460 SLI build for review / recommendation

[cognitoo]

Hello All,

Would you guys/gals please let me know if my choices below are good ones and that there are no compatibility issues? I've had them in the past with a previous build and ASUS confirmed that their mobo was "glitchy" with windows 7 Pro and SLI ... so this time I would like to be free of "Glithcy" issues and would rather not write to all the manufacturers prior....


I have spent a lot of time on a list of components but I'm wondering if I should wait another week or so as Newegg's "Black November" sale trickels in or if I should just get it all now while it is in stock... I know, my call on that one


Core Components Only are:


ASUS Rampage III mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131666


Corsair Dominator 6gb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145224


i7 950
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115211

Arctic Freezer pro 7
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134


Corsair Pro Series AX850, 850W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139015


2 X EVGA gtx 460 @ 850MHz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130575


Windows 7 Home



My choice of the 850mhz 460 card has been on again off again for many reasons as has the 850W PSU. As for the GPU, 850mhz pre-clocked cards are appeliing but I'm not sure I will see a big difference from lesser clocked cards.... is it worth $30 more/card? Will a card with an 850mhz clock burn out faster??

As for the PSU I thought the 850W AX model was best??... Well it has phenominal reviews and while I know 750W is plenty of juice for 2, 460's I figured it wouldn 't hurt to have extra and possibly be slightly more future proof. I was going to go with watercooling but the Corsair Freezer seems to work just fine for 1700+ reviewers many with Overclocked i7 950's...

Would someone please let me know if it is necessary to run 2 Velociraptors in RAID 0 to see the benefits of a 10,000 RPM hard drive? Would ONE Velociraptor be a dramatic improvement over a 7200RPM card? Seems to me I have read dissagrement on this

One more question, How seriously should one take the reviews on Newegg? If they are to be taken seriously, is it safe to assume that 40 - 70% of all merchandise is defecive? I am always shocked to see such abominal reviews of products yet the company stays in business. Also it seems that some reviewers copy and paste a review and use it more than one product ... maybe I'm imagining things, maybe I'm too sceptical, but your opinions would be appreciated. When let's say an item like a motherboard has a review with 3 out of the 5 stars ... Does it really mean that there's 40% chance the board will arrive DOA, or explode in 3 weeks time?

I am basically looking for parts that are Very solid, require the least amount of tweeking and TLC, and that will last a good long time... i.e until an Intel hexacore processor is more justifiable.

Thanks! .... Jack

 

[Wolygon]

Ha ok, ASUS fails with that issue. They didn't offer to give you a different board? Thats not very good customer service for their problem.

I say stuff the ASUS board and just get that nice MSI board that you like. As boiler said SSDs that run on SATA 2 are pretty damn quick anyway.

Thats my conclusion of this massively long discussion, get the MSI board.

 

[cognitoo]

You're not just saying that to shut me up are you??

No, there was no offer to change out "-E Pro" ... and I doubt I would have taken them / him up on the offer as when it was in his possession all problems somehow seemed to conveniently dissapear and immediately on return the problems persisted.

I have to admit I was wondering what you had 'against' that MSI board. To be honest I am not entirely convinced that any of those boards have me terribly excited. We'll see what comes of my 'shopping cart' in the next 1 - 14 days. I will make a choice very soon.

Thanks Wolygon, and to Everyone who piped in on this thread!

 

[cognitoo]

Best answer selected by cognitoo.

 

[Wolygon]

No I'm saying that in your position if I found out that the board that was giving me so much trouble was a known problem. I would be pretty pissed. I think I'd probably stay away from ASUS for atleast 6 months.

Many people dislike MSI boards over ASUS and Gigabyte. It seems that if you can avoid them you do, though if they're much cheaper or offer unique things like the Big Bing they can be very good.

Good luck with choosing a motherboard, you really can't go wrong. Even if you chose the dreaded board you probably wouldn't have the same problem and if I did I would be RAWRing at ASUS support. I'd make then give me a different board, since they know about the problem and don't say anything publicly.

Good luck, its been a long thread but its been fun.

 

[cognitoo]

Hey Woly...

I bought everything half an hour ago ... Went with the MSI board, the i5 750, the PNY 460's, g.skill ripjaw 4gb, xfx 750W, cooler master 212, cooler master 690 II, and a hanns-G 25" monitor. [and a pack of screws]

Can't wait for it to arrive ... shipping is apparently "rushed" for free with my egg account

yeeeaaaah

 

[Wolygon]

Awesome work, "pack of screws"? The case generally comes with enough for normal things....

If you have any trouble post it here. Also when you done you should post up a pic of it .

If its your first build read up on how so you can get right in.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/274745-31-step-step-guide-building

 

[cognitoo]

Thanks for the link ... and the "pack of screws", while I did order one for extras, was more or less said tounge in cheek

 

[coldsleep]

I never said that they have a "problem" with crossfire setups. I was just saying that X4s have a bit of a bottleneck to 2 5870s, not in a crossfire link but as a CPU based bottleneck. But maybe this is not the case...you say that i5s offer more performance over a "single" 5870? Why would this be? The bottleneck from two 5870s is only smallish so I would think that the bottleneck would be completely gone when you half the graphics power. Is this not true?

Way late, and I realize that the OP has his parts already, but I wanted to discuss this.

I think perhaps we have different definitions of what a bottleneck is. I believe that you're referring to the fact that the X4 is not quite as powerful as the i5.

If part A is truly bottlenecking part B, I would expect to see some sort of ceiling, or a marked decrease in the effectiveness if you add more B. Theoretically, f you had an X4 and an i5 system, if you get, say, 30 fps on the X4 and 35 fps on the i5 with one 5870, when you add the 2nd 5870, you might see 70 fps (theoretically, I realize scaling isn't 100%) on the i5 system, but if you hit some sort of processor bottleneck, you would see the X4 system cap at 40 fps. In other words, you wouldn't see an equivalent level of scaling between the two systems.

The article you linked doesn't seem to point to anything of the sort, it simply calls out that overall, the i5 tends to have slightly better (a few fps) performance in some games. In fact, on Crysis Warhead and STALKER at 2560x1600, the X4 had a higher maximum fps (36 vs. 35 and 113 vs. 110). The X4 was nearly lapped by the i5 and the i7 in the World in Conflict benchmarks though, so if that's your game, then it might be advisable to go with Intel.

From the Crysis Warhead compiled results page:
"Clocking all the processors to 3.6GHz provided some interesting results. The majority of processors were now able to push the Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire graphics cards at full speed with average frame rates between 33–35fps. The only processors to deliver weaker results included the Core 2 Quad Q6xxx and Pentium E6xxx series."

 

[Wolygon]

Ok I see your point, I guess I was saying that the less performance the 5870 got was a "bottleneck" when really it wasn't. But I guess it is still ok to call it a "bottleneck" as the GPU can clearly put out more power.

If the X4 isn't bottlenecked why does it get less performance? I don't understand this, I thought that there wasn't anything other than no bottleneck and bottleneck, but there is?

"Way late, and I realize that the OP has his parts already, but I wanted to discuss this."
I always like a good discussion and I'm sure OP won't mind....

 

[coldsleep]

If the X4 isn't bottlenecked why does it get less performance? I don't understand this, I thought that there wasn't anything other than no bottleneck and bottleneck, but there is?

The X4 isn't as powerful a processor at some tasks/games as the i5 is. It can't send quite as much data to the 5870.

In some games, there's no difference between the two processors; other games, there is a large difference. It also depends a lot on what resolution you're gaming at. Many articles/reviews test at lower resolutions to heighten the differences between chips. At 1920x1080 and up, most games are GPU-limited, not CPU-limited.

In a graphics-card-neutral situation, the Intel chips perform better than AMD at WoW:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/62 -- but both the X4 965 and the i5-760 are above 60 fps, which is the max the human eye can perceive. Admittedly, the i5 is 15 fps better, but in the real world it doesn't matter that much (until you start to see additional CPU load from other sources).

Again, graphics-card-neutral, Fallout 3 exhibits almost no difference between top-end AMD & Intel chips.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/47 -- this suggests that the game is GPU-limited, even at this low resolution. Virtually all desktop dual-cores can produce at least 60 fps in Fallout 3.

Crysis Warhead is another good example.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/50 -- a 2 fps difference between the i5 and the X4.
From the legionhardware article ( http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/radeon_hd_5870_crossfire_cpu_scaling_performance_part_2,4.html ), the i5 and the X4 are only 5 fps different, which isn't a significant drop in performance. If the X4 were truly bottlenecked with multiple cards high-end, I would expect to see a larger difference. I realize that we don't know what card anandtech used to test (though it's probably in the notes somewhere), but the proportion is what we're interested in, not the raw numbers.
As you move to higher resolutions ( http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/radeon_hd_5870_crossfire_cpu_scaling_performance_part_2,5.html ), the difference disappears, again suggesting that CPU makes little difference for most games at high resolution. As you can see, none of the combinations produced much more than 35 or 36 fps, indicating the graphics solution is the bottleneck.

Anyway, my contention is that while it's not as powerful as the i5, the X4 is still a very competent processor for gaming, and as you start to move to higher resolutions, you increasingly put the load on the graphics solution, so (to some extent) the CPU matters less and less. The i5 is certainly superior at a number of productivity benchmarks, as can be seen at http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=191 , but the difference in most games is relatively minor.

 

[Wolygon]

Yes that was a nice read, thanks.

I did see that the X4 caused a small performance hit in games though my main concern was that it would grow largely with more high end graphics cards. I guess this isn't really the case.

Also I realize the uselessness of having lots graphics power and running on a small screen where the CPU comes into play. The X4 will never be a large realistic bottleneck because the only reason for such high end graphics cards is that your running really high resolutions or really fancy games (Crysis 2?) and thus the bottleneck goes back to the graphics card.

Thanks for writing, I have learned a bit.

 

[cognitoo]

How do I post a picture ?

 

[Wolygon]

Are you finished? Awesome work!

You have to upload it to a site then use the IMG tags. Its a bit of work so don't worry about it.

How'd you go?

 

[cognitoo]

I just finished it ... Went to install windows 7 [OEM] and I am being told that the activation code is NOT valid.... I from what I have read I know this happens sometimes but I am not sure how to resolve the matter...


HELP!!!

EDIT ... Do I need to download and install the "OEM Preinstallation Kit" [OPK] .. Just stumbled across this.. didn't see it on the packaging until I decided to read it ...

 

[Wolygon]

Sorry to hear that you have problems.

Does this happen after you install it? Because you should be able to install it for a 30 day trial. Did you install it with the key and then try activate it online and it said that? Please provide more information, also search around a little to see if you can find anything.

No you do not need the OPK, that doesn't have anything to do with this.

 

[cognitoo]

I was not on-line ... I was just starting the whole "starting up" process. Windows will not install. "Invalid Product [Key] Code"

Why would I only be able to install it for a 30 day trial?? I bought the software DVD / CD [whichever it is] from Newegg. It is not an upgrade version. It is the full 64 bit OEM copy of windows 7 Home.

Do you think I need to be on-line for this? How would I get on-line without an operating system?

--------->> NEVERMIND I have no idea what just happened. I re-entered the product code 3 more times. Voila it installed. What is this "activation" that is required in 30 days? Will I have the same problem with the code not registering?

The new putter is seeing 2 GTX 460's and seemingly everything else it's supposed to see. Just tried to install my antivirus but they are conviently "updating" so I can't add this maching to my account. I'll ask if i have any questions if thats OK. What image site would I upload to to post a pic? My photos are taken with my phone; an old Razer so they're not high def anyway. I cannot believe it's actually running! The sides of the case are still off but it sounds like the fans are running a bit loud ... I know can find it by researching but any chance you or someone can point me in the right direction ?

 

[Wolygon]

Glad you got it installed. You should just have to connect to the internet for activation and you'll be all good.

Did you install your own drivers? It doesn't matter that much for chipsets/audio though for graphics cards you'd see more performance with the latest nVidia drivers.

I'm not sure what the best non-member image upload site is but here is one:
http://tinypic.com/

 

[cognitoo]

Thanks I'll try that .. Any idea how / if I can slow down my various fans without one of those Fan Controllers that are installed on the front of the case?

EDIT: It is definately the Coolermaster 212 CPU cooler that is spinning at high revs. Isn't there something that should be triggering it to spin fast under load palying a game and to rev down when typing here on Toms? HA

 

[Wolygon]

Yeah if you connected it to the motherboard. In the BIOS, I'm not sure where, maybe under PC Health Stats. Your manual might tell you.

 

[cognitoo]

Hey Woly ..

I'm having issues with the audio cutting out when I raise the volume past ~ 20% I think I'm going to start a new threat with questions about this ... Feel free to have a look

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/282787-30-motherboard-p55gd

 

[Wolygon]

Well it seems you've sorted yourself, good work!

All done?

 

[cognitoo]

Hey for one last entry I thought I would copy and paste the solution to the sound issue from the other post:

..................""Hi again, I know everyone was just frantic about my sitchiation .. but I have remedied the problem.

On my head set I have something called "The Boosteroo" It is a device that boosts signals from dvd, blue ray, and other hardware connected to your TV in the absence of a receiver where the out put volume signal reaches a max at very low audible levels. While I did take out all of the components of the putter and put them back in... and while I still am not sure what the 'JFP2' connectors are for ..I now have a seemingly perfect build!

Yeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaah

Cog ............"" I'm not sure if I made that clear... the Boosteroo device connects to a headset to boost the volume from the Output of a device to the headset. When I removed the Boosteroo from the headset the jumpy / cutting out of the sound stopped. I'm not entirely sure why this was happening but it seems as though there was some sort of feedback going on between the Boosteroo and the PC.

With that I just really want to thank you a Whole Big Lot of Bunches !! for all of your help Woly. From our first encounter when I adopted the name ''jack" to now with me having a successful new build. I joined this site months ago with the hope that I would reach this goal and it has come to fruition!

Thanks Woly and everyone else who has helped in here over the last several months.

Cog

 

[Wolygon]

So glad I could help. Awesome work.

Best of luck "Jack"! Look forward to seeing you around some time...