Want a SLI system with out dual core bottleneck, Suggestions?

[deathman20]

You think I'm going to need water cooling for this rig ? To hit 1.6 on the opty 170.. I mean lets face it the new opty 170's dont hit 1.65 on 1.35 volts no more.

You mean 2.65 im guessing?

As for them not hitting that thats un true. Well they might not hit it using 1.35V but its still totally possible to hit 2.6-2.65 heck even 2.9Ghz under 1.5V and still have it cool. I'm running 2.65Ghz with 1.485V and I bearly break 40C full load, depending on how cool my place is, which is around 62-68C depending. Thats both processors at full load, and even during games just 1 CPU chugging with the graphics card going I don't even break 40C.

While the new ones might not clock as high some are still getting some impressive results under stock. One just recently was hitting 2.6Ghz if not mistaken on stock volts.

 

[syndragon]

You mean 2.65 im guessing?

As for them not hitting that thats un true. Well they might not hit it using 1.35V but its still totally possible to hit 2.6-2.65 heck even 2.9Ghz under 1.5V and still have it cool. I'm running 2.65Ghz with 1.485V and I bearly break 40C full load, depending on how cool my place is, which is around 62-68C depending. Thats both processors at full load, and even during games just 1 CPU chugging with the graphics card going I don't even break 40C.

While the new ones might not clock as high some are still getting some impressive results under stock. One just recently was hitting 2.6Ghz if not mistaken on stock volts.

Nice Atleast I know I don't have to by the 180 then HEH!
SO you think water cooling would be a waste of time money then probaly?
Hey you getting any ghosting with that monitor?

 

[deathman20]

Nice Atleast I know I don't have to by the 180 then HEH!
SO you think water cooling would be a waste of time money then probaly?
Hey you getting any ghosting with that monitor?

Water cooling na think its a great idea actually. I wouldn't mind it but I don't have the funds to spend on a water cooling setup that I can transport from place to place every weekend.

As for ghosting no, I can't tell any ghosting but thats imo. Different people react to the timings in the display, my old NEC 1760V is a 16ms one and I never noticed it in that display.

 

[Careface]

this is really offtopic, but regarding the last post, what exactly is the point in having the 6ms LCDs, when even the 8ms screens (iirc) are still faster than a CRT, and you dont see ghosting on them?

OT: i wouldnt see an oc'd X2 to 2.6 being a bottleneck for 2 7800gtx's (256s) mainly because with the new multi threaded drivers, the X2s can at least act like 2*2.6ghz of power..

Careface*

 

[El<(')>Maxi]

Personally if your not running a 30in monitor with 1600X1200 or better and high quality settings a single card will give you everything you need.

Here's what I'd get

Opty 170
X1900XTX

Yes you would have to wait 2 weeks or so but the new card is worth it when your this close, plus you won't have any of the dual card headaches.

 

[InfiniteThought]

I'd get SLI 7800GTs. You can pick them up for around $300 a piece and they'll blow away any single card.

Buying ABSOLUTE top of the line is always a waste of money.

 

[syndragon]

Personally if your not running a 30in monitor with 1600X1200 or better and high quality settings a single card will give you everything you need.

Here's what I'd get

Opty 170
X1900XTX

Yes you would have to wait 2 weeks or so but the new card is worth it when your this close, plus you won't have any of the dual card headaches.

Whens and where is this card comming out at?

 

[Kampfzerstorer]

I'd hold off on the GTX 512's. I was considering getting those also, but the cards based on the new 90nm process should be out around q1-q2 this year. This means a bump in clock rates, more efficiency and performance.

As far as the CPU being the bottleneck in an SLI system, this tends to be true, depending on what video cards we're looking at here. For the 7800GTX and the 7800GTX 512 this is true. You can do a simple test yourself (will not be 100% scientific but it'll give you a general indication of whats going on): take a system with a low end card, check the 3dMark05 score. Overclock the processor and check the 3dMark05 score again. You'll notice the score didn't go up all that much, indicating that the CPU isn't the limiting factor. Take an SLI system with GTX's. Do the same thing. You'll notice that even small increases in CPU clock rates will net proportionally higher 3dMark scores than in the system with lower end cards, generally indicating that the cards are hungry for data from the CPU.

You could argue that these synthetic tests aren't necessarily indicative of "real life" application performance so take the results with a grain of salt.

 

[syndragon]

Yeah valid point... I think I may wait off on the x1900xtx. If I can wait that long heheh.

 

[noxqzs]

I would tend to lean on the side of the cpu being a slight bottleneck with the 7800s

On my system runinng 3dmark05:

*overclocking just the video cards from 450/1200 to 530/1400 netted roughly a 1000 point increase in marks.
*overclocking just cpu from 2.2. to 2.9 netted ~2,700 points.
*overclocking cpu and gpu raised score by ~3,200.

BF2 runs great @ 1920x1200. smooth as silk even on 64man servers.

FEAR ran great too. With all settings on max, except soft shadows. 1920x1200
4xAA, 8xAF

 

[Slammin]

If you are not running 1920x1200 with a Dell 24" WS LCD, then you won't really want to go SLI since you will not get near the limits of those cards in SLI.

If you are going to be running 1920x1200 WS, then definitely go SLI! I do, and did, and love it!

 

[voodoothenoob]

I would not go sli, go with the top vid card and ukeep upgrading it

my sli 7800's gtx runs fine with x2 at 2.5, but really not much different than my buds 1 7800 gtx

 

[wa77ss]

There is no need for SLI in games at all, the only need for it is if your just going to bench your system. I have a single 7800GT ( Not GTX ) and I can run all games on high everything turned up with my 2G of RAM and Opteron 148. So my suggestion to you is to get a single card, either a 7800GTX 256 or 512. If you got the money the 512 would be better because you can prolly sell it for a lot of money still when the new Nvidia card comes out in a little while.

 

[deathman20]

There is no need for SLI in games at all, the only need for it is if your just going to bench your system. I have a single 7800GT ( Not GTX ) and I can run all games on high everything turned up with my 2G of RAM and Opteron 148. So my suggestion to you is to get a single card, either a 7800GTX 256 or 512. If you got the money the 512 would be better because you can prolly sell it for a lot of money still when the new Nvidia card comes out in a little while.

Yes but you also have a 20" Widescreen not a 24". I play alot of games and such and theres a couple where I can't run at my native res if I want all the fancy things running in the game. I have eto either suffer and lower the options or shrink the res and deal with the non-native res, or play in window mode. Top end cards are very powerful, but if you have a large LCD like mine, you should keep in mind the other options like gonig CF/SLI since it might be possible that you will need to head that route sometime down the road.

 

[DarkPurity]

Probably already been said, but I couldn't be arsed to read all replies....

Right now, any processor is going to bottleneck 2x7800GTX in SLI. It's just a matter of to what degree.