[SyphonPayne]

QUOTE (leik oh em jeez! @ Thursday, May 17 2012, 11:43)

GTA IV doesn't support SLI so it would only be running on one 7900 GPU with 512Mb of video memory that it would happily eat up even at low settings.

While I'm sure that the 7900 even in SLI would crawl with GTA IV, my 560 TIs in SLI will run GTA IV flawlessly and both even get up to 70% GPU usage at times. So I think that there is a "small" benefit to SLI in GTA IV, but that being said, mostly they run at 50% each so it's not a whole lot of benefit. The benefit I get out of it though, is that instead of 1 card frying itself at 100% constantly, it's 2 cards at 50% producing less heat and spreading it out more.

[leik oh em jeez!]

QUOTE (SyphonPayne @ Thursday, May 17 2012, 15:22)

QUOTE (leik oh em jeez! @ Thursday, May 17 2012, 11:43) GTA IV doesn't support SLI so it would only be running on one 7900 GPU with 512Mb of video memory that it would happily eat up even at low settings. While I'm sure that the 7900 even in SLI would crawl with GTA IV, my 560 TIs in SLI will run GTA IV flawlessly and both even get up to 70% GPU usage at times. So I think that there is a "small" benefit to SLI in GTA IV, but that being said, mostly they run at 50% each so it's not a whole lot of benefit. The benefit I get out of it though, is that instead of 1 card frying itself at 100% constantly, it's 2 cards at 50% producing less heat and spreading it out more.

Odd, if I remember correctly on release GTA IV actually took a small performance hit on SLI systems, and users had to disable SLI to get it to run correctly. And though that bug was fixed in later patches, the game was still never programmed to take any advantage of SLI. Of course new patches and drivers have been released since I've read in to it so my information is a bit dated.

Oh, and with two GPUs at 50% you'd still be heating your room up more than one card at 100%, it's just GPUs that are staying cooler as you've got twice the heat dissipation.

[SyphonPayne]

QUOTE (leik oh em jeez! @ Thursday, May 17 2012, 16:54)

QUOTE (SyphonPayne @ Thursday, May 17 2012, 15:22) QUOTE (leik oh em jeez! @ Thursday, May 17 2012, 11:43) GTA IV doesn't support SLI so it would only be running on one 7900 GPU with 512Mb of video memory that it would happily eat up even at low settings. While I'm sure that the 7900 even in SLI would crawl with GTA IV, my 560 TIs in SLI will run GTA IV flawlessly and both even get up to 70% GPU usage at times. So I think that there is a "small" benefit to SLI in GTA IV, but that being said, mostly they run at 50% each so it's not a whole lot of benefit. The benefit I get out of it though, is that instead of 1 card frying itself at 100% constantly, it's 2 cards at 50% producing less heat and spreading it out more. Odd, if I remember correctly on release GTA IV actually took a small performance hit on SLI systems, and users had to disable SLI to get it to run correctly. And though that bug was fixed in later patches, the game was still never programmed to take any advantage of SLI. Of course new patches and drivers have been released since I've read in to it so my information is a bit dated. Oh, and with two GPUs at 50% you'd still be heating your room up more than one card at 100%, it's just GPUs that are staying cooler as you've got twice the heat dissipation.

Well ever since the 400 series came out Nvidia has had some great SLI scaling performance, so perhaps that's what it is. All I know for sure is what I see in my GPU usage. Whether or not it is beneficial I don't know because regardless I'm getting 60+FPS.

Yeah, two cards will produce more heat. I just meant each individual GPU runs cooler overall when I do that.

[leik oh em jeez!]

Decided to rebuild the old Opteron system as the E8400/780i system just wasn't cutting it with the new GTX480. Popped my old HDD to find out I had forgotten the password and had no free space, but didn't want to lose any data. So I looked around and turned up another 80Gb HDD with plenty of unpartitioned space. So I popped it in and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1, and my God, this thing is lightning fast. Can't wait to start playing with the RAM timing again.


No such thing as cable management with the OEM case, but it's the fastest hunk of junk in the Galaxy. So it's got it where it counts.

Edit:


This post has been edited by leik oh em jeez! on Tuesday, May 29 2012, 17:36

[les]

New laptop.



This post has been edited by les on Friday, Jun 1 2012, 03:40

[SyphonPayne]

Need to shrink the taskbar icons and add labels . Totally made me nostalgia though.

[les]

QUOTE (SyphonPayne @ Friday, Jun 1 2012, 03:32)

Need to shrink the taskbar icons and add labels . Totally made me nostalgia though.

Heh, didn't even think to see if I could do that. Thanks, previous post edited with results.

ps - "Nirvana MIDIs" folder contains all the files I need to create an OS X86 Lion dual boot.

[illegal_luggage]

@leik
You must get some beastly benchmarks with that thing and electricity bills

[sivispacem]

After a forced absence due to a failed PSU, my PC is rebuild and back! Fitted a modular PSU, Corsair H60 and spent plenty of time tidying cables.

[illegal_luggage]

Looks very neat and tidy. I wish I chose a modular PSU and a case with cable management but it's too late now. I had to tuck my cables behind the hard drive cage. Is the fan on your radiator blowing in? As I can see that orange fan is blowing out.

[Ryan]

Looks good. Now to just get yourself an SSD and some spray paint for those horrible optical drive casings.

[sivispacem]

QUOTE (illegal_luggage @ Wednesday, Jun 6 2012, 16:47)

Looks very neat and tidy. I wish I chose a modular PSU and a case with cable management but it's too late now. I had to tuck my cables behind the hard drive cage. Is the fan on your radiator blowing in? As I can see that orange fan is blowing out.

The radiator fan is set to intake. I wanted to do a push-pull but I don't have any bolts that will attach the second fan to the radiator so the top-mount is my substitute for the pull. My PSU before this one was a PC Power and Cooling one which was non-modular and huge so the Corsair is a welcome change. It's got a bit of a "sponsored by Corsair" vibe about it at the moment- RAM, PSU and cooler- now I just need one of the swanky Corsair cases and an SSD to finish it off...

QUOTE (Ryan @ Wednesday, Jun 6 2012, 16:50)

some spray paint for those horrible optical drive casings.

I thought I had some but I'm fresh out. I'll do them satin black when I can eventually be bothered.

[Stinky12]

Your rams are not running in dual channel mode.

[Wolf68k]

@sivispacem
So the HDDs are on rails but the 5.25in bay isn't?!?
Ummm ok


@Stinky12
There's a review I read some where that showed that there is very little difference between single channel and dual-channel performance when it comes to 2+ sticks of RAM.
The benchmarks I still want to see however are single stick vs 2x sticks of equaling size (1x4GB vs 2x2GB for example).

[sivispacem]

QUOTE (Stinky12 @ Wednesday, Jun 6 2012, 17:09)

Your rams are not running in dual channel mode.

Just noticed this myself, now duly fixed. Thanks

QUOTE (Wolf68k @ Wednesday, Jun 6 2012, 17:24)

@sivispacem So the HDDs are on rails but the 5.25in bay isn't?!? Ummm ok

I've lost my spare set of rails along the way, and I seem to have to take my HDDs out far more frequently than my ODDS.

This post has been edited by sivispacem on Wednesday, Jun 6 2012, 16:28

[Stinky12]

QUOTE (Wolf68k @ Wednesday, Jun 6 2012, 16:24)

@sivispacem So the HDDs are on rails but the 5.25in bay isn't?!? Ummm ok @Stinky12 There's a review I read some where that showed that there is very little difference between single channel and dual-channel performance when it comes to 2+ sticks of RAM. The benchmarks I still want to see however are single stick vs 2x sticks of equaling size (1x4GB vs 2x2GB for example).

True that there is little difference between single and dual channel, but if you can go with dual channel, why not?
If one where to pick between 4GB (2x2GB) in dual channel more or 6GB (3x2GB) in single channel, I'll go with the 6GB in single channel.

[leik oh em jeez!]

[Piperka]

[leik oh em jeez!]

Why on Earth do you have four web browsers? Especially Safari, it's horrible.

Why don't you go ahead and install Opera and Ice Weasel while you're at it?

[Piperka]

I only use Google Chrome. I already have Opera, it's just not on the desktop. I also have Flock. I don't know why. lol