Jothay Posted July 14, 2011 Posted July 14, 2011 (edited) So over the last two weeks I've been re-building my system, making improvements and changes that should provide considerable performance boosts. I'm after enabling myself to run high end games at max res and visual settings with 60+ FPS for the next 2-3 years. I'll do another rebuild then. Here's my setup as it is today, items marked with (New!) are things I go recently, otherwise it's parts I've had for about a year: Chassis: ThermalTake Level 10 GT (New!) Mobo: EVGA X58 SLi Processor: Intel Core i7 930 @ 2.80 GHz Memory: Total 24 GB. Corsair Vengeance 12 GB (3x 4GB) 1600 MHz PC-12800 x2 (New!) * Note: Previously total 12GB of DDR3 1067MHz ram, where the OS would only recognize 8 GB of it no matter what i did, tried troubleshooting guides to change the 2T, etc. and nothing worked Video: 3x nVidia GeForce 580 GTX (for Tri SLi) (New!) * Note: Previously 2x nVidia 280 GTX's in Dual SLi, which ran pretty smoothly for most things, I just wanted the extra oomph since I went to bigger monitors at higher total res. Display: 3x Asus VG236H 120 Hz 3D Ready 23" at 1920x1080x3 total res (New!) * Note: Previously 3x 17" Ultrasharp widescreen Dell monitors at 1680x1050x3 total res HDD: 2x 1 TB, 32 MB cache, 7200RPM drives in RAID-0 (each is SATA 3Gb/s). One is a Western Digital, the other is a Seagate. * Note: It's what I had after taking 4 hard drives out of my system and dropping them in a new Netgear Ultraready 4 NAS, I needed to get them out of the system as I didn't have enough power cables to cover both the HDDs and the 3 video cards at the same time. * Note: I also previously was not running any form of raid on a 500 GB, 8 MB cache 5400 RPM SATA drive P/S: 1200W 80+Gold (New!) One question I know will be asked is whether I'm running current drivers. It is a fresh Windows 7 x64 install with full Windows updates, latest nVidia drivers (275.50 I think) and the latest BIOS for the X58 mobo as of 2 weeks ago. I will be buying an in-case water cooling system for the processor tonight, like the Corsair H80 (CWCH80). My stock 1" heat-sink with a little fan on top kinda sucks and isn't mounted well. I have purchased the 7/11 deal from 3Dmark.com (3DMark 11 and PC Mark 7). My current scores are X3910 in 3DSurround, P6673 in 3DSurround and P12066 in Sli All displays (not 3D Surround). The scores alone are telling me that I'm low and there's some kind of problem with Tri SLI and 3D Surround, I've actually got less performance there then when I was doing 2 cards in 3D Surround. No Load: Now: The two things I have tried in this setup so far is to set the BIOS memory profile to XMP, to get the memory to run at 1600 MHz like it is supposed to and to set the Dummy Overclock to Enabled (which I turned off after bluescreening in 3dMark 11's Combined test, BSOD 0x124). I do want to take the proc to the 3.5+ GHz range and the Memory to the 1900-2000 MHz range. The problems are: * I'm not exactly sure how I should be stepping these things up safely * I'm not exactly sure what the safest and most relevant methods of testing each step up are Both of these points have conflicting reports on different sites, and I know that some tools have become out of date as they don't properly test multi-core procs and high levels of memory, etc. Edited July 14, 2011 by Jothay Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVIYTH0S Posted July 14, 2011 Posted July 14, 2011 check check it: http://www.techreaction.net/2010/09/07/3-step-overclocking-guide-bloomfield-and-gulftown/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jothay Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 Damn, thats probably the most user friendly guide for such advanced work that I've ever seen. After about 6 hours of following the guide (including load tests), I think I'm sitting where I need to be for now. My friend upgraded his i7 980 to a 990, so he gave me his 980 to replace my 930, which is a nice bump up. I also purchhased that water cooling kit, a Corsair CWCH70. It doesn't exactly fit like it should since there's a heat-sink from the X58 board in the way, but with it finagled over a smidge, I got it in there. So with those changes to the initial specs, here is what I ended up with: QPI: 1.4v VTT: 1.4v DIMM/DRAM: 1.65v IOH: 1.4v VCORE: 1.45v The other voltages are at their BIOS defaults, usually "Auto". I also noticed while I was in there, that most of the voltage selections lists had the top (low) values in gray but if you scroll down a bit, you can find ones in green, then high volts in red. Since most of this OC stuff didn't work until I was in the green values, I'm guessing it's what EVGA tested for reasonable values. The reds probably have to do with the Extreme Cooling option (-50C). The Bus Speed is at 160 MHz from the base 133 MHz. It hated 170+, 165 was stable with lower CPU/RAM settings, but 160 seems to be working ok with the RAM and CPU up. If anyone has any suggestions of how I could fuddle with the board to get it closer to 200 MHz I'd appreciate it. Memory is running at 1600 MHz (800x2) as 2:10, 9-9-9-24 Proc is sitting at x27 which gives me 4,309.5 MHz (4.3 GHz) from the stock 3.33GHz that's a 1 GHz gain Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drdeath Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 First of all if your just gaming your 24G of RAM is a waste. Unless you doing very intensive programs, anything more than 6G is worthless IMO. You should have saved the money and devoted it to your watercooling. Also, 24G will inhibit your overclocking. Achieving 2000MHz is very unlikely. Native speed on your CPU is I think 1066MHz and most get 1700 or so on the memory. Your performance gain even if you got over 1800MHz is minimal and you will not see any difference in real world applications. You are better off running at 1600-1740MHz at lower Cas. Your potential with your rig and cooling is 4.1GHz-4.2GHz. Custom water would have pretty much insured 4.3GHz. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drdeath Posted July 15, 2011 Posted July 15, 2011 The reason your system does not see all the memory is most likely used by your heatsin being too tight. This is a common problem with X58 motherboards. I would rest your processor and Heatsinks but be carefully when tightening the sucker. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jothay Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 The reason your system does not see all the memory is most likely used by your heatsin being too tight. This is a common problem with X58 motherboards. I would rest your processor and Heatsinks but be carefully when tightening the sucker. I had that problem before, I do not have that problem with the new RAM. I have 24 GB of RAM because I not only use the system for gaming, but also to run Virtual Machines for testing programs in other operating systems. I will take 3 sticks out for the sake of benchmark testing though, just want to see what the direct performance difference is. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drdeath Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 ^5.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jothay Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 ^5.... 5? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CowKing Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 For the memory limitation, unless you have W7 Pro the OS will only use 16GB, so even if you got your mobo/OS to see the rest of the RAM it would only use 16GB. I'm pretty sure about this. I do know Vista x64 Home premium was limited to 8GB. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CowKing Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 5? I think he was trying to say high five. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jothay Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 (edited) I think he was trying to say high five. oh ^5 = high five, i get it. Sorry, had my dunce cap on. I would never use one of the low end versions of the OS, I'm in Win7 x64 ultimate . I have an MSDN license through work (I'm a software developer), so I get to choose what I OS's I need to run, depending on what I'm doing. For my home system, I always get the Ultimate x64 while at work I use Enterprise x64 (have a Dell T7500 there with dual Xeon Hexcore hyperthreaded procs, but as it's a true business machine, I can't do any overclocking to it and it has kind of a crappy video card). And yes, the lower versions are limited by amounts of RAM, the lowest version (Home) can only see 2 GB and it stages up by powers of 2 from there. Ultimate/Pro/Enterprise can see up to 192 GB. What concerns me at the moment, is that I ran Crysis 2 last night and when I ran it at 5760x1080 with the settings on Ultra and DX11 and HiRes Textures pack on, it ran fine. Fraps says I got a solid 25-30 FPS (turn the settings down to High, and I could reach 70-75 FPS). But when I turned on 3D, my left eye saw normal vision, the video continued as I moved around and looked around and the right eye seemed to get stuck on the initial frame. Gotta research the issue and see if there's a fix. The nVidia beta driver release notes states that these cards have better performance in Sli vs TriSli, which is a "known issue"... Edited July 16, 2011 by Jothay Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jothay Posted July 16, 2011 Posted July 16, 2011 (edited) Taking 3 sticks out and leaving 3 in the green 1,3,5 slots for a total of 12 GB of RAM and running 3dMark 11, I lost 305 points (14282-13977=305): http://3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/1530391/3dm11/1527227 - Surround comparison Gonna put the RAM back in for now Edited July 16, 2011 by Jothay Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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