Who's waiting to buy a new PC for SoW?

Wait for Sandy Bridge.

lets see how to put this..?? WRRRRROOOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

why?
#1 your main bottleneck will be GPU if u wait for something should be the GPU
#2 sandybridge can't OC them their locked chips no OC for you looser, unless you pay extra 300 dollars.. heh yeah right,
#3 SOW will be out before sandybridge SOW CAN NOT WAIT

[whatnot]

Originally Posted by techpowerup

lets see how to put this..?? WRRRRROOOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

why?
#1 your main bottleneck will be GPU if u wait for something should be the GPU
#2 sandybridge can't OC them their locked chips no OC for you looser, unless you pay extra 300 dollars.. heh yeah right,
#3 SOW will be out before sandybridge SOW CAN NOT WAIT

Aren't you a well mannered and polite individual. But anyway:

A bunch of sim games I've seen (a bit older in architechture though) have been pretty CPU intensive. DCS, FSX, IL2 etc as far as I know have their FPS set more by the CPU than GPU at the end of the day.

So can someone confirm it might be different for SOW based on the news we've received so far or do I just have to wait and see. I wouldn't rush out to buy any GPU's until there is some more light on this.

I saw sandy bridge OC'd to 4,9GHz on air. If that costs 300$ extra I don't really care and I'd be interested to see some sources behind that claim. If it's CPU that creates the bottlenecks then CPU is on my shopping cart and I don't have the time or energy to do any liquid coolings to reach 4,5GHz+ and I want to get the smoothest experience possible with SOW.

Well, thanks for the correction

So, how does it work? If i use 4x1Gb sticks, the 3 of them work in tripple channel and the last one works "on its own"? Or does it somehow "divide" the performance gains from the tripple channel sticks and have all four of them running at an in-between speed?

no thier will be no in between speed, each stick will be running at full DDR3 speeds, however if you had two sticks only you would loose some performance.. you just need 3+ sticks and your good to go the motherboard uses the data from the 3 and the 1 and all 4 sticks will run in triple Chanel just sending the info all to the same controller and motherboard sorts the data.. like i said the motherboard now must do just a little more work to process the data, so maybe it sucks up an other watt and runs a 1C hotter,but no no loss in performance (only on intel motherboards) so yup all 4 gigs running at triple channel.. enjoy!

Also, i have another question. I have an i7 920 with the stock cooler, but i got it somewhat early (April 2009). I don't know if it's one of the D0 stepping chips that overclock better, or one of the older chips where you need to be a bit more careful.

Can i see that from the BIOS or a diagnostic tool, or do i need to open the case,

downlaod teh program CPU-Z..
http://www.filehippo.com/download_cp...6f39f3b0275a1/

there install will tell you wither CO or DO revision... CO OC too it just takes more power .. ie get hotter so with stock cooler wont go as far.. DO should gt to 3.4 on stock volts easily.. i have mine at 3.8 on stock volts, however i have a powerful air cooler

I have never overclocked any of my PCs, but since i7 920 is considered so reliable i might give it a go. I have the stock cooler, an Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard and a Heroichi Cougar 700W PSU. You think i could go to 3.4Ghz without any real problems?

Asus P6T Rev V2.. ONE OF THE BEST boards to OC I7.. in fact i have a comp with the same board and an I7 i can easily show you how to do it

your PSU although called "cougar" is really a re-branded HEC PSU, HEC makes good PSUs not the best but especially for not getting to wild with the OC i dont forsee any problems
yeah everything loos great the one thing that need to know what typr of case.. IE how man fans.. unfortunate the intel stock cooler just blows hot air around in case so id recommend at least 2 big or three small fans, either way.. you should be able to hit 3.4 without adjusting volts and keep temps low.. but if you get yourself a 60-80 dollar air cooler youll get to 4.2 ill bet ((DO) maybe 3.8 CO)

I saw sandy bridge OC'd to 4,9GHz on air. If that costs 300$ extra I don't really care and I'd be interested to see some sources behind that claim.

Intel press release, the new sandybridge will have special UNLOCKED revisions, normal revisions wont OC, locked on chip, intel saw all the 920 OC and realized how much moeny were loosing decided to put a stop to it. but next amd revision will have unlocked cores.. i own ALOT of amd stock right now haha

[Blackdog_kt]

Thanks for the tips so far.

After running CPU-Z it turns out my CPU is a C0/C1 revision, so i can't go that high
The case is not anything spectacular but it's roomy and has space for a couple of extra fans, so i think that i could create some proper air circulation if i wanted to overclock.

The good thing is that even this way, it looks like i can safely get it over 3Ghz without spending too much. I don't think i'd run it as high as 4Ghz even if i had a D0 CPU. We have really hot summers where i live and the PC is in a small room without air-conditioning, if the PC doesn't fry during the summer i will from all the heat build up
I think 3.5Ghz would be good enough for me.

I guess that i could spend 100 Euros on an aftermarket cooler and 1-2 case fans and go for it if SoW happens to give me trouble. On the other hand, i could maybe sell my C0 revision CPU and get a D0 one

ok well in your situation, if you dont want to OC too high i wouldn't spend anything yet.. stock fan will most likely do just fine at the very least to 3.2 maybe you could add one case fan for very cheap probably less than 10 dollars shipped, then you just screw it on and plug it on the asus board where their is 3 or 4 pins and says fan1 or fan2

but i dont see any reason why you cant OC now, i just personally wouldnt want to run a hot case for long periods of time has a small chance to cause a problem, sounds like all you need to do is get OC

heres tools youll want/ need

intelburn
http://downloads.guru3d.com/IntelBur....html#download

core temp
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

CPUZ (already have)

heres where to start
first thing you must know is if anything goes wrong , which is to be expected, you may see blue screen, or may lock up... perfectly normal nothing is harmed, just reboot and the bios will automatically reset stock timings so you can boot again into bios..
hope you know how to get into bios... looking like this

[QUOTE]

heres a resource for you in case you want to learn about your BIOS
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=9

also i need to know what is your ram stock speed? it is likely that even your ram is running slower than it should you often have to go into bios in order to get it to run at the advertised speed

for instance you buy ddr1600 and when you install it its running at 1066 speed, most will never even realize it