 KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | reply to Phantasee
Re: New rig suggestions Two 7950s will be a fairly powerful setup, but will avoid the bandwidth limitation issues you get into with the 7970/680 under PCie 3.0 x8/x8.
That way you enjoy the power of high-end Crossfire without the premium for X79.
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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. |
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| Which brand should should I go with? Visiontek? XFX? Diamond? |
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KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | Sapphire, Gigabyte, PowerColer, MSI, ASUS, and HIS are all valid choices.
»www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rad···207.html
Since the Asus Thunderbolt has its PCIe 3.0 slots spread out, I suggest you use this 2.5 slot card (assuming you don't need the PCI slots it covers):
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···14202003
I have the 7970 version of this card and it lets me overclock from a stock 1050mhz to 1215mhz. That's a very hefty OC, and pretty normal for these cards, based on what I've read.
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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. |
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| Okay. Ordering the ASUS. |
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| reply to Krisnatharok
I am thinking of going big on the PSU. Like 900w big. Overkill? |
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KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | said by Phantasee:I am thinking of going big on the PSU. Like 900w big. Overkill?
Very. Clicking on the PC Parts Picker link for the build above says the estimated power draw is 598w. Erring on the safe side and adjusting for OCing might give you 800w as an upper number, but a solid 750w unit would be more than enough (any Gold/Plat rated unit by Corsair/Seasonic/Rosewill).
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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. |
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| reply to Phantasee
Maybe even 1k. |
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| reply to Krisnatharok
Too late. Ordered. Lol.
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···17151102
850 Seasonic. |
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KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | Hardly a bad unit. It will give you overhead to OC the CPU and GPUs, if that's what you like to do. |
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KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | reply to Phantasee
Also it's not a bad idea to put up a final "BUILD COMPLETE" post so we can comb over your selections one final time. You know. Just in case.
I have no idea what you're ordering, unless it's verbatim what I suggested.
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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. |
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| reply to Krisnatharok
Never did much OC'ing outside of very potato mode with my AMD rig. And I used AMD Overdrive, so yea. Never been deep. |
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| reply to Krisnatharok
I ordered everything in your single 7970 build minus the optical and case. Still looking at cases. Just ordered the Seasonic 850 and the ASUS GPU. So 90% done. |
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Reviews:
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| reply to Krisnatharok
Got this minus 1 GPU. Did I screw up? |
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| Subbed for the ASUS card and Seasonic PSU. No case yet. |
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KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | reply to Phantasee
said by Phantasee:Got this minus 1 GPU. Did I screw up? Uhhh... yeah. You screwed up. The whole point of the X79 (i7-3820) build is the ability to drive two PCIe 3.0 lanes at x16/x16, because the highest-end GPUs (the Radeon 7970, GTX 680, and most likely the GTX Titan) become handicapped at PCIe 3.0 @ x8/x8, which is what Z77 (i5-3570K and i7-3770K) runs at in dual-GPU configurations.
The handicap of x8/x8 w/2 GTX 680s is approximately 10% at 1920x1080, but scales up to 50% loss at 3x 1080p.
However, using two 7950s will all but eliminate any bandwidth loss you would have at PCIe 3.0 @ x8/x8, since they are slightly slower than the 7970s.
tl;dr the whole point of x79 is to run two 7970s or 680s. i said so in my intro in that post
You gotta read my caveats carefully! Z77 is the better platform (more mature, faster, better feature-set) than X79 for single card configs, or even dual card configs at 1080p or using less than two 7970s or two 680s.
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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. |
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| Ok. So cancel the giant ASUS and get 2 of those Gigabyte ones? I can handle that. My bad. Xfire here I come? |
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KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | I don't know what you mean now. You can certainly do xfire on Z77, which was the second build I suggested (NOT the one you just linked). Two 7950s would be more efficient than two 7970s due to the slight overcapacity the 7970s would experience at PCIe 3.0 @ x8/x8.
To be extremely clear, here are the differences between these builds:
1. X79 build w/7970 Crossfire - i7-3820, 32GB ram, 250GB SSD, 7970 Crossfire
2. Z77 build w/7950 Crossfire - i7-3770K, 32GB ram, thunderbolt mobo, 500GB SSD, 7950 Crossfire
With Build 1, you get Sandy Bridge - Extended (an older chipset, but better handled to run 7970 Crossfire at x16/x16). The premium means you only get a 250GB SSD.
With Build 2, you get Ivy Bridge (the 22nm die shrink of Sandy Bridge), which is a newer chipset, comes with Thunderbolt, and allows you to afford a 500GB SSD. The bandwidth limitation of PCIe 3.0 @ x8/x8 on Ivy Bridge will not matter since you are using two 7950s instead of two 7970s.
Comprende? 
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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. |
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| reply to Krisnatharok
Ooookay. I got the case you had listed. Cards are redone. Pretty much a copy now except for the Seasonic I went with over the Corsair PSU. OH! Need to get the SSD! Then done. Thanks. Brofist. |
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KrisnatharokCaveat EmptorPremium
join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit
kudos:7 | I'm not going to pretend to track...  which one are you going for now? |
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Reviews:
·Charter
·AT&T DSL Service
| reply to Krisnatharok
Got all dat with Seasonic PSU and no SSD yet. |
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