I can only echo what the other guys said above, I find your posts very interesting and especially enjoy the detail and do apprecaite how much work it takes to do them.
I would be a shame if you did not feel inclined to continue the good work...
eternal_fantasy, yes I am really shocked. You are VERY appreciated indeed! I don't buy PC magazines anymore because of people like yourself giving us all the information we want, your reviews make excellent reading, and as soppy as it sounds we all love you one here, I have never heard a bad word said about you ever!
I think I speak for everyone when I ask you to forgive us for not showing our appreciation for your hard work.
Please eternal_fantasy give us another chance you are part of our family Please let us know you will still help us with reviews and your presence on these forums
Eternal Fantasy,Sir. Its members like your goodself who are the backbone of this community.I heartedly endorse all the above comments... I have learnt so much from the information you provide.I based my choice of Vadim computer from the input given on this forum,as a complete uninformed noob.I am starting to understand the technical side of computers to an extent I never thought possible before.
If I had added any comment on your posts,you would have thought it facile,bearing in mind my usual contributions,but that does not mean its not appreciated,because it most certainly is. I hope you reconsider your position.We need informed comment.
To further add to to the serious nature of my post,I will not add any stupid photo
After reading through forums and reviews, I've decided on purchasing the fastest graphics card configuration currently available to an Intel platform; a pair of AMD/ATi HD3870XT in CrossFire.
The HD3870XT is the latest AMD graphics offering, although slower than the nVidia competitor, it offers great performance for it's cost, and to the consensus of many users, offer better image quality and colour compared to nVidia's solutions.
Also, AMD/ATi's Multi-GPU setup, CrossFire, scales better then nVidia's SLi setup, offering higher percentage of performance increase when additional GFX cards are added.
HD3870XT also has a much more efficient video decoding, utilising less CPU then nVidia while playback.
Because of the nature of CrossFire, new games will most likely benefit from it, and subsequent driver updates will optimise it even further. SLi on the other hand require specific tweaks in the driver to optimise performance, so support for games come only when a new version of ForceWare is published, on average once every 1~2 months, and there is no guarantee that your game is on their list to support SLi.
Anyway, without further ado, here are today's guests:
In my DD Torture Rack for testing/benching:
Small fan is added for airflow on the primary card:
Overview:
And here is my 3DMark06 score, as I'm running on Windows Vista, if you are running windows XP you can comfortably add another 500 points to the score. Note that the QX9650 is clocked at a lowly 4.05Ghz:
This pair is currently air-cooled, and as you can see is not really wise to do so on a duel-slot cooler design. I have been able to overclock the core from 777Mhz to 850Mhz, at which point the primary card becomes toasty hot at 78~ degrees. I have some water blocks on order, and will report back if there are more headroom form these cards, and hopefully will pass the 21000 mark easily.
Overall I'm very pleased with their performance and picture quality, and they are currently the fastest graphics setup by quite a margin on the Intel platform even without cooling modification/overclocking. At £330 a pair it even cost cheaper than the fastest nVidia offering for Intel chipsets, an overclocked nVidia 8800 GTS 512 with a waterblock!!! How awesome is that?
With all the 8800 GTS 512 praise and following, an AMD/ATi offering is a fresh breath of air. And by the looks of it, I'm surprised it did not get the attention it deserves.
nVidia chipset performance. Intel chipset stability. Need I say more?
(p.s. AMD did not pay me to post this topic... although it may sound like it and I am not at all a fanboy as I also own 2 nVidia 8800 Ultras )
On the screenshot, why does tech powerup say crossfire disabled? It does on mine as well.
Well to be honest I have an 8800GT with a budget E2160 clocked at 3.42GHz and I get just over 12K. So surely you should be getting quite a bit higher with two cards and probabaly a better CPU? Who knows.
and I am not at all a fanboy as I also own 2 nVidia 8800 Ultras 
)
