I'm N-Gage Croal, and I'm blogging this.
Well, in reality, I'm NOT N-Gage Croal, but those who read this blog know that already. This is just a quick update to list my “final” choices for my upgrade. (I use the term “final” lightly, because it's still subject to some change.) My final costs come to around 540 dollars, so slightly less than what I had originally configured with the MSI P55-GD65.
I ended up choosing the EVGA P55 FTW, which was a difficult choice to say the least. The Vdroop issues on the P55-GD65 made me a sad panda, as well as the lack of some features such as an on board CMOS reset button. The button just attracted me beyond belief, mainly due to my jumper hatred, no matter how easy DFI made it to access them. My choice quickly swung from the GD65 to a battle between two boards, the EVGA P55 SLI, and the EVGA P55 FTW. The P55 FTW is slightly more expensive, but offers a few things over top of the P55 SLI. Some of these features I won't use, such as the molex connection to provide more power to the PCI-e lanes, and the second 8 pin EPS power connector so it can provide up to 600w of power to the CPU for “extreme overclocking”. The other features, however, such as the EVGA ECP v2 (Easy control panel), and the triple BIOS, I'll probably use religiously. Beyond that, the only other real difference between the two of the boards is the number of power phases. Both boards provide 3 phases for the memory, but you get more for the processor. The FTW model has 12+2, versus the SLI model's 8+2. So, the FTW model provides “cleaner power”. Vdroop control on EVGA's P55 boards is also supposed to be pretty godly. The thing that really captured me though was the P55 FTW is only 5 dollars more than the SLI version right now! So for the few extra features, 5 dollars is worth it.
The processor, I'll be going with the same Core i5 750. My hope is to get this chip running at 4Ghz, with my NH-U12P. I was considering an i7 860, and almost did get one off eBay, at a price below that of the i5 750. But, just before the bidding ended, the price skyrocketed, and I didn't bother trying if it was going over 200, and of course, it did. Oh well, the i5 750 should run a little cooler, considering it doesn't have the extra hyperthreading (which is almost useless when it comes to games anyway).
Instead of going with 8Gb of RAM, I've decided that 4Gb is enough. It also cuts 100 dollars off of the cost of my order, and 2x2Gb sticks should overclock better than 4x2Gb sticks. I'm going with some of the cheaper DDR3, but still from a decent name brand, Corsair XMS3. It's fairly low profile too, so it should easily fit under my NH-U12P if I choose to upgrade to 8Gb in the future. From reviews read, it should run fine at stock speeds, but I don't think I'll be able to push it very far. 1600Mhz really should be okay though, considering P55 only supports up to DDR3-1333 without overclocking.
I'll also be purchasing the NH-U12P's mounting hardware seperately. Although Noctua will provide it for free, it would require me waiting two weeks and having to send in the invoice for the U12P AND the P55 FTW. I suppose, it's just to make sure that they're not getting gipped out of a bunch of mounting hardware, but really, who other than Noctua owners would use it? Back on track, however much I wouldn't have a problem with just using EVGA's “double play heatsink mounting”, I've read smatterings on different forums about the LGA775 backplate having trouble fitting properly with the Socket 1156 retention bracket. The effect being that the motherboard cannot be mounted in cases without a cutout for motherboard backplates. Not to mention, the 775 holes are placed at a slight angle, so the heatsink would be visibly crooked. I doubt it would affect cooling, but, I think for the extra 6 dollars, having a straight heatsink is a good thing.
In the laptop news field, although I won't be switching from the netbook for a while, Asus revealed the UL30JT at CES 2010. The JT rocks an ultra low voltage Core i5 dual core processor clocked at 1.2Ghz, with dynamic overclocking. Asus also introduced their new dynamic switching GPU technology, which, unlike the UL30VT, does not require a user to manually switch graphics cards, but instead it's done on the fly, second by second, depending on load. Asus also changed the GPU from the 512Mb GT210M to the 1024Mb GT310M. I'm not sure the difference exactly, but I could guess at it just being a rebranding with a bit more video memory. Asus still retains the claimed “12 hour battery life” due to the new low power i5 and the on the fly automatic GPU switching.
As for my netbook, well, Windows 7 is now sharing it's room with a new OS to me, Ubuntu. It was pretty easy to get it installed, with some slight snags in the process. Tools used were the EasyBSD 2.0 beta (build 73 I believe), Unetbootin, and Microsoft's ISO to USB tool. I shrunk the volume in Windows 7, and freed up about 12.4Gb of space. I then booted into Ubuntu, installed Ubuntu into that 12.4Gb of free space, making sure to install the boot loader into it's own partition, NOT the MBR. After that, I booted Windows install through a USB version of the Windows 7 install disc I made, repaired the MBR with the repair your computer option (For some reason it has a fit when anything else is installed), then rebooted into Windows and set an entry in the Windows boot loader for Ubuntu. After that, everything was fine and dandy, with absolutely no problems after that. The two co-exist quite nicely together. And, surprisingly, I've been using Ubuntu a fair amount. More than I thought anyway.
On the topic of my GTX275, I did get the card last weekend. When I got home on Sunday, I installed the card, and everything booted fine. No problems what so ever. Frame rates in Counter Strike Source were a good 10% higher, and I'm brilliantly happy. Of course, Monday rolled around, and I decided that it needed to be faster, so I prepared the magic “GO-FASTER!” tools, and went to work. Initially, Furmark would run at the stock clock speed, and the fan wouldn't really spin up until the GPU reached close to 90 degrees, and even then, it didn't spin up much at all. At one point, it even exceeded 90, and I just stopped it there. So, off to the magic of the internets, and I learned how to configure Rivatuner to do automatic fan control. So my settings are basically that the GPU needs to reach 85 degrees for the fan to be going full blast. No big deal, because, if you don't know already, Furmark is going to be a lot more demanding, graphically, than any current game will be. So, after some playing around, I managed to get up to 720 core, 1600 shader, and 1250 memory. That's from stock clock speeds of 633 core, 1404 shader, and 1133 memory. Not a bad overclock at all if I do say so myself. Of course, with how busy I've been in school, I haven't even had a chance to fire up Borderlands or something intensive to see how hot it gets under real world conditions.
I actually managed to overclock my processor a bit more as well, pushing it to 4.5Ghz at 1.45 volts, with a slight increase in CPU VTT. Of course, this managed to boot into Windows, but it was an instant crash. So, I scaled it back to 4.275Ghz, at 1.45v and it booted Windows and even ran super pi 1M (11.38 seconds! Cut down from my previous of 12.58!), but instantly errored in Orthos. Oh well, back to 4Ghz, and feeling good. Maybe once I get my new parts, I'll use my older stuff for benching! Get myself a nice LN2 pot, some dry ice (Yeeeah, I definitely cannot afford nor do I wish to risk LN2 right now... Dry ice cools to -80 anyway, so for someone just starting out, this will be great), acetone, and lots of insulation, and just maybe I can push it to 6Ghz or something crazy. Of course, once doing this, the processor is basically a write off.
School is going fairly well. I'm back on top of things, and not confused by the silliness of online courses. Hardware is pretty much my favorite class ever, and probably the easiest for me. The first chapter assignment, I'm positive I could do without even touching the book. We even have to do a “portfolio build” at the end of the year, which consists of building a PC for Gord. I'm quite tempted to bring in my box, disassemble it, then reassemble it. He'd be in awe at the sheer size of the heatsink and video card. Unix isn't too bad either. We're doing most of our work with OpenSUSE 11.2, and we also have VNC access to a Sun server cluster in Yarmouth, which is kinda cool. It's mainly an online course as well, so if I want to sleep in on Wednesday, then I can do so at my pleasure, and Fridays I have no class! So, as of right now, I'm on a bus back to Amherst! Programming is alright as well. We're using Visual Basic, and so far, it's been pretty fun, and quite easy to get the hang of. The other courses, Database, Systems Analysis And Design, Technical Communication, and Project Management are about as amusing as a solid brown wall. I'm really going to struggle to try and find interest in those.
I really must get a cheaper point and shoot digital camera, so I can start using my own pictures for these posts... And I can start doing some tutorials and showing off some parts/cooking! Ooooh, and maybe even.... UNBOXING VIDEOS. Well, I doubt it, but you never know.
Anyway, that's this fairly lengthy blog post done.
N-Gage Croa- I mean, Jon, signing off.
-Jon