Current changes

A few weeks ago I started upgrading and changing several things on my media centre PC. Most importantly, I’ve exchanged the mainboard and the RAM. Another component that’s changed was the graphics card. I switched from a common GeForce GTX 560ti to a GeForce GTX 560ti 448.

The “old” graphics card was a SuperClocked version by EVGA, which had a lot of power but the EVGA Classified Edition of the GeForce 560ti 448 was too intriguing to be resisted to. The EVGA CE uses six power phases and is more a 570 than a 560. The big issue with the 570 is the lack power phases – four instead of five. One of my previous 570 cards died due to this fact during an overclocking session and a slight voltage increase.

I also exchanged the chassis, which looks much more elegant than the old chassis I’ve used and is a little quieter. The only noisy thing that is currently inside is the graphics card, but the cooling components will be exchanged in the very nearby future.

The CPU that was once working in my work PC wandered into the media centre giving me much more core horse power. The CPU is now overclocked but does not cause too much heat, thanks to a stock voltage.

After setting up the system and installing all the things I actually need (tons of games and XBMC) I’m very satisfied with the final result. Everything feels much smoother and the overall gamin performance has increased a lot. The only thing that bothers me currently is the noise level of the system during gaming sessions. But like I said, this is going to be solved.

The reason why I actually did those changes to the system was mainly the new Batman video game. And my plan worked perfectly well. The game’s now finished and I did not notice any weird performance issues, except the rumble with the Joker and his henchmen and the Catwoman fight in the strong room. Those were more PhysX related and my dedicated 9800GT had a little struggle with these fights.

Whatever the case, I’ve finally got a “debugged” system where everything finally works, which was not the case on the old system. For instance, ‘L.A. Noire’ did not even start. XBMC is working smoothly and I had no issues with exporting and importing the media library data.

Of RipJaws and Eden

Previously, I’ve told you guys about my GeForce upgrade on my media centre. The performance boost was, well, kind of okay, but at last I felt it was time for an overall upgrade on the system. I’ ve got this AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition in my PC that I usually use for some work on photos and on the other hand it’s simply a machine I use to manage my mails, websites and these kind of things.

It finally turns out that the processor plugged into this machine gets a little bored so I’ll do an exchange and my AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition moves from my media centre to this working machine. Both system still run on the AMD 7xx chipset and the media centre will now get the upgrade to the AMD 990FX chipset in form of an Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 board.

I’ll put 16GB DDR3 12800 G.Skill RipJaw modules on this system, so that I finally do not have to suffer on a memory bottleneck. I personally think that this is a good foundation for my EVGA GeForce GTX 560ti 448 Cores Classified. I was able to get a performance increase on games like “Batman Arkham City” but the overall system performance became pretty bad during the last year and a half so it’s time to make an upgrade and most importantly get a fresh and new installment of Windows 7.

 ...

I’ve exchanged graphics and sound card drivers a lot in the past and I also had to struggle with several hardware and software issues that also caused new bugs, if you know what I’m saying.

Anyhow, I don’t expect a performance boost of 200 per cent but I’m certain that the overall system performance and feel of smoothness will increase and a lot of crashes and bugs will get fixed with this new setup.

In preparation for this did I also give the new XBMC version (called “Eden”) a try, which is currently out as a beta release. I was a little disappointed. I did a fresh installment and imported my old library to get everything as clean as I could. The movie library did not work as expected. I was missing movie posters. I wasn’t able to get movie information. The new skin itself is not a thing I’m going to be friend with because all the items are drawn much smaller and it looks like as if there’s something missing on the GUI.

I also tried several video add-ons and most of them did not work properly as well. To summarize, this is still a beta version and it does not represent the final product, but I will wait for a long time until I’ll finally do the update from “Dharma” to “Eden”. I’m fine and comfortable with my current media centre software. So why changing a good and running system?

I hope I can get everything done within the next 5-7 days and I’ll keep you informed.

The Upper-Classified

You may remember a post I published by the beginning of December where I stated that totally, totally, totally want the EVGA GeForce 560ti 448 Cores Classified. It finally happened. The card has been shipped and will probably be here with in like one or two days.

I’m totally excited about the abilities of the card. Things like temperature, stability and most importantly overclocking capabilities. I remember the EVGA GeForce 570 DS HD with a pretty similar cooling design, but this one was a pure noise terror. Those very, very few reviews that do exist about the  EVGA GeForce 560ti 448 Cores Classified say, that the noise level is pretty low actually and the temperatures are moderate, too.

This is exactly what I need for my media centre. Silence and undisputed, raw GPU power. To be honest, I buy this graphics card just to be able to play Batman Arkham City on almost maximum details fluently. Yes, there you got him, video game  freak buying hardware for just one game.

Whatever the case, Mrs EVGA GeForce 560ti 448 Cores Classified is on her way to Mr Hardware Freak and as soon as this romance gets hot and wet I’ll leave some details right here in this blog.

(By far the worst final sentence I’ve written here 😀 )

We are 4-48

When you want to have something exclusive, you have to use some exclusive methods to get it. Nvidia announced that they put out a new graphics card which will be settled in the upper mid-range segment. It’s called GeForce GTX 560ti 448 and is basically not a 560, it’s a 570 with a few cuts on the shader units.

Whatever the case, I want this bloody card. And secondly, I want this bloody card by EVGA. And last but not least I want the “Classified” edition with improved cooling design and two more phase units to beat the shit out of every game with some monster overclocking. Well, until now, I’m just waiting. I had the standard version of the 560ti 448 but I wasn’t very happy with it.

The performance is okay and slightly improved in comparison to my GeForce GTX 560ti, but it was too loud. Not too loud for a common system, but too loud for my media centre. 1,500rpms in idle mode were too much and the card went back to sender.

So, here I am, waiting and waiting for the “Classified” edition. I ordered this card at three different resellers to get some special assurance that at least ONE reseller will get this card and send it to me. The person who’s dignified.

It’s dead and will not move no more

After having pushed several of my graphics cards to their limits and beyond I have to announce a death in the family. My Geforce GTX 570 died after some burn-in tests with FurMark. I was able to run 3DMark 11 a couple of times, but the card finally suffered the big heat and decided to simply turn off. Actually, one voltage transformer decided to burn out and the card wasn’t functional anymore. This happened because of several reasons. First of all, I think that the core voltage wasn’t set to high, because 1.152V is actually a value a GTX 570 should be able to handle.

I personally think that the overall heat, even in the water circle, was a to high. Around 50°C of pure water warmth is something that brings every circular flow assisted system on its knees. Anyhow, the whole system was boiling and cooking and my graphics card said “No, I’m leaving here”

Like I said before, I know that the GTX 570 is capable of handling the previously mentioned core voltage. I guess the used components were like manufactured on a Monday and deserved to die. After giving condolences and mumbling some last words to her, I decided it’s time to switch to something really, really fucking bad and ordered a Geforce GTX 580. Firstly, I ordered the wrong one. A Good Edition by Gainward with the main problem that the PCB differs from the original one. That’s a giant problem for me, because I use a waterblock that is designed for the common Fermi 570/580 design. The card is going back to sender and I finally ordered a card by EVGA.

I decided to take the Superclocked model, which is for what I believe, the card with the better single components on it. I had to pay a higher price, but that’s okay. EVGA offers some great terms of warranty and is in my opinion the new high end manufacturer. I was a fan of XFX for a long time, but they do not build Nvidia cards anymore, which is sad, because they put out some absolutely great products. I also liked Gainward a lot, but the price for their cards compared to the service afterwards is nothing in comparison to EVGA. You could say, EVGA is the real shit for every Nvidia fanboy.

At this very moment, my gaming rig is finished like 70 per cent and hopefully up and running within the next two days. I also hope that it will work, because I had some serious space issues with the retention module for the waterblock. Screws and kind of things like that touch the backplate. This IS serious, man. All fingers crossed for my work on electric isolation.