This Is My New Build......What Do Ya Think

drwho

Specs are below;

Case - Lian Li PC-G70B

PSU - SILVERSTONE ST85F ATX 12V 2.2 & EPS 12V 850W Power Supply (ordered)

OS - Vista Ultimate (64-bit)

CPU - Intel e8400 Duo 2 Core (3.0 Ghz)

Cooler - Thermalright SI-128 (AS5) w/Panaflo 120mm x38 Fan

Mobo - Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 (ordered)

Memory - G.Skill DDR3 1600 (2x2048 GB) (ordered)

GPU - 2x HIS Radeon HD 3870 IceQ3 Turbo Video Card (Crossfire Mode) (ordered)

Optical - Plextor PX-760A DVD/R
Plextor PX-810SA DVD/R

Sound Card - Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series (ordered)



That parts are all ordered, just waiting for them to arrive.

Tipstaff

I see you went with the 2 x HD3870s in the end?

The only concern I have is the height of the case (which is massive) vs the power supplies modular cable length. Hopefully you will be able to reach all the components. Your best bet would be to put the PSU in the bottom bay (which will help balance the weight load towards the bottom), and put your optical drives as low as you can in the bottom two 5-1/4" bays. That will allow you to use the hard drive bay at the bottom without overreaching the cables.

Otherwise I like the setup.

kris23

i dunno about the 3870s...... this coming from a guy that has one.

might as well go with a 3870X2 or 9800GX2

drwho

Any particular reasons for your comments, kris?

kris23

they dont perform THAT good, the cooling is good, but the card BIOS is trashed, card fan will be locked at 25% until the card fries....., they dont OC too good either.

i used Rivatuner to up the fan manually to 100% but then that gives driver instability.....hinders my game when i see that "Crysis has stopped working" box. and in bigger cases, i see the "Driver has stopped working and has recovered" thing

the 9800GX2 has an almost flat out 50% greater performance than the 3870X2 and obviously shits on 2 mildly OCed 3870s in Crossfire.....

Mousey

My HD3850 drives anything i throw at it, and it's surprisingly quiet
Mebbe it's just your 3870?

dr0p_z0ne

I have the HIS HD 3870 IceQ3 as well and he is absolutely right. The fan is stuck at 25% and the card overheats within minutes.

I have to use RivaTuner also to control the fan or the card will fry.

I am waiting on RMA from HIS.

It is the worst card I have ever owned!

kris23

there are no revisions that i know of and this thing IS quiet but thats not the point.

i can play Crysis on high/very high settings comfortably but when i want it to go even faster, it wont deliver, in order to let this thing run without any changes, i need to fully pump my 832's cooling to the max. and i really hate how AA doesnt work good..... the moment i enable it on high, it goes from decent to just plain wrong.

id rather get the 9800GX2 better for the money with no issues.

im gonna wait for ATis newer 4XXX series with the like 440 stream processors.

supposedly coming in June but thats not final.

drwho

We're just talking about the HIS product here correct. Or do these problems plague all 3870s?

dr0p_z0ne

It's a problem with the 3870 and the powerplay BIOS. Google search it and you will see tons of issues with the 3870's.

drwho

What would you recommend as replacement for cards then, drOp_zOne?

kris23

googling what he said, it turns out to be an issue with the majority of 3870s and is also easily fixable, well kinda

basically you open a notepad doc and fiddle with settings in there. you disable the fan control settings and manually adjust RPM settings so you can run easily.

Sapphire Forums - Fix for PowerPlay 3870

if you still wanna stay with 3870s anyway.

if you are thinking about DX10.1 i say dont worry about it, by the time its in full effect, theres gonna be a new set of cards you are gonna have to get to stay up to speed

i think you should go with a Nvidia card with a 3rd party heatsink at the very least.

the 9800GX2 can also run on non Nvidia chipsets as well, all i hear is that a BIOS update is needed at most.

drwho

Well, I'd like to try staying with ATI right now. Do they problems plaque all ATI 3xxx series cards or is just specific with the 3870 cards. maybe I'll just go with one 3870 X2 card for now and see how things work out. I would like to stay away from Nvidia as I have been all kinds of problems with that nvlddmkm display driver problem recently.

[hobo]eclipse

i have a HD3870. it did take a bios flash to correct the fan trouble, but after the flash i no longer needed rivatuner. Now the card idles at 45c and maxs out a 60c. the automatic fan takes care of keeping the temps within range and adjusted the fan speed as needed. I can say that 100% fan speed is never and prolly never will be needed. That creates a mad wind tunnel sound and will prolly shorten the life of the fan.

I can overclock to 865 core and 1305 RAM no trouble and the auto fan setting keeps it below 60c and barley audible if at all. Mind you i have a semi noisey exhaust fan that needs replaced.

When i did use RIVATUNer before the flash i can say that for me, setting the fan at anything above 60% was over kill as the cooling i got from it at 60% was more than adequate.

drwho

How does one flash the Bios on a video card, I've never done that before? If this is all it takes to correct error on the 3870 I may just go ahead and get the HIS cards.

[hobo]eclipse

i used a program called WinFlash 2.0.0.2a. This was current as of the beginning of feb so i dont know if there are updates. The A denotes a vista only version so if you have vista look for the A version if not dont use the A version. The bios i used was a sapphire version so my card now shows up a sapphire in GPU Z. Ill get back here later, i gotta go now. GL.

drwho

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind when I get my new system up and running.

Tipstaff

I had the exact same problem the my X1950 Pros. In this case HIS had clocked the cards incorrectly (way above what their box said), and since the temperature to fan speed ratio in the bios was too low the cards would hard lock at 65c. Which, btw, at 65c, the fans wouldn't go above 50%.

It's been a while, but I think I used atiflash to dump the bios, Rabit 2.2.1 to edit the fan speeds (in particular that the fan would jack up to 75% if the card hit 55c, 100% at 60c, otherwise it'd stay at 50%, and to be safe I clocked the cards back a bit to the box rate. Then I used atiflash to flash the firmware back. After that the cards ran perfectly with not one issue.

drwho

Well, my mainboard and memory will be here tomorrow sometime and I will start swapping out parts. I was taking a closer look at the X-FI sound card I bought and thought it might be a good idea to check for 64-bit drivers. I checked Creative's website and cannot find any 64-bit drivers. Would anyone know where I can find them?

The sound card is a X-Fi Fatality Xtremegamer Pro Series sound card.

kris23

did you already order the sound card?

i forgot to recommend an auzentech X-fi

Newegg.com - AuzenTech Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card - Sound Cards

it won DH's highest honors

drwho

Yes, I'm afraid I have. I'm looking at the box as I type these words.

kris23

ehh......

the X-fi XtremeMusic has x64 drivers..... you sure?

i guess if you really need to, just get that software suite

drwho

See for yourself, kris.



Customer Support: Downloads

kris23

Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty - The most powerful audio gaming accelerator ever with 64MB of X-RAM


try that one, its the same file for nearly all X-fi cards using the true chip

drwho