Project speeder: $4000: FX60, 7800GTX, SG01B

basically, Need For Speed Carbon showed practically no improvement. that was my main game at the time, and i saw no reason for spending the extra $400. maybe, 6 months down the road, when UT2007 or STALKER comes out, i'll end up grading the whole mobo/cpu/video combo. right now, i can play my games at 1900x1200 at high details with one 8800gts.
 
was bored on the cyber monday, bought a little upgrade:

Intel C2D E6850 3GHz/1333FSB
Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500 2GB (2x1GB)
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R G33 MicroATX
Zalman ZM-CS1 clip for CNPS7000

will get 8800gt with 660mhz or 670mhz GPU when i can find one in stock (missed the dell's deal for $200 dammit...) for cheap. this weekend - upgrade time. :) everything should just drop in - hopefully windows won't be too cruel and make me reinstall it. i might do that anyway, is't been a while.

/edit hmmm 8800gts512 :D
 
now also running 8800gts512! - i can *feel* the speed increase over 8800gts640. synthetic benches:

3dmark05:

FX60, 8800gts640 (600/850): 13539
C2D, 8800gts640 (stock): 16114
C2D, 8800gts512 (stock): 18709

3dmark06:

FX60, 8800gts640 (600/850): 8811
C2D, 8800gts640 (stock): 9194
C2D, 8800gts512 (stock): 12351
 
no pics yet... i've had BSODs all over the place... 0x8e and 0x7e... checked RAM (8 hours of memtest) - no errors. reinstalled windows... updated latest bios/drivers... if it does it one more frigging time, i'm getting ASUS P5E-VM HDMI.

i'm gonna try increasing the memory timings, just in case... right now it's defaulting to 5/5/5/18
 
got a PM, decided to reply to it here.

morris_man said:
Hi, after reading your thread i was wondering if you could possibly tell me your idle/load temps of your cpu as we are both using a e6850 and a sg01.
Click to expand...

my idle is about room temp - 22-23C - this is with zalman fan spinning at ~1500rpm. load temps are 45C, with torture test resulting in 50C - fan spinning at still inadible 1700rpm.
 
Oh and just to add, is that measured with coretemp? because if it is i think i will try reseating my hsf.
 
correction on the temperatures. i've downloaded EVEREST, and it's saying that idle core temp is ~36, load core temp ~61; idle cpu temp is ~27, load ~50. before i was getting the readings from MBM5, hacked up version using a cpu plugin. i didn't trust it too much, and now i see why.

btw, i reinstalled windows again, using the latest drivers from gigabyte, and it's been stable all day. my prime suspect is a 4-port USB bracket i bought on ebay - it's not a straight up connector-cable-port kind, but has a PCB on it where the wires go... anyway, i pulled that thing out before reinstalling, and it's been fine... we'll see, of course.
 
well, it happened again... i'm sick of it, and would rather throw money at it. so, i bought:

320gb seatage sata hard drive - to replace the raptor
2gb kingston hyperx ddr2-1066 ram - no leds, thank god
ASUS P5E-VM HDMI mobo
 
Yeah, it was a fun project. I'm already working on something new though. It's based on the NZXT Rogue. I'm hoping to outdo the SG01... :D
 
slapped asus P5E in there, everything fine so far. looks like the seagate is faster than the raptop - at twice the storage. another thing - the mobo wants a PWM fan... zalman is not cutting it... i will try to install the asus software to control the fan temps, see if that makes their fan management work.
 
asus rules. 100% stable. next step - backup (just in case) and overclock! :)

oh, btw, this mobo wants a PWM fan... using zalman fan controller to slow the CPU fan down to ~2k rpm.
 
what a friggin day... one of my raid drives is dead. s.m.a.r.t. error, read errors... thank god for raid1, or else i would lose all my pr0n. i mean - documents, backups, and non-copyright multimedia files. :) ordered 2 x 750gb WDs - the RE2 series this time. zipzoomfly has them for $180.
 
Threw out the drive caddy, using DLink DNS-323 NAS with 2 x Western Digital 1TB in RAID1.
Upgraded to GSKILL 4GB DDR2-10000 5-5-5-15.
Upgraded to BFG GTX 260 maxcore OCX - the drive caddy would have definitely been in its way.

Overclocked E6850 to 3.4 (FSB 380), CPU voltage 1.475v in BIOS, 1.43v reading in windows (using Everest). I notice that the voltage drops under load to 1.37v - my 620w PSU needs an upgrade (will get 750w thermaltake). Overclocking @ 3.6 is not stable - voltage drops under load, Orthos reports errors - I don't want to go over 1.5v on cpu. Will also likely get E8600 - pretty sure CPU is my bottleneck at this point.

3dmark05 - was 18709 (@3, stock, optimized), now 19295 (@3, stock/unoptimized), 21702 (@ 3.4, video stock, optimized)
3dmark06 - was 12351 stock, 13780 @3.4, now 13389 stock, 15144 @3.4/optimized
 
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