Finally! Permission to build!

[PaulieG]

Looked into the Blood Rage and DFI UT, the Rage seems to have an unstable BIOS whereas the DFI seems to have an overly complicated BIOS. I'll stick with my UD4P, unless I'm mistaken.

Edit: How about a mobo that will allow me to manually control fans? The UD4P, from a review I just read, doesn't have that option.

The Blood Rage had early bios issues. Not now though. DON"T rely on Newegg reviews. XS forums has threads dedicated to the Blood Rage, and our own systemviper has had great success with it. The DFI has a learning curve, but once you know it, it's the best bios to work with, period. Not to say the Gigabyte is a bad choice though. If you want control of fans, buy a fan controller.

 

[Wile E]

Full tower for sure, good cases would be Silverstone Tj-07, Coolermaster HAF 932, may be Stacker 830, certain Lian-Li models, Thermaltake Armor+, Mountain Mods cases which are optimized for water cooling, there are others but these come to mind first.
Antec 1200 is a great case, its just not for water, for air its excellent. I wouldnt recomend water cooling for a first time builder though, if you really want to though id get a kit like Swiftech H20 Compact or one of Petra's kits and get someone to help you if possible.

Don't get the Stacker 830 for water. Believe or not, it gets cramped.

 

[Bokteelo]

Wile E! Been waiting for you all day. Can always count on good ol' Wile E!

What changes would you make for my current system?

 

[Wile E]

Wile E! Been waiting for you all day. Can always count on good ol' Wile E!

What changes would you make for my current system?

Are you still going with the UD4P? If so, I'd say it's looking pretty good. I'm a bit of a glutton tho, so if it were my build I'd probably go with the 940 or 965. lol.

Aside from that, I might do 2 GTX260's instead of the 4870's. They seem to clock better.

 

[Bokteelo]

There's been a lot of discussion in this thread about different cards... 4850, 4870, 260, 285. If I can't see a significant difference, I'll go with the 4870 w/ Crossfire.

 

[Wile E]

There's been a lot of discussion in this thread about different cards... 4850, 4870, 260, 285. If I can't see a significant difference, I'll go with the 4870 w/ Crossfire.

Well, the 260's do offer Physx support. (I kinda miss it, but then again, I really like playing GRAW and GRAW2.)

Judgment call, really. Go with what you prefer. I'd grab the 1GB 4870's if I was going ATI.

 

[Bokteelo]

What brands should I be looking at for the 4870's?

 

[Wile E]

Powercolor, Sapphire, Asus

My MSI 4850 has treated me well, too.

 

[Bokteelo]

Does core clock really matter? A lot of them are like 50-60MHz different.

 

[Wile E]

Does core clock really matter? A lot of them are like 50-60MHz different.

Nah, most OC to around the same levels.

Or better yet, you can grab this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102768

Costs about the same as 2 4870 1GB's anyway.

It should be known that ATI is currently having more driver issues than nVidia currently. That seems to go back and forth tho.

 

[Bokteelo]

Nah, most OC to around the same levels.

Or better yet, you can grab this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102768

Costs about the same as 2 4870 1GB's anyway.

It should be known that ATI is currently having more driver issues than nVidia currently. That seems to go back and forth tho.

I'm not sure if I should get an x2 or just hook them up with crossfire. I think KBD or Paulieg said that crossfire gives better performance.

I'm debating between the following two:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127400
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801

 

[phanbuey]

Nah, most OC to around the same levels.

Or better yet, you can grab this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102768

Costs about the same as 2 4870 1GB's anyway.

It should be known that ATI is currently having more driver issues than nVidia currently. That seems to go back and forth tho.

Yeah they do... im using the 178.24's because my GTX 260's freeze with a green screen and a re-looping sound at stock clocks in l4d with anything newer.

and I used to rag on ATI's drivers haha...

 

[Wile E]

I'm not sure if I should get an x2 or just hook them up with crossfire. I think KBD or Paulieg said that crossfire gives better performance.

From what I've seen, the X2 does better.

And think of it this way, more room in your case to work with, or the option of adding another ATI card to it for Tri or Quad Crossfire. Just trying to maximize the upgrade path.

 

[Bokteelo]

From what I've seen, the X2 does better.

And think of it this way, more room in your case to work with, or the option of adding another ATI card to it for Tri or Quad Crossfire. Just trying to maximize the upgrade path.

I've never thought of it this way... HMM!! I'm lost.

 

[Fleck]

Nah, most OC to around the same levels.

Or better yet, you can grab this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102768

Costs about the same as 2 4870 1GB's anyway.

It should be known that ATI is currently having more driver issues than nVidia currently. That seems to go back and forth tho.

I've never heard of this back and forth. ATI has had driver issues since their real performance GPUs came out in the Radeon 9500/9800 and it's apparently been the same since, but I've never had an issue with an nVidia card. This forum almost had me convinced to go back to ATI, then I started reading how ATI drivers are still a nightmare. No thanks, I'll spend the extra money on a good old stable nVidia card (and the 9800GTX+ has pleased me wholesomely).

 

[Bokteelo]

I'm getting a full tower, so if possible could I grab 2 4870's for now, and still have room for 2 more? (Same as 4870x2 x2?)

 

[Wile E]

I've never heard of this back and forth. ATI has had driver issues since their real performance GPUs came out in the Radeon 9500/9800 and it's apparently been the same since, but I've never had an issue with an nVidia card. This forum almost had me convinced to go back to ATI, then I started reading how ATI drivers are still a nightmare. No thanks, I'll spend the extra money on a good old stable nVidia card (and the 9800GTX+ has pleased me wholesomely).

No, they haven't had driver issues since the 9800 series. Their drivers have been solid for a couple years now, aside from the past 4 or 5 months.

I had driver issues with my 8800GT's on the 160 series. Then they were fine after 168.xx, iirc. nVidia is just as prone to releasing a bad string of drivers. It's happened more than once from both manufacturers.

I'm getting a full tower, so if possible could I grab 2 4870's for now, and still have room for 2 more? (Same as 4870x2 x2?)

Not really. They take up too much space with their coolers. I'd honestly grab the X2 over 2 4870's

 

[Bokteelo]

Alright, I'll think about 2x over x2.

 

[Fleck]

Eventually I think you would be able to add another X2 so it would be kind of like running 4X, except SLI/Crossfire always performs faster than one board with two GPUs because of the additional bandwidth provided by using two slots.

 

[Bokteelo]

Jeez, so I have to consider performance or futureproofing.

 

[Wile E]

Eventually I think you would be able to add another X2 so it would be kind of like running 4X, except SLI/Crossfire always performs faster than one board with two GPUs because of the additional bandwidth provided by using two slots.

That hasn't proven to be an issue with the X2, unless you try to put it in a slower than 16x PCIe 2.0 slot.

Besides, the X2 provides enough power that the possible advantage given by having 2 4870s in separate slots would be completely imperceptible, especially at his chosen resolution.

 

[Fleck]

That hasn't proven to be an issue with the X2, unless you try to put it in a slower than 16x PCIe 2.0 slot.

Besides, the X2 provides enough power that the possible advantage given by having 2 4870s in separate slots would be completely imperceptible, especially at his chosen resolution.

Find me the benches, I just saw benches that showed an X2 having ~50-75% performance gain while the Crossfires had straight up 100% performance gain. And most Crossfire boards run at 8x/8x or 16x/8x at best on Crossfire mode.

 

[Wile E]

Find me the benches, I just saw benches that showed an X2 having ~50-75% performance gain while the Crossfires had straight up 100% performance gain. And most Crossfire boards run at 8x/8x or 16x/8x at best on Crossfire mode.

His chosen board does 16 + 16 + 8 in 3 slots. My board does 16 + 16 with 2 slots.

And the 4870X2 and 2 4870s show no credible difference in a 16 + 16 board. In fact, the X2 is ahead in many tests.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-radeon-hd-4870-x2-2gb-video-card-review.html

Are you thinking of the 3870X2? That only had a PCIe 1.1 bridge on it, causing a slight performance difference.

 

[Bokteelo]

Uh huh... of course! I agree with you completely.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

 

[Wile E]

Uh huh... of course! I agree with you completely.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

What?