Time for an upgrade..

[Sam DeathWalker]

Odd you would take the IBS over the OZC PCIe solutions:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3949/o...ace-reviewed/5

http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...-drive-r2.html



Hey I would be most interested is seeing if your old video card (2G) is better then the new (1.5G) for wow as its my opinion that video ram is very important.

Run 5 wows then pick one and

Put all effects down to low and fly around org and see which card has the better frame rates.

Then turn up to Ultra and do the same. If on ultra your new card isnt doing better then we know that its not the gpu that limits performance but the texture pipeline.


That would give us a lot of infos.



Ya IPS for the win, I have 5 HP 2335's

[thefunk]

Hey I would be most interested is seeing if your old video card (2G) is better then the new (1.5G) for wow as its my opinion that video ram is very important.

I had a conversation with one of those custom pc config people and it appears the chip is as or more important than the vram; i.e. a 470 1.2gb would run faster than the 460 2gig. Kinda makes sense as you'd want a combination of a good chip and enough ram to support.

Then again i'm no engineer so happy to hear otherwise.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ya with normal stuffs sure, but for multiboxing, say 5 boxing on one machine you have 1/5th of the ram per client. In areas where a lot of new textures are coming in/out that a lot of data to be moving from SSD to System Ram then to Video Ram. Obvoiusly the more video ram you have the less you need to move from the SSD. Dosn't matter how fast the gpu is if the textures are just not there.

And faster GPU only means you can run with more effects turned up as compare to a slower GPU (at the same frame rates), its probably not going to effect baseline fps (i.e. fps with all effects off).

Its easy to test. Just stand at one spot in Org and spin. If your fps goes down a lot its your gpu. If you fps is about the same or a bit less its your texture lag.

[Noids]

There will be no comparison between the 5850 and 580GTX as the processors are different generations and I really can't see Ram making much difference.

I am very interested to see how you go with the IBIS. I have been tossing up whether to upgrade my 2 x intel X-25s to an OCZ RevoDrive 2. As far as I understand, the IBIS just uses a proprietary bus which connects to the PCI-Express port rather than a direct connection like the Revo/Z-Drives, so performance should be pretty similar to 4 drives in a raid 0 setup regardless.

Also looking around recently, it seems that the new SandyBridge stuff is available at very good prices and will perform comparably to an X58 980X setup. It also seems that they are extremely easy to overclock (the K versions only) but they are limited to 4 cores. From what I have seen though, clock for clock, a 2600K chip will achieve similar results to the 980X even with the extra cores. If I was upgrading from Core2 I would probably look at this platform currently, if I was upgrading from i7 then I would probably wait for the Sandy Bridge E stuff to come out later this year.

I know you have already bought the gear and it looks like an awesome package mate. Either way, you will have heaps of fun with it which is the main thing

[mikekim]

I am very interested to see how you go with the IBIS. I have been tossing up whether to upgrade my 2 x intel X-25s to an OCZ RevoDrive 2. As far as I understand, the IBIS just uses a proprietary bus which connects to the PCI-Express port rather than a direct connection like the Revo/Z-Drives, so performance should be pretty similar to 4 drives in a raid 0 setup regardless.

the IBIS shows in post as 4x 37gb drives. performance is stunning to say the least , programs open up instantly, the read and write speeds are very similar to the Revo 2, but that wasn't available at the time of purchase, so i went with the IBIS.
You are correct with the IBIS, it is supplied with a 4x PCi-e card with a HDSL connector that you connect to the 3.5 drive via the supplied cable (this cable can be seen in the case shot at the bottom, on the previous page)

[Noids]

Nice to hear

After reading through the thread yesterday I was inspired to head over to tomshardware for a look at new goodies and saw all the OCZ stuff at CES. A new IBIS and a Z-drive 3 which are doing >1000MB/s transfer times. No wonder these guys have pulled out of the memory market to focus on storage when there is so much scope for development.

[mikekim]

Odd you would take the IBS over the OZC PCIe solutions:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3949/o...ace-reviewed/5

http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...-drive-r2.html



Hey I would be most interested is seeing if your old video card (2G) is better then the new (1.5G) for wow as its my opinion that video ram is very important.

Run 5 wows then pick one and

Put all effects down to low and fly around org and see which card has the better frame rates.

Then turn up to Ultra and do the same. If on ultra your new card isnt doing better then we know that its not the gpu that limits performance but the texture pipeline.


That would give us a lot of infos.



Ya IPS for the win, I have 5 HP 2335's

GTX 580 test - 260.99 driver
==========

GFX running standard speed, not OC'd for this test. i7 980x CPU running at 4Ghz(1,920x1280)

5x wows running on ISBoxer (4x background set to low detail 30)
On main everything set to maximum/ultra inc max aa/multi (apart from Shadows set to low)

Org flight fps 90-120.


1x wow running on ISBoxer.
On main everything set to maximum/ultra (apart from Shadows set to low)

Org flight fps 132-260.

the spin in place test averaged 220-225 fps when tried.


I wont be able to test the 5850 in the rig as i have sold it, but looking on every hardware test comparison it will not come close to these figures

[Sam DeathWalker]

That sure is nice.

So the spin test tells us that your gpu is way more then you need and you are texture lag limited.

(Fewer textures need be loaded when spinning but you still max stress the gpu).

And as expected you are more texture lagged as you have more clients.

I don't see any reason to play above 60fps so if your gpu can get 60fps during the spin test then its good enough and money best spent on the SSD.

Well as expected but overall results are basically fantastic. I am not getting anywhere near that. Have to move to a X58 at some point at least on my main I guess.

These tests also show that the system is not CPU limited either, its limited by getting the textures from SSD to System Ram to Video Ram as shown by the flying being lower (a lot) fps then then spinning.

I'm also kinda wondering if the 1.5G on your current system is giving you a big edge over people with 1G on their video cards .....



When you run 5 clients you tile 4 at lower resolutions with IsBoxer? Whats your Switch charater to Main screen from low resolution speed about? With your GPU maybe you can render all 5 tiled at full resolution (if you are not already) which should vastly speed up client to main screen portion switching. I can see that to be an excellent reason to use a higherpower gpu.



By the way whats your ping and are you using the onboard nic?

Whats the ping with one, and then with 5 clients?

[mikekim]

That sure is nice.

When you run 5 clients you tile 4 at lower resolutions with IsBoxer? Whats your Switch charater to Main screen from low resolution speed about? With your GPU maybe you can render all 5 tiled at full resolution (if you are not already) which should vastly speed up client to main screen portion switching. I can see that to be an excellent reason to use a higherpower gpu.


By the way whats your ping and are you using the onboard nic?

Whats the ping with one, and then with 5 clients?

All my alts are rendered at the same resolution (obviously in smaller windows on the 22" screen and lower details)
no delay what so ever in swapping characters.

havent run a tracert to wow's servers, but my latency was 80ms when running the tests

[Noids]

That sure is nice.

So the spin test tells us that your gpu is way more then you need and you are texture lag limited.

(Fewer textures need be loaded when spinning but you still max stress the gpu).

And as expected you are more texture lagged as you have more clients.

I don't see any reason to play above 60fps so if your gpu can get 60fps during the spin test then its good enough and money best spent on the SSD.

Well as expected but overall results are basically fantastic. I am not getting anywhere near that. Have to move to a X58 at some point at least on my main I guess.

These tests also show that the system is not CPU limited either, its limited by getting the textures from SSD to System Ram to Video Ram as shown by the flying being lower (a lot) fps then then spinning.

I'm also kinda wondering if the 1.5G on your current system is giving you a big edge over people with 1G on their video cards .....



When you run 5 clients you tile 4 at lower resolutions with IsBoxer? Whats your Switch charater to Main screen from low resolution speed about? With your GPU maybe you can render all 5 tiled at full resolution (if you are not already) which should vastly speed up client to main screen portion switching. I can see that to be an excellent reason to use a higherpower gpu.



By the way whats your ping and are you using the onboard nic?

Whats the ping with one, and then with 5 clients?

X68 (or whatever they call it) and LGA 2011 coming in Q3 this year :P Triple channel ram is going up to quad channel for you Sam, although they are cutting back to 4 slots instead of 6 so max of 16GB until they bring out 8GB DDR3 modules.