OT: Hardware guru advice sought

***wombat666*** · October 5th, 2011, 07:22

As a matter of interest I've set up my I7-960 on a GA-X58A-OC M/B and it runs at a stable 4.2GH clock.................next stop will be a 995X on that board.
I can get some really 'interesting' FPS rates if I want to but who cares, I don't.
My only bottleneck right now are a pair of GV-R697OC-2GD/ graphic cards but I'm shopping around.

**txnetcop** · October 8th, 2011, 16:22

Interesting things are happening:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...-Guinness-Book

Ted

***wombat666*** · October 9th, 2011, 08:13

Interesting indeed Ted.

I'm sticking with Intel for now, and as I refuse to be an 'Early Adopter' that means the I7 as there is too much money and time invested in getting to the stage I am now.
The trusty 960 is now running at 4.7GH with (I believe) more to come.
Just need to sort out a couple of new graphic cards that won't heat the room and are reasonably priced.

**txnetcop** · October 9th, 2011, 10:11

Since you are running crossfire you could run a pair of MSIGeForce GTX 560 Ti HAWKs in SLI MODE and cool things off and still have great performance. At worst it put out up to 65 C of heat when cranked up to full imaging but if don't mind a little noise from the two huge fans on it crank it up 80% or better and those fans still let you run full imaging graphics at a nice 55C. Love the GTX 560 Ti HAWK TWIN FROZER II by MSI. Even GTX 570s run cooler than the AMD Radeon 6950 and 6970, and talk about BANDWIDTH...WOOOOHOOOOO!

By the way the only thing you will need to do to that rig to run the pants off of Bulldozer is add a 990 or 995X why start over!

WOMBAT...ya know I was just thinking those ATI 6970s have more bandwidth available to them than the GTX 560 or even the GTX570s if heating is the problem you are aware you can turn the fan speed up on those video cards with the ATI Catalyst, right?

***wombat666*** · October 25th, 2011, 00:32

No overheating problems with these Ted.
And yes indeed, fan speeds and temps can be tweaked via the CC.
I really have no cooling issues with anything, since I invested in my Thermaltake Level 10 GT it's more a matter of keeping stuff from being sucked into the case ................

Attachment 50613
I was contemplating the temperatures that Asus' Radeon HD6990 generate, rather too toasty for my taste.
That aside, I hate really wide cards and just to put me off even more, the bloody thing is really noisy.
Until the price become a bit more realistic (currently around A$950.00) it's not on my shopping list.