Pics first!

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Some shots of the hardware out of the box





Heatsink is massive (not TRUE large but) and I was afraid if it was gonna fit in my dinky little case. Then I got a look at the fuckin 4870... ridiculously large.

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Installation shots

Heatsink clips on. Case is a coolermaster centurion 5. Not exactly what it was made for but oh well. You can sort of see in the top right (better pics down further) I had to take a hole saw/dremel and cut myself some cable management. Last few PSUs have been modular.


PSU is actually smaller than my old antec but the amount of cables makes up for it. Some fuzztape around the ones I need, rest I shot out the back.


hard drives in and hdd fan plugged in. shits already gettin cramped. case has no cable management


I had some old aquarium tubing (only about 300 feet ) laying around. I use it as grommets and the shit is tough as nails. Lot of sharp edges on this case, only where originally cables/etc were never meant to go. 2 sets of old ATA power connectors, 2 PCI-E 6 pin connectors (in additon to the 2 inside) and all my sata cables. Took a lot of squeezin and squirming to the the side panel back on.


Everything fits, barely. 4870 is about a half inch off the HDDs but the back end of the card doesnt seem to get hot at all, as opposed to the front part that could probably melt sand.

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After flashing the BIOS a half dozen times, Ive left everything but the mem timings @ stock. I had originally opted for the UD5 mobo but after reading some not so good things about LAN issues (not working, not firing properly) I decided to grab the UD4P. Same issues plague both boards as it turns out to be a Realtek/X58 problem. Network controller drops off the IRQ list altogether, cant even be seen from the BIOS. A hard reboot with AC power off (pull the plug or flip the UPS switch) solves it most of the time.

Im jetlagged, hungover, sick as fuck and runnin on 4 hours of sleep for 3 days. Ive yet to install vista or to do much benching/burn in. Ill try to finish up my vLite tweakin and slap on a nice small vista64 (and hope I can get the LAN to work on that) and crank out some 3dmarks, SuperPIs for you guys.

Also gonna be overclocking it to about 3.3 (166@20) as I grabbed some 1333 DDR3. It ramped up to 3.0 with nothing but a +1 step in dram voltage. Temps never seem to hit 40C on load, sits roughly @ 30-32C idle.

Noctua cooler is fuckin silent with NO resistors on. I cant imagine the LOW or ULTRALOW impeders make any difference other than less performance cooling wise. *shrug* I will admit out of all the computer parts I have purchased, Noctua is the first to send a solid metal (bout 1/8" thick) case badge. Its nothing big but its a nice touch.[/img]

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nice! was thinking about upgrading my second comp to the I7 myself,other one a QX6850 extreme,nice build Bakkoda!

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and here I was happy with my new dual core laptop

nice build, love the cabling job you'd be surprised how many people butcher that :P

Have fun, use the i7 to give us the next digit of pi.

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Few things I might warn you about:

X58 chipsets that use realtek LAN are horrible at best currently. As I stated above, I went through 5 or 6 BIOS version before getting one that allowed the LAN to actually see the outside world. Its still quite buggy as I have to power down when i reboot. LAN doesnt handle power cycling well (or at all it seems) and if you warm reboot chances are it will drop off the IRQ table and ull be internetless.

Another thing, which is my main problem, is the lack of support inherent on a platform this new. Ive just migrated from VMware to Virtualbox for the 64bit guest support, but the i7 will tell you its not 64 bit enabled when installing/mounting a 64bit guest OS.

HUGE. My case is small but goddamn everything is huge. The Noctua isnt as big as the TRUE and its still a fuckin stupid large heatsink. id forgotten how large full ATX mobos are also, used to usin matx from my old shitbox.

I recommend Gigabyte over anyone but maybe Asus but if you are lookin at the i7/x58 platform hold out until rev > 1.0 as its got some kinks.

Last edited by Bakkoda on 01-08-2009 at 10:25 PM

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Windows shit

CPUz in Windows 7. Vista would not install no matter what I did. Reboot loops, unsuitable partitions, etc. So all of these benches, etc are run on Windows 7 and a few with Vista compatibility enabled. No idea if this effects performance. Stock speeds on left, stable OC on right. Never pushed it past 150X20 as I saw it spike up to ~55C with 3.3(166X20) So I figured id hold off.


Stock speeds on the 4870. Before testing I cranked it up to 775/1000 with fan speed @70%. Fan noise was pretty noticeable.




3dMark 06 with the required compatibility options enabled. CPU test threw errors about Directx9 (the dreaded IDirect3dDevice shit).


3dMark Vantage score. Same compatibility options as 06. Didnt submit any of my scores to Orb or w/e yet. I will later when I play with OCing th gfx more (I had to do some actual work today).

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Temps and Sisoft benches

highest load temp I saw, eveythign else stayed in the 30-40C range except when I pushed it to 3.3(166x20) ten it hit 55-57C and I let it back down. Was after about 30 mins with wPrime. All BIOS fan settings are static and the turbo features enable. Kicks it up an extra multiplier when it hits load and is under thermal limits. Kinda useless to me but for gamers and heavy OCers definately nice. Its a LOT snappier than my q6600 on power/mulitplier changes. Conky also confirmed this.


Sisoft multimedia test. @ 3Ghz the 920 chip lost out only to the 965. Shit on everything else, including a 920 at stock speeds. QPI seems to make a pretty big difference. Im gonna test raising the QPI multi while keeping the bclk @ stock and see how much performance it actually makes up for.


THis is where the i7/x58 shines. It trashes everything else available today. Keep in mind im using 2GB modules @ 7-7-7-18. Id be willing to bet a performance machine with 3GB at lower timings would see an even better outcome.


even with the higher timings than ddr2 its pretty obvious ddr3 is worth the money if you are upgrading from anything older than a quad core or new generation (45nm) duals.


these 333gb platters fuckin rock.

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