Motherboard broke, replacement arriveing on tuesday

[tekgek]

Hey, all,

Well, my asus p5k e mobo has crapped out after a very short life of only six months. So, I have to get a new board. I ordered the EVGA 123-YW-E175-A1. Terrifyingly long, alphanumeric name aside, it seems like a good board.

And, now, to the interesting stuff. Since the motherboard supports SLI and core 2 extreme, I will be strapping 2 geforce 9600 gso s together in SLI (Why such wimpy cards? I got a good deal on one from a friend, and the other one I already have), and overclocking them to about 850 mhz each. And, eventually, and I am talking way down the road (maybe at Christmas), I will get a core 2 extreme QX9650 cpu, or a very good core 2 quad, once they come down in price. No i7 for me, still waiting for the total price of building a system with it to be under $2000.

Anyway, now that I have sounded like a raving maniac who wants it all, what do you think of this plan? Am I making a mistake in planning on a core 2 extreme and overclocking the GPU s? I think I want to know where I will go in upgrading my PC for the next year, and I had to get a new mobo, so I thought I would plan on using the mobo for a year. What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Tekgek

[vicaphit]

Let us know how it performs for you. You could also use one 9600 for video and one for physX.

[ibleet]

Congrats, you are overdue for a better system imo!

[Major_A]

Sounds like a logical build to me. Out of curiosity what CPU do you have now? When I went from my E6750 to my Q9550 both overclocked to 3.8Ghz I noticed no discernible difference while playing games. It's also a bit disheartening the amount of useful applications that actually can take advantage of all four cores.

[tekgek]

I have the e6750 too. It is a good CPU, and I will probably have it for at least another year. Haven't overclocked it, though. I do not like overclocking CPU s for some reason. They fry too easily maybe.

[Major_A]

To each their own, I've been overclocking for a long time now and never fried a CPU. I still have a working Athlon T-Bird that has been overclocked since I got it a long time ago. You are running more of a risk overclocking your GPUs than you are your CPU, seeing as there are no fail safes built into the GPU.

I bet you are overclocking your CPU and don't even know it. I have a feeling that if you download CPU-Z your FSB is not 333Mhz it's probably a few Mhz above that.

[tekgek]

I will let you know if the FSB is above 333 mhz, and if it is, then I will make it even higher. I do not think that I wil overclock the GPU s, but I will OC the CPU slightly, at least until I reach ful-burn temps of 75 C.

Tekgek

[DaddyRabbit]

Not that I am advocating actually doing it, but you can build a quite nice i7 rig for around $1500-$1700. I just did a quick shopping spree on the Egg and built (in the wish list) a system with:

- Core i7 920
- Gigabyte GA-X58-UD3R
- 6G G.Skill DDR3 1600 (at about half the price I paid for it )
- ASUS 4870 1G GPU
- ASUS 1080P 24" Widescreen with a 1.3 MP Webcam
- WD Caviar Black 640G (nice, fast drive)
- Antec P182 Gunmetal case
- Corsair 620HX PSU (Excellent PSU!)
- LG Blu-ray reader/DVD-CDRW (to feed the 1080p Monitor and GPU )
- Vista Home Premium 64bit

Total = $1718.90 (shipping and MIRs not included)

The only thing missing:

- KB/Mouse (assume you already have it)
- Discrete audio
- Speakers

Also you could probably trim a couple hundred or three off of total with a different case, optical drive, monitor, and RAM as well as reusing existing parts.

Current Egg price for the QX9650 = $1029.99.

IMHO, if you are looking at a purchase 6 months to a year down the road, SLI the 9600 GSOs on your existing rig and plan to build i7.

[tekgek]

That's quite a list, there. Maybe in a couple years, I will build a core i7 rig off that list. When my current system ceases to be capable of doing its job and I cannot upgrade it anymore, then I will build a core i7. But for now, thanks for the info and the parts list.

Thanks,
Tekgek

Update: The board will be arriving on Wednesday, so I will post performance benchmarks then.

[tekgek]

hey guys sorry for the double post but ive been having some problems. I think I have corrupted bios or something because whenever i try to install a sata controller for vista 64 at install i get a bluescreen with STOP. I looked for the bios updates but there were none. does anyone have the bios update tool and bios update for this board

thanks,
tekgek

[Major_A]

Are you loading the board's ACHI driver before Vista begins to install? From the looks of it you will need to download the latest nForce drivers and use WinRAR, WinZip, etc... and extract the setup file. From there you'll need to manually locate the ACHI drivers and load them onto a thumb drive. Vista's setup asks if you have a driver you need to install, tell it you do and point to the driver for your board. Otherwise go into the motherboard's BIOS and set the SATA mode to IDE.

[tekgek]

Okay, guys, I fixed the problem. The thread below explains it all:

http://www.vistax64.com/general-discuss ... 64bit.html

I am installing 3dmark06 today as soon as I get home from work, but I already ran the crysis benchmark with my two 9600 gso s in SLI.

With all settings on high, and screen resolution at 1680x1050, I got an average framerate of 31.2 FPS. I will post the 3dmark06 benchmark soon.

Tekgek

[tekgek]

Okay, guys, 3dmark vnatage ran, and gave me a score of 9,632 with everything on high. Nice imporvement, I think.