thoughts on this gaming rig

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Sun May 07, 2006 7:52 pm

newegg gaming machine

board looks like it supports SLI so that when the 7800 in it gets antiquated, I can stick another card in and make it kick ass again

i'd also probably stick another gb or ram into it

thoughts?

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Sun May 07, 2006 8:03 pm

I'll do one of my rigs for you at cost in a few weeks if you are interested in being a beta tester.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Sun May 07, 2006 8:24 pm

depending on specs yeah, I may be interested

I definately want a dual core machine of some sort, as my gaming machine doubles as a video encoding box

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 7:40 am

I got the 6800 ultra SLI last october. It only increases the FPS by 20% at most for games that support SLI. Unless the game was designed for nvidia it doesnt even help.

Not worth the $$.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Mon May 08, 2006 7:58 am

Naethyn9 wrote:I got the 6800 ultra SLI last october. It only increases the FPS by 20% at most for games that support SLI. Unless the game was designed for nvidia it doesnt even help.

Not worth the $$.

well, SLI/crossfire is becoming standard, so I'm betting all newer games will take advantage of it

the nice part is that if you start with 1 new card, when it gets older, you can buy a newer card (not top of the line, but 1 down) and pair them up, and not lose your investment in the original card

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:14 am

both cards must be identical.

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:19 am

The idea behind it is very nice.

If you turn the load balancing option on it will create a line across the middle of your screen. While playing EQ2 or BF2 that line will go up and down on the screen depending on what part is taking more to display.

Honestly, if you want the best bang for your buck in making a fast fast machine. Get two raptor 10k rpm western digital drives in raid 0. But if you do that make sure to use the Nvidia raid driver. It load balances the drives just like the SLI so that both are being accessed as much as possible.

With both of those my machine boots to desktop in 4 seconds.

Oh, and there is a serious advantage on BF2 loading 20 seconds before anyone. Really nice to have the first base capped before anyone else even zones in =p

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:28 am

hrm

I had thought I'd read somewhere that they'd been able to fix it so that you could use non-identical cards

Menlaan · Post by **Menlaan** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:41 am

Tikker wrote:hrm

I had thought I'd read somewhere that they'd been able to fix it so that you could use non-identical cards

That's the way Crossfire works, but not SLI.

I decided to wait to buy a new machine until this summer when Conroe comes out.

Menlaan

Post by **Lyion** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:43 am

Naethyn9 wrote:Honestly, if you want the best bang for your buck in making a fast fast machine. Get two raptor 10k rpm western digital drives in raid 0. But if you do that make sure to use the Nvidia raid driver. It load balances the drives just like the SLI so that both are being accessed as much as possible.

With both of those my machine boots to desktop in 4 seconds.

Actually, outside of load times, you gain very little from Raid 0 configurations. I ran two 10K 74G raptors at first on my machine, and benchmarked them with and without Raid. Sure, it saved a few seconds of loading, but the overall gaming performance was minimal for the cost.

For gaming, it's waste of time and cash that could be better spent on other things that will have an actual effect.

That PC is way too pricey for what you're getting IMO Tikker.

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:56 am

Did you use load balancing for the raid 0? I did a lot of research into it and if you arent using that (supplied by the nvidia chipset) only one hard drive is accessed untill the other fills up. It does not actually stripe the drives equally. I bench marked improvements in read write speeds of 57% when I enabled it.

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:57 am

And true it wont help after the information is all ready loaded into ram. But the loading stage is when the performance is really noticed. In some games (age3) I don't even see the load screen.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Mon May 08, 2006 9:31 am

loading screens are when you go for another drink

Post by **Lyion** » Mon May 08, 2006 9:36 am

Naethyn9 wrote:Did you use load balancing for the raid 0? I did a lot of research into it and if you arent using that (supplied by the nvidia chipset) only one hard drive is accessed untill the other fills up. It does not actually stripe the drives equally. I bench marked improvements in read write speeds of 57% when I enabled it.

How much writing are you doing when gaming?

Show me actual benchmarks from an official <non nvidia affiliated> site.

Realistically, you are looking at almost no gain for most gaming from Raid 0.

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 9:47 am

I will disagree. From personal experience I can say it works great for me. In my experience computers are only good as their weakest link. No matter how good your cpu, northbridge, ect are it wont make a difference if you have a bottleneck slowing down the entire system. In almost all cases read/write speeds from a hdd is what slows a system. Actually any task done from a south bridge call will slow it down.

In any case I'm a firm believer of getting the biggest bang for the buck by making the weakest link stronger to see the highest gains.

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 9:50 am

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?Pa ... ID=392&P=1

Post by **Lyion** » Mon May 08, 2006 9:55 am

Except SATA HDDs are not the weak link.

Show me a game that is at all I/O bound.

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 9:59 am

Naethyn9 wrote:And true it wont help after the information is all ready loaded into ram. But the loading stage is when the performance is really noticed. In some games (age3) I don't even see the load screen.

10sun · Post by **10sun** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:19 am

That PC is way overpriced.

vonkaar · Post by **vonkaar** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:43 am

captain_insano wrote:I'll do one of my rigs for you at cost in a few weeks if you are interested in being a beta tester.

hi

Lionking · Post by **Lionking** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:00 pm

vonkaar wrote:
captain_insano wrote:I'll do one of my rigs for you at cost in a few weeks if you are interested in being a beta tester.

hi

me 3

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:15 pm

Tikker wrote:hrm

I had thought I'd read somewhere that they'd been able to fix it so that you could use non-identical cards

You can read right on NVIDIA's SLI page... The cards do NOT have to be identical. The class MUST be identical...

For example an NVIDIA 7900 GTX produced by eVGA will work in SLI with an NVIDIA 7900 GTX produced by MSI.

Now a 7900 GTX will not do SLI with a 7800 GT. Another example is that a 7800 GT will not work with a 7800 GTX. Another factor is some of the overclocked cards made by BFG. They will probably have problems if they aren't paired with an identical BFG card.

I can tell you for fact that as long as the class of the card is the same SLI works just fine. I have implemented it many times. Also the gain on SLI is around 80 percent from graphcs I have seen over at Tom's Hardware...Essentially the performance is almost doubled.

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:17 pm

I'll let you all know know as soon as the first one is done. I definitely want multiple beta testers.

Oh and I plan on making a kickass affiliate program which everyone here will have the opportunity to be part of.

Not only will I enable your friends, friends of friends and family to get a discount I plan on kicking back 50-200 bucks per system to anyone who helps me get sales.

Tikker · Post by **Tikker** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:24 pm

slick

I see where I read wrong tho~

I was hoping I could stick in a 7800, then next year, move the 7800 to the 2nd slot, and have a 7538321570931(or whatever) in primary slot

tho, if crossfire will let me use a x1600, then next year stick in a x3200, and move the x1600 to secondary that'd be the way to go imo

Naethyn · Post by **Naethyn** » Mon May 08, 2006 1:34 pm

captain_insano wrote:
Tikker wrote:hrm

I had thought I'd read somewhere that they'd been able to fix it so that you could use non-identical cards

You can read right on NVIDIA's SLI page... The cards do NOT have to be identical. The class MUST be identical...

For example an NVIDIA 7900 GTX produced by eVGA will work in SLI with an NVIDIA 7900 GTX produced by MSI.

Now a 7900 GTX will not do SLI with a 7800 GT. Another example is that a 7800 GT will not work with a 7800 GTX. Another factor is some of the overclocked cards made by BFG. They will probably have problems if they aren't paired with an identical BFG card.

I can tell you for fact that as long as the class of the card is the same SLI works just fine. I have implemented it many times. Also the gain on SLI is around 80 percent from graphcs I have seen over at Tom's Hardware...Essentially the performance is almost doubled.

I dont usually ask for it but please post a link where you read about a 80% gain. I have never seen even close to that much of an increase.

Not to say the system wont rock any game out there. 100+ fps on just about anything. EQ2 is the low end with 64fps with everything maxed. Without sli it runs in the low 50's.