Questions about i7 platform

By Boz
in Hardware Hangout

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Veteran

The Canadian

Posted
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:) The sweeping replies in this thread about not needing more than 6GB are rediculous at best.

The problem is, that everyone assumes that the only thing you use your computer for is gaming...there are a bunch of us that make our money because of our computers; so we need more RAM, etc.

Yes, I'll admit I am a Gamer, and have been gaming for almost 30 years...but it's not what my computer's prime function is.

Mentor

_dandy_

Posted
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Why does he need to justify himself to you or anyone else, Are you the RAM Police?

No need to justify to either myself or others. Just trying to rationally quantify things with real hard numbers to bring things into perspective, instead of just going with his but I neeeeeed tons of RAM, I don't use my PC like youuuuu do attitude which, to me, sounds like little more than an attempt to win a penis size contest.

Is that okay with ya?

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
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The guy needs the extra RAM that is all you really need to know. He never once asked anyone to quantify his RAM usage. 6GB of DDR3 is about ?60 here for ?120 you can have 12GB of memory. It's no longer one of the most expensive parts of a system. I'm surprised no one picked on his choice of graphics cards. Why does he need dual GTX275's when he clearly stated his not even a gamer and does not plan to game on the computer at all.

8800GT's would be sufficient for what needs but no one brought that up. Just zoomed straight in to one of the cheapest parts in his entire build!

The only question he asked that even had a fleeting relationship with RAM was would this ram work in this motherboard.

Mentor

Mannlich

Posted
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I still need to get an aftermarket HSF, and when I do I am most likely going to go with the Prolimatech Megahalems -- http://www.prolimatech.com/products/megahalems.html -- as it is getting great reviews.

Great Heatsink. I just installed it myself on my i7 920. Idle temps in the low 30s, load temps in the low 60s.

Apprentice

Malkii

Posted
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I'm still not buying the argument that you need 12GB of RAM despite what you'd like us to believe. Please post screenshots of Task Manager on your current machine, showing the Processes tab, under what you'd consider (for you) to be normal and heavy loads. Include the "Memory Usage" and "Peak Memory Usage" columns (XP), or "Memory - Working Set" and "Memory - Peak Working Set" (Win7) -- I don't recall what the equivalent are called on Vista, if that's what you're using.

You may very well need it, but until you can provide the figures to back your claims, I'm taking this with a large grain of salt.

Why the hell would he want to prove anything to you? If you don't believe him I doubt he could care less, he is asking for system building advice not how much ram you believe he needs......

If he wants 128Gig what difference does that make to you? Roflmao!

Some people are incredible!

Community Regular

Zarpraz

Posted
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Dreamweaver and Illustrator or both 32bit, only Photoshop come in 64 bit.

Personally I'd have gone with a 920 and overclocked it, depending on the stepping people are getting around 3.8GHz on air cooling which trounces even the extreme never mind the 940, they would even if OC'ed more modestly. I'd also definately go with an after market heat sink both for improved cooling and less noise.

Would forget about the Velociraptors, I'd go for Caviar Blacks, the performance difference is too small these days to warrant the price. Neither would I go for Seagates knowing the issues they've been having.

Veteran

The Canadian

Posted
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Great Heatsink. I just installed it myself on my i7 920. Idle temps in the low 30s, load temps in the low 60s.

I am currently using the stock HSF that came with the i7 965...unfortunately no one seems to sell the PM HSF here in Canada; so I have no idea how to get my hands on it, I want to try my CPU at 4GHz as my mobo -- Rampage II Extreme -- has an auto OC'ing feature to do that but I want to wait until I get an aftermarket HSF.

Grand Master

Boz

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Some of you might've missed in my long ass reply to Vice earlier. I'm using Cooler Master V8.

8800GT's would be sufficient for what needs but no one brought that up. Just zoomed straight in to one of the cheapest parts in his entire build!

I have them now powering the monitors and I can feel a bit of a strain. I'm effectively pushing 8.7 million pixels across 8800GTs just do draw stuff out in OS.

And to be honest I want to be able to have powerful GPUs in case I want play a game or two 2-3 months from now on a 30-incher in 2560x1600 :)

Veteran

The Canadian

Posted
Posted
Some of you might've missed in my long ass reply to Vice earlier. I'm using Cooler Master V8.

I have them now powering the monitors and I can feel a bit of a strain. I'm effectively pushing 8.7 million pixels across 8800GTs just do draw stuff out in OS.

And to be honest I want to be able to have powerful GPUs in case I want play a game or two 2-3 months from now on a 30-incher in 2560x1600 :)

Why not wait a few months until the DX11 cards start showing up, that should push the price down on the DX10 cards....

Veteran

ccuk

Posted
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If you're suggesting to do that then you might as well wait until DX11 comes out before you plan your build....

I kind of agree. Not only will the CPU prices drop, but the graphics card prices will also drop.

I am still perplexed as to why you need GTX275s, 260s in SLI would be more than adequate, and as far as drawing pixels on the screen is concerned I can assure you that a single 8600GT would drive a 30 incher more than adequately for Photoshop or Illustrator work. For 3DS Max I can see you wanting something with more power though, surprising that you haven't opted for a quadro and aren't building a dedicated gaming rig.

Grand Master

Boz

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I can assure you that a single 8600GT would drive a 30 incher more than adequately for Photoshop or Illustrator work. For 3DS Max I can see you wanting something with more power though, surprising that you haven't opted for a quadro and aren't building a dedicated gaming rig.

You don't have to assure me. I have 2 8800GTs now and it's not adequate. I mean it works and it's usable of course, but I can feel windows dragging across 3 monitors. I don't see how 8600GT would run it better. There's a difference between running it and running it fast and smooth.

I did pick 275s as I wanted to have a bit better cards if I want to game. GTX 250s in SLI would do what i wanted, but it was a good deal ($220) for 275s so I went for it.

Grand Master

Vice

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There is one thing I should point out Boz in the newer NVIDIA drivers you can use Multiple Monitors with SLI but only two monitors. So if you want to run 3 your need a 3rd card. I personally run a 30" and a 20" on my main GTX260 (as is required for it to work with SLI on) and then run an 8400GS for my 3rd and 4th monitor. Works great.

Veteran

ccuk

Posted
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You don't have to assure me. I have 2 8800GTs now and it's not adequate. I mean it works and it's usable of course, but I can feel windows dragging across 3 monitors. I don't see how 8600GT would run it better. There's a difference between running it and running it fast and smooth.

I did pick 275s as I wanted to have a bit better cards if I want to game. GTX 250s in SLI would do what i wanted, but it was a good deal ($220) for 275s so I went for it.

Drawing 2D windows on those displays is not, in any real world speeds, going to be measurably faster using the GTX2XX series as compared with your existing 8800s. It seems to me that your lag is down to some other factor and I would, at a guess, say it is down to HDD speed and pagefile issues.

Mentor

_dandy_

Posted
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Why the hell would he want to prove anything to you? If you don't believe him I doubt he could care less, he is asking for system building advice not how much ram you believe he needs......

And what exactly would you base your system building advice if not by first measuring needs?

But who cares, bigger's better and that's the end of that, right? Pretty rational way of doing your shopping I guess...

Grand Master

Boz

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And what exactly would you base your system building advice if not by first measuring needs?

But who cares, bigger's better and that's the end of that, right? Pretty rational way of doing your shopping I guess...

If you read my original response carefully you would see that I know exactly what I want, but that i was asking specific questions about compatibility not how much ram I should use. I don't really have issues with people commenting but it's really not discussing the topic but mostly giving opinions about something that was not asked. Makes sense?

Veteran

ccuk

Posted
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And what exactly would you base your system building advice if not by first measuring needs?

But who cares, bigger's better and that's the end of that, right? Pretty rational way of doing your shopping I guess...

Strikes me that you are using your needs to create a standard by which others should build their PCs.

You want someone to rationalise why anyone could need more than 4GB of RAM? I do 3D work, and I can tell you right now that the programs I use will eat 4GB of RAM faster than you can load Counter Strike Source. If I start doing particle simulations I would say 12GB of RAM in given situations would actually be tight, thats not even bringing into the equation compositing scenes of 2k or 4K together. I am unsure of your computing background or of your job occupation but please take it from me, some of us do indeed require large amounts of RAM and very fast large RAID arrays in order to maintain high data transfer and computation rates. The right tools for the right job.

Grand Master

goji

Posted
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If it were me, I would purchase ATI cards, particularly the 4870 for now. They are cheap, and can be had for about $150 online with rebates and other promotions.

However, with Nvidia's CUDA platform sure to mature and grow, the next generation powerhouse will be in Nvidia's camp. I may be reading to much into this, but I think the writing is on the wall for this one.

Grand Master

Vice

Posted
Posted
If it were me, I would purchase ATI cards, particularly the 4870 for now. They are cheap, and can be had for about $150 online with rebates and other promotions.

However, with Nvidia's CUDA platform sure to mature and grow, the next generation powerhouse will be in Nvidia's camp. I may be reading to much into this, but I think the writing is on the wall for this one.

Don't worry yourself over CUDA - ATi and NVIDIA are both committed to supporting OpenCL which is becoming the GPGPU standard (Like OpenGL). It has the benefit of already running on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X and many different companies are backing it including Intel (Who make the majority of GPU's in the Market Place)

Grand Master

Boz

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Lol, the i7 920 isn't that much faster generally than the QX9770. I'd ditch the 940, and get a 920 and do what I did and overclock it to 4Ghz. The speed is killer and you'll save some much needed pennies for SSD drives and other goodies.

The thing is that I don't really like to overclock. I'm more of a get the fastest you can and run it factory settings to get maximum stability. Even if I do overclock it's like 10-15% at the most. So I could bring up 2.93 to 3.2 or 3.4 but that's it.

Proficient

Raikou Tch

Posted
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Thing is, if you run stress tests on maximum overclock and it doesn't error or crash, then it is completely stable. I think you should at least try it out; you might be missing out on a lot of free power. That said, if you get any errors I wouldn't trust it at that clock speed especially with the critical work you do.

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