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    Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

    My turn to post a build I guess, wasted way too much time on this one…
    First proper SLI board I get so wanted to play around a little bit since I got a couple 8800 GTS.
    Everything done with random parts I had lying around.

    Specs :
    • CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9450
    • RAM: 2x2GB KHX6400D2K2
    • GPUs: 2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS G80 320MB
    • MB: P5N-E SLI
    • PSU: Antec Basiq Power 550 Plus
    • HDD: Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1TB
    • ODDs: DVD ROM, DVD RW
    • Case: not sure


    Cooling:
    • 92mm rear fan
    • 120mm front fan
    • Additional heatsink on southbridge
    • Additional heatsink on CPU VCore MOSFETs
    • CPU heatsink from HP dc7700 MT


    Had to cut some fins from the southbridge heatsink for the second graphics card to fit.
    CPU heatsink was more of a pain, in the HP dc7700 it screws directly into the mainboard tray.
    So I had to use a rear bracket (got one without heatsink for some reasons), but the nuts were too small.
    Drilled and re-threaded them and now the heatsink screws do fit.
    Also had to remove a piece of plastic from the heatsink which didn't fit.
    Had to cut/adjust some fins of the northbridge heatsink as well.
    At first I tried using some fancy Zalman heatsink but it was basically useless ( https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1684603207 ). Also it had no PWM control so it was running at full speed (the board can only adjust voltage for chassis fan, CPU fan is controller with PWM only).
    For the front fan, I cut an opening in the chassis since it was restricting airflow way too much, the front cover mesh is already pretty dense.

    I was missing modular cables for PSU so I used Molex adapters instead for the second graphics card and the HDD, I absolutely hate them but they do the job…

    One of the graphics card was dead when I got it. Basically heavy liquid damage, had to rework a lot of solder joints on the back, fix some traces, replace some caps, also reballed a VRAM chip. Did that a while ago, it was working fine but when I picked it again it didn't work anymore. Something was pulling the PCIe reset signal low, also preventing the motherboard from POSTing. In the end I couldn't really figure out what the problem was (no schematics/boardview for this card), it would come good again for a short time when injecting some voltage, so as a last resort I pushed the voltage above what I should and for now that took care of it (don't do this at home).

    Motherboard also had several problems.
    Very large ripple on CPU VCore ( https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1684603334 ), caps were good, it was actually the buck controller (ADP3198) that wasn't regulating properly, so replaced that and that took care of this issue. I also took the opportunity to try to reduce Vdroop which can be quite large on this board, I observed more than 0.15V difference between idle and stress test, not that great for overclocking.
    Bridged one of the resistor between CSSUM and CSCOMP, not the correct way to do it according to the datasheet, but much easier that adding a voltage divider on LLSET. Difference is less than 0.02V now.

    Next issue was that the audio codec wasn't detected. Replaced the ALC883 with an ALC888 and that's fixed too.

    Final issue was with Ethernet. Gigabit mostly didn't work even though it got uplink. 100M was mostly working but not 100% stable. It was both a hardware and a software issue. Software issue was the crappy driver from Nvidia, the Microsoft one works much better. Hardware issue was weird. Booting from PXE was extremely slow so for sure it wasn't just software. I replaced the Ethernet PHY IC (88E1116), didn't fix it. I replaced the ports stack (2xUSB+RJ45 which also contains the Ethernet transformer), didn't fix it either but at that point I realized that the issue was mostly on download using iperf3, so unlikely to be an issue on the physical link after the PHY, more likely it was a problem on the RGMII interface between PHY and MAC (Nvidia southbridge here). Started probing, touched up some solder joints and that fixed it. Couldn't get to the bottom of it here either…

    All components came from donor boards, for once the crap I keep that should go to the trash bin has been helpful…


    Now comes overclocking.
    Voltages:
    • VCore: 1.30000 V (setpoint, actual is around 1.33V-1.34V)
    • Memory: 2.085 V
    • Northbridge: 1.563 V


    Frequencies:
    • FSB: 1650 MHz
    • Memory: 825 MHz (linked)
    • CPU: 3300 MHz (locked multiplier x8, 412.5 MHz BCLK)


    3.32 GHz on the CPU is unstable, this is an FSB ceiling because it's the same when CPU multiplier and RAM ratio are decreased. Increasing CPU or northbridge voltage doesn't help.

    RAM timings:
    • CL: 5
    • RCD: 4
    • RP: 4
    • RAS: 12
    • RC: 16
    • CMD: 2 cycles


    Other timings are set to auto. I'm not experienced with fine-tuning RAM timings, but this does just a little bit better than stock at least.


    On the software side, sadly only Windows 7 works with SLI. 64-bit of course. Windows 10 crashes when driver loads for both graphics cards (if one is disabled it works). Windows 11 always crashes with random blue screens, SLI or not.
    Nvidia drivers version 342.01.

    CineBench R15 scores 360.
    Unigine Tropics set to DirectX 10, 1280x720 window, 4x anisotropic, trilinear filtering ,shaders&textures to high, ambient occlusion&reflection enabled, no anti-aliasing.
    Scores 1640, 65.1 FPS with SLI.
    Scores 1034, 41.1 FPS without SLI.


    Sorry for the wall of text, this was a great waste of time for a useless machine.
    I have no use for it, it's stuck on Windows 7 for SLI, but I don't feel like just giving it away to someone random since I spent so much time on it…
    Attached Files
    OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

    #2
    Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

    Nice setup. One of my favorite era's of more modern hardware...sadly, this build is flirting with 'retro' in the near future. Nice attention to detail, I'm glad to share server space for it with my weird things!!
    <--- Badcaps.net Founder

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    Comment


      #3
      Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

      I might have something similar to this... kinda. No pics on my side unfortunately as I'm not gonna be home anytime soon. Oh, and no SLi/Crossfire on mine since not only the PSU I'm using doesn't have enough wires for it, but because I don't have matching cards. Do have the bridges though, lol.

      CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9400
      RAM: 6GB DDR2 (2x2GB + 2x1GB)
      GPU: ASUS Radeon R7 265 (HD7850) 2GB GDDR5
      MB: P5Q Deluxe
      PSU: LC-Power LC6550H v2.2 (Great Wall OEM)
      HDD: Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB
      ODDs: Pioneer slot-loading DVD-RW + Sony/Optiarc AD-5240S
      Case: Techsolo TC10-SR (rebuilt, good god I've spent more than I should have restoring that case, but I love its mid 2000s aesthetic too much to let it rot. Mine is Black/Green instead of silver/red as I've seen on Google.)
      OS: Win10 LTSC, though I've saved a 11 Enterprise ISO for testing purposes - my experiences with 11 Enterprise have been pretty pleasant, although this was on a Haswell machine. It'll remain to be seen how good will it be on this Core 2 Quad.

      BTW not sure but I think the P5Q Deluxe I have has the TPM header installed so I guess it won't complain about it. That, and latest Rufus versions seem to detect it and disable the TPM/Secure Boot checks before building the bootable flash drive.
      Main rig:
      Gigabyte B75M-D3H
      Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
      Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
      16GB DDR3-1600
      Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
      FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
      120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
      Delux MG760 case

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

        2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS G80 320MB sounds...

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

          Originally posted by piernov View Post
          My turn to post a build I guess, wasted way too much time on this one…
          First proper SLI board I get so wanted to play around a little bit since I got a couple 8800 GTS.
          Everything done with random parts I had lying around.

          Specs :
          • CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9450
          • RAM: 2x2GB KHX6400D2K2
          • GPUs: 2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS G80 320MB
          • MB: P5N-E SLI
          • PSU: Antec Basiq Power 550 Plus
          • HDD: Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1TB
          • ODDs: DVD ROM, DVD RW
          • Case: not sure


          Cooling:
          • 92mm rear fan
          • 120mm front fan
          • Additional heatsink on southbridge
          • Additional heatsink on CPU VCore MOSFETs
          • CPU heatsink from HP dc7700 MT


          Had to cut some fins from the southbridge heatsink for the second graphics card to fit.
          CPU heatsink was more of a pain, in the HP dc7700 it screws directly into the mainboard tray.
          So I had to use a rear bracket (got one without heatsink for some reasons), but the nuts were too small.
          Drilled and re-threaded them and now the heatsink screws do fit.
          Also had to remove a piece of plastic from the heatsink which didn't fit.
          Had to cut/adjust some fins of the northbridge heatsink as well.
          At first I tried using some fancy Zalman heatsink but it was basically useless ( https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1684603207 ). Also it had no PWM control so it was running at full speed (the board can only adjust voltage for chassis fan, CPU fan is controller with PWM only).
          For the front fan, I cut an opening in the chassis since it was restricting airflow way too much, the front cover mesh is already pretty dense.

          I was missing modular cables for PSU so I used Molex adapters instead for the second graphics card and the HDD, I absolutely hate them but they do the job…

          One of the graphics card was dead when I got it. Basically heavy liquid damage, had to rework a lot of solder joints on the back, fix some traces, replace some caps, also reballed a VRAM chip. Did that a while ago, it was working fine but when I picked it again it didn't work anymore. Something was pulling the PCIe reset signal low, also preventing the motherboard from POSTing. In the end I couldn't really figure out what the problem was (no schematics/boardview for this card), it would come good again for a short time when injecting some voltage, so as a last resort I pushed the voltage above what I should and for now that took care of it (don't do this at home).

          Motherboard also had several problems.
          Very large ripple on CPU VCore ( https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1684603334 ), caps were good, it was actually the buck controller (ADP3198) that wasn't regulating properly, so replaced that and that took care of this issue. I also took the opportunity to try to reduce Vdroop which can be quite large on this board, I observed more than 0.15V difference between idle and stress test, not that great for overclocking.
          Bridged one of the resistor between CSSUM and CSCOMP, not the correct way to do it according to the datasheet, but much easier that adding a voltage divider on LLSET. Difference is less than 0.02V now.

          Next issue was that the audio codec wasn't detected. Replaced the ALC883 with an ALC888 and that's fixed too.

          Final issue was with Ethernet. Gigabit mostly didn't work even though it got uplink. 100M was mostly working but not 100% stable. It was both a hardware and a software issue. Software issue was the crappy driver from Nvidia, the Microsoft one works much better. Hardware issue was weird. Booting from PXE was extremely slow so for sure it wasn't just software. I replaced the Ethernet PHY IC (88E1116), didn't fix it. I replaced the ports stack (2xUSB+RJ45 which also contains the Ethernet transformer), didn't fix it either but at that point I realized that the issue was mostly on download using iperf3, so unlikely to be an issue on the physical link after the PHY, more likely it was a problem on the RGMII interface between PHY and MAC (Nvidia southbridge here). Started probing, touched up some solder joints and that fixed it. Couldn't get to the bottom of it here either…

          All components came from donor boards, for once the crap I keep that should go to the trash bin has been helpful…


          Now comes overclocking.
          Voltages:
          • VCore: 1.30000 V (setpoint, actual is around 1.33V-1.34V)
          • Memory: 2.085 V
          • Northbridge: 1.563 V


          Frequencies:
          • FSB: 1650 MHz
          • Memory: 825 MHz (linked)
          • CPU: 3300 MHz (locked multiplier x8, 412.5 MHz BCLK)


          3.32 GHz on the CPU is unstable, this is an FSB ceiling because it's the same when CPU multiplier and RAM ratio are decreased. Increasing CPU or northbridge voltage doesn't help.

          RAM timings:
          • CL: 5
          • RCD: 4
          • RP: 4
          • RAS: 12
          • RC: 16
          • CMD: 2 cycles


          Other timings are set to auto. I'm not experienced with fine-tuning RAM timings, but this does just a little bit better than stock at least.


          On the software side, sadly only Windows 7 works with SLI. 64-bit of course. Windows 10 crashes when driver loads for both graphics cards (if one is disabled it works). Windows 11 always crashes with random blue screens, SLI or not.
          Nvidia drivers version 342.01.

          CineBench R15 scores 360.
          Unigine Tropics set to DirectX 10, 1280x720 window, 4x anisotropic, trilinear filtering ,shaders&textures to high, ambient occlusion&reflection enabled, no anti-aliasing.
          Scores 1640, 65.1 FPS with SLI.
          Scores 1034, 41.1 FPS without SLI.


          Sorry for the wall of text, this was a great waste of time for a useless machine.
          I have no use for it, it's stuck on Windows 7 for SLI, but I don't feel like just giving it away to someone random since I spent so much time on it…
          At least it does better than my Q6600 that I have! My used Q6600 from early '08 is the meme of "Bus/Interconnect Error" "WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR" BSOD, which it gets stable for the most part, but only with very chilled air blowing on it, if I increase the FSB termination voltage to 1.35V, IIRC. Linpack is normally only good for core testing, so I didn't notice this until I ran Prime95 in blend mode.
          It of course, also needed at least 1.39V for Vcore at only 3303 MHz. That's only 367 MHz FSB!

          I'm 90-something-percent sure it's not the motherboard, with it being a P45 chipset. (Asus Maximus II Gene, which is from 2009!)
          Last edited by RJARRRPCGP; 05-24-2023, 03:58 AM.
          ASRock B550 PG Velocita

          Ryzen 9 "Vermeer" 5900X

          16 GB AData XPG Spectrix D41

          Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6750 XT

          eVGA Supernova G3 750W

          Western Digital Black SN850 1TB NVMe SSD

          Alienware AW3423DWF OLED




          "¡Me encanta "Me Encanta o Enlistarlo con Hilary Farr!" -Mí mismo

          "There's nothing more unattractive than a chick smoking a cigarette" -Topcat

          "Today's lesson in pissivity comes in the form of a ziplock baggie full of GPU extension brackets & hardware that for the last ~3 years have been on my bench, always in my way, getting moved around constantly....and yesterday I found myself in need of them....and the bastards are now nowhere to be found! Motherfracker!!" -Topcat

          "did I see a chair fly? I think I did! Time for popcorn!" -ratdude747

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

            Originally posted by alindumitru46 View Post
            2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS G80 320MB sounds...
            Twice the hotness and twice the TDP (I know how hot G80 runs and how much it's eating, owning a Winfast 8800GTX TDH myself in a rather nice 939 dual-core build)
            Main rig:
            Gigabyte B75M-D3H
            Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
            Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
            16GB DDR3-1600
            Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
            FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
            120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
            Delux MG760 case

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

              There is a nice E5450 and X5460 on Ali. Both of those chips are capable of running at 4 and even 4.5 GHz with proper cooling. Frequency that you kinda need for one of your cards, not to mention two at the same time. Here is more info - https://xeon-e5450.ru/socket-775/e5450/

              Now.. Anyway you spin it, your CPU is old....... So gaming wise, games 2015 and newer will have problems, some won't even run.

              I have a similar setup, ASUS P5Q3 and I want to get xeon from ali and 8 or 16 gigs of memory. But the only reason I'm doing it is because I got the system and 27 inch dell monitor for mere 1500 rubles, that's under 20 bucks. I throw on it CPU and ram and will be running the system under my work desk, so that I don't have to use laptop, more space on my desk.

              Yea, your CPU is kinda not tops. Upgrade CPU and ram and cooler and overclock to 4 GHz and call it a day.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                The point was that I didn't buy anything for this build specifically. It's not a system I have any use for, and I'm probably gonna end up giving it away as usual.
                These Xeon are nice but still too expensive for what they are, hardly makes sense to buy one these days, especially for a machine that has no purpose anyway. It'll definitely not play any major game made in the last decade.
                It should run Crysis somewhat decently at least…
                The FSB may be a limit with these Xeon too, but at least a slightly higher multiplier would help. 3.30 GHz for a 45nm Core 2 Quad is still not too bad performance-wise.

                About RAM, the kit I put in there does not play nice in many systems I tried (well, mostly Intel chipsets). Finally found this one where it works great but it still doesn't work properly when I put other random RAM sticks, and not many reasons to go for 8 GB here (I mean, for a useless machine on Windows 7), so I'm gonna leave it like that.
                OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                  Hmmm. Mine has Q8300 and 2 gigs ram now (for now at least), runs Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 64-bit just fine. I mean, web browser, latest chrome, foxit pdf, boardview software, no problems. I wouldn't call it useless, it's still a work station, ideal for live under the work bench for manuals and web. All I want for mine is xeon CPU and big cooler and more ram, and maybe better card, perhaps I can find a broken card and fix it.

                  I mean, what else can you ask for? System like this will be good for another 10 years or so, maybe even more.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                    Yeah still usable for light web browsing and office work for sure, but I regularly get machines from this generation. I love fixing them (more than modern garbage with dying PCH and CPU left and right for sure), but then I don't need them. So I give them away, but even that is not that easy these days when it's a bulky chassis, old, and relatively slow (especially since they have HDDs not SSDs).

                    This generation is right at the limit of what I'd consider usable daily for light office work, provided it's not a low-end CPU, has enough RAM, and either use Linux or has an SSD for Windows. Even if you can install Windows 11 on a Pentium D 9xx (generation just before Core 2 for desktops), it's really struggling.

                    I already have a Precision T7400 taking up a lot of space and wasting power under my desk, next to my main desktop PC (this one with a i7-2600k).
                    OpenBoardView — https://github.com/OpenBoardView/OpenBoardView

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                      Nice build, Piernov!

                      And WOW!
                      - I'm amazed at depth of level you've gone to troubleshoot the issues with the motherboard and one of the video cards. That's some mad troubleshooting skills there! My hat off to you, sir.

                      I got to quite the depth myself on some silly things, but usually it's simple stuff that requires no skill (just time.)

                      And yeah, I feel you on not wanting to give it away to anyone randomly, who might just throw it away some time down the road or not appreciate it at all. Probably one of the reasons I keep so much junk PCs myself... though the other reason is that at least half of them have some weird issue or oddity that would make most "casual" techs just throw it away. I'm all for re-using hardware that still has life in it, hence my fleet / hoard of old/crappy PCs. But sometimes, they are a bliss, as I might encounter some piece of hardware I want to test and don't want to sacrifice a good mobo. So a lot of these are good for this kind of testing... and causal use! I can run to any corner of the house and pull out a "spare" PC, hook it up, and bam, all ready to do light work or some web-browsing.

                      Originally posted by piernov View Post
                      Yeah still usable for light web browsing and office work for sure, but I regularly get machines from this generation.
                      Yeah, hardly anyone bothers with Core 2 stuff where I live too (though I've encountered a few loonies like myself.)

                      The thing is, "light web browsing" really is an oxymoron term now - modern web designers tend to be lazy (or are have no incentive to do better), so most modern websites use a ton of pre-made garbage JS and other crap that is extremely inefficient. Even a "simple" text-only page can make old CPUs squeak to a stop if it uses any of these scripts. But I guess endless scrollbars and spinning wheels are still considered too cool. . Anyways, not to turn this into rant about modern HTML web standards (or lackthereof)... just wanted to point out that "light web browsing" really isn't a thing anymore. If anything, a modern web browser can take a crap-top of RAM to run (especially with a "dummy" / lazy user that never or rarely closes used tabs.) Add to that all the JS crap, and modern websites can actually be quite taxing on an old system. I now find that even a high-end Core 2 Duo will struggle to play YT at 1080p without hardware decoding help from a dedicated GPU. This used to not be that case as of 5 years ago. So I guess even Core 2 Duo CPUs are considered quite useless these days... which is a shame, because they are quite capable for everything else office-related. On that note, my "office" PC is still my venerable Optiplex 170L with a Pentium 4 HT. I'm still running it on XP, so it's actually quite alright for its intended purpose. Online, it IS quite slow, but still manages to work fine with Gov. websites, which are usually more conservative with JS garbage and tend to work on most browsers.

                      Originally posted by piernov View Post
                      ... love fixing them (more than modern garbage with dying PCH and CPU left and right for sure)...
                      Question for you:
                      I've been noticing (shopping standpoint) a lot of dead motherboards and CPUs nowadays - modern stuff like 2nd gen Ryzen and such. Have we really reached a point now where modern hardware is just considered disposable?

                      At least from my understanding from how silicone chips are made (back when I was studying EE in university), it seems that modern transistor node is just too small for its own good. What I mean, each transistor is made of too little silicone, so it just "burns" through itself a lot faster. And perhaps things like electron migration really are a reality now with how small modern stuff is. Does this seem like a plausible theory of why stuff is dying so fast? Or is it because modern hardware is always running everything right up to its thermal limit with very little room to spare? ... or a combo of both??

                      IDK if I should be considered silly for this, but I really don't trust modern hardware in terms of reliability. I think 4th gen Intel i-series and AM3+ CPUs are the last gen I can trust (CPU-wise, anyways.) And GPU-wise... I don't think I can trust anything (maybe only discrete desktop HD2400 and HD3450 cards, as those have too low of a TDP to cook themselves, provided their fans are still OK.) For sure, the only "GPU" I will swear by is Intel i865 chipset "Extreme" Graphics 2. I've seen boards with these burn to a near crisp (due to running in dust-clogged, poorly ventilated machines), and they still kept going. Friggin' fright trains, alas way too obsolete for modern use (for the most part ).

                      Originally posted by piernov View Post
                      I already have a Precision T7400 taking up a lot of space and wasting power under my desk, next to my main desktop PC (this one with a i7-2600k).
                      I like your style.

                      I have a T7400 as well, but not currently set up or working (PSU has issue with the 5V rail dropping low with any load, and I can't seem to find out what is causing it.)

                      I do have a working T7500 with the add-on CPU card, though - that one is running and currently my "gaming" machine, despite actually performing quite poorly with modern games due to the age of the CPU(s). My other one is an Optiplex 790 with an i5-2500. I think these two are my top-performing machines. Everything else is Core 2 Duo's and Quads or equivalent AM2/3 AMD CPUs. Not sure if a "hex"-core FX6300 would be considered better than these, despite being newer... nor an A8-7600 APU.

                      Despite all of this modern hardware, I'm still sticking with my old tried and true machines. This message brought to you by a 850 MHz Pentium 3 laptop running at 700 Mhz.

                      Originally posted by alindumitru46 View Post
                      2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS G80 320MB sounds...
                      Hey, at least they're not Ultra's
                      Now those...

                      Originally posted by Dan81 View Post
                      Twice the hotness and twice the TDP (I know how hot G80 runs and how much it's eating, owning a Winfast 8800GTX TDH myself in a rather nice 939 dual-core build)
                      Yeah, the G80 is like the Pentium 4 of video cards: it doesn't matter whether or not you're running it full-tilt or idling - it just eats power like there's no tomorrow.

                      For their time, though, those 8800 cards were quite amazing. I remember a friend of mine getting an Alienware PC with 2x 8800 GTX in SLI. This was back in late 2006 or sometime in 2007. The machine cost him several grand. It was a dream machine back then... well, mostly. It also came with Windows Vista and the best part: 1 GB of RAM only!

                      The thing would actually perform quite decently in Crysis, which meant a lot back then (and even does now? ) ... once it loaded on the 1 GB of RAM, that is.
                      Last edited by momaka; 05-29-2023, 11:00 AM.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                        weird, the P4's I have clearly do change power consumption as I run it full tilt or not... Alas I don't have any more stable P4s (still have a unstable Northwood and a unstable Prescott).

                        sigh. I still have S775 machines in active service. A Q9550 with 8GB RAM.
                        Also have a Q9650 used as a backup server, a spare X3360, and a couple of other S775 chips not in motherboards including a P4, a C2D, and a Celeron (Allendale I think).

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                          Originally posted by momaka View Post

                          Yeah, the G80 is like the Pentium 4 of video cards: it doesn't matter whether or not you're running it full-tilt or idling - it just eats power like there's no tomorrow.

                          For their time, though, those 8800 cards were quite amazing. I remember a friend of mine getting an Alienware PC with 2x 8800 GTX in SLI. This was back in late 2006 or sometime in 2007. The machine cost him several grand. It was a dream machine back then... well, mostly. It also came with Windows Vista and the best part: 1 GB of RAM only!

                          The thing would actually perform quite decently in Crysis, which meant a lot back then (and even does now? ) ... once it loaded on the 1 GB of RAM, that is.
                          The 939 I have (DFI Infinity nF4 SLi) runs 4GB . Prolly can do 8GB max if I can find ECC DDR400 sticks of 2GB size.
                          Main rig:
                          Gigabyte B75M-D3H
                          Core i5-3470 3.60GHz
                          Gigabyte Geforce GTX650 1GB GDDR5
                          16GB DDR3-1600
                          Samsung SH-224AB DVD-RW
                          FSP Bluestorm II 500W (recapped)
                          120GB ADATA + 2x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS 1TB
                          Delux MG760 case

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            though the other reason is that at least half of them have some weird issue or oddity that would make most "casual" techs just throw it away.
                            Oh yeah I do have a bunch of stuff like that too… Never know what to do with them, that's the case with the motherboard in my main desktop, also quite a lot of work to get it back into a somewhat usable state, still missing a RAM slot and I think an additional SATA controller.
                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            But sometimes, they are a bliss, as I might encounter some piece of hardware I want to test and don't want to sacrifice a good mobo. So a lot of these are good for this kind of testing...
                            Yeah I do keep a lot of parts just for testing, I have a bunch of different generation of PC hardware from the mid 90s to the early 2010s so if I need to diagnose a machine PC I have another motherboard, CPU and RAM to try.
                            But I'm missing a lot of the newer stuff, people hang onto their machines for much longer now, and even when they part ways with them they do not give them away for free.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            and causal use! I can run to any corner of the house and pull out a "spare" PC, hook it up, and bam, all ready to do light work or some web-browsing.
                            I don't really need to use any of my spare stuff, but when I do, of course nothing works and I'm in for a few more hours of troubleshooting…


                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            The thing is, "light web browsing" really is an oxymoron term now - modern web designers tend to be lazy (or are have no incentive to do better), so most modern websites use a ton of pre-made garbage JS and other crap that is extremely inefficient. Even a "simple" text-only page can make old CPUs squeak to a stop if it uses any of these scripts. But I guess endless scrollbars and spinning wheels are still considered too cool. . Anyways, not to turn this into rant about modern HTML web standards (or lackthereof)... just wanted to point out that "light web browsing" really isn't a thing anymore.
                            If anything, a modern web browser can take a crap-top of RAM to run (especially with a "dummy" / lazy user that never or rarely closes used tabs.) Add to that all the JS crap, and modern websites can actually be quite taxing on an old system.
                            For sure, I definitely agree there, what I meant by that is not having many tabs of JS/video-heavy stuff open, which is not the web (as I see it) anyway.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            I now find that even a high-end Core 2 Duo will struggle to play YT at 1080p without hardware decoding help from a dedicated GPU. This used to not be that case as of 5 years ago. So I guess even Core 2 Duo CPUs are considered quite useless these days... which is a shame, because they are quite capable for everything else office-related.
                            Playing full-HD Youtube (30FPS at least) is also the cut-off I use to deem a machine to be usable by most people daily. And personally I haven't had issues with decent Core 2 CPUs in that regard. A mid-range 45nm one typically still has some headroom in fact. A 65nm Celeron will not do well, but even a Pentium Dual-Core E5500 or better should do (and it can even be used on some FSB800 motherboard, if the BIOS accepts to boot with a 45nm).

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            On that note, my "office" PC is still my venerable Optiplex 170L with a Pentium 4 HT. I'm still running it on XP, so it's actually quite alright for its intended purpose. Online, it IS quite slow, but still manages to work fine with Gov. websites, which are usually more conservative with JS garbage and tend to work on most browsers.
                            I've put up with Pentium D 9xx for a while as they still were barely usable on the web but really I can't deal with them anymore now. So a socket 478 one… not for me. Even though I still like to fix them they're really useless, apart from specific "retro" needs maybe, but they don't even have the charm of retro hardware. It's that generation of hardware that's available in abundance and doesn't have any interesting characteristics in my opinion

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            Question for you:
                            I've been noticing (shopping standpoint) a lot of dead motherboards and CPUs nowadays - modern stuff like 2nd gen Ryzen and such. Have we really reached a point now where modern hardware is just considered disposable?

                            At least from my understanding from how silicone chips are made (back when I was studying EE in university), it seems that modern transistor node is just too small for its own good. What I mean, each transistor is made of too little silicone, so it just "burns" through itself a lot faster. And perhaps things like electron migration really are a reality now with how small modern stuff is. Does this seem like a plausible theory of why stuff is dying so fast? Or is it because modern hardware is always running everything right up to its thermal limit with very little room to spare? ... or a combo of both??
                            I honestly don't know all the reasons and I'd like to, but I think you're not too far off the truth. It's not just thermal stress but electrical too I think. As for the miniaturization of the process, it probably also causes the ICs to be much more sensitive to external events. For example you could shove 12V into a Pentium 4 multiple times (shorted high-side MOSFET) and it'd be fine. You do that once with a CPU made in the last decade and it's immediately dead. So that also applies to events happening to external interfaces that could travel to the CPU/chipset.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            IDK if I should be considered silly for this, but I really don't trust modern hardware in terms of reliability. I think 4th gen Intel i-series and AM3+ CPUs are the last gen I can trust (CPU-wise, anyways.)
                            From what I've seen, on Intel side the reliability really changed between 3rd and 4th gen. But there's also the fact that on laptops it's also when they mostly went BGA-only, so part of it might be that issues that were easily diagnosed and fixed before by swapping CPU are now always much harder to diagnose and mostly not repairable, so do see and hear about them more. However just from personal experience the reliability of the PCH also took a hit at the same time (8 series), much more common to see a randomly shorted PCH (both on desktops and laptops).
                            Modern AMD stuff is still mostly unknown to me, CPU reliability was good in the past (unlike GPU/chipsets), but I do hear about some failures of mobile Ryzen CPUs now, which of course are also BGA.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            And GPU-wise... I don't think I can trust anything (maybe only discrete desktop HD2400 and HD3450 cards, as those have too low of a TDP to cook themselves, provided their fans are still OK.) For sure, the only "GPU" I will swear by is Intel i865 chipset "Extreme" Graphics 2. I've seen boards with these burn to a near crisp (due to running in dust-clogged, poorly ventilated machines), and they still kept going. Friggin' fright trains, alas way too obsolete for modern use (for the most part ).
                            I don't like dedicated GPU when it's not absolutely needed. At least modern GPUs (the IC itself) seem to be much more reliable than they were 11-17 years ago. But now you get regular failures of VRAM and power delivery circuits so…


                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            I have a T7400 as well, but not currently set up or working (PSU has issue with the 5V rail dropping low with any load, and I can't seem to find out what is causing it.)
                            In fact that T7400 was originally a 690. The 690 had a PSU issue where it wouldn't turn back on when it was warm, I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I had access to parts from a few 690&T7400, but couldn't really keep them, most of them had a lot of missing stuff and damaged chassis. I figured could try to fit a T7400 board and PSU in my 690 instead of just taking a PSU. It was much more work than anticipated. I/O shield had to be replaced but it's riveted, also had to replace front I/O board and cables which run behind everything, replaced ODD, and the MB had some broken traces I had to fix, had to swap the cables from the PSU since the new one just had one large connector, someone cut the SATA cables from the PSU cable harness so had to fix that too. But it runs nicely now. Dual quad-core CPUs (unsupported on the 690 revision I had) and I also have the RAM extension board but only 32GB.

                            Originally posted by momaka View Post
                            I do have a working T7500 with the add-on CPU card, though - that one is running and currently my "gaming" machine, despite actually performing quite poorly with modern games due to the age of the CPU(s).
                            It's funny because I use a T7500 as a desktop at work. It was supposed to go to the trash and I could definitely get something better, but I didn't want to let it go so I kept it. Single X5550 CPU, 48GB of RAM, 750GB HDD, it's not fast but somewhat usable, could definitely be much better with an SSD but once apps have been loaded once it's not bad since it's kept in cache thanks to the large amount of RAM. I do feel the CPU being slow a bit too often though. But everything computationally intensive I do it on remote machines, including a Precision 7920 with 2x Xeon Gold 6230R, 256GB of RAM, 4TB NVMe SSD, an RTX A6000 and an RTX5000.
                            Last edited by piernov; 05-30-2023, 06:32 AM.
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                              #15
                              Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                              Originally posted by eccerr0r View Post
                              weird, the P4's I have clearly do change power consumption as I run it full tilt or not... Alas I don't have any more stable P4s (still have a unstable Northwood and a unstable Prescott).

                              sigh. I still have S775 machines in active service. A Q9550 with 8GB RAM.
                              Also have a Q9650 used as a backup server, a spare X3360, and a couple of other S775 chips not in motherboards including a P4, a C2D, and a Celeron (Allendale I think).
                              Until I got rid of the MSI 845E Max, which honestly looked like a solid motherboard, which I was regularly using in 2007, the Northwood 2.4 @ 2.7 GHz was stable, as long as the air was really chilled! If not, if you had Windows 98 SE with Prime95 going, Prime95 would fail with an error box from Windows 98 SE, blaming Prime95.exe and a cascade of error boxes, was common, especially when 45+F outside and the sun shining.
                              (not a typo, I would definitely get an error at only 45 Fahrenheit for the outdoor temp, when cooling my Northwood with an air duct to the window)

                              I never saw that with NT 5 and later.

                              Only a Windows 95-based OS would give error boxes like that, LOL.

                              2.8 GHz required more Vcore than stock and required more chilled air!
                              Last edited by RJARRRPCGP; 06-05-2023, 08:57 PM.
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                                #16
                                Re: Core 2 "gaming" build with SLI

                                Not exactly sure what's wrong with the P4s. The unstable Prescott 3.4GHz (S775, no overclock) has a motherboard issue, I ran the chip in another board (the board I sold) and it was solid in that board. Machine would just hang there on the board I have left. Board officially does not support Core2 chips.

                                The unstable Northwood (S478) is a 3GHz (again no overclock), it overheats and shuts down but I never see it "overheating" in the temperature sensors. Machine goes through a system shutdown when it overheats. Not sure if I should try better heatsink compound... since I don't have much I've been trying to save it for my sandybridge that really needs it. I don't really need the P4...

                                Running Gentoo on both in text mode, and swapping boards (or rather moving the disk to another machine) it's stable once again.

                                Speaking of motherboards, the working board I had was a MSI 865 Neo3 or something like that. Was a good board but had bad caps on it -- and still worked perfectly fine. Water under bridge now. The broken board I have left is an Asus, it gets through POST and boots the OS but a few minutes running the OS it would hard hang randomly. The S478 is some Intel board which should be fairly reliable, if I had a lot of good heatsink compound to waste I'd probably try it on that machine, alas, even a HT 3GHz P4 won't get much use, my S775 Core2 machines are so much faster in my compute farm...
                                Last edited by eccerr0r; 06-06-2023, 12:43 AM.

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