does anyone have one of these, or offer advice about buying one

[Alptraum]

Has anyone actually used one of these before, or have any advice/suggestions about them, my friend and myself were thinking about putting these in our next gaming rigs we build. For the price and size they seem incredible, im looking for any constructive information other multiboxer gearheads may have.
OCZ (OCZSSDPX-1RVDX0240) RevoDrive X2 PCI-Express SSD 240GB, Read: 740MB/s, Write: 720MB/s


http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_179&item_id=035056

Im hoping if all goes well to purchase one of these sometime in the new year and drop it into a new monster machine im building for gaming/work stuff, This should fit no problem onto my Rampage 3 board, and with 24 gigs of ram, I was hoping this would run wow PDF (pretty damn fast) as well as hopefully also allow me to run a small fleet of virtual machines on it as well.

All advice/comments welcome...I could also use some suggestions about a 6 monitor graphics card..im a long time Nvidia fan, but sadly I think we are going to part ways since the ATI Eyeinfinity solution if i understand it correctly will allow me to use all 6 monitors as one giant one when I want to, and when I dont it will let me break the monster card up into indivual monitors for my wow/work pleasure.

Im looking at this bad boy XFX HD-597X-ENFN Radeon HD 5970 BLACK 4GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150500&cm_re=5970-_-14-150-500-_-Product

or something similar if anyone has any suggestions about this card, or knows of something better they think I should consider i am again willing to read your comments, so please dont be shy.

[burningforce]

will you just be using the revodrive JUST for WoW? I would think that would be a waste if you did hehe

Do you need/want 6 monitors? I mean it is cool and all but damn that is an expensive card and buying 6 monitors of the same size if you do not already have them will be pricey. But it is your money and you can get whatever you want/need.

If I had the money I would do the same but use the computer for an entertainment station. Gaming, movies,etc. But that is only if I had the money and or a lot of people to enjoy it with :)

[Sam DeathWalker]

I just got the revo 50G and put it in my system, Im getting 30fps in Org with one client

Ill be doing a full write up on my site soon but rl stuffs is pileing up so it will be a few days.

It shows 488MBs with sandra test, read.


To bad you missed that auction (see my post here in hardware) a bit ago, 6 monitors and hardware to hook up went for $1000 or so.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=32899

[Hivetyrant]

Worth every cent :)

ISBoxer currently:
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/4736/desker.jpg
By hivetyrant7 (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/hivetyrant7) at 2010-11-30

Eyefinity 6:
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/1511/desker2.jpg
By hivetyrant7 (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/hivetyrant7) at 2010-11-30

There are some issues with Eyefinity 6, and it certainly isn't for everyone, but if you're like me and like having over the top expensive stuff, it's brilliant :D


EDIT: And it gives you this sort of real estate (Quality isn't great as I had to shrink quality to fit it on the internet):

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/7039/bigjx.jpg
By hivetyrant7 (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/hivetyrant7) at 2010-11-30

(http://imageshack.us)

[Hivetyrant]

And back onto your question...

The 5870 eyefinity 6 edition cards are super cheap now if you are looking to save or just to experiment, but the XFX 5970 is awesome.

[alcattle]

looks like the monitors are wall mounted. no angles for improved pictures? still pretty damn hot

[Alptraum]

I just got the revo 50G and put it in my system, Im getting 30fps in Org with one client

Ill be doing a full write up on my site soon but rl stuffs is pileing up so it will be a few days.

It shows 488MBs with sandra test, read.


To bad you missed that auction (see my post here in hardware) a bit ago, 6 monitors and hardware to hook up went for $1000 or so.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=32899


No worries Sam, I hate buying other peoples used stuff, I like new with warrenty.

[Alptraum]

And back onto your question...

The 5870 eyefinity 6 edition cards are super cheap now if you are looking to save or just to experiment, but the XFX 5970 is awesome.

I was hoping the 5970 was packing enough of a punch to really be awesome, the 5870 was sorta an ok but nothing terribly great to write home about from what i've seen and read. I was all excited when it first came out, but after looking over the specs I put the breaks on, untill this card came out.

I know the biggest hurdle is finding 6 monitors with small enough bezels that I can live with, Im not a fan of dell or i'd ask what you were running there.

Over all, how is your performance when running single toon, across all 6 screens ??? im assuming your running the 5870 right now the 5970 ???, im hoping to have no bottlenecks in my new rig with 24 gigs of ram and the 700 meg read/writes from the ssd card, assuming even if they only do 450-500 meg actual.

[Alptraum]

will you just be using the revodrive JUST for WoW? I would think that would be a waste if you did hehe

Do you need/want 6 monitors? I mean it is cool and all but damn that is an expensive card and buying 6 monitors of the same size if you do not already have them will be pricey. But it is your money and you can get whatever you want/need.

If I had the money I would do the same but use the computer for an entertainment station. Gaming, movies,etc. But that is only if I had the money and or a lot of people to enjoy it with :)




Wow is just a hobby, no the main reason for this revodrive is for fast access for running virtual servers for security and penetration testing (my main job).

And the six screens where essentially to handle the amount of data we want to be displaying from one of our command op workstation setups...this is both a trial and error gaming/work machine build im going for here. during the day the six screens will not be running wow, but instead will have between 10-15 windows/linux server screens spreadout on them, but afterhours..well now :) thats when the WOW portion of my addiction kicks in...

[Sajuuk]

5870 was sorta an ok but nothing terribly great to write home about from what i've seen and read.

What? The 5870 is a great card, and still trumps the AMD cards currently released (the 6800 is really the low end of the spectrum for the new cards, but meh), and the 5970 is really two 5850s in crossfire (not entirely sure about the XFX BLACK, it might be two 5870s, clocks seem to match). MY POINT BEING: YOU CAN GET THE SAME SOLUTION AS THE XFX 5970 BLACK FOR LESS BY PURCHASING TWO 5870 EYEFINITY6 cards!

In fact, you could buy three 5870 eyefinity6 cards for the price of one 5970 black card. The only limiting factors are: motherboard layout and power supply. Just think of all the monitors you could run! 18! OMGSWEET YAY THINKING

(also please to note the extra horsepower would come in handy when playing graphically intensive games, as well as for splitting rendering of each clients between cards)

That hard drive is fine, all it does is bypass the limits on speed for SATA2 interfaces, not that big of an issue. Again, to save money (and preserve precious motherboard space for graphics cards) you could get any number of other solid state drives, even Buy two of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227590 and you'd be just fine.


thinking about alternatives is good.

[Hivetyrant]

Sajuuk is correct on the video card part, the 5870 is AMD's best selling card for a reason, and they moved from the 5970 pretty quickly as it didn't provide enough horsepower to justify the cost, doesn't mean it's a bad card, its just like most top end cards in that you pay a hell of a lot more for only a small increase.

[Alptraum]

What? The 5870 is a great card, and still trumps the AMD cards currently released (the 6800 is really the low end of the spectrum for the new cards, but meh), and the 5970 is really two 5850s in crossfire (not entirely sure about the XFX BLACK, it might be two 5870s, clocks seem to match). MY POINT BEING: YOU CAN GET THE SAME SOLUTION AS THE XFX 5970 BLACK FOR LESS BY PURCHASING TWO 5870 EYEFINITY6 cards!

In fact, you could buy three 5870 eyefinity6 cards for the price of one 5970 black card. The only limiting factors are: motherboard layout and power supply. Just think of all the monitors you could run! 18! OMGSWEET YAY THINKING

(also please to note the extra horsepower would come in handy when playing graphically intensive games, as well as for splitting rendering of each clients between cards)

That hard drive is fine, all it does is bypass the limits on speed for SATA2 interfaces, not that big of an issue. Again, to save money (and preserve precious motherboard space for graphics cards) you could get any number of other solid state drives, even Buy two of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227590 and you'd be just fine.


thinking about alternatives is good.


Sorry I was refering to the previous Eyefinity6 card...the specs for it were less then the 5970, it was basicly just 2 cards mashed together, and I didnt think the performance was that great, without attempting to crossfire multiple cards together.

Now im hoping this new version truely is their most powerful card to date, im avoiding going back down the 3-4 sli/crossfire phase again, I did that with 8800 ultra's and at the time, only one monitor was able to be active well running in SLI, turning off the SLI allowed for all 6 screens to be active, but the noise/heat issues were a nightmare. I'll willingly pay extra for 1 card that does it all, and hopefully this is such a beast.

[jstanthr]

you might wanna make sure they fixed the bug where the revo drive wasn't bootable. i think they did fix it, but im not sure. but for virtualization, it shouldn't be an issue.

[Sajuuk]

Sorry I was refering to the previous Eyefinity6 card...the specs for it were less then the 5970, it was basicly just 2 cards mashed together, and I didnt think the performance was that great, without attempting to crossfire multiple cards together.

Now im hoping this new version truely is their most powerful card to date, im avoiding going back down the 3-4 sli/crossfire phase again, I did that with 8800 ultra's and at the time, only one monitor was able to be active well running in SLI, turning off the SLI allowed for all 6 screens to be active, but the noise/heat issues were a nightmare. I'll willingly pay extra for 1 card that does it all, and hopefully this is such a beast.

We're not going to run them in crossfire. They're there for three reasons (splitting rendering of wow clients between cards for MAXIMUM performance, extra monitors (12-18 anyone!?), and lastly to accelerate multiple instances of applications that can use the card for parallel computing.) The first two are what we're really going to look at.

The regular 5970 is really two 5850 dies on one PCB, the XFX black one is (I think) two 5870s( or the equivalent) taking up two slots instead of four, for a very high premium. Get two cards for 2/3rds the price of one, with possibly easier overclocking? Yes please.

[Hivetyrant]

The regular 5970 is really two 5850 dies on one PCB, the XFX black one is (I think) two 5870s( or the equivalent) taking up two slots instead of four, for a very high premium. Get two cards for 2/3rds the price of one, with possibly easier overclocking? Yes please.

I believe it's still the two 5850's but with 4gig of memory instead of the usual 2, could be wring though.

[Sajuuk]

I believe it's still the two 5850's but with 4gig of memory instead of the usual 2, could be wring though.

As could I. I'm not entirely certain of it, actually, now that I think again, it's just two 5850s, ASUS had a republic of gamers card that was, in fact two 5870s. (ASUS ARES)

Oh, and it's dual 2gb 5850s. :p

[Alptraum]

you might wanna make sure they fixed the bug where the revo drive wasn't bootable. i think they did fix it, but im not sure. but for virtualization, it shouldn't be an issue.

I did ask the store clerk about that bug, he said it was fixed, but at the very least if I take it home set it up and it dosnt work I've still got 15 days to bring it back for a refund, since finding the 240 gig version, they've released a 120 version as well...that's a bit more afordable for other people, it also features a 700+ read/write, and they offer a 500+ read/write version in smaller capacities as well, it looks like they are really trying to push these now.

I'll post my performance stats for everyone in the new year when I get the next rig built up and then everyone can see if it was worth the money or just over hyped.