Rated: 80% (1 votes)
Loading ...“…SLI or boobies man. tell me, what is more teasing to see…”
combatus
Well that’s a quote from Hilbert Hagedoorn, Cheif Editor of www.guru3d.com in a recent test involving more than one GTX 280. So are multi-graphics setups just an expensive way of pimping your PC? They have been the source of much controversey recently, and well pretty much since Nvidia launched SLI four years ago. Certainly things haven’t improved significantly as Custom PCs SLI vs Crossfire vs Single card test showed in Issue 58. Value has never been a strong point of either implementation on any of the various motherboards wielding more than one PCI-E slot, nor on Vista or XP, 32 or 64bit even in games that scale well like Call of Duty 4.
Having used Crossfire on my main system for several months, I’m well aware of it’s advantages and disadvantages - the former being an increase in frames per second in most games which is always welcome and it looks pretty good too. The latter being more expensive to buy and run, more expensive and more difficult watercool and less than perfect stability.
I think both Crossfire and SLI have moved beyond the simply aesthetic factor that still seems to dominate some discussions and does offer performance increases. But at what cost? Clearly the “c” word is something Nvidia and AMD ATI have steered well clear of. What is worrying though is the sheer amount of cash that you have to throw at these setups in order to get them working. In the guru 3d test, SLI and triple SLI work quite well which is probably down to new drivers or hardware or both. There is now a more potent arguement for opting for these setups, especially if you game at 1920×1200 and above.
But is this only for the super elite with super fat wallets? Three GTX 280 cards will set you back a minimum of £1200 which is rediculous when you consider you’ll need a epic power supply, and a brand new Nvidia 7xx series chipset motherboard just to get it up and running. You’ll also need to think about getting a seriously fast CPU as well as anything below a 3Ghz Intel Dual or Quad core processor would likely be a bottleneck.
For the rest of us that might just about be able to afford £200-300 every couple of years for the latest high end graphics card, multi graphics is a big no-no. ATI gave a bit of a glimer of hope with Crossfire X and the ability to mix and match different graphics cards in Crossfire. This seemed like a good idea but after a fair amount of testing with a 3870 and 3850 in Crossfire accross a range of games from FSX, Crysis, COD4, UT3 and Quake Wars the setup proved to be less than 100% stable with frequent unexplained crashes, poor minimum framerates (although average and maximum were impressive compared to a single card especially in COD4) and a generally unenjoyable gaming experience. In fact I was spending more time tweaking and trying different driver versions to get things running smoothly than actually playing games. As much as I like tweaking, this just isn’t on.
If you’re on a budget less than £400 for a new GPU, then SLI and Crossfire simply don’t add up. For me stability is everything which is why I’ve ditched my Crossfire setup in favour of an 8800GTS 512MB. It may not have the screaming frame rates of two HD3800 chips but overall, every game I play is smoother and most importantly, far more stable. There is light at the end of the tunnel however. ATI have mentioned hardware issues with previous generations of GPU’s have effected Crossfire performance and stability. If this is true and stability has also improved then the new 4000 series might have the answer for an affordble multi graphics solution that is good value. Infact Shane Baxtor from www.tweaktown.com has stated two 4850’s were faster than a single GTX 280 in many tests yet cost $250 less than the mighty Nvidia card. (see the full article here).
The NDA of the 4850 was lifted early today so make sure you check out this announcement and links to various 4850 benchmarks!
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Loading ...The Watercooling Matrix
combatus
Many Custom PC, CPCFF and WCuk forum users know that I’ve been working on a website called The Watercooling Matrix for a couple of months now although in the last month I’ve been snowed under with other things and part migrated to Vista so it has been neglected a little! The basic idea behind the site is a matrix or database of information which is displayed in a grid that allows you to view systems that have been submitted with certain water-cooling configurations.
The idea is you might want to use a certain size radiator or a certain case but don’t know if one will fit in the other. Using the Matrix you can click on a certain radiator size, for example 360mm and see all systems that have used that size. Likewise you can click on a certain case and see all systems built using that case. All systems are water-cooled obviously so you’ll be able to see lots of different ways people have come up with to water-cool their case.
The Matrix also shows the number of combinations of a specific case and radiator size for example a Silverstone TJ-07 with a 360mm radiator and this too you are able to select to see all TJ-07’s with a 360mm rad. ? Well click on over to www.watercoolingmatrix.net and let me know your thoughts. If you have a water-cooled PC then feel free to submit it. You’ll get featured on the front page!
I’m trying to keep the site as simple as possible partly as water-cooling can be a complicated subject but also because my own web design skills are fairly limited so please excuse the fact it’s not the most sexy site out there! Who knows maybe a nice big fancy enthusiast site will incorporate it into their website one day and make it look nice! However I am keeping it up to date with the latest water-cooling news and reviews and adding new features like a radiator dimensions table so it’s worth checking out every now and then. Visitor wise it’s been going very well considering I’m not advertising per-say. Watercooling UK were kind enough to exchange banners (thanks Rob) and I am of course affiliated massively but unofficially with Custom PC! So I’m getting quite a few hits through this and various other places which have doubled every month since the site went live to nearly 2000 unique hits in April!
Sound good? Well click on over to www.watercoolingmatrix.net and let me know your thoughts. If you have a water-cooled PC then feel free to submit it. You’ll get featured on the front page! I’d like to give special thanks to Marcus and Rob of WCUK, Mark Buckley (mad4maxin), LukeSullivan (D-Cyph3r), Andrew Shapter (OneEyeUK), Stuart Llewellyn (stuartpengs), WoodSpoon and GlowingBulb who all helped very early on with the site and gave feedback and/or submitted their own systems. Thanks must finally go to CPC for these excellent Blogs, Plogs and Forums and of course THE magazine!
regards to all
Antony [Combatus]
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Loading ...You only notice when things go wrong…
combatus
I’ve had a bit of a time of it recently PC wise. I’ll start first with my dissatisfaction with a certain watercooling manufacturer, or should I say two, who produce full cover cover blocks for graphics cards. The first I bought for my 6800GT a few years ago and that was fine. Indeed the second for my X1900XT was also fine. Then the trouble started…
I upgraded this block to one with higher performance and less restriction but never got to find out just how good it was because fitting it fried the card. Oh how I hate the smell of burning silicon. It’s still unknown what happened but from the looks of things the VRM plate didn’t fit particularly well and may have shorted something. I blogged about my watercooled Crossfire setup and those who read it will know I again had issues with one of the blocks fouling a capacitor on the board. A bit of modding with a dremmel sorted this but neither the supplier nor manufacturer have mentioned this on their websites following my emails so use these combinations of block and GPU at your own risk!
I’ve now moved to a setup with a single 8800GTS 512MB (G92) and things have got worse! The first block I bought came with the wrong screws so that is on it’s way back, although the block did fit the card at least (read on). The second block appeared to have come from another planet in that it fouled practically every component on the card.
My 8800GTS is a reference card so seeing that these companies should be using it as template you’d think they should fit?
On closer inspection, I noticed the layout of the block looked suspiciously like it should fit a 3870. I also noticed that the picture of the 3870 block from this manufacturer looked identical to the block I had and not like the block for a G92 card. My suspicions were confirmed when I test fitted the block on a 3870 and it fitted like a glove. This issue was confirmed by the supplier who said they’d recently noticed it to. In desperate need to finish my system and re-attach the sidepanel for good (yeah right!) I ordered another card from a different supplier. Shock horror this one is on it’s way back to with the same issue - G92 block in an AMD HD 3870 box!!! ARRHHH!!! Do you ever wish you didn’t fiddle? Oh well. If you ever wandered what 5 £50 full cover GPU waterblocks looks like then check the pic below outor pop round and see my desk. Not a pretty site and Combatus is not a happy bunny! Does anyone have a waterblock that actually fits a G92 8800???
If you need an AMD HD 3870 waterblock then you can probably find one any Royal Mail van given the number I’m sending back…
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...ATI drivers require plumbing modification?
combatus
My foray into dual GPU gaming has been relatively smooth. At least until the new ATI hotfix based on the CCC 8.4 driver turned up. Convinced that I was suffering from stuttering in numerous games, I ran the hotfix only to find it was an entire driver version. As it’s recommended to remove the old driver before installing a new one I thought cheers ATI, this better not screw things up! Things went well, mainly because I didn’t have time to run any games for a day or two, but when I did, ooooohhh dear oh dear.
UT3 is virtually unplayable and if the game didn’t crash it stuttered like absolute sod and made playing with bots impossible, never mind online opponents. Ok I thought, seeing as 8.3 ruins framerates for XP users I’ll go back to 8.2. Hmmm what’s this funny error saying CCC is screwed up? Reboot, hmmm error is still there! Run driver cleaner. Nope still no joy. Install CCC 8.2. Nope now things are even worse - the error keeps popping up every few seconds!
I look on the AMD ATI forums showed I was not alone and while the hotfix worked fine for some users, others had terrible trouble and just like me, uninstalling it proved quite difficult!
A Windows reinstallation later (not happy) and everything is fine. In short the hotfix is a complete mess and while it may fix “stuttering in certain 3D applications” It renders other systems totally effing useless!!! However I did findout that a surefire way of avoiding many problems when installing drivers with two cards installed with Crossfire, is to remove one card, install the driver then install the second card. Sure thing, except if you have the two cards linked in a watercooling system, this is a complete pain in the rectum.
The two cards are held together with Crossfire connectors, barbs and tubing that it’s impossible to remove one card without a lot of bending and flexing. If I’m going to have to do this for every new driver release I’m going to have work something else out.
With the reader’s night COD4 session fast approaching and the big Coolermaster Stacker sitting on my desk where I can get at things without receiving neck ache, the race was onto come up with a config that would allow me to remove either card - in short not have them connected via a barb. Not as easy as you might think unfortunately as this means the barbs from the bottom GPU will be pointing downwards. Not being a fan of 90 degree barbs this would mean working out a way of plumbing everything in using tight bends in the tubing. A few feet of practically un-kinkable Tygon R-3603 tubing later and the bending was now a possibility.
Rather than have miles of tubing criss-crossing the case, I decided to spend some time and come up with more efficient routing. With the pump staying in the base, the only way to avoid unsightlyness was to use the bottom GPU block as the first block then dive down to the bottom rad and then up. Next the coolant visits the chipset and RAM and after passing through the final rad it serves the CPU and top GPU and then ends up in the reservoir.
For some reason it looks better like this and seeing as both CPU and GPU temps were actually slightly lower following the shuffle, I’m going to keep it like this! At least now I can safley remove one card when installing new drivers. If only it didn’t seem like the faster and cooler things get, the more complicated they get too!
Rated: 100% (4 votes)
Loading ...Vista, a shock to the system?
combatus
Well it’s taken me over a year but I’ve finally made the move from XP to Vista on my main rig. If I hadn’t had the opportunity to use the new OS on other systems I doubt whether I would have made the change yet but the other day I hit the point where the advantages suddenly outweighed the disadvantages and took the plunge with Vista Home Premium 32bit (no not 64bit, one step at a time!) Do I like it? Yes I do. It’s not a massive leap from XP but it looks much nicer and I can still get things the way I like them.
I’ve set the OS up on a few systems and run through the installation of updates and drivers numerous times, but actually using it full time isn’t something I’ve been prepared to do. After all, XP just works. No issues with sound cards, no slow file transfers and performance in general, and something everyone is used to. Some particular niggles simply prevented me from making the move - for example, Vista not working with Frontpage (if you input a hyperlink, the program would crash). But these have all been resolved although I’ll doubtless find new ones!
Aside from the recent updates impoving the situation for the OS like GPU drivers and of course SP1, there is one overiding fact that anyone still with XP should consider and is the main reason why I bit the bullet. Vista is the future. However much you or I like the seasoned XP, it’s simplicity(?), it’s speed, its stability, it is now irrelevant. Support will cease for it in June of this year and you’ll no longer be able to buy it retail. DX10 looks like it won’t be morphed into an XP friendly version so for future games Vista will be a necessity if you want the full eye candy.
And the eye candy will come. No we haven’t seen the full capability of DX10 yet, not by a long shot. It’s so different to everything that’s gone before it that it will take time for developers to adhere and get used to it’s features. Performance will also improve. DX9 has always been faster but this is rapidly becoming old news as driver updates close the gap each month sometimes by significant margins.
In this light, it’s the dawn of a new age of PC gaming. DX10 has huge potential and a really good summary can be heard from Futuremark’s site manager in relation to the new DX10 3D Benchmark, 3DMark Vantage.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/30291.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/30933.html
While Vista may still have it’s share of niggles, a vast majority of these can be overcome and the sleek look and feel as well as the new features of the OS more than make up for this. In short it’s now easy to move from XP to Vista with little or no hassle for the average user. 32Bit versions especially, although 64bit versions still have compatibility issues in certain scenarios so if you use your PC for all manner of things from browsing, editing and gaming then it might be best to stick with a 32Bit version for now.
In the coming months many new games and benchmarks will be taking advantage of DX10 and the OS in general will improve too. I even know a few businesses who are already migrating to Vista so while XP will run everything fine for the forseeable future and will doubtless prove quicker and more compatible for a while yet, if only to keep up with technology, moving to Vista is the right thing to do. As I have learnt, you can’t “know” an OS until you use it day in day out on your own machine. Having a play on the odd system with Vista installed doesn’t really do anything for your understanding and when you come to use it full time, it will be just as big a shock to the system (pun not intended…) as if you’d never set eyes on it. And with the recent price crash, OEM Vista Premium can be had for less than £60 which is less than that 4GB of RAM you’ve been eyeing up.
Not yet rated
Loading ...An Easter full of modding!
combatus
I don’t know about you but I have to scream and shout to get any decent modding and gaming time these days! I’m lucky to be home from work by 6pm and weekends of late have mainly been spent under my car taking advantage of the dry weather. The rest of the time it’s too wet for any serious outside modding but at least it means I’ve been working on www.watercoolingmatrix.net ! If you haven’t submitted your system, well why not!
This weekend though, and indeed next week too as I’m off work for a few days, is going to be full of modding. Firstly I have a side panel window kit coming for my Stacker from www.thecoolingshop.com
My choice to save money by opting for the non-windowed version when I bought the case a few years ago was one of the worst decisions I ever made! This weekend I hope to right it and have UV light pouring out into my room with a nice view of my watercooling. It’s dremmel time!
Secondly I have an AC Ryan UV cable tidying kit on it’s way to me which has the following goodies in it:
Each kit comprises of 8 items (incl. 10m / 30ft of FlexSleeve™):
- FlexSleeve™ 3mm (1/8″) : 3.3m (10ft) UVcolor
- FlexSleeve™ 6mm (1/4″) : 3.3m (10ft) UVcolor
- FlexSleeve™ 10mm (3/8″) : 1.6m (5ft) UVcolor
- FlexSleeve™ 13mm (1/2″) : 1.6m (5ft) UVcolor
- Heatshrink Tubing 10mm (3/8″) UVcolor : 30cm (12″)
- Heatshrink Tubing 20mm (3/4″) UVcolor : 30cm (12″)
- Heatshrink Tubing 25mm (1″) UVcolor : 15cm (6″)
- Tie wraps : 10 pcs
Kit is less than £7 HERE
My cables have been a mess for while now and this kit should hopefully make things look meaner (and greener).
Also on it’s way to me is some new OCZ Freeze Thermal Paste.
The paste is the new king of pastes beating even the mighty Arctic Silver 5 and CoolaboratoryLiquid Pro in thermal transfer performance in a recent test of scores of different TIMs. I’ll be replacing the gook on all my waterblocks over the weekend.
Not a bad bunch of kit for less than £20! I say we all get modding kit instead of Easter Eggs personally, except Smarties ones of course!
So do you have anything planned for your PC this Easter?
Not yet rated
Loading ...Mixing Crossfire and water
combatus
Mixing Crossfire
I came accross a rather interesting article over at Legit Reviews which shows that as of the last couple of Catalyst releases (certainly after Cat 8.1) it is now possible to mix certain cards in Crossfire. Namely, as per the review, ATI’s latest mid range cards, the 3850 and 3870. With the introduction of Crossfire X you may even be able to mix even more cards - say a 3870X2 and a 3850 etc etc. Very interesting stuff and the performance is pretty good too, especially with Antialiasing enabled - frame rates are doubled over your average 3850 in games like COD4. Whether it’s worth forking out for two cards at once is another matter - it’s usually more sensible financially to sell your old card and get a newer faster single card. But in my case, it was cheaper to get a 3870 and go Crossfire than to say, sell my 3850 and opt for something like an 8800GTS 512MB. Seeing as both setups can’t run Crysis but can cope with anything else , 3850 owners with Crossfire motherboards may want to consider a 3870, especially if new cards like the 3870X2 and 9800GX2 can’t run Crysis at your monitors native resolution on high settings.
The Decision…
With next gen graphics cards seemingly being delayed all over the auction and with ATI’s 3870X2 not puting a massively convincing arguement for spending £270 odd quid, I decided I needed to do something about my lonely 3850 which suffers badly at 1680×1050 when enabling AA. I had first thought about getting a cheap 8800GTX or 8800GTS, but both were close to or more than £200, certainly in the case of the GTX. However after reading the review I was warming to Crossfire seeing that it would give similar if not better performance to the latest cards from Nivida but would cost me less - and when I found a 3870 for less than £120 in my local PC shop I grabbed it.
Crossfire miss-fire?
Now, for those who have read my forum post, I had problems!!! the 3870 branded as “Triplex” was far shorter than my Sapphire 3850 - a bit odd and it looked like it was missing a whole row of voltage regulators! . It also didn’t come with a Crossfire bridge connector - not a big problem as my Sapphire did but many people use two and you need to for high resolutions.
I could enable Crossfire and got a stonking 15100 points in 3D Mark 06 at stock settings - even with my 3850 clocked as high as it would go I could only just about crack the 10,000 mark. I couldn’t compare the system to anyone elses on 3Dmark as apparently I’m the ONLY person with this setup! he he!!! This could be the only watercooled 3870/3850 setup in the world!!!
However I was unable to overclock the cards. In Catalyst Control Centre the sliders would move but on testing or running Autotune, the frequencies would return to default. I tried reverting to Catalyst 8.1 but still no joy. In the end I decided to take the card back and low and behold my retailer had no idea the Triplex cards didn’t come with a Crossfire connector. While he was shouting down the phone at their supplier I was given a refund and decided to give a Sapphire 3870 a go - maybe running the same vendor would do the trick. I attached the second Crossfire connector as well and low and behold I can now overclock each card seperately!!! Woo hoo!
Just add water…
Now, something that has bugged me when overclocking my 3850 is that the cooler can’t handle much heat. In fact I’ve come out of games suffering from artifacts even though CCC overdrive passed the overclock, to find the card running in excess of 70′C!!!! I used Rivatuner to create a fan profile to manually raise the fan speed but this didn’t always kick in and to run the fan at 60% speed which was needed to keep the thing cool was too noisy for my liking.
So too much noise and heat and Combatus is involved - you guessed it! Watercooling! Two EK Acetalfull cover blocks were soon at my door.
It won’t fit!!!!
I started by removing the HSF from each GPU which was fairly easy. I fitted the 3870 waterblock but when I went to install the block on the 3850 —Horror!!!! It fouled one of the capacitors!!!! No matter how much I squeezed the block in, the holes for the mounting screws wouldn’t line up.
There was only one thing for it. Out came Mr Dremmel and a circular sanding block and I made a small groove in the copper so the Capacitor could fit recessed into it without actually touching the block. Not something you should have to do…
On the 3870 for some reason this capacitor is absent but with the block installed you can clearly see how much it fouls the capacitor placement.
The block now fits fine and also cools the voltage regulators but I’ll be on the blower to EK if they don’t know already! Without a dremmel this could render many blocks useless.
This is the first time I’ve installed dual card watercooling. Not for the faint hearted! I ended up with with the following loop:
Pump>GPU1>GPU2>RAD>CPU>RAD>Chipset/RAM>Reservoir
Amazingly the flow rate didn’t appear to be effected at all (EK blocks are fairly low restriction) and my CPU temp has only gone up a few degrees, although my system was designed around a CPU,GPU,Chipset/RAM to begin with - my watercooled X1900 died last year and the 3850 has been aircooled since then so there has been plenty of redundancy. I am probably going to re-hash the plumbing at some point, for cosmetic reasons if anything - it’s all over the place!
Does look nice though….
Overclocking…
So, now that overclocking is enabled and the cards are watercooled and running at a nice cool 30′C idle (down from 50+!) it’s time to try a little clocking. I started by overclocking the 3850 to a modest 710Mhz/1020mhz up from 669mhz/829mhz. This gave me an extra 400 points in 3dmark 06 - 15498 and I know it can go a bit further too. Overclocking the 3870 was a different matter. The card refused to run 3Dmark 06 at anything other than default speeds. I’m sure the card can be clocked more than this but it’s probably because it’s working as the main card in the setup - bit of a shame but future drivers may sort this and it’s amazing you can use the two cards together anyway!!!
So if you’re thinking of mixing Crossfire, firstly avoid the cheap Triplex cards, secondly try to use cards from the same vendor ie Sapphire. It’s also worth using both Crossfire connectors too!
Not yet rated
Loading ...COD4 - WOW!
combatus
I haven’t been a fan of the Call of Duty series - I was more of a Medal of Honour guy until BF2 stole my life away a few years ago. It’s been a good couple of months for games what with UT3, Crysis (well we all know what the issue is there) and I now own all three. COD4 certainly looked ok from reviews and screenshots I’d seen, and with the idea it might be a modernized BF2 with a storyline thrown in, my copy was soon being installed.
I’d heard about the singleplayer mode being too short so decided straight away to play it on hard to make it last a bit longer. One of the first scenes has you completing a firing range to get an idea of your recommended difficulty setting. I managed a fairly good time of around 17 seconds and decided to follow the game’s advice and play on “hardened” to which it’s response was “your skills will be stretched”. They weren’t wrong….
The first couple of missions were a bit tedious. Jumping straight in at the deep end and not being used to the controls got me killed a bit too often (although this didn’t really change!) While I wasn’t too keen on the night-op forest settings, the middle-eastern act is simply outstanding both graphically and game play-wise.
This screen grab is taken at 1680×1050 with AA at 2x and the slider bar in game for AF set to minimum (presumably off) so not “max” settings but everything else at full - quite outstanding and this is currently my desktop wallpaper!
The depth of field is staggering. Many scenes like this leave you gaping at the view even at the AK-47’s and RPGs start pointing in your direction.
Another part of the game was taking control of the awesome weaponry aboard an AC130 Gunship. This was probably my favourite bit of the game as it seemed so realistic. It’s one of those snippets which they could have made an entire game out of! Screenshots don’t do it justice so here are a couple of videos on what to expect…
Youtube video 1 - actual in-game footage of the “Death from above” mission
Youtube Video 2 - real - exactly like the in game experience!
Youtube Video 3 - awesome AC130
Bascially the game never has a dull moment, from hiding in grass as a sniper with tanks and soldiers walking within inches of you, to fast sweeps of strongholds - right up until the end and the last few missions really are challenging with ever increasin numbers of increasingly challenging opponents. One thing I do like about the game is the availability of guns and ammo. You’re not given copious amounts which makes you check around for spare clips or even ditch your depleted rifle for something laying around. Half the time this is deliberate - there are quite a few sniper rifles laying around just before scenes where they come in handy. But equally some scenes simply leave it up to you - carry on with your preferred weapon, or ditch it for an AK with enough rounds to see you through the next firefight.
Even better is the ability to carry two weapons. This usually involves ditching your pistol for something a little more potent. One of my favourite guns in the game is the M1014 semi-automatic shotgun. Alongside an assault rifle it can be deadly for close encounters or just pummeling a corridor to get its occupants to their knees for a few seconds.
Now I’ve completed the game I’m definitely going to play back through it when I get a graphics card which can ramp up the AA and AF. It’s also great to see CPC using it as the readers night choice too - when I’ve got used to the multiplayer I’ll be along!
SO, if you played the demo and like me you weren’t that enamoured with the game or if you haven’t been a fan of the CPD series, get it. You won’t be sorry.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Multicore gaming is here - so Dual or Quad?
combatus
Pretty much as long as multi-CPU’s have been around, there has been the overwhelming argument that most every-day applications simply didn’t benefit from more than one core. Multitasking and encoding were pretty much the only non-benchmark situations that you might actually see noticable benefits.
Then all of a sudden games developers have taken note and we are seeing real performance improvements over single core CPUs. Not only this but having four rather than two cores also makes a difference, especially in multithreaded games like Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis. In the CPC CPU megatest (Issue53 Feb) quad-cores were ahead by similarly clocked dual-cores by noticable margins.
Crysis for example had a minimum frame rate 15% higher with a Q6600 than with an E6600. UT3 actively uses two or more cores “There is a primary thread for the gameplay and a second one for rendering. On systems with more than two cores we run additional threads to speed up various calculation tasks, including physics and data decompression. So the overall performance benefits greatly from a quad-core processor.” (EPIC’S Tim Sweeney ) and the difference is even more pronounced - with the resolution lowered to 1024×768 to eliminate GPU limitations, Anandtech found that frame rates were boosted from 154FPS to 186FPS simply by making the move from two to four cores. Read the full article here
What this means is that the bandwagon is definitely on the move as far as multi-core gaming is concerned. While benefits from quad cores at the moment are relatively small compared to the move from a single core, the increase is there nonetheless and this is important for two reasons:
1. If you want to get the most out of your system, even with games then a quad core CPU is a worthwhile investment.
2. futureproofing should naturally include consideration for future games which may make even more use of two or more cores - so with games already making use of additional cores with extra threads for things like additional calculations, if you upgrade every year or two then a quad core could be a worthwhile investment
This makes current decisions extremely difficult though. With intels new Wolfdale 45nm dual cores on the shelves this week, and proving very overclockable, is it worth waiting for the new quad cores? There is a BIG price hike too - over £100 difference from an E8200 to a Q9450 both clocked at 2.6Ghz. What’s more the Q9450 only has an 8x multiplier, while more meaty, cheaper dual cores like the E8400 and E8500 have multipliers of 9x and 9.5x. This means that they are able to clock much higher - well over 4GHz, while the Quad will have to have a FSb of 500 a s bare minimum to even reach 4Ghz.
The new Dual cores certainly offer more bang per buck, especially as current games don’t scale convincingly with 4 cores.
Not yet rated
Loading ...SLI/Crossfire - the next upgrade?
combatus
I blogged about Nvidia and ATI’s relentless push for dual graphics setups a while ago [clicky] and spoke about the rediculous situation with high end boards - every single high end board out there has dual PCI-E graphics slots but hardly anyone uses them so why can’t we ditch one and get extra functionality?
This has also been mentioned several times in CPC by the well informed Ben Hardwidge who agrees with this to. So with 3-way SLI upon us and dual GPU cards due out in the next couple of months, with little news on faster single core variants, will everyone have to opt for some kind of dual GPU setup? Those of us who save up and get the best single card hoping it will last for a couple of years of high end gaming may have no choice but to opt for something that resembles a 7950GX2.
Well if this is what it will take to run Crysis at playable frame rates at 1680×1050 then so be it I hear you cry!. Hold your horses is all I can say - the 7950GX2 may well be the fastest DX9 card ever made, but they have been fraught with problems and many owners simply weren’t able to get the most out of the card due to flakey drivers and the card wouldn’t work at all with Vista to start with. There have been several people on the CPC forums asking why their GX2 is no faster than a mid range card in games even though SLI is enabled and they’ve checked everything. Its the same reason two cards don’t always scale well in some games - infact very few games scale well with SLI, at least not enough to warrant the extra money.
So is this the only option? The only way to boost framerates for the forseeable future is to do the unthinkable and get an SLi or Crossfire setup? It certainly looks this way. One would hope that both companies are hard at work making bloody sure these cards don’t suffer from the same issues as their predecessors. We’ll have to wait and see if this turns out to be the case. In the mean time I really do hope that Intel enters the market and shakes things up a bit. They say three’s a crowd, well maybe ATI or at least the graphics department at AMD, might go bust. Who knows. I just hope that those of us who have been saving get something worthy of our hard earned cash this spring.