Rig of the month? More like sucker of the month...

[JDocs]

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizon...ecember07.html

This poor guy shells out for 3 8800 Ultras in SLI, overclocks everthing in his case and still only gets 21266 on 3DMark06?! Suddenly my single 8800GT doing 15K doesn't seem to bad. 1Day, care to submit your single card machine for rig of the month just to annoy this poor guy?

Also it shows just how important correctly overclocking things is vs just overclocking everything to the max is. I'd bet if he had to slow down his CPU and memory and then tighten his timing he'd score higher; On my motherboard for instance memory performance is much better when its at 800mhz CL5 than at 1200mhz CL5. Additionally if he is using a 680i motherboard ocing the PCI-E lanes by 25mhz also normally yields a nice increase with even a single 320mb 8800GTS when its overclocked.

[1Day]

JDocs no longer thave the system that I set 20K single card 3DMark06 score on. But I am certain that he has lots and lots of head room on his set up, while my single card run was pushing right against the outer limit. With that set up maxed out 30K in 3DMark06 has been done.

As to your ram I am sure you mean 800 MHz at CL4. (How ever if not then the ratio you are using for your Ram to clock it to 1200 MHz is most certainly not a good choice.) Interestingly that 800 to 1200 is the convergence point in rough terms for clocked ram. 800 MHz CL4 = 1200 MHz CL5 give or take a byte of mem bandwidth. Also for 3D benching ram needs to be set slightly differently than say for Super PI benching. What that means is that 3D settings are often less tight yet yield substantially better results. The sub-timings especially the Trd associated ones are critical for good benching.

[Steel]

With his QX6850 Quad core the 3Dmark2006 doesn't use all 4 Cores which will hamper the overall benchmark test just like it did 2 1Day's Q6600. But paying for his setup. OMG I would never pay for all that hardware..

What i liked about the system was that the watercooling was setup really well & the machine was so neat. With the CPU under heavy load he stated the CPU was -32 Degrees which is fantastic..

So if he manged 2 get himself a Q9550 Chip then his benchmark would be a lot higher. Also i've been reading from you guys that 3DMark2006 isn't setup well for a Quad core & when the tests are run that it doesn't use 4 Cores and only 2.

So 1Day's benchmark probably would have been even higher with her Q6600 clocked at that unbelievable over clock.

[1Day]

So if he manged 2 get himself a Q9550 Chip then his benchmark would be a lot higher. Also i've been reading from you guys that 3DMark2006 isn't setup well for a Quad core & when the tests are run that it doesn't use 4 Cores and only 2.

So 1Day's benchmark probably would have been even higher with her Q6600 clocked at that unbelievable over clock.

Steel the CPU he currently has is an outstanding processor. It is as you know a unlocked extreme quad core. And the SLi boards are much better at overclocking dual cores than they are overclocking quads. 3DMark06 is best suited for a quad core, I have no idea where you got the notion that it is not. The rig in question would most certainly benefit from having a really good quad core and if it was able to be clocked to round about 5.4 Ghs and all three cards on LN2 then a serious assault on the 30K mark would be possible.


And with respect to my bench - my Quad core was clocked higher than his quad core. As it was in both the single and dual card results. For me to have improved on my scores would need a far stronger CPU as I was running with a Q6600 and that is so yesterday in top flight benching. But we can hope that some kind soul lets me bench with at QX9650 some time soon.

[JDocs]

As to your ram I am sure you mean 800 MHz at CL4.

Actually I mean CL3 well if memory serves... CL4 = 4-4-4-12 while CL3=3-3-3-8...

[1Day]

Actually I mean CL3 well if memory serves... CL4 = 4-4-4-12 while CL=3-3-3-8...

Now we are talking real good latencies for ram.

[JDocs]

Thanks 1Day. PS What I was refering to about the guy being a sucker is his buying habit. And I quote:

"Being an enthusiast, I could not pass up the opportunity to install a third 8800 video card to my system. Definitely gaming at very high resolutions with high levels of Anti-aliasing/Anisotropic filtering was a good enough reason."

He spent the cost of 3 Ultras to get 30% better performance than my 1 GT. He bought simply because NVidia made it available... In my opinion he got suckered out of his money since he claims the Ultras are overclocked. Either that or he did a terrible job overclocking his system.