Whoami: Ian Mapleson http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/ My AMD PC Specs (initially built May 2008): Antec 300 case, Thermaltake Pure Power 680W PSU Scythe SFF21F intake fan (1600rpm), Thermaltake A2329 exhaust fan ASUS M2N32 WS Pro mbd (AM2, DDR2/800 RAM, 2 x PCIe/16X, 2 x PCIX/133) Athlon64 X2 6000+ 3GHz, oc'd to 3225MHz (215/15, 1.584V) Thermalright Ultra120 Extreme CPU cooler, 2 x Scythe Kaze-Jyuni 1900rpm fan. 2 x ASUS 8800GT 512MB Glaciator SLI, oc'd from 602/1512/800 to 650/1608/1900. 4GB RAM (4 x 1GB DIMMS, ie. two dual-channel DDR2/800 OCZ kits). LSI SAS3442X-R PCIX with 2 x Seagate 450GB 15K SAS ST3450857SS (RAID0). OCZ 60GB Vertex2E system drive. Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA2 HD103UJ (clone backup of 900GB sysvol). 2 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA2 HD103SJ (data archive). 20X Liteon DVDRW. A4Tech Laser Mouse. My current SGI specs (Fuel/Tezro): http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16719759 http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16721054 ******************************************************************** CHANGELOG: 23/Jul/2012: Moved all the parts into an Antec 300 case for better cooling, etc. Upgraded with an SSD. 11/Oct/2010: Replaced the MBA3147RC with 2 x Seagate 450GB 15K SAS in hardware RAID0 for the system drive, and I managed to get the newer 15K.7 edition which is faster: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/diskdata.html Would have been nice to have an SSD, but they're still too expensive given I also need a lot of space. Two SAS drives in RAID0 is a nice compromise; not tested yet, but should give decent results for random read/write, and of course much quicker than any single disk for sequential I/O. Added two 1TB Spinpoint F3s for video data. The previous Spinpoint F1 is now acting as a clone backup of the 900GB system volume (manually cloned using XXClone). Also replaced the single Scythe 1600rpm fan with two Scythe Kaze-Jyuni 1900rpm fans in push/pull. The idea is to go for a better overclock. To this end, I've completely redone the thermal paste attachment of the TRUE cooler, this time following ArcticSilver's application instructions ("dot method") and with the CPU and heat sink surfaces both cleaned beforehand using ArtiClean 1 & 2. With any luck, and better knowledge now of oc methods, I should be able to get somewhere between 3.3 and 3.4GHz. I've been pondering the mod one can do in order to use the Phenom II X4 940BE 3GHz CPU, but alas it looks like I'd have to downgrade the BIOS which would mean losing reliable PCIX support, so I'll leave it for the moment. 05/Aug/2010: Replaced the LSI PCIX U320 card with an LSI SAS3442X-R PCIX (switching to SAS for system disk); replaced the Fujitsu 300GB 15K MBA3300NC with a Fujitsu 147GB 15K SAS MBA3147RC (hoping to get a Seagate 15K.6 450GB 15K SAS); replaced the single Gigabyte 8800GT with two ASUS 8800GTs. Replaced the Scythe 1600rpm CPU fan with a Scythe 1900rpm, moved the 1600rpm to the front of the case for intake duty. 16/Aug/2009: Replaced the Seagate ST3146855LC with a Fujitsu 300GB 15K MBA3300NC. 03/Jun/2009: Replaced the Maxtor system disk with a Seagate ST3146855LC (faster!), added a 1TB SATA for data backup, replaced the 1200rpm Sycthe fan on the CPU heat sink with a 1600rpm to better cope with the summer heat, moved the Scythe 1200rpm onto the front of the case (replacing the old Coolermaster fan). Ref: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/diskdata.html 08/Mar/2009: Replaced LSI 21320R RAID card with LSI 22320R, which has two external VHDCI SCSI ports instead of a single external HD68 port. Thus, the RAID disks have been moved into an external unit (Sagitta 12-bay dual- channel JBOD) which now houses 12 disks instead of four. This means less power consumption when I'm not using the RAID. ******************************************************************** 3D Graphics These results compare to my previous mbd/gfx combination (Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA, X1950 Pro AGP) with the same CPU and RAM. OLD: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1771835 NEW: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=7303357 X1950 Pro AGP 8X 8800GT PCIe (641/783) (790/1790/985) 3DMark06 Overall: 5583 11762 3DMark06 SM 2.0: 2081 5457 3DMark06 SM 3.0: 2326 5704 3DMark06 CPU: 2415 2491 Return to Proxycon (FPS): 16.11 44.80 Firefly Forest (FPS): 18.57 46.16 Canyon Flight (FPS): 22.16 57.73 Deep Freeze (FPS): 24.36 56.34 Fill Rate Single (MTex/sec): 4931.52 6325.18 Fill Rate Multi (MTex/sec): 7675.52 30669.47 Pixel Shader (FPS): 215.76 548.29 Vertex Shader Simple (MVerts/sec): 179.42 242.97 Vertex Shader Complex (MVerts/sec): 60.87 159.56 Shader Particles (SM 3.0): N/A 131.86 Perlin Noise (SM 3.0): 70.61 172.96 Oblivion frames-per-seond test descriptions (URLs below), done before I installed the Natural Environments mod: 1. Dense forest location at night, focus on the centre of the ruins. 2. Bottom of the stairs in Merchants' Inn, focus on the inn keeper. 3. At wooden door to City Isle (inside), Market District, N.E. corner, focus between the two vertical red flags on far building. 4. Talos Plaza, west city entrance, inside the plaza, focus on the head of the dragon statue. 5. Behind (north east) of the Wawnet Inn, standing on the rock, facing, a) the Inn, b) east to the city, c) north to the horizon above the hill texture 'seam', and d) the end of the pier. 6. Signpost outside the city, facing S.E. Images: http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest1.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest2.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest3.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest4.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5a.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5b.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5c.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5d.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest6.jpg And here are the results: CAVEAT: tests on the new 8800GT were done with the enhanced water realism activated; couldn't work out how to turn it off. MEDIUM DETAIL: 1024x768, 4X AA, no AF, Texture Preference = High Quality, MipMap Detail = Performance, in-game settings at default. Athlon64 X2 6000+, old mbd/gfx vs. new mbd/gfx. All results are fps. | 3.15GHz (210/15) | 3GHz (200/15) Test | DDR2/800 (394) | DDR2/800 (375) Num | X1950 Pro AGP 8X | GF8800GT (700/1715/920) -------------------------------------------------- 1 | 48 | 79 2 | 63 | 63 <-- CPU bottleneck? 3 | 40 | 48 4 | 49 | 49 <-- CPU bottleneck? 5a | 71 | 84 5b | 125 | 150 5c | 149 | 182 5d | 89 | 111 6 | 67 | 92 Now for High Detail... CAVEAT: old gfx tests were done with 6X AA, but the 8800GT only offers 4X and 8X modes, not 6X. Thus, I tested with both 4X and 8X, and also no AA out of curiosity, which revealed some tests are very CPU-bound. Note that CPU in the new system was only going at 3GHz to avoid any issues related to Oblivion's sensitivity to overclocked components. HIGH DETAIL: 1600x1200, 6X AA, 16X AF, Texture Preference = High Quality, MipMap Detail = High Quality, in-game settings at default, Athlon64 X2 6000+, old mbd/gfx vs. new mbd/gfx. All results are fps. | 3.15GHz (210/15) | 3GHz (200/15) || 3GHz (200/15), DDR2/800 (375) | DDR2/800 (394) | DDR2/800 (375) || GF8800GT (700MHz) Test | X1950 Pro AGP 8X | GF8800GT (700MHz) || 2048 x 1536 res!!!! Num | 6X AA | 8X AA | 4X AA | No AA || 8X AA | 4X AA | No AA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 45 | 39 47 69 || 25 33 51 2 | 50 | 63 63 63 || 46 61 63 <-- CPU bottleneck? 3 | 37 | 47 48 48 || 40 47 47 4 | 50 | 48 48 50 || 48 49 50 <-- CPU bottleneck? 5a | 58 | 59 70 84 || 41 55 77 5b | 81 | 90 122 138 || 64 89 121 5c | 88 | 107 153 169 || 77 109 152 5d | 53 | 56 66 88 || 37 48 66 6 | 48 | 48 60 76 || 33 42 59 **************************************************************************** PC RAID test using just 4 x Maxtor disks (SiSoft Sandra, results in MB/sec): Sequential Buffered Random Read | Write Read | Write Read | Write LSI 320-2E PCIe (hw): 359 280 558 409 127 149 LSI 21320R PCIX (sw): 359 205 250 122 135 150 (old card) The LSI 320-2E PCIe card is a Dell PERC 4e/DC.