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Thanks a lot Myrmidon, super informative.
Quick question: I had always thought the Z68 chipset needed a SSD and also wasn't quite as efficient at OCing-- I take it both these thoughts are wrong and I don't need to buy a SSD and Z68 OCs well? I'm more a fan of a dedicated GPU until SSDs really start blowing my mind.
And I always thought my PSU was overkill (seemed like it would only max out at 300, if that) so it was very good to see you support that. Thanks.
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5930 Posts
Z68 motherboards overclock as well as P67. Maybe high end P67 boards might have more goodies to overclock with obscene frequencies but who the fuck cares you're not here doing that.
No you don't need an SSD. Z68 has options for SSD caching but like all enterprise technologies, its doubtful you'll ever find a use for it. You'll get more shoving everything onto the SSD you were going to cache than using it as an actual cache.
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hey i got a quick question regarding ram issues. It turns out that my bsod and installation problems was from a bad ram. I took one of my 2gb sticks out and then i was finally able to install sc2, no more crashes, no more bsod. Now i been reading and since my ram is 2x2gb 1600 CL 9-9-9-24, and my mobo is asrock h61m-vs that can only handle 1333, that if i fix some settings like voltage and few others in the bios, that my ram shouldn't be an issue. Whenever i have done memtest before it gets stuck and i have left it on overnight. So i can't tell whether my ram is bad or if it is just incompatible and i need to make some bios changes.
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Your mobo will not be able to to use it above 1333 that's it, bad ram stick
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On September 18 2011 13:28 skyR wrote: You don't need 600w of power for a non-overclocking configuration and with a motherboard that isn't capable of CrossfireX. A core i5 2400 uses roughly 55w while a 6870 uses roughly 130w, this configuration will have a hard time breaking 200w, yet alone even come close to 600w. From a different thread, but is this true? We have a prebuilt Acer computer with an AMD CPU that according to calculators uses the exact same amount of power as a i5 2400. The power supply's 300W, there's like 2 led lights 6 MB of ram one HD. It has only an integrated graphic gard, now my question is, would it be safe for the power supply to change into a 6850, as the calculators recommend a PSU closer to 400W?
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prebuilt desktop's have very bad psu's usuallly, in 99% of cases a 300w of a prebuilt wont manage an hd6850
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5930 Posts
No, I wouldn't even try it. You *might* be able to get away with 300W with a low end Sandy Bridge processor but the minimum for a HD6850 is still a decent ~400W with something like 27A on the 12V rails. Power consumption between the HD6850 and HD6870 aren't really that much different anyway.
Did you use an online calculator to determine the max power draw of your Acer system? Whatever AMD processor you have in there is very, very likely going to be drawing a significant amount more power than a i5 2400. To use Tech Report's results as an example, an Athlon II X3 draws 140W* while an i5 2400 draws 110W* during a typical render job. Phenom IIs are even worse, with some of the higher clocked stock models hitting up to 180W*.
*This is straight from the wall.
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Sooo I was wondering. What would happen if you crossfire a 6950 2GB(connected directly to CPU) and a 6950 1GB? Would it still function with only 1GB?
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On September 18 2011 22:06 Shikyo wrote: Sooo I was wondering. What would happen if you crossfire a 6950 2GB(connected directly to CPU) and a 6950 1GB? Would it still function with only 1GB?
It would automatically take you to Google.com, the same place most of us would go to definitively answer this question. For SLI, it wouldn't work. For Crossfire, it either won't work, or will work at the smaller number most likely.
Seriously, dude, google is your friend, I'm just the guy who groans every time he sees your name on a tech thread.
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5930 Posts
Crossfire shares framebuffer so however much you spent on your HD6950 2GB instead of another HD6950 1GB is wasted.
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On September 18 2011 16:36 Womwomwom wrote: Z68 motherboards overclock as well as P67. Maybe high end P67 boards might have more goodies to overclock with obscene frequencies but who the fuck cares you're not here doing that.
No you don't need an SSD. Z68 has options for SSD caching but like all enterprise technologies, its doubtful you'll ever find a use for it. You'll get more shoving everything onto the SSD you were going to cache than using it as an actual cache.
haha i love your style of posting man, dont ever stop
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On September 18 2011 19:51 Shikyo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 18 2011 13:28 skyR wrote: You don't need 600w of power for a non-overclocking configuration and with a motherboard that isn't capable of CrossfireX. A core i5 2400 uses roughly 55w while a 6870 uses roughly 130w, this configuration will have a hard time breaking 200w, yet alone even come close to 600w. From a different thread, but is this true? We have a prebuilt Acer computer with an AMD CPU that according to calculators uses the exact same amount of power as a i5 2400. The power supply's 300W, there's like 2 led lights 6 MB of ram one HD. It has only an integrated graphic gard, now my question is, would it be safe for the power supply to change into a 6850, as the calculators recommend a PSU closer to 400W?
Yes, this is true. You can go look at benchmarks or measure from the wall yourself.
268w from the wall: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/37286-amd-radeon-hd-6870-hd-6850-review-25.html
256w from the wall: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/20
265w from the wall: http://techreport.com/articles.x/19844/15
All of those are with Bloomfields.
And a 300w power supply from a prebuilt is not the same as a quality 300w you buy from a retailer. The one included in your prebuilt most likely does not provide anywhere close to 300w on the 12v rail, it probably provides closer to 200w. You can run a core i5 2400 and a 6850 perfectly fine off a quality 300w power supply that actually provides close to 300w (24a) on the 12v rail. But good luck finding one that is less expensive than the CX430 V2 after mail in rebate.
Unless you have like a single or dual core Athlon than your AMD processor will not be using the same amount of power as a core i5 2400. It'll be using (much) more power than any Intel processor.
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16A on 12V rail... yeah why would you even try to sell this as a 300W PSU -_- What's the point of prebuilt computers if they're supposed to be low trouble and then they have a crappy 70% efficiency PSU?
On September 18 2011 22:24 Womwomwom wrote: Crossfire shares framebuffer so however much you spent on your HD6950 2GB instead of another HD6950 1GB is wasted. Oh, no, the 2gb one actually costs less in this case but they only have 1 in stock and the next one is going to arrive in like 2 months
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I'm not sure how old your prebuilt is either but older power supplies had most of the power on the 5v and 3.3v rails because those were the rails that powered all the major components. Your power supply may also be rated for maximum instead of continuous. Regardless, there are several reasons why it might be labeled as 300w.
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Is there a quality 300W from a retailer out there, aside from...the Huntkey Jumper Gold 300W? Okay, you can also buy a 300W OEM Seasonic unit at retail too. I think that's more of a hypothetical than a realistic scenario, as alluded to above, since those won't really be cheaper than the CX430 V2 anyway. Mostly the only good-quality lower-wattage units come inside business-class workstations from Dell and so on. There you can get like 250W 80 plus gold units from Delta.
It's just the power supplies in low-end consumer desktops (like most people asking have, that are sold for razer-thin profits) that are a bit suspect, and still, none of those are going to be as bad as some stuff you can find on retail like this: http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6714
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Should be functional for at least bad settings, since BF3 is the only one I expect to be able to be demanding, and that's being released on consoles at well, which means minimum spec should be below a 9800gtx.
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You shouldn't have to upgrade the 9800 GTX for 1280x1024.
$25 for a single 4gb module is expensive... heatspreaders don't do anything besides looks fancy so unless you really want to waste $5 for aesthetics you'll likely never even see ever again, you can get it instead of a $20 module: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231421 There's probably some core i5 2400 + memory combos as well.
Earthwatts 430D is overpriced. You can get the Antec Neo Eco 520C for the same price ($45 after mail in rebate): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371030 If you want to deal with adapters when you upgrade your GPU than you can get the 400w variant.
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Hi guys, so i'm building a computer and i was wondering of your thoughts on a graphic card that will run good at (1920x1080) for anywhere between 150-250 or so, any suggestions would be great it's gonna be running with an overclocked i5 2500k.
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560 ti, 6950. 6870 but might not run everything at 60fps
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