INC -----> New hardware for 6 boxing. (OC progress update)

[Rms]

Acronis is awesome sauce to the second power.

Cube that!



Congrats on the system! I just did the same thing. Although my GTX285 came half DOA so RMAing. QQ.

[moosejaw]

About disk imaging. I use a Windows Home Server so I have all the images for all the windows installs saved on the server. It is so nice to run a backup, swap out a disk then restore it with no worries. Especially the boot drives.

I am using a single Ati 4870 1gb for the gaming video. The HTPC will get the 8800gt. Should I want to game with Linux/Ubuntu, I have to use a Nvidia card for OpenGl which really sucks.

Btw, I did 11 years in the Navy in Submarine service. :P

[moosejaw]

I order those parts at 5 am (central) Monday morning and everthing is out for delivery today (1 day later) with the exception of the Vista dvd which is going via snail mail.

I really like being close to warehouses. :thumbup:

[Herc130]

Did you have to pay for tax? I know Tiger is based out of florida, but not sure where their wharehouses are. If you haven't gotten an aftermarket cooler and looking to do so, highly recommend

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catal...31d8c01fc0e95f

or

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/

Lot more choices and for me, cheapest shipping since they do USPS and there is no such thing as free shipping to Hawaii (except Amazon, but amazon doesn't really sell high end cooling gear)

[Oatboat]

Man I'm excited for you... I upgraded my ram and operating system and i thought i was a kid in a candy store... a new computer would probably make me go bonkers.

[moosejaw]

I was going to recycle my zalman cooler since the new MB is drilled for both patterns (dualcore and i7). But when I went to install the backing plate I see there is a large reinforcement plate for the cpu retention on the underside that screws everything up. There is significant interference with the MB tray and I really don't want to get out the sheet metal cutters to make room. My HTPC has water cooling for silencing and even that plate is incompatible. So I will need a new heat sink now despite my efforts to recycle. X(


Everything is assembled and I tried to get windows 7 beta installed this morning from the dvd I burned a while back. Windows 7 install just hangs up once the mouse goes active. So I have to wait for the snail mail now for the new Vista license. At least I can finish up the HTPC setup and get it done right while I wait.

Oh yeah, the system started up with out a problem with 6 gb of ram installed. Boy this new ram standard is very finicky anyone building an I7 machine needs to really look over the ram configurations of their MB because overclocking has some serious limitations on what you can and can not install in what slots. My ddr2 800 ram setup worked with out much complaining. The manual for this board states the Intel standard only supports 4 populated slots, in a specific order, for dd3 1600 OC. My ram supports the XMP profiles which, I believe, makes it much easier to OC the ram by selecting a predefined profile.

Whew! Now its time for work.

[Frosty]

I'm pretty sure there was something I was supposed to do with the RAM in my computer...but it works and I'm too chicken to play around with it. :whistling:

[moosejaw]

[quote='Herc130',index.php?page=Thread&postID=19885 4#post198854]Did you have to pay for tax? I know Tiger is based out of florida, but not sure where their wharehouses are. If you haven't gotten an aftermarket cooler and looking to do so, highly recommend

[url]http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=450&zenid=e28030b9 820f23238431d8c01fc0e95f[/url]

or

[url]http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/[/url]

Lot more choices and for me, cheapest shipping since they do USPS and there is no such thing as free shipping to Hawaii (except Amazon, but amazon doesn't really sell high end cooling gear)[/quote]Thanks for the links. While I was cruising for a new heat sink I found [url='http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118045']this[/url]. My problem with the MB brace is solved for $5 plus shipping.

[Herc130]

Just curious what stepping 920 you got from Tiger. On the CPU box there is a white sticker with a bunch of scan codes, prduct code, UPC, etc.

One number will be "S-spec: SLBXX

If it's SLBCH , it's a CO stepping
If it's SLBEJ, it's DO stepping


mine is a CO ;(

[kazxex]

I'm also upgrading to a new i7 soon, for those that haven't bought a 920 yet thought I'd reccomend trying to get a chip with D0 stepping as they supposably overclock to 4.0+ speeds even better and easier

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=584

I'm currently able to run 6 with ok performance on a q9450 (oc to 3.2) w/8gigs ram, a GTX295, 30" dell and vista x64. I experimented alot and what I am doing to increase performance (using Innerspace) is to set all windows to 1024x768 resolution and I set the 5 slaves to render 512x384 windows with 100% zoom on rollover (this way they expand to 1024x768). After I launch I resize the main window to be much larger. I give up mouse repeating this way because the resolutions are different but I can play the main in a much larger window this way and I don't use window swapping but rather just mouse over slave windows (which expand to full size) when I need to.

I believe EQ2 uses alot of software rendering techniques (or just very bad code) and a move to a i7 cpu should provide a big boost. For those that have moved to i7, have you tried it with and without hyperthreading to see which gives better performance in this case?

Also I just saw this Asus board that can run 2x socket 1366 xeons http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...sus%20Z8NA-D6C which might be even better with 8 real cores vs 4 on the 920.