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“…SLI or boobies man. tell me, what is more teasing to see…”

combatus

Posted in Hardware on June 19, 2008 at 3:51 pm

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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Mixing Crossfire and water

combatus

Posted in Antony Leather, Watercooling, Hardware on February 21, 2008 at 12:01 am

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!

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The case for high definition on the PC

combatus

Posted in Antony Leather, Hardware on December 31, 2007 at 4:01 pm

I think most of us know that there is a battle going on between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Who wins most people don’t really care, and if both formats end up succeeding in some strange and ridiculous 50/50 scenario (come on guys get it together next time with one format please, it can’t be that difficult!) we’ve now got players that can read both formats.

What has interested me however, is the need for HD over standard DVD quality which has been mainstream since the mid 90’s and on the PC since the late 90’s. DVD still looks great considering screen sizes have expanded considerably since the days that 15” and 17” CRT’s were the norm. Clearly on a 17” screen DVD quality video or 720×576 in other words looks great. However, run this video on a 24” or even 20” widescreen like I have and you begin to notice a drop in quality. This for me was highlighted quite markedly when I downloaded the HD Transformers (2007) trailer last summer in 720p (1280×720). The increase in picture quality, even audio quality was clear even on my 20” screen. I would imagine that a 24” screen running a 1080p film (1920×1080) would look fantastic. So for those who watch DVD’s on their PC at the moment and have made the move to medium/large HD compliant TFT’s for high resolution gaming, there are clear benefits for making the rest of your rig HD compliant. Luckily LG have just released a drive that can read and write to Blu-ray and read HD-DVD disks. The LG GGW-H20L is available for less than £200 and seeing as the format war is far from over, it won’t matter what way it swings, you’ll be able to use both formats and have the advantage of being able to record to large Blu-ray recordable disks which are great for backing up large amounts of data.

So despite all the hype, HD is shaping up quite nicely and the benefits can clearly be seen on screens 20 inches or larger. With many modern TFT’s and GPU’s already being HDCP compliant, the addition of a BD/HD-DVD reader for a little over £150 is a fantastic investment which will vastly improve the quality of movies you watch on your PC. So forget about that Western Digital Raptor or 4GB of ram, you’ll get much more benefit from a High Definition optical drive!.

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Why Hard Drives Suck

combatus

Posted in Hardware on October 4, 2007 at 7:37 pm

I love and hate the hard drive at the moment. It’s very rare that I feel this way about a piece of hardware but I’m definitely in two minds about this magnetic storage device which has been about for what must be two decades.

Lets start with the good points. First has got to be size.  Drives have increased massively in size over the last 10 years. I still remember struggling with a 1GB drive in the early/mid 90’s a time when I had to delete one game in order to fit another on the damn thing.

Then all of a sudden the storage space exploded and we now have drives 1000 times as big which are far more spacious than many people need but are still relatively cheap – you can get a 1000GB (1TB) drive for a little over £200. It’s very rare that there is an excess of performance in this industry but hard drive space is definitely one area where you don’t have to spend a fortune to get loads of headroom.

Now the downside? Downside you say? Yes this stems from the fact that there are two sides to every hard drive. There is space, and one other crucial factor – PERFORMANCE. This is something that hasn’t improved to the same extent as the space or any other factor in the average PC. In fact the speed at which hard drives can transfer data has only increased by two or three times at most in the last 10 –15 years quite appalling considering the thousand fold increase we’ve seen in other components. Modern  7200rpm drives can transfer data at an average of 50-60MB/sec and have average seek times of around 8-10ms. This is not a massive increase compared to older 5400 speed drives around 10 years ago. I don’t have a 10 year old drive to test but you only have to look at benchmarks to see how fast they were. Below is a comparison between my drive (a 1 year old 250GB Hitachi 7K250) in red and some older drives using data in the Sisoftware Sandra benchmarking system.

Yes the difference would be noticeable moving from a 10 year old drive to a Western Digital Raptor X but imagine moving from a 600Mhz Athlon that was a quick chip 10 years ago  to a 2.6Ghz Intel Core2 Quad, or maybe a 16MB Creative Banshee Graphics card to an 8800 Ultra. The difference then becomes much more marked.

This lack of improvement has meant that the hard drive is a massive bottleneck and by far the slowest, most archaic component of modern PC systems despite all the bolt-ons it’s had over the last 20 years like faster spin speeds, larger caches etc etc. The consequences are that transferring files that take up just 1% of a 500GB drive’s space can leave you sitting around for several minutes in some cases. Games and other demanding programs also suffer – stuttering and startup/loading times are greatly effected as is the time taken to boot into Windows. A simple task like transferring two 500MB files at the same time requiring a drive to read and write makes everything grind to a halt.

The multitasking prowess and raw power of an Intel Quad Core processor puts these devices to shame. The technology behind Hard Drives, (using changes in magnetisations) still has plenty of headroom and we have only used a fraction of it’s speed potential. Processor technology for example has had to adopt new materials recently which allow for smaller manufacturing processes and faster, cooler chips as a result.

I don’t care how they do it, but something significant has to happen in the storage industry in the next few years, be it flash based or holographic technology. Either way I really do hope the days are numbered for the Hard Drive.

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Do we need Crossfire and SLI motherboards?

combatus

Posted in Hardware on September 17, 2007 at 3:44 pm

I’ve built a few PCs recently where the owners have specifically stated they will not be delving into dual GPU setups and would prefer a board with extra features or space. I didn’t think this was a problem but when I looked for motherboards that were “high end” practically everything had SLI or Crossfire capability and a maximum of 3 PCI slots which seemed a bit of a waste.

The Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe. One of the best motherboards ever made and one of the first to include SLI technology.

One of the best overclocking Socket A boards for AMD the Epox 8RDA6 Pro

the lack of SLI means more space on the board for PCI slots.

Then I upgraded to socket 939 and had my shiny new Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard with its dual PCI-E slots, I thought “This is great! When my 6800GT starts to show it’s age I’ll just buy another one for far less than a new high end card.” In theory this could have worked quite well – 6-12 months down the line the retail price for most PC hardware, especially CPU’s and GPU’s is cut in half, and SLI did appear to give significant performance boosts in many games.

However this is where the fairy tale ends and there are several reasons for this:

1. Availability of cards

The 6800 series cards for example were all discontinued before I found the need for a second card. The only choice was to get a second hand card of Ebay.

2.  Cost effectiveness

If you do the maths, it’s often clear that when your current card is showing it’s age, its more than likely that by selling it and getting a newer card, you’ll end up no worse off than getting a second card for a dual setup. You’ll also have the benefit of a warranty on the new card as well as being able to use any new features that card might have over your old one.

3. Two heads are not always better than one

While SLI and Crossfire do work, they only work in a select catalogue of games. Many games don’t benefit at all or have stability issues. Even when they do work, the benefits are no way near 100%. Time has shown that even the best results give around 70% performance increases and this is usually at very high resolutions which few gamers actually use.

Edit{4. SLI and Crossfire linked to memory loss!

See Gareth Ogden’s Post on:

 memory loss in dual card setups -

Yet another reason to stick to single card setups, especially in 32bit OS’s

This leaves me thinking when are dual card setups worth it? Well there is an answer to this and no it’s not “never”. The answer is if you have the money to get two of the fastest cards around and whack them into a dual card setup, then you will probably have a lightning fast PC.  Two 8800GTX’s or Ultras at the time of writing for example which I know a few people have.

Unfortunately Nvidia and AMD/ATI have never made it possible to buy two cheaper cards resulting in a faster system for less dosh than a single more expensive card. Nvidia even went out of there way to do this with the 6600GT – two cards of the 256MB model could outperform a more expensive 6800GT so the card was withdrawn and soon became as rare as Dodo eggs.

So from a mercenary point of view, if you’re looking to get the best bang per buck it’s best to avoid dual card setups. But where does this leave us with regards to motherboards? After all, I may want to stick to single GPU setups but I sure as hell want to overclock the nuts out of my system!

Unfortunately manufacturers don’t seem to cater for this point of view as all high end boards since the Asus A8N series first came out in late 2004 have ditched a PCI slot in favour of 2x PCI-E graphics ports.

Yes there are a few boards around that can overclock quite well which don’t have dual graphics slots but I reckon a vast majority of people out there don’t have dual card setups. This suspicion is confirmed if you look at the very interesting  Steam’s system stats survey carried out by users of Counterstrike and Half Life’s distribution software.

Steam PC Survey

Out of just over One million entries, only 13,000 have dual card setups. “So what” I hear you say – “they could be the high end users with decent graphics cards”. Well unfortunately there are over five times more 6600 card users for example than the number of dual card users, not to mention any other popular card like 6800, 7800 or 8800 and I haven’t even mentioned ATI yet!

What I’d like to see is a return to high end- single PCI-E slot boards or at least a few more of them. At the moment that second PCI-E slot is a complete waste of space for a majority of people that own them.

Antony Leather

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AMD ATI X1900XT all in one device Western digital Nvidia Mixing Crossfire cards Radeon E8400 HD3850 GPS windows ATI 4870 dual core Custom PC CPCFF Flash memory Ipod Flash Drive quad core WCUK Crossfire Serial ATA futuremark Dual Graphics cards Nokia N95 watercooling matrix SATA 2900XT PDA gaming Raptor Unreal Tournament 2004 watercooling Hitachi cod4 Unreal Tournament HD3870 ATI 3Dmark nvifia GTX 280 Motherboard 8800GT SLI vista XP Symbian Unreal Tournament 3 Blog HTC TyTN II x38 chipset E8500 windows mobile 6 Hard Drive High Definition HD blu-ray HD-DVD multithreaded asus blitz multiplier msi x38 DX10 ATI 4850 Graphics card Crysis 8800GTS MDA Vario III

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