2009 is NOT my year

[NickN]

I dont know if no news is good news or not... but I will check back in a bit

[vgbaron]

Just a lot of testing. No real joy but interesting. Using 450 1800 8-8-8-24  PL7 I tried various combos of Vtt from 1.1 to 1.3 and using 1T and 2T.

Also double checked - with those settings system was OCCT stable.

Found two configs that worked with 3DMark - 2T and 1.28Vtt and 1T and 1.1Vtt.

Both did not work in FSX. the 2T/1.28 setting gave me the same garbage as before only very quickly.

The 1T/1.1 setting hung FSX after a few minutes but the mouse was live, etc and I was able to ctl-alt-del to task manager and quietly close the application.

Disabled the Static Read and tried again and it was worse - got the garbage tiles.

BTW, JIC I tried Enhanced IDE - bsod as expected.

Aside  - what do you use for fan control of the GTX 280?

[NickN]

bummer


OK

Then at this point and assuming 1800 was completely stable in the 32bit OS I must assume there is something in that system in combination with 64bit which simply does not play right

Right now I am just using EVGA's Precision Tool on the i7 system with the 280...but thats not an auto fan control, its manual.

I have not had any time to play! I cant build GEX on the i7 system or the perf would be out of line with typical systems so I have not spent a lot of time with it setting up all my auto controls. I will probably set up RivaTuner on it when I get time but I have not checked to see if they updated it to control the 280 yet


I guess you are going to have to go back down to 430 8-8-8 vic and set the numbers back up as they were stable on that clock. The benchmark numbers were not that far off the 1800 values so I dont see you losing anything on that clock, thats for sure but I did want to know if it would stabilize @ 1800.

I could probably sit here and throw skew values out at you for 2 days and hope for a winner but I'll tell you truth the amount of going back and forth and you testing for another sliver of perf, I just dont see the value other than the loss of 180MHz CPU clock, which is really nothing in the big picture

[NickN]

If it was me I would probably be taking the rail off the motherboard and checking for contact on the heatsinks to the northbridge, southbridge and the power mosfets

Thats a job in itself and not something I suggest you do unless you are just completely board and want a project for the day and you do need to make sure it goes back together correctly.. I believe there are spacers/washers on that one


The only other suggestion I can think of is to try the mushkin memory @ 1800 and see what it does.. If you get the same thing you know its not the memory.. I dont think it is anyway.

DRAM STATIC stays off.. your better off taking 1T over DSRC enabled

[vgbaron]

I agree. 430 8-8-8 seemed just fine and the bench differences were just that - bench differences - nothing that I could translate to FSX.

Just tried Riv2.2 and it doesn't handle the 280n right for fan control. I'll revisit it JIC it was me misunderstanding something.

I want to get some flying done so I'll just leave it at 430 and if something else crops up that's an issue I'll drop it down a bit.

Not going to buy any more hardware until the I7's come down. Of course, by then I may have to deal with Windoze 7.

I will try VERY hard not to come up with any more brainteasers for a while - I'll just stick to simple things like nHancer settings, etc..

As always, I appreciate your help and certainly enjoy the banter - look forward to doing it over a cool one some day.

Also, hope readers of these threads learn a bit about how things can go.

Now to go get Acronis True Image - need a decent b/u program for XP64.

Thanx again -

[vgbaron]

If it was me I would probably be taking the rail off the motherboard and checking for contact on the heatsinks to the northbridge, southbridge and the power mosfets

Thats a job in itself and not something I suggest you do unless you are just completely board and want a project for the day and you do need to make sure it goes back together correctly.. I believe there are spacers/washers on that one


The only other suggestion I can think of is to try the mushkin memory @ 1800 and see what it does.. If you get the same thing you know its not the memory.. I dont think it is anyway.

DRAM STATIC stays off.. your better off taking 1T over DSRC enabled

LOL Actually I did take the rail off the very first thing. Cleaned everything and reassembled. They do have quite a few spacers but what surprised me was the low quality of the TIM - really thick tape.

Come to think of it, I will give te Mushies a try for the helluvit. Can't hurt, and IIRC, he was using +70GTL to set up his clock with vtt 1.1 only he had static read AND write enabled.

[NickN]

OK well then THATS OUT too

Glad you did that rail removal.. they were known for being pooly fitted

Riva is not working the 280 fan yet?  crap.. well, I dont have to sit here and listen to it all day so thank god for that. I hope they get the support for that nailed down soon.

[vgbaron]

This is about as good as it's going to get and it ain't bad. Put the mushies in and had same oroblem. Left them in and dropped to 430. Flew a beautiful evening flight through the LA Basin in the Shockwave P-51 with no problems - steady 30fps locked at 30 using TrackIR and ASA weather.

Can not complain.

Did put a call into Asus about the Enhanced IDE but even if they would RMA the board ( I did remove the rail), it's like you said - considering the hassle of removing and reinstalling for a few bench points....

I'm getting too old for the "my toys are better than your toys" game.

Unless something goes haywire from out of nowhere, I think I'll keep the setup as is and enjoy it for a while.

although...I wonder if I could get this memory down to 7-7-7  ;)


Have a good one!

[NickN]

you could go back to x32  

[vgbaron]

[NickN]

I didnt think so....    :)

[vgbaron]

Well, IMHO, all the effort was worth it. Hopefully nothing will come out of the woodwork but I am impressed with the overall quality and smoothness of FSX. I usually avoid flying at night because it was always a little choppy in dense areas and this last flight was fantastic.

Of course, I did have the advantage of a completely clean install and was able to follow your setup guide to the letter.

I don't think there's any more to get out of this system without some sort of hardware change

[NickN]

little secret

x64 is smoother than x32

and XP x64 is smoother than Vista or Windows7 x64

so you doin fine and on the right OS and hardware, for now

[vgbaron]

as the "A Team" used to say - "I love it when a plan comes together!"

8-)