Damn...talked me into it. Not that I needed much of that. Pulled the trigger. Parts will be here Friday. Will be on water of course. Time to start ebay'n the current parts.
If you play Empire Total War, you'll find quite happily that it will take a Core 2 chip of approximately 1Ghz faster then your chip to beat you: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,678262/Empire-Total-War-Benchmarks-with-14-CPUs/Practice/ Of course, the debate above aside, the links in it also show some great gains for 2.66ghz i7 over 3.2Ghz QX9770 in WiC and CoH, enough to show that clock for clock, i7 will treat you much better then Core 2 would have. Typically, in RTS games at least, i7 920 competes directly with QX9770, often beating it. Enjoy your superiority
Right on. I "basically" have a oc'd QX9770 anyway. Looking forward to oc'n the bad boy when it gets in.
I guess my next question to the i7 gurus would be for oc'n. What do I need to set in bios to hit 4ghz? I know it kind of depends on the motherboard and cpu, but for i7 overclocking "101", I need to understand the difference. Still got "fsb" stuck in my head. And fyi, I bought 1600 mem. Thanks!
I got there by turning off turbo, setting bclock to 200, CPU multi to 20, mem multi to 8x (sets my memory to it's default 1600mhz), and vcore to 1.35. I don't run 4Ghz 24/7 though since I'm on stock cooling, load temps go insane like that. It's 2 hour Prime95 and IBT stable like that (yes, I'm aware it's not a full test unless you go 8 hours), but I'm scared to run it like that (95C loaded) for anything more then a couple hours. I backed it off to 3.6Ghz because giving up 400mhz is enough for radically lower vcore. My 3841A507 i7 920 hits 3.6Ghz using less then VID (Voltage ID) vcore of 1.19 which results in 1.17 idle and 1.15 under load. Temps never go over 65C even with IBT running. That's just my experience. Overclocking only has ONE universal rule. YMMV.
Thanks Morb. Greg...I bought the same mobo as you, the sli version. Apparently there are two models, the initial one that doesn't support sli, and one that does. So it seems to oc well then eh? Anything I need to look out for with this board?
It's been as flaw free as any motherboard I've ever used at this point. I did update the bios to F3 as soon as I got it home though since it had F1 on it. Mine is the non-SLI version, by the way. I'm actually thinking somebody soon will have modded the bios so it's usable on my board, but not really sweating it since I don't even have an Nvidia GPU in my system at the moment. I can't think of any issues you would run into on this board that are any different then any other X58 mobo out there. Everything runs so smoothly and was crazy easy to get setup on. Windows Vista and Win 7 both installed flawlessly, although both seem to have a weird pause during Windows setup on this mobo that I've not seen before. If Windows setup seems to stick at any one point, just let it sit, don't panic. It will break free shortly. I just lit a cig up and waited. Your going to be very happy
I work in Photoshop, 3DS Max, After effects etc. I often have them all open so I can never have enough RAM. Eth
I'm a bit late on this and I haven't got a i7 platform; although, from what I know of the technology, plus reviews, etc., I'll stake my reputation as a nobody on this : You will feel the computer being more responsive and smooth and faster overall. :banana:
Flight Simulator X also greatly benefit from the i7. I'm planing to get the 920 and Gigabyte UD3R mainly for FSX. Should be sweet.
After doing some reading, I can see that FSX can be up to 30% faster per clock under the i7 which is very impressive. http://www.digitalstormonline.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5371 Thanks for pointing that out. I wish Black Shark had such impressive gains (although it runs fine as it is). Eth
I guess you missed my link on the previous page showing Empire Total War also showing i7 920 faster then QX9770.
I almost went with the Zotac mobo...which may be perfectly fine. But it was kinda skimpy on the heat sinks. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500024
You'll be glad you went with the UD3R instead, big time. I still haven't seen ANYTHING about the Zotac board yet, and I have to figure that if it was some kind of out of the blue, bang for the buck king, that there would be SOME kind of fuss being kicked up somewhere about it. I'm sure SOMEBODY has to have tried it by now... The weird part is, there's no positive feedback, nor any negative feedback either. I'd be outright shocked if NOBODY buys the Zotac, but if anybody has, they're being mum about it. Google only has 5 pages of stuff, and almost all of it is either sales links or discussions like this, people wondering if the board is any good. I don't think I've ever seen such a universal lack of interest, good or bad, in a new motherboard. It's almost a ghost board...
What's odd is, there's really nothing on it at all...good or bad. lol! You'd think if it sucked, you would see something about it. I Gurgled it, and not much came up. Some other people asking about it in another forum. But no feedback. Maybe everyone is afraid to be the first. :nerd:
YEAH!! Read my edit above, I was just ranting about that. Weird stuff, man. Totally a ghost board, IMO.
Yep. And had it had better heat sinks, I may have tried it out. Makes me wonder who makes the board that Zotac slaps their name on.
