General Intel HEDT Xeon/i7 Discussion

[the pudding]

3 hours ago, Waqas409 said:

never a bad option if one gets for cheap

yeah if you can get one cheap it's a good move, but at going rates the W3690 isn't as good a move as the W3680 really 

[Troika]

Alright, so I have finished migrating everything over and my main rig is now my X58 rig. I have a working 3.78Ghz OC because I'm able to force the turbo multiplier to remain active 100% of the time in the bios. One of the things I find annoying is that while the MSI Big Bang Xpower board has two raid controllers, one by Marvell and one by Intel, I can't use both so I have to pick between raid on the two sata 3 ports or on the six sata 2 ports. Since I want a single SSD partition, I put my SSDs in raid 0 on the sata 3 ports. Other than that, everything has gone smoothly so far. Now, I want to push my i7 920 more, at least to an even 4.0ghz or 4.2ghz if possible, both of which would require a bclk of 200. I've had trouble getting this to boot into windows at all. I managed to squeak past post but I can't into windows so far. At this point, I need some help.

I took pictures of my bios settings for 3.78Ghz. The max temp I observed in the MSI afterburner graph was about 65C The voltages I'm using are straight from Brian's X58 Overclocking video so they may or may not be high for this chip. I don't know because this is my first experience with any serious X58 overclocking,

System specs
CPU: i7 920
Mobo: MSI X58 Big Bang Xpower (AMI Bios v1.7)
Cooler: Corsair H110i GTX (Pump set to performance, fans have a custom curve with them getting pinned to 100% once a temp of 70C has been reached)
Ram: 16GB (2x4GB Micron + 4x2GB Samsung) DDR3-1333mhz CL9
GPU: XFX Radeon R9 Fury X
SSDs: 2x Intel 545s 256GB in Raid 0
HDDs: 2x Seagate Barracuda 1TB
Case Notes: The stock white led AF140 fans have been swapped for ML140, which are unfortunately pinned at 100% due to no pwm headers. The rear fan behind the Fury X rad is a Noctua NF-F14 IPPC 3000rpm set to 75% to make it less obnoxious. The H110i GTX has its stock SP140L fans because they're not that bad.

[bimmerman]

I bet your QPI needs more voltage. Probably closer to 1.3-1.35.

 

I've posted guides to OC-ing this platform a few times now so I'd suggest searching for past posts of mine in this thread.

 

That said, my general advice is to adjust one thing at a time (and, keep QPI at the 6.4 setting if you can). In other words, figure out what BCLK you can stably run first, with multiplier and memory turned waaay down. Increase BCLK 5-10-20 MHz at a time, and when it fails to boot or be stable, add voltage. Repeat. Use a real stress test, not Cinebench. Set uncore to half QPI and double memory.

 

Then, once you've found the upper end and stress tested it, likely somewhere near or over 200 MHz, keep the voltage the same but go back to 133. Then, dial in the memory multiplier you want. I'd guess either 8x BCLK is your end goal, so key that in, set timings and voltage per its XMP or your own tweaking, then ratchet BCLK up again to see if the memory will stably do your desired BCLK.

 

So, if all goes well, you have determined what voltages you need for BCLK ~200 and memory ~1600, with an isolated CPU multiplier of slow.

 

Now all you need to do is....key in your desired CPU multiplier while setting BCLK back to 133. Then ratchet up BCLK in 5-10-20 MHz jumps, adding CPU voltage to stabilize.

 

Then you're done! This takes a while, but is how I and others have gotten stable 4.5-4.8 GHz OCs on these chips.

 

With a 920, I'd guesstimate you'll be hard pressed to reach 4.0. My 950 did not enjoy OC-ing much. In contrast, my Xeon has been stable at 4.5 for two years now and will do 4.7 stable but that's far past the point of diminishing returns. IIRC I'm ~1.33V CPU, 21x CPU mult, 215 BCLK, 8x memory, 16-17x uncore, double that QPI, QPI 1.325V. I've posted it somewhere, I don't remember anymore.

[Troika]

1 hour ago, bimmerman said:

I bet your QPI needs more voltage. Probably closer to 1.3-1.35.

 

I've posted guides to OC-ing this platform a few times now so I'd suggest searching for past posts of mine in this thread.

 

That said, my general advice is to adjust one thing at a time (and, keep QPI at the 6.4 setting if you can). In other words, figure out what BCLK you can stably run first, with multiplier and memory turned waaay down. Increase BCLK 5-10-20 MHz at a time, and when it fails to boot or be stable, add voltage. Repeat. Use a real stress test, not Cinebench. Set uncore to half QPI and double memory.

 

Then, once you've found the upper end and stress tested it, likely somewhere near or over 200 MHz, keep the voltage the same but go back to 133. Then, dial in the memory multiplier you want. I'd guess either 8x BCLK is your end goal, so key that in, set timings and voltage per its XMP or your own tweaking, then ratchet BCLK up again to see if the memory will stably do your desired BCLK.

 

So, if all goes well, you have determined what voltages you need for BCLK ~200 and memory ~1600, with an isolated CPU multiplier of slow.

 

Now all you need to do is....key in your desired CPU multiplier while setting BCLK back to 133. Then ratchet up BCLK in 5-10-20 MHz jumps, adding CPU voltage to stabilize.

 

Then you're done! This takes a while, but is how I and others have gotten stable 4.5-4.8 GHz OCs on these chips.

 

With a 920, I'd guesstimate you'll be hard pressed to reach 4.0. My 950 did not enjoy OC-ing much. In contrast, my Xeon has been stable at 4.5 for two years now and will do 4.7 stable but that's far past the point of diminishing returns. IIRC I'm ~1.33V CPU, 21x CPU mult, 215 BCLK, 8x memory, 16-17x uncore, double that QPI, QPI 1.325V. I've posted it somewhere, I don't remember anymore.

Thanks, I'll give those voltages a try tomorrow and I'll try looking for your old guides. I might have to dial back the bclk so I can get the QPI lower, which would lower my maximum clock speed. I may still hit 4ghz at one of those weird numbers that LGA 1366 and LGA 775/771 chips are famous for. I will be needing faster ram to be able to get better speeds or more stability out of certain settings. I do have plans for better ram as well as a build path for the whole rig. The first thing on the list is getting a nvme drive to boot from a pci-e riser card with a secondary sata m.2 drive for high capacity, high speed storage.

I use prime95 for an hour to validate for benchmarking n' such but for everyday use, I'll do a 8 hour run on smallFFTs. If it passes that, then I can trust it to be reliable for 24/7 use even though I use my computer continually only for about 6 hours with mixed loads. That said, the heaviest games I play are Ark Survival, Mass Effect Andromeda (both of which are poorly optimized), and large RTS games like Age of Empires 6+ players with 200+ pop cap and Dawn of War Soulstorm with the ultimate Apocalypse mod with titans and 30+ troop and vehicle caps. Those last two can be particularly intense on a cpu. On a Ryzen 7 2700X at 4.2Ghz, I was at 100% usage and 10~15fps in battles with a 6 player battle with the settings I describe for DoW:SS. I'm certainly not expecting that for an i7 920 but I'm hoping to comfortably play 1v1 matches.

Once I move up to a i7 970 and eventually an i7 990X, it'll be easier to hit higher OCs without pushing the bclk as hard.

[the pudding]

5 hours ago, Troika said:

Once I move up to a i7 970 and eventually an i7 990X, it'll be easier to hit higher OCs without pushing the bclk as hard.

to be fair, if memory serves on msi boards your IOH voltage is what's feeding the chipset (im more used to asus boards) if i am correct in thinking this then you've got quite a lot of headroom before i'd really class that as pushing the bclk too hard really 1.16v for 180MHz is great, my board needs about 1.28 through my chipset for my 188x24 clock on my X5670

[Zando_]

7 hours ago, Troika said:

Once I move up to a i7 970 and eventually an i7 990X, it'll be easier to hit higher OCs without pushing the bclk as hard.

Hell yeah! Like @bimmerman said, the i7 920 and 950 don't OC too well, they've been pretty shit compared to Xeons in my experience as well. Haven't heard much amazing about OCing the 45nm chips, but IIRC all the 6 core i7s are 32nm and OC the same as the Xeons, I think Intelfreak or one of the other guys here runs one. 

[the pudding]

35 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Hell yeah! Like @bimmerman said, the i7 920 and 950 don't OC too well, they've been pretty shit compared to Xeons in my experience as well. Haven't heard much amazing about OCing the 45nm chips, but IIRC all the 6 core i7s are 32nm and OC the same as the Xeons, I think Intelfreak or one of the other guys here runs one. 

yeah the 45nm chips tend to top out at 4GHz iirc and even then that takes a shit ton of voltage (though they can handle the voltage better) but these 32nm xeons and i7s all clock very similar, only proper reason to go for anything above say an X5660 is to not push the board as hard and all, i've had a few 970s and a few W3670s (xeon equivalent of the 970) and both overclcoked pretty close to each other, think the 970 did 4.4GHz 1,38v and the W3670 did 4.5GHz 1.4v

[Zando_]

Just now, the pudding said:

yeah the 45nm chips tend to top out at 4GHz iirc and even then that takes a shit ton of voltage (though they can handle the voltage better) but these 32nm xeons and i7s all clock very similar, only proper reason to go for anything above say an X5660 is to not push the board as hard and all, i've had a few 970s and a few W3670s (xeon equivalent of the 970) and both overclcoked pretty close to each other, think the 970 did 4.4GHz 1,38v and the W3670 did 4.5GHz 1.4v

The difference is probably just silicon lottery, I assume the i7s and Xeons are the same chip, just binned slightly differently and with some different features (like dual QPI on some of the Xeons for 2 CPU setups). I have an X5670, IDK what it does 4.5 at though. I have it at 1.45v right now but I haven't booted it in ages, I was getting 4.74Ghz but not quite stable, needed more tweaking. Runs 4.54 at that voltage with no instability at all, but I'm pretty sure I could drop the voltage a good bit for that speed. I had it on a custom loop with a 360 rad though, so temps weren't a concern (that loop's block, rad, and pump/res have since been stolen for my main X99 rig). 

[the pudding]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

The difference is probably just silicon lottery, I assume the i7s and Xeons are the same chip, just binned slightly differently and with some different features (like dual QPI on some of the Xeons for 2 CPU setups). I have an X5670, IDK what it does 4.5 at though. I have it at 1.45v right now but I haven't booted it in ages, I was getting 4.74Ghz but not quite stable, needed more tweaking. Runs 4.54 at that voltage with no instability at all, but I'm pretty sure I could drop the voltage a good bit for that speed. I had it on a custom loop with a 360 rad though, so temps weren't a concern (that loop's block, rad, and pump/res have since been stolen for my main X99 rig). 

quite possible yeah, the xeons are pretty much just the same chips with ECC support and that's about it really,

 

ahh ouch that's pretty high voltage, though out of interest how long has it been running at that? im tempted to push 1.45v daily into mine since I have a spare awful bin X5660 to use while i wait for a replacement X5670 if it dies since they're so cheap now and all 

 

tbf i've not yet had an X5670 that won't do 4.5GHz with 1.4v stable so you should in theory be able to do that 

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, the pudding said:

quite possible yeah, the xeons are pretty much just the same chips with ECC support and that's about it really,

 

ahh ouch that's pretty high voltage, though out of interest how long has it been running at that? im tempted to push 1.45v daily into mine since I have a spare awful bin X5660 to use while i wait for a replacement X5670 if it dies since they're so cheap now and all 

 

tbf i've not yet had an X5670 that won't do 4.5GHz with 1.4v stable so you should in theory be able to do that 

I ran it for a decent bit like that, mostly just benching. I've seen guys claim they ran 1.6v daily with no degradation, but imma have to call one large hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm on that. It was a $14 CPU though, so I'm not too worried if it conks out, and my mobo was built to handle that in its sleep (EVGA Classified 4-Way SLI, the dumb thicc XL-ATX monster). I need to boot it up again but I wanna get the LGA1366 mounting bracket for my NH-D15S to keep it cool. Need to boot up my SR-2s sometime too but am a lazeyboye and the coolers I have for my main one (have one that should be all working, and one I got "broken" for $99 that boots with one CPU) have that classic janky as fuck cooler master mounting system that's oh so nice to work with. 

[the pudding]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

I ran it for a decent bit like that, mostly just benching. I've seen guys claim they ran 1.6v daily with no degradation, but imma have to call one large hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm on that. It was a $14 CPU though, so I'm not too worried if it conks out, and my mobo was built to handle that in its sleep (EVGA Classified 4-Way SLI, the dumb thicc XL-ATX monster). I need to boot it up again but I wanna get the LGA1366 mounting bracket for my NH-D15S to keep it cool. Need to boot up my SR-2s sometime too but am a lazeyboye and the coolers I have for my main one (have one that should be all working, and one I got "broken" for $99 that boots with one CPU) have that classic janky as fuck cooler master mounting system that's oh so nice to work with. 

well, 1.6v for short runs can be done with no degradation, i've pumped 1.65v into my X5660 before for like 6 hours and no degradation, if it were, say, a week then yeah big doubt but otherwise 1.6v is fine i guess 

 

ahhhhh if you ran it for a while then that might be okay, i might pump 1.45v in and see what i can get  they're like £16 now and sometimes cheaper, see image for response

 

i really want an SR2 tbh but money XD 

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, the pudding said:

well, 1.6v for short runs can be done with no degradation, i've pumped 1.65v into my X5660 before for like 6 hours and no degradation, if it were, say, a week then yeah big doubt but otherwise 1.6v is fine i guess 

 

ahhhhh if you ran it for a while then that might be okay, i might pump 1.45v in and see what i can get  they're like £16 now and sometimes cheaper, see image for response

 

i really want an SR2 tbh but money XD 

Lol on the image, tis a perfect representation of pushing high voltages on these older chips. TBH, don't think it's too bad if they go down in a blaze of glory, so long as you're not abusing an X5690 or something. 

And yee the prices are a yikes, my working one was $430  

I think @WhisperingKnickers scored his for $250 though, the lucky bastard. I paid $230 for my Classified 4-way, and that only runs one CPU .

[the pudding]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

Lol on the image, tis a perfect representation of pushing high voltages on these older chips. TBH, don't think it's too bad if they go down in a blaze of glory, so long as you're not abusing an X5690 or something. 

And yee the prices are a yikes, my working one was $430  

I think @WhisperingKnickers scored his for $250 though, the lucky bastard. I paid $230 for my Classified 4-way, and that only runs one CPU .

yeah honestly X5680s are as high as I'd go since those are like £30 on aliexpress, but if you have a board that can do 200MHz bclk then just get an X5670 really, like half the money and you only lose like one or two multi steps iirc, i wouldn't shove 1.6v into an X5680 because more expensive but realistically for short runs of less than a day or two 1.6v would be fine really

 

yeah they're hella steep, but once I'm able to work again I'll be going for one i reckon just to have some fun with

 

oh my that's a great deal

[MaratM]

3 hours ago, the pudding said:

yeah honestly X5680s are as high as I'd go since those are like £30 on aliexpress, but if you have a board that can do 200MHz bclk then just get an X5670 really

I think most of original x58 (not Chinese Huanan) boards can do 200mhz bclk without any problems as long as the north bridge is properly cooled. At 200bclk even cheapest x5650 can do 4+ghz and in daily use there is not much difference between 4.0 and 4.4 ghz on x58, unless the use is to get the highest CB R15 score on x58)))

[the pudding]

29 minutes ago, MaratM said:

I think most of original x58 (not Chinese Huanan) boards can do 200mhz bclk without any problems as long as the north bridge is properly cooled. At 200bclk even cheapest x5650 can do 4+ghz and in daily use there is not much difference between 4.0 and 4.4 ghz on x58, unless the use is to get the highest CB R15 score on x58)))

most can, I've had a few that couldn't though and yeah 400MHz isn't that much difference and all but it's always nicer to push the cpu as far as it can go within safe voltage limits and all

[Zando_]

5 minutes ago, the pudding said:

most can, I've had a few that couldn't though and yeah 400MHz isn't that much difference and all but it's always nicer to push the cpu as far as it can go within safe voltage limits and all

Gotta get all that sweet g i g a h e r t z amirite? 

[Troika]

So, I've been messing around with the voltages. I dropped bclk down to 191 to get 4.01Ghz at the x21 multiplier, changed vcore all the way upto 1.375v, QPI upto 1.32, IOH to 1.2V and it appears to be stable but the temps are hotter than I'd like. 85C after 4 minutes and the water hasn't equalized yet so the temp would creep higher and higher the longer prime95 ran. I saved the settings but it seems like I won't be able to get much farther with the i7 920 with my H110i GTX. I tried different combinations of lower vcore and higher QPI and I would either crash at the desktop or crash after 10 seconds into prime95. I've been looking up other people who've overclocked i7 920s upto and past 4ghz and they were using 1.375v or more vcore with 1600mhz or faster ram. I may need a better cooler or I just need better quality ram, both of which I don't have the budget for at the moment. I'll have to revisit this later in the future.

[seagate_surfer]

16 hours ago, Troika said:

intentionally left blank

Here there are updates available for your HDD, there may not be any updates for you but if there is one then do it, this could help you a little more with your machine: Seagate Technology - Download Finder

[the pudding]

9 minutes ago, Troika said:

So, I've been messing around with the voltages. I dropped bclk down to 191 to get 4.01Ghz at the x21 multiplier, changed vcore all the way upto 1.375v, QPI upto 1.32, IOH to 1.2V and it appears to be stable but the temps are hotter than I'd like. 85C after 4 minutes and the water hasn't equalized yet so the temp would creep higher and higher the longer prime95 ran. I saved the settings but it seems like I won't be able to get much farther with the i7 920 with my H110i GTX. I tried different combinations of lower vcore and higher QPI and I would either crash at the desktop or crash after 10 seconds into prime95. I've been looking up other people who've overclocked i7 920s upto and past 4ghz and they were using 1.375v or more vcore with 1600mhz or faster ram. I may need a better cooler or I just need better quality ram, both of which I don't have the budget for at the moment. I'll have to revisit this later in the future.

once you manage to sort a 6 core gulftown/westmere thing the cooling problem will become much less of a problem, i was able to run 4.8GHz 1.52v for benching on a dark rock pro 3 without any issues at all but i wouldn't be able to do that on nehelem 

[Ground]

6 hours ago, the pudding said:

yeah the 45nm chips tend to top out at 4GHz iirc and even then that takes a shit ton of voltage (though they can handle the voltage better) but these 32nm xeons and i7s all clock very similar, only proper reason to go for anything above say an X5660 is to not push the board as hard and all, i've had a few 970s and a few W3670s (xeon equivalent of the 970) and both overclcoked pretty close to each other, think the 970 did 4.4GHz 1,38v and the W3670 did 4.5GHz 1.4v

the very best 45nm chips handily beat the best 32nm chips. I have a W3520 and i7 920 that run Superpi 32M at 4.5/1.2V, none of my 32nm chips (out of around 100 by now) manage that.

[the pudding]

8 hours ago, Ground said:

the very best 45nm chips handily beat the best 32nm chips. I have a W3520 and i7 920 that run Superpi 32M at 4.5/1.2V, none of my 32nm chips (out of around 100 by now) manage that.

ehhh, 42nm chips that'll do that are pretty damn rare though, same for 32nm really, like either way that's a god tier bin on either of the two so 

[Troika]

I got my two RGB stripped plugged in once I found my box of Corsair RMx cables to grab a molex connector. I just gotta find my remote so I can change the color to blue.

Now that I've finally got my full game library installed again, I've started playing some games and I've noticed that my Fury X has become my bottleneck for this rig. Usage is pinned to 100% or flutters between 95% and 100%. That got me thinking, what the most powerful gpu y'all have paired with a 6 core X58 rig for gaming? I'm thinking a 1070 Ti or a 1080 might be the most you could pair without the CPU becoming a hard bottleneck. My target res is 1440p at 144hz, or as close to that as possible, with the highest settings possible to maintain high fps. I haven't gone through all my games but I noticed that Crossout get an average of 130FPS on the high preset and War Thunder gets 85~90FPS on the high preset depending on the map and how intense a given battle is. I've seen sustained dips as low as 70 FPS. None of the games I tried have the cpu pinned at 100% yet so that tells me that it isn't a bottleneck yet. I've heard that going to higher resolutions that cpu bottlenecks are lesser because your GPU gets pushed harder.

[Zando_]

1 hour ago, Troika said:

I got my two RGB stripped plugged in once I found my box of Corsair RMx cables to grab a molex connector. I just gotta find my remote so I can change the color to blue.

Now that I've finally got my full game library installed again, I've started playing some games and I've noticed that my Fury X has become my bottleneck for this rig. Usage is pinned to 100% or flutters between 95% and 100%. That got me thinking, what the most powerful gpu y'all have paired with a 6 core X58 rig for gaming? I'm thinking a 1070 Ti or a 1080 might be the most you could pair without the CPU becoming a hard bottleneck. My target res is 1440p at 144hz, or as close to that as possible, with the highest settings possible to maintain high fps. I haven't gone through all my games but I noticed that Crossout get an average of 130FPS on the high preset and War Thunder gets 85~90FPS on the high preset depending on the map and how intense a given battle is. I've seen sustained dips as low as 70 FPS. None of the games I tried have the cpu pinned at 100% yet so that tells me that it isn't a bottleneck yet. I've heard that going to higher resolutions that cpu bottlenecks are lesser because your GPU gets pushed harder.

-snip-

GPUs usually go to 100% in most reasonably good titles, my Radeon VII (about on par with a 1080 Ti, just a bit behind at stock) hits 85-100% at 1080p, depending on the game, whether I have a frame lock/v-sync on, and what area I'm at in the game.

As for the highest GPU I've ran with one, that'd be a 1080 Ti with a 4.54Ghz X5670, the CPU was definitely the bottleneck there. I was running it at 1080p though, haven't tested anything like that at 1440p. 

As far as CPU perf, an X5675 at 4.2-4.5Ghz (depends on RAM and uncore tuning as well) can pretty much match a stock Ryzen 5 1600 IIRC, may be a little bit behind. I don't think any X58 mobos got BIOS updates to fix all the vulnerabilities found over the past year or two, so it should still be similar?

[Troika]

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

GPUs usually go to 100% in most reasonably good titles, my Radeon VII (about on par with a 1080 Ti, just a bit behind at stock) hits 85-100% at 1080p, depending on the game, whether I have a frame lock/v-sync on, and what area I'm at in the game.

As for the highest GPU I've ran with one, that'd be a 1080 Ti with a 4.54Ghz X5670, the CPU was definitely the bottleneck there. I was running it at 1080p though, haven't tested anything like that at 1440p. 

As far as CPU perf, an X5675 at 4.2-4.5Ghz (depends on RAM and uncore tuning as well) can pretty much match a stock Ryzen 5 1600 IIRC, may be a little bit behind. I don't think any X58 mobos got BIOS updates to fix all the vulnerabilities found over the past year or two, so it should still be similar?

I highly doubt that there's any microcode updates to fix any of the vulnerabilities found after 2017. X79 and X99, maybe, but I think X58 is old enough to be fully discontinued by Intel at this point.

I mean, all the X58 chips will be effectively behind most modern chips because of the lack of modern instruction sets, namely AVX and applications that use it more efficiently than SSE2, 3, or 4/4.1/4.2 or outright requires it (Apex Legends). That said, when it comes to raw grunt, it'll easily match and in some cases surpass a stock Ryzen 5 1600. Interestingly, a clock for clock matched i7 8700k is only 56% faster on average in gaming despite the 73% single core performance disparity. That does shows that modern games are becoming more optimized for larger core count chips. That said, the 8700k is 2017 and the 970 is from 7 year earlier and its a locked chip. Kinda goes to show that gpus have come MUCH farther along in the same amount of time than cpus.

So my assumption that a 1070 Ti/1080/Vega 64 would be the best gpu I could pair with this setup. I'll probably go for a 1080 just so I don't have to deal with the radeon drivers. I really do like AMD cards more but the drivers can be a pain to live with sometimes. Vega FE made that painfully obvious. Fury X is easier to live with but that's only because overclocking it is pretty pointless and undervolting it doesn't really do much other than maybe save 20 or so watts of power. Once I'm back on Ryzen, I'll probably go for a high end Navi card for that. Here's to hoping for the return of the X990 class cards, even if dual gpu cards don't comeback with Navi. That said, I don't believe that multi-gpu solutions will be gone forever, eventually, they'll be the only way to get gains at ultra high resolutions in the future when gpu performance gains from IPC and architecture improvements starts to flat line. Just like the old days where if you wanted the best gaming experience possible, you put two or three gpus together to play games at crazy high resolutions on arrays of four, six and eight monitors.

I remember when I first got started in tech school, one of the first friends I made had a fucking epic gaming setup. Custom six monitor array for a total of 5760x2160, a full 7.1 1000w surround sound system, and desktop powered by a i7 4960X, 128GB of ram and 4 GTX 780 TI. If memory serves correctly, they were K|ngp|n cards. It was fully watercooled and he even built the case for it himself out of aluminum and acrylic plates. It was a fricken beast but it was by far the best gaming computer I ever saw in person. I think he said he had put like over $7,000 into the parts to get the system going and as far as I know, he still has it. I know he had replaced his quad 780 Ti setup for quad 1080 Ti, also k|ngp|n cards. I know that cause I asked him if I could buy one of those 780 Tis from him but he said no. I think he didn't want to sell them cause they were produced in a limited quantity so that made them kinda rare. I don't know if that was true but they definitely looked a lot better than other gpus at the time and honestly, I still think they do.

[Slayer3032]

15 hours ago, Troika said:

I got my two RGB stripped plugged in once I found my box of Corsair RMx cables to grab a molex connector. I just gotta find my remote so I can change the color to blue.

Now that I've finally got my full game library installed again, I've started playing some games and I've noticed that my Fury X has become my bottleneck for this rig. Usage is pinned to 100% or flutters between 95% and 100%. That got me thinking, what the most powerful gpu y'all have paired with a 6 core X58 rig for gaming? I'm thinking a 1070 Ti or a 1080 might be the most you could pair without the CPU becoming a hard bottleneck. My target res is 1440p at 144hz, or as close to that as possible, with the highest settings possible to maintain high fps. I haven't gone through all my games but I noticed that Crossout get an average of 130FPS on the high preset and War Thunder gets 85~90FPS on the high preset depending on the map and how intense a given battle is. I've seen sustained dips as low as 70 FPS. None of the games I tried have the cpu pinned at 100% yet so that tells me that it isn't a bottleneck yet. I've heard that going to higher resolutions that cpu bottlenecks are lesser because your GPU gets pushed harder.

Depending on the game, I see 100% gpu utilization at 1440p with my GTX 1080 far more often than you'd think. Most recently the VR update(don't have VR) for No Man's Sky along with a LOD/view distance mod has really been fully utilizing it which is really crazy since before they switched to Vulkan it was very limited by cpu. I generally get about the same fps in games at 1440p as my friends with less powerful cards but better/newer everything else in 1080p. I also generally get about the same performance as my buddy with a Ryzen 1700 at 1440p as well. FPS lows are where X58 will likely suffer still though.

 

I really suggest 1440p with X58, it's a really nice bump in resolution while going up to 27" from your more standard 23/24" 1080p monitors.