of 3dMark are you using for your score?

[viper3two]

3dmark06. I read somewhere that 3dmark vantage is the current one? anyways, 3dmark06 is the one I am benching with.

[hitman]

I cant for the life of me get over 15500 3dmarks on 3dMark06. My 3dmarks on Vantage is 0! I cant for the life of me figure that out.