lokicat

Go with 3 instead of 2. I personally have not seen this work at 2 when clocked higher than 250. I've got the same memory and can run it all the way to 280 at 2.5-3-3-8.

I used the tops of my SLI cards to mount an 80mm fan right over the chipset heatsink. Now my chipset temps stay at 45 or below at full load. Thats at 1.6V too.

Mod your Ultra-D and get an SLI bridge on eBay. Mine had the epoxy on the chipset, but a sharp exato knife will fix that in no time. Read the thread on this in the Mods forum.

My system below gets 13400 in 3DMark05. The latest drivers support multi-threading and which adds 2-3K pts versus single CPU.

Can you plug in a 4 pin 12V line into the new 8 pin connector? The Anandtech review of the Crossfire board that uses the same connector implies that you can. From my view, no dual x16 and new power supply equals no Expert for me. Even more so since I recently modded by Ultra-D for SLI so I really have no compelling reason to upgrade unless dual x16. Why? I read a review on the Asus dual x16 and it really shined in SLI and AA performance - something like 67% better performance. Read it here http://hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=739. I refuse to go with the Asus board since there are no PCI slots available if you use SLI with dual slot coolers or water blocks. At least DFI gives you two legitimate PCI slots if you need them in the same scenario. I would absolutely use at least one for a primo sound card.

After much thought, I went ahead and modded an Ultra-D for SLI. I waited since my chipset had the epoxy on the SLI pads. Scraping that off with an exacto knife was easy and conductive paint did rest of the trick. Anyway, I thought I needed water cooling on the chipset since the two video cards severely restrict the flow of air to the chipset. Searching various forums, it looks like a chipset block for the LP boards are hard to find and expensive. I decided to keep the DFI chipset cooling (replacing the TIM with Ceramique) and made one simple modifaction. I noticed the space between the NV-78 barbs and the back of the cards was about 80mm so I got the idea to put an 80mm fan on the backs of the video cards and secure them with zip ties. I used the barbs and the little holes in the rear corner of the video cards as the mounting points of the zip ties. The fan is perfectly centered over the chipset cooler. Guess what, now I get temps that stay well below 50C at load. I'm idling at 38C as I type this. Even before the SLI mod with a single video card, the chipset would idle at 42C and occasionally hit the low 50's. The best part now is that the chipet fan stays at low speed and makes no noise. Thought I'd share this with anyone else thinking about this. Don't get a water block. Just force more air onto the chipset fan. Cheers

My installation of x64 went fine including all major drivers. I started running into all kinds of application issues so I switched back to 32-Bit. When I ran into similar problems with 32, I found out that my issues were with DEP and not x64. However, I've loaded all my software onto the 32 system and don't like the idea of doing it all over again for x64. Factor in no performance benefit on all of my 32-Bit software and I'm in no rush to change. When I do my annual Windows reinstall, I'll move to x64 then.

I don't have the drivers loaded either and have not experienced any problems in Far Cry.

Here's what I did and it works fine: 1) Remove the yellow CPU bracket completely from the board but save the back plate. 2) Forget about using any of the Swiftech supplied screws and springs. 3) Place the WB on the CPU and align the blue bracket to the two holes in the motherboard. 4) Use the 2 original screws that held the yellow CPU bracket to the back plate to now join the blue swiftech bracket to the back plate. 5) Carefully tighten both screws and count the number of turns so that the pressure is spread evenly accross the CPU. 6) Do not tighten to where the board starts to bend. This method does have some risk, but use reasonable judgement on how much to tighten. I've discovered that the blue mounting bracket itself has some spring to it so there is a decent amount of play before damaging the CPU and/or board. My setup gives me 28 C idle and 38 C load at 21 C ambient.

Hi All, I finally got my system working as spec'd below. I decided to go ahead and install XP x64 for the heck of it. So far, it's been mostly good except the following 32-bit programs don't work: 1) Nero Recode 2 2) Norton SystemWorks 2005 3) PCMark04 4) ATI Control Center (had to go with regular control panel) If anyone can help with Nero or ATI, I would be grateful. Have any of you stayed with x64 or have most gone back to x32? Thanks