Enneisevoli wrote:Looks like i was sent bad ram possibly (unless you guys can think of what else it might be)
Try downloading and running
Memtest86 (you'll need to burn it to CD and then boot from the CD. Usually 1 full pass (about 20 minutes) is enough to reveal bad memory but a thorough overnight test ensures there's no problems. You'll need that if you're tweaking your memory timings anyway.
Enneisevoli wrote:Also, I'm contemplating on biting the bullet and going for some gtx 480's. 1500's a bit steep, but the cards will help me with work (video editing and animation) anyway so i guess i could warrant spending that. Will my motherboard handle 3 of those ok? or will it bottleneck and not even worth putting that kind of power in it? Thx again for all your help phane, wish i knew more about hardware so i could stop bugging you lol
I have 3 main concerns.
1) that your computer might not be able to keep up with 3 of your current cards, let alone 3 GTX 480's. The bottleneck may not be the card or the PCIe bus but the processor (as in they don't make one fast enough yet). So you might spend $1500 and see no performance boost at all, which I wouldn't want you to do. One thing you can do is run 3D Mark 06 and see what your scores are with 3 cards, and then run it again with only 2. See how much of a performance drop (if any) you see.
2) The GTX 480 requires an ungodly amount of power.
Two[/b/] of them in SLI pull in an estimated 595 watts (GTX 280's are 508 watts) under ideal conditions (at load). A third would probably push you over 700 watts of power. I'm not sure what kind of power supply you have there (or how many amps you got on that circuit for your house, that's almost 6 amps off of a standard 15 amp circuit). I'd make sure your power supply can handle at least 700 watts (800 to be extra safe) on the +12 volt rails. To find that out, open up your case and look at the power supply. It will have a chart with voltages and amps. Look at each of the boxes that have +12v written on them and see how many amps there are. Add them all up and multiply by 12 to find out how many watts you can handle on the +12v rails.
3) The GTX 480 puts out a TON of heat. 55 degrees C at idle, 93 degrees at full load. A GTX 280 is 49 at idle, 69 at load. Your case had better have plenty of good ventilation and a decent gap between each 2 slot card.
Enneisevoli wrote:one last thing. still cant figure out how to do memory tweaks. know of any good guides online for my setup that could help me? If not no worries, don't go out of your way to find one. Just wondering if you knew of one off hand. Thx man)
I can't find any decent guides. It's a fairly complicated and laborious process that may result in a 10% performance boost, or may not end up with any appreciable boost at all.
If you're already benching over 4k, I don't know why you'd throw another $1500 at it. 4k at high res is probably about as good as you can expect. You'd be MUCH better off saving the $1500 and using it to upgrade 1-2 years from now when you actually have a reasonable amount of room to move up instead of struggling to plaster yourself closer to the performance ceiling.
I just fully upgraded and optimized my rig and I'm quite happy with a 3,650 score at full screen high res. I know my GPU's are bottlenecking me on that benchmark but I figure in 2 years there'll be a card available for $100 that performs just as well as the $350 cards of today, and probably has less power and heat concerns... ><
. Fuck random, everything should be based on skill and effort. Luck has never been my friend lol.