DigiDiz wrote:
i have an ASUS mobo, i have never had another type of mobo, was tempted to go Gigabyte, but nah, i think ASUS rocks, currently have the Asus Striker II Formula nForce 780i, and it is soooooooo soooooo good, excellent performance
My M2N32WSpro, that runs as the heart of the Linux box, was a real joy. It's a 680 I think. But, the 790i on the striker II extreme was a nightmare, really really hot, and had gaping FSB holes, making overclocking a major pain in the arse...... I had to run the machine at 430x8 because anything between 350 and 410 was just a total no-boot, so using a 9x multi was basically a no go. Really liked it's ability to specify memory speed by hand instead of just a few multiplier values.
But, the crash-free bios is disappeared from their boards, so has dual-bios....hence mine ended up fscked....when a successful BIOS flash mind wiped it. And honestly, their tech support's turned to shit in about the last 12 months by all accounts.
The most disturbing thing is this accusation, made I think by Abit, or Gigabyte, that their "solid state capacitors", are actually cheap Chinese wax caps, with expensive Japanese Solid state cap labels on them....shocking and would explain a few of the odd things I experienced. It's not the kind of thing you can say about a competitor without having evidence, lawyers will eat you alive.
Dunno, maybe it's just the 790i chipset that stinks. I've used Asus exclusively since 2003 (previous board was an ECS K7 board, which cost £20, was universally regarded as total shite, and ran flawlessly for over 4 years 24/7....and then died just slowly enough to give me a chance to replace it (capacitors fail, swell, and burst on them))...and to be honest I think that's why I've taken the horrid SIIE so badly....it's like a dog you had from when it was a pup, that suddenly savages your hand.
The Gigabyte has been a revelation, CPU clocks higher (fuck, I got it to bench through 3dmark Vantage at 3.75GHz....not bad on air cooling on a 2.4GHz chip....and it runs prime stable at 3.5....but a teeny bit too hot for me).
The whole shebang....
Gigabyte X48t-DQ6
Intell Q6600 (G0) @ 3.44Ghz
BFG 8800GTX Oc2 (626/1000MHz)
2GB Corsair DDR3 1600 (arm, leg, kidney, hence only 2GB for now....I'll get the other 2 in 6 months when it's £20 a gig)
OCZ 780W PSU (machine draws 410W with all 4 CPU cores and the GPU pinned to 100%).
2xHitachi 500GB Deskstars (the quietest drive I've ever not heard)
Optiarc DVDrw
M-audio ozone (but onboard sound for games).
My other box has the Asus M2n,and an Asus cooler, and an Asus videocard....all fabulous.
Next upgrade for me is a Gigantic screen (really torn between monitor and tv....tv=shit res, but monitor=having to run games at it's max res (cos LCD's look cack at anything but "native" res), which is 2600x something= molten GPU. OR I may buy one of the new ATI 4870 video cards. My last ATI card gave me fuck all but ulcers and sleepless nights, but these things are getting 90% the performance of the new NV GTX280's.....but cost less than half was much (you can actually buy a crossfire bundle for about 30quid less than a single 280....basically, you'd need to be a total NV fanboy not to look at them.
Besides, I'm building a box for a cow-orker this week using a 4850, so I'llbe able to find out if they're painful.
Anyway, so much for my theory that hyperthreading is the cause of FF3 woes.
