min specs for SOW

[hellbomber]

Considering your 850 PSU - what is the setup and did you ever check actual consumption?

well TBH i got the 850w just in case i decided to go crossfire or SLI and i still may do it.. if and only if it will work well with my eyefinity, AND if SOW demands it for high settings with 2x aa.. honestly i dont see the point in 8 or 16 aa on a 1920 x 1200 screen or even 6000 x 1200 for that matter, the whole point of aa is to smooth out that ugly pixel jaggedness, which is MUCH less an issue at high res.. honestly i have tried and i cannot honestly recognize the diff between 4x aa and 16x aa on my screens.. af is another story, but still beyond 4x af the return is steadily diminishing, although it would be nice to max out id much rather have three screen eyefinity. IT IS A HUGE ADVANTAGE IN DOGFIGHTS.. i went from getting 1:2 kill ration in ful realism servers to getting 1.5:1 just after eyefinity.. it also really almost eliminates the need for track IR although i still want to try it

any way your question.

System Name: "The Triple Trader"
Processor: I7 920 D0@4.2 1.35v
Motherboard: Asus P6t Deluxe V2
Cooling: Prolimatech Megalahems 2x 1800 rpm 27 Dba
Memory: 3x 2GB Mushkin enhanced Blackline 1600mhz 7-8-7-24
Video Card: Saphire 5870(6) 2GB
Hard Disk: 2x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black
Optical Drive: Samsung DVD burn / read
CRT/LCD Model: 3x 24" dell u2410 1920 x 1200 (eyefinity)
Case: Thermaltake Element G
Sound Card: HT Omega Claro plus
PSU: Corsair 850w
Software: Win7 Ultimate 64 bit
Benchmarks: max stable 4.2 Ghz stable at 1.35v at 75C max semi-stable 4.494 Ghz at 1.4v

my next upgrade step will most likely be a 6870, or possibly crossfire 5870 2GB ... but i really really dont want to crossfire

after that i am really kicking myself for not getting the 27" dells even though they were $1200 a pop when i built the rig, now i can get them for $600... but im thinking to myself if i do that il jsut be kicking myself later for not getting triple 30's , but the GPUs arnt powerful enough for 3 30" yet.. so most likely itll be 27"







this is when i first built it it still had the "pathetic" 5770, that only ran MW2 at 80FPS at 6000 x 1200 on high settings, and no aa ...such a pathetic card!

[hellbomber]

did you ever check actual consumption?

no i haven't checked it even though i do have a kill-a-watt and check other appliances, but from what i know the PSU shouldnt draw more than 500wtts max from the wall, which would be about 450w for the system.. but also consider each monitor draws another 75 watts, the sound system is drawing alot of watts and so are the subs..well north of a thousand considering my subs are over 1500watts, depending on how loud my dub-step music is, usually the walls are shaking, and then i have security system monitors 4 of them with 16 cameras, 2 DVRs to record the cameras, 2 other computers 1 with 4 monitors, and the other with 2, a mini fridge, radios, police scanner, the list goes on, it gets so hot in here have to put the AC on full blast, AND have another ac unit installed just for my room, its even hot in here during the winter when its 5C outside

[hellbomber]

working drunk is the fast lane to success.

well now that i have a full time employee im alot more lazy, i pretty much make him do everything while i pass out, but it took me three years of working 100 hour weeks to get here so id say i earned it

[Blackdog_kt]

I used to have nVidia cards up until i built my i7 920 last year. I switched to Ati at that point to keep the cost down, with a 4870 1Gb (it also had a full GB of Ram, as opposed to 768Mb of comparable nVidia cards at the time for the same price). Unlucky for me it was a deffective card and got fried, but thanks to the 3 year warranty i switched it for a 4890 for free and i've had no problems since.

Before someone goes off about poor manufacturing quality in general, let me say that i also had an nVidia card go dead on me in the past. I had a NX6600 whose fan got fried and it almost killed the card, but the hassle in that case was that fan damage was not covered under the warranty. Also, replacing the fan yourself would void the warranty. So, i was forced to void it to repair damage that should have been covered under the warranty. In that sense, my experience in troubleshooting with nVidia was worse than doing it with Ati.

I dual-boot with winXP SP3 on one disk and Win7 64bit on the other, so i didn't have any problems with drivers...IL2 and other old games stay installed under XP where i run older drivers, new stuff goes under Win7 where i run the latest ones.

In fact, i think that there will be no problems whatsoever with Ati and SoW. The problems with IL2 are because of the fact that IL2 uses OpenGL. SoW will use DirectX, so it makes sense to buy the cards that deliver the most processing power for the least amount of money and watts. I never buy top of the line GPUs, i wait until they are in the $150 range before i pick them up. Since SoW will use DX, if i were to buy a new GPU for it i'd get a monster 5xxx series card from Ati instead of a 4xx series card from nVidia. Performance would be comparable since i run a single 1680x1050 (16:10) 22" dell monitor, so i'd rather buy something that generates less heat and costs less, rather than have the GPU fans screaming all the time and raising my room temperature an extra 5 degrees celsius, it's hot enough during the summer as it is

[hellbomber]

it's hot enough during the summer as it is

i feel ya!, and the Nvidia fanbabby feels it too

you tube.com/watch?v=2QkyfGJgcwQ

[hellbomber]

So, i was forced to void it to repair damage that should have been covered under the warranty. In that sense, my experience in troubleshooting with nVidia was worse than doing it with Ati.

to be fair to the nVidababy, generally its the card maker that does the warranties not directly ati or nvidia, sound like you got a bad company, maybe go with XFX or the likes next time they have double lifetime warranties, although nVidia companies are going out of business fast from the Fermi debacle, BFG just closed shop. and XFX jumped exclusivity ship, soon thier may not be any suppliers left rumor is EVGA is noone to happy right now either

[Blackdog_kt]

Yes, it's the final manufacturer that's mostly responsible for this, just relaying the whole experience here.

I buy almost exclusively from a small shop in my hometown (i avoid the franchised shops), plus order from the internet sometimes if i get a good price. The guy i buy from only carries MSI and a couple of other manufacturers for GPUs just because of the fact that they give a 3 year warranty on all of their cards, both Ati and nVidia.