Jump to content

upgrade advice multimonitor..


Gizz

Recommended Posts

Greetings!

 

I built my system about 2 yrs back now but I've been out the loop for about 15 months now and need a bit of advice on which road to take now...

 

My current rig is as follows...

 

 

MOBO: ASUS P5Q PRO

CPU: E8400 (stock 3ghz)

RAM: 8Gb Kingston hyper 1066 DDR2 dualchannel

GFX: BFG GTX 260 OC2 maxcore (216) just underperforms a gtx 280 on benchmarks

PSU: OCZ 700w

Article coller 7 pro

 

So the first question is how will I fair running A10/FSX..??

 

Am I best to ditch this and rebuild or am I best OC'in the nuts off the e8400 to say 4ghz? And is my 260 maxcore now to weak?

 

In the near future I'm hoping to run 3x 37" hdtv's on tripleheade2go and guessing my 260 just doesn't have the guts for that and I'm not sure on the CPU either when I go 3x...

 

 

 

So what's your guys opinion? Any help is much apritiated

 

Thx in advance

Gizzmo


Edited by Gizz
sp
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Both A10 and FSX stress the CPU the most. Well, depending on the settings, etc etc, but you'll notice a bigger bump by upgrading the CPU. I don't know much about Intel's CPUs of that generation, but it does sound like a pretty good one... *Shrug*

As for graphics in A10, any card handling DirectX 9 should be enough - which would mean anything you can find in even generic stores, not specialized on computer components. FSX does have a DirectX 10 preview (which appears to crash with several add-on aircraft, incidentally), but I don't really know if the mesh taxes the GPU much... Beefy VRAM would likely be preferable (min. 512+ Mb).

 

CPU: Consider Core i5 / Phenom II

GPU: GeForce 4xx and up / Radeon HD 5770 and up

(I have a problem where the text in the ATC window doesn't render quite correct with a 6850, though my experience is otherwise the stuff of legends. If only it wouldn't hang for x minutes every so often with autogen scenery enabled, that is.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DCS A-10, as well as many other flight sims, will make use of two cores. Opinions will vary, but mine is that you will be fine OC'ing that 8400 a little and riding it out a little longer. I am on the same chip at a 3.6 clock with a 5870 running three 24" monitors.

 

As suggested above, I would go with a higher end 2GB card. Preferrably ATI as it will give you more flexability to run multiple monitors(more than 2) off a single card.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DCS A-10, as well as many other flight sims, will make use of two cores. Opinions will vary, but mine is that you will be fine OC'ing that 8400 a little and riding it out a little longer. I am on the same chip at a 3.6 clock with a 5870 running three 24" monitors.

 

As suggested above, I would go with a higher end 2GB card. Preferrably ATI as it will give you more flexability to run multiple monitors(more than 2) off a single card.

 

Just the info I was after, chears m8.....:thumbup:

 

What Res/aspect ratio and Hz are you running there on those 24"at and what FPS are you getting? As you said if can squeeze a little time out of this rig for a while until i go triplehead2go that will be awesome, if I can get away with just a gfx upgrade I'll be happy, don't even mind splashing the cash on that now, I'll be bottlenecking but I'll have it for when I rebuild in a few months time...

 

And has anyone managed to clock. E8400 to 4 ghz stable with a article cooler 7 pro?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just the info I was after, chears m8.....:thumbup:

 

What Res/aspect ratio and Hz are you running there on those 24"at and what FPS are you getting? As you said if can squeeze a little time out of this rig for a while until i go triplehead2go that will be awesome, if I can get away with just a gfx upgrade I'll be happy, don't even mind splashing the cash on that now, I'll be bottlenecking but I'll have it for when I rebuild in a few months time...

 

And has anyone managed to clock. E8400 to 4 ghz stable with a article cooler 7 pro?

 

My opinion only, but triple head is kind of obsolete these days. Just invest in a card(s) with multiple heads(ATI Eyefinity if you want just one card) and spare the money on the triple head. The Eyefinity cards will run anywhere from 3-6 monitors on one card.

 

My frames are not the greatest, but definetly flyable. I fly 3 screens as one monitor in something like 4600x900. Frames usually hover somewhere in the 40's during normal flight with the occasional hit to the mid-hid 20's if I hit somewhere that is really heavy. I will admit, I am running three screens on a 1GB card which is not the ideal situation(best to be on a 1.5 or 2 as suggested above to handle the memory for the required res).

 

As for the OC, I am stable at a 3.6 with a slight voltage bumb on the CPU. I could run stable at 3.4 on stock voltages but it was not running my RAM at the speed I wanted. At 3.6 on stock I was getting freezes after running Orthos for a bit. Temps are in the high 20's at idle and mid 50's after running the piss out of it at 100% for a bit. This is on a 212 Hyper Cooler. I have heard of people getting to the 3.8-4.0 rangle on air but I haven't tried and would imagine you would need a pretty efficient system to get there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once again thx rainmaker for the info you have been a grqte help...

 

As for the ATI eyefinity, I have considered it but I must admit I'm not a grate ATI fan, although the last ati card I had was a 4mb 2d card many moons ago:noexpression: I haven't had any personal exp with today's Gen models but I still here that there driver support is still a little rough around the edges...

 

But I do see what your saying on the motrox box being old tech now and it does bring atI into the picture a bit more with there eyefinity looking pretty solid, not to mention the better resolution support where the motrox is already showing its age..

 

You have me rethinking now lol.... the way I'm looking at it now is, if I overclock the 8400 then that leaves me with just needing to upgrade the gtx260 and buy the motrox box, but if I ditch the matrox box and put that saved money with the cash I would be spending on a new gfx card anyway I could get a top end card that will see me good for when I upgrade mobo/CPU/ram..

 

 

I'm looking to be able to run 3x37/42" hdtv's at 1080p if poss so the best eyefinity card I can get would do me good...

 

Doesn't at I do a card over 2gb vram? I would like the extra ram due to the Res I'm planning on running so... price wouldn't be to much of an issue on this due to the saving I would be making on the matrox....

 

As for the over lock I'm running a antec900 case and that thing freezes my feet lol its a noisy case but that's not an issue for me but its a very cool case, so I'm hoping with the large case cooling capacity of the 900 case and the article cooler 7 I can get close to 4gig... my p5q pro mobo is pretty decent at overclocking and I purposly got the E0 stepping E8400 for its OC patential...

 

 

Once again thx for your time..

 

Regards

 

Gizz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once again thx rainmaker for the info you have been a grqte help...

 

As for the ATI eyefinity, I have considered it but I must admit I'm not a grate ATI fan, although the last ati card I had was a 4mb 2d card many moons ago:noexpression: I haven't had any personal exp with today's Gen models but I still here that there driver support is still a little rough around the edges...

 

But I do see what your saying on the motrox box being old tech now and it does bring atI into the picture a bit more with there eyefinity looking pretty solid, not to mention the better resolution support where the motrox is already showing its age..

 

You have me rethinking now lol.... the way I'm looking at it now is, if I overclock the 8400 then that leaves me with just needing to upgrade the gtx260 and buy the motrox box, but if I ditch the matrox box and put that saved money with the cash I would be spending on a new gfx card anyway I could get a top end card that will see me good for when I upgrade mobo/CPU/ram..

 

 

I'm looking to be able to run 3x37/42" hdtv's at 1080p if poss so the best eyefinity card I can get would do me good...

 

Doesn't at I do a card over 2gb vram? I would like the extra ram due to the Res I'm planning on running so... price wouldn't be to much of an issue on this due to the saving I would be making on the matrox....

 

As for the over lock I'm running a antec900 case and that thing freezes my feet lol its a noisy case but that's not an issue for me but its a very cool case, so I'm hoping with the large case cooling capacity of the 900 case and the article cooler 7 I can get close to 4gig... my p5q pro mobo is pretty decent at overclocking and I purposly got the E0 stepping E8400 for its OC patential...

 

 

Once again thx for your time..

 

Regards

 

Gizz

 

 

My 8400 is also a stepper. For whatever reason, when I had the instability issues, it was when the processor was stepping from a 9x back to a 6x. It wouldn't freeze during orthos, it would actually freeze after I stopped it.

 

As for the cards, I am not really sure. I bought a 5870 earlier last year before the prices took off. I know they make cards up to 2GB, I don't know about above. Everyone has a preference on ATI or NVIDIA, and most are usually partial to one and hate the other for one reason or another. I have been back and forth myself. TBH, my last card was an NVIDIA and the one things that caused me to switch was the Eyefinity capability. I have two card slots(SLI), but from most I have seen, most actually lose performance by enabling it for whatever reason. So when I decided I wanted to do three monitors, the fact I could do it with one card just made sense.

 

There is also another option you may want to research. There is a program called SoftTH that will allow you to use two video cards(one high end and one low end if you prefer), to run multiple monitors. It uses the high end card for all the processing, and uses the head of the low end to output to the third monitor. I may be worth looking into. I looked at it months ago, but you may want to do your own research on it as I am not up to speed on it enough to give you good info.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yea Ive quickly looked at the softTH solution and from what I have read its the slowest and most cumbersome of the 3 options so I've pretty much ruled that out, so it either bite the bullet and go ATI, sli nvidia or matrox TH2G...

 

I'll do a bit of research on the at I cards and see what the options are but from what I've seen so far there is nothing that's lighting my fire tbh, but once the 7xxx series gets released there might be something a bit juice....

 

Once again rainmaker thanks for your help and time its much apritiated... and thx for the stepping issue on the 8400 you had, something I'll be looking out for...

 

Chears buddy

 

Regards gizz

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started off with eyefinity on a 5850 and now have a 6970. Ati's multi monitor solution is the most flexible right now. I'm thinking about upgrading to a 7970, but really the 6970 is more than enough to push x3 1080p monitors

"It takes a big man to admit he is wrong...I'm not a big man" Chevy Chase, Fletch Lives

 

5800X3D - 64gb ram - RTX3080 - Windows 11

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...