Well, this is a freak system. You must be a freak then

Seriously, as per the recent Anandtech review of the single-board Dual-GPU 5970 (which is basically similar to your 5870SLI) - this power is COMPLETELY wasted on a single monitor even at resolutions of 2560x1600.

Unless you plan on running multiple 1920x1200 screens with Eyefinity, you are paying for power you can NOT possible realize in any game of the next two years. Because any single LCD screen will cap you at 60hz refresh rate, thus at a max of 60FPS, which you can easily get with a single 5870 in all current games.

AND you will generate twice the heat, twice the noise, AND have to deal with Crossfire conflicts for new games. Not to mention you are paying a lot of money extra.

You could easily throw out the Velociraptor (good choice for a mechanical HD, but damn hot and noisy) which in itself is not cheap, use that money and the money from the second HD5870 to buy a 256GB SSD (Corsair or Patriot). As a System and Game Drive, that would ROCK your world.

Or you could get a monitor upgrade for that amount of cash, unless you are already on something bigger than 24".

Seriously, I'm not telling you to get an SSD because I'm an SSD fanatic. I'm telling you to get an SSD because otherwise you have a VERY unbalanced build.

With a given budget X, care should always be taken to spend equal on GFX, CPU and if possible storage. With the i7 Triple Channel RAM and super fast PCI-Express speeds, your only and serious bottleneck will be the mechanical HD, even if it's a Raptor, unless you run it Raid 0 (which I don't see since you only have one Raptor).

Personally, I wanted a balanced system with no clear component bottleneck AND low noise/heat. You are oversizing the GFX component at the cost of heat, noise, storage and setup simplicity (Crossfire).


Sorry, I know I'm rambling a bit. I also know that sometimes we buy stuff because it's cool to have even if we're not really ever going to fully realize it's potential. I have a 400EUR Cougar Force Sensor upgrade even though I never every even programmed the Cougar with more than normal in-game commands. So I completely understand the "It's what I always wanted to have" point of view, but if you are looking at best-all around performance and enjoyment for a given budget, you are on the wrong track with that dual HD5870 setup.

BTW, just reading the Anandtech 5970 review again - Crossfire and Eyefinity are currently not working togehter on anything but the dual GPU single board 5970. Until ATI enables CF+EF for a HD5870 pair, you can not put this performance into real world frame rates. And while Anandtech says the 5970 is an OVERKILL for a single screen, your dual 5870s are even faster, so much more overkill.

What display do you use or plan to use, actually?

I mean, this freak monster of yours will run Stalker Call of Prypjat in DX11 at max FPS max quality 1920x1200 at 60FPS AND have some power to spare, maybe even if you go 2560x1600. There's just no way you can put this GFX performance into practical use right now.

RSColonel, how do you evaluate my system ?

Coolmaster Storm Sniper mid tower (appropriate since I did some time as a sniper in the US Army)
800 watt power supply
i7-920 with minimum 10% overcocking
Asetek LCLC 240 Liquid Cooling system w/ 240MM Radiator and Dual Fans (Extreme Overclocking Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA)
Asus P6T Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA,GbLAN,USB2.0,IEEE1394a,&7.1Audio (3-Way SLI Support)(Venom Boost Extreme OC Certified)
6 GB Corsair Dominator RAM(All Venom OC Levels Certified)
ATI Radeon HD 5870 PCI-E 16X 1GB DDR5 Video Card
128 GB Kingston 2.5 inch SATA Gaming MLC Solid State Disk (Nearly Instant Data Access Technology)
Two 22X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drives
NZXT Sentry-2 Fan Touch Screen Fan Control & Temperature Display
All-in-One External USB 2.0 Card Reader
Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)
Not worth listing all the USB, Firewire, Lan,mouse, keyboard, etc stuff

OG, you do NOT want that SSD.

I hope you read this before it's too late.

I looked at the Cyperpower website which isn't telling much, I looked at Kingston's website which isn't giving much detail either, especially since we have no definite Kingston product number.

But one thing seems very likely: This is a 1st Gen SSD with a JMICRON controller with NO write buffer, because that's what Kingston seems to sell these days.

When buying an SSD, you MUST make sure it uses either an Intel Controller (X25, damn expensive but the best), a Samsung Controller (Corsair uses these) or an Indilinx controller (which is in my Patriot Torqx).

The Samsung Controller has 128MB Write Cache, the Indilinx has 64MB Write Cache. The 1st Gen drives without these suffer terrible when writing small files, since Flash Storage is not good at doing that. The difference being that first Gen SSDs reach 40MB/s write speed or lower (which is on par with a cheap mechanical HD) but Second Gen SSDs get 200MB/s or at least 180MB/s.



So it seems to me Cyperpower is - like any other large retailer - riding marketing rather than function. The only recognized SSD brand they are offering is the X25-M, Ridata and Kingston are questionable. You need to contact them and find out the precise type number and model of that Kingston SSD, preferable ask them if they can tell you what controller it uses.

Other than that, your balance of GPU, CPU and Storage is planned nicely, I'm not sure you need the water cooling (unless the overclocked i7 gets really hot).

Oh my; too late. It has shipped and arrives tomorrow.

The water cooling was a "free" item with the basic system. I'm hoping it allows them to get a better over-clocking. I went with a better MOBO that is certified for the overclocking; same with the RAM.

Well, when the system comes in I will update you on the Kingston SSD. I will give you the specifics. I'm hoping I didn't make a mistake there.

Sorry, I might have seen it earlier if I had checked your postings, but that is also why I always say to reduce the component list to a bare minimum when Copy and Pasted.

Kingston seems to have a V+ Series that has decent write performance, indicating the use of a write cache. Lets hope this will be it.

Without cache, you will still get very nice loading times, it's just that there is better tech out there.

That's why I dislike these large chains - they never give absolute prices on the website, they don't give product details, it's really pretty hard to find exactly what you want with them.

I called and was told that the Kingston is the V+ and uses the Samsung controller.

Here is something I found on information searching for it.

http://www.futurelooks.com/kingston-technology-64gb-ssdnow-v-sata-solid-state-drive-review/

So I feel better.

Aye, then happy for you and sorry for the somewhat false alarm. The initial first searches only gave me the old Kingston, and Cyperpower didn't reduce suspicions by not putting any more info on the product online.

The review is nice in that it includes my Torqx as a reference point. You clearly see the difference between the JMicron, Samsung and Indilinx controller, though I'm surprised: The current "THE Samsung" controller as in the Corsair P128 should be faster than my Torqx, not sure why this one here comes out slightly lower. But it does say that the 64GB version has less write speed than the 128GB version, which might then become equal to my Torqx.

Nice machine OG

What are you gonna use for a Monitor, Or did I miss that?

Not necessarily relevant to the current discussion, but as a general point I've got to say that a mid-range system driving triple monitors (whether through EyeFinity or a TripleHead2Go) provides way more immersion and enjoyment than a wiz-bang latest, greatest, and fastest system. And it should cost about the same money when you buy two more monitors with the money saved on a fastest graphics card and SSD drive.