smshpkins

Ahhh, now I understand, Raphie. Yeah, if I end up replacing the cooler, I would be happy to unload my coolers elsewhere. As far as the Zalman goes, I have seen that thing for sale elsewhere and after reading the dimensions, I don't think it would fit in the space between the cards on this board. Thoughts?

Which Zalman's are you referring to? The standard Zalman coolers are wonderful--I have their 120mm on on my CPU--but you have to remember this is a modified Ultra-D; thus, there is only about 2-3cm of space between the two video cards. Currently, I have the BIOS modded to the clock any voltages I wanted in addition to regulating the fan speed (esentially I have RivaTuner settings hardwired into my card) so noise isn't the issue. I am simply curious if there are alternative cooling solutions I could use for such a small space. For example, the Evercool VR-CE many people, including myself, have placed on their chipsets, would something of that size be any improvement over the stock cooling + AS5 I am currently using. Even IF Raphie did break an old one, I don't know what use these things would be.

As in you would want to buy my old stock coolers? Yeah, I suppose; however, why on earth would you want them, Raphie?

I modified my DFI-Lanparty to be SLI compatible a few months ago and, as one would expect, I purchased a second MSI 6800 vanilla to run in SLI before the cards were discontinued. I have re-seated both heatsinks with AS5 but I was wondering is anyone knew of good, low-profile coolers which would fit on the cards and not be much, if any, higher than the coolers I already am using. For example, would a Iceberg Pro do any better of a job than what I am currently using? All suggestions are welcome - thank you.

Well done, well done; however, I apologize for not being better informed but could you please detail exactly--or your best guess--what materials you used to complete this project. Share the knowledge! Thanks.

Zalman hasn't changed their instructions; I put that exact same HSF onto my board 2 weeks ago and there shouldn't be any washers between the cross bar and the nipples comming up from the board. I used the smaller washers--as the instructions told me to--and then a one-size-larger washer between the nipple and the board to make sure there was enough support. I figured there would be enough torque that everything would work out fine. As I screwed my HSF into place, however, you simply need to take your time and give one screw on one side a few turns then oscillate to the other side and repeat until the crossbar touches the nipple on each side--once again, as indicated in the instructions. Good luck.

Well done, although I have decided to use SLI as a means to beat a single-card setup for a cheaper price, being a poor college student and all. Nevertheless, good job on the setup--keep up the good work.

Impressive... most impressive.

I believe your power supply might be the cause of your problems; recently, I had to upgrade from a 485W to get better stability and so far so good.

Just a suggestion, but you may want to post scores with 3DMark05 since that benchmarking program is in common usage--you can get it over at guru3d.com. I usually run 3DMark03 just for nostolgia's sake.

dab, I MAY have a solution to your problem. Recently, I went through a rather train-wreck of a crash with my Mobo and these were teh symptoms I had: 1)The comp would beep at start-up but with no boot, 2)No video output, and 3)The red VGA led light would stay on and nothing else would happen. Solution: Because I had pulled and cleared the BIOS, my checksum was off, the reason for the stall at start-up was because the comp was prompting me to strike F10, but I couldn't see any display. So, I hooked up my monitor to the VGA port--usually, I had been using the DVI port--and when I got into windows, I set my default display to monitor 2: the DVI connection. I hope this aides you in your troubles.

Just a note, I have the HL2 x64 version and the boys at valve f-ed this thing up. Almost 2 months ago I discovered that the game crashes--even with ALL settings set to stock and the game graphics turned down--on the last level of the game. That's right, you can't finish the x64 version of HL2. Two months ago, after I first encountered this problem, I wrote in to their tech support department and the response I got was that the game crashes on the last level were "a known issue" and a fix was being developed "as quickly as possible". As we all know, this is corporate language for, "Screw you; we sold you the game and we will fix it when we feel like fixing it." So, you may not want to switch to x64 as quickly as you may have thought you once did. The only thing you really gain from the x64 version is quicker load times. As for your problem though, I just looked around online for x64 version drivers for the Silicon Image drivers on Google--using the manual to find out exactly what kind of controller the Ultra-D uses. Good luck!

"Hey tell me the truth... with your experience... is it worth jump to XP64?" That all depends on you, my friend. If you are going to have to battle with driver issue after driver issue because you have plenty of little toys you like to connect to your PC, then DON'T go to x64 until at least a few months after Vista because the driver support simply isn't there. On the other hand, if you're dealing primarily with things hardwired into your PC only (i.e. VGA card, cound card, etc.), then, by all means, make the jump. There are some advantages to switching to x64, for example: 1) Remember all those problems those stupid root kits were creating for people? Because I was running x64, those problems were never an issue for me because the root kit wasn't capable of interacting with my computer the same way it could with other x32 based systems. Advantage: obscurity. 2) Stability. The reason x64 is claimed to be so stable is because it is based on the Server 2003 platform (as evidenced from the slightly different install screens) so stability is factored into the equation from the get-go. 3) Fun. I know, some people may think of having to scrounge around for special programs and drivers for an OS is more pain than it is worth, but I enjoy it--a sick pasttime, I know. SO, there you go--those are my thoughts on the issue. And, just as a side note, I play BF2 alot and when you run it in Win64 you are going to notice a lag time when you actually click to enter a game after the level loads--as far as I can tell, this is normal so don't fret. Good luck.

I know this is going to sound stupid, but from past experience when I really need the BIOS to be cleared, you may want to try not only setting the clear CMOS jumper but also popping out the battery as well and leave it for an hour or two. When I have ad REALLY bad crashes that has remedied my problems. I know you have been at this much longer than I have but that has been my experience with the board you have.

I have been running Win x64 for almost 6 mo. and, for the most part, the system has been great. As far as driver suggestions go, head over to www.guru3d.com and look through their beta x64 Nvidia drivers and get the 83.91 one--this one has worked better for me than the standard one from NVidia's site. Also, try the Firefox and Thunderbird x64 builds; just do a google search for both of them. As far as chipset drivers go, I don't install either the ethernet drivers (because of the firewall) nor the audio drivers (because I wanted to offload as much processing as I could from the CPU) and instead just install the Marvell drivers and do a search for the ALC850 x64 drivers; if you're having stability issues, try that. Also, Tweaknow Powerpack Professional 2006 is a great x64 compatible registry cleaner and Windows modifier. Good luck.