Zio wrote:
Sorry John, TL:DR. You were impressed with your new Radeon though, I take it?
It turns out I did indeed have a faulty motherboard. ASUS Tech Support asked me to return it and I got a replacement at the weekend, which works fine. Dissappointingly, I can't get the kind of hefty overclock out of it that I've heard plenty of other people have been, but I suspect that this may be down to my case not having decent enough cooling. Whatever, I now have a Intel Core i5-750 CPU running perfectly at a relaxed 3.2GHz and it totally knocks the shite out of the PC it's replaced in the benchmarks I've run. I could probably get a fair bit more out of it, but why bother?
However, the last two weeks of getting that fucking thing to work have been rather stressful and so the missus has once again questioned why I don't just sell my PC either as a complete unit, or as seperate parts, on eBay and buy myself a prebuilt system from a reputable company with a decent warranty. I've done a little research and I reckon I ought to be able to get most of my money back on the computer by selling it (I shopped around for the parts to get the best prices in the first place), so... well... it appears I may have ordered an Alienware m15x laptop. Normally I wouldn't bother with an AW since they;re so overpriced, but this one with the spec I've ordered actually seems very reasonable (though I wouldn't say 'cheap').
I've also had a look to see how much I'd get for that on eBay and it seems that I could pretty much get my money back on it if the laptop arrived and I decided not to keep it. So that's what I'm doing, I'll take delivery of the machine, benchmark it and if it runs similarily to my PC I'll keep it and flog the PC. I may do that even if it's not quite as good, simply because it'll be a proper computer with a proper warranty.
For JC's benefit, the spec I've ordered is: Core i7 720QM @ 1.6 GHz (don't laugh, I've read reviews and it's meant to be an amazing CPU), 4GB RAM, GeForce GTX260M 1GB, 500GB HDD and all the various trimmings. Cost just under £1300. It's meant to be quite something in terms of build quality, etc.
congrats
Alienwares laptops are awesome. Even Custom Pc said so (mentioning of course the price.. but quality does come at a price).
I'm aware of the funny clock speeds of laptop cpus. In honesty its not all about the clock any more. It's much more about the gpu. the 260 is more than adequate (god listen to the new me....).
In other news the irresponsible side of me is back with an air of caution.. Basically I'm going to ask Videocardshop to send me a second 5770 and credit me the rest. Then I found this motherboard
http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?M ... TA2%20R3.0Now its quite old (2007) but was the first AMD based Crossfire board. I emailed Assrock and asked them about 5 series crossfire and they replied saying that not only has it been tested and confirmed working but it also has a brand new bios update 4 days old. The seal on the deal? £32 delivered for that board.
So I think with the wonder that is the 5 series I am going to give Crossfire a try. It won't cost me anything and I wont be getting rid of the Crosshair
Dav, it's a bit of both. All of the older gen GPUs are a bag of shite due to the ridiculous temps they run at. It's practically impossible to use one without killing it eventually. I know what I wrote down was incredibly long winded but it was supposed to be. It wasn't there to be casual reading for a forum it was there to help any one who might be considering getting a new GPU. So I made sure I laid out everything that someone could possibly want to know to save them the three or so days of looking all around the net and doing research. Also stuck in a video to seal the deal so you can actually see it actually running a game. Something that reviewers never do. Benchmarks smenchmarks. They mean fuck all in real world terms
Zio. Indeed. I was actually dissapointed when I fitted that 280. I was expecting an all out wank sesh, but what I got was actually not anywhere near as impressive as the look and price at launch should have done.Yes it ran everything I threw at it but here I am 7 months later with a card almost equally as capable, running at half the temps, half the size, with half the power consumption and noise and £120 full RRP at launch.