# Mid Range Intel Gaming Build



## Skaarj (Aug 2, 2007)

Hey all, 
I was looking at the sticky (http://www.techsupportforum.com/for...evised-2010-and-updated-regularly-448272.html) on this section of the forum regarding AMD and Intel gaming builds that have been tested.
I will be building a new desktop fairly soon and the $1200 intel build caught my eye. The only changes I would make to the build would be to buy 2 of the Radeon HD 6950s. Now here lies my concern, is there anyway of confirming whether the motherboard posted in the build supports crossfire? And will there be enough room on the motherboard for those 2 cards to sit side by side? And finally, am i correct in thinking that adding another video card would require a slightly more powerful PSU?

Thanks


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## hhnq04 (Mar 19, 2008)

I can't imagine you needing dual 6950's at this point in time. The $1200 build will handle any game on the market with ease.

However, it is your money and your system, so the decision lies with you. You'll need a different motherboard to accomplish this, you'll need one that has two PCI-E x16 slots *that will operate at x16 speed simultaneously*, not single x16 or dual x8. You'll need to look at the higher end boards for this feature. And yes, you'll want a more powerful PSU to handle dual GPU. I'd jump to a 950W+.


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## Skaarj (Aug 2, 2007)

I know that the dual 6960's isnt necessary for any games on the market yet, but I'm thinking long term (that is also another reason why I was considering a more powerful PSU) and eventually I want to set up eyefinity.
And yeah, I just noticed the part about single 16 and dual 8 after I made the thread >.<
Thanks for your help


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

When two GPU's are required, if ever, your hardware will be outdated.
Two GPU's equal twice the initial costs (plus the required PSU), use more energy, generate more unneeded/unwanted heat in the case and you get a small percentage performance increase in return.


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## hhnq04 (Mar 19, 2008)

Tyree said:


> When two GPU's are required, if ever, your hardware will be outdated.
> Two GPU's equal twice the initial costs (plus the required PSU), use more energy, generate more unneeded/unwanted heat in the case and you get a small percentage performance increase in return.


Agreed.


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## Drenlin (Dec 13, 2010)

The 6950 will run just fine at x8. That's pushing the limits a little bit, but not much.

A 950W power supply is complete overkill for that. A 750W would be perfectly fine, though 850-ish would be more comfortable for most people. With both cards, I wouldn't expect the system to top ~625W with everything fully loaded, which isn't really a realistic situation.

Your best bet at this point is to wait on Sandy Bridge to become available at its regular price. Socket 1156 has been officially replaced.


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## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

The pre-release Sandy bridge tests look interesting, along with the scalability of the xfire setup on the new 1155 boards and new CPU's, however I like to wait until after they are released and get some hands on testing before jumping on a new platform, the guys that jumped on the 1366 platform when it first came out had a lot of grief for the first 3 months or so some of early board had a bios update every week if not sooner.

I'll vote for the 950w with 2 of those cards.


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## Drenlin (Dec 13, 2010)

Again, what on that system could possibly use 950W? 850W will give him more choices and still leave plenty of head room, and will have the system running at a higher efficiency when it's idling, which if TS is like most people will be 90% of the time. If no overclocking/unlocking is involved, even a 650W could power this, easily.

For twin GTX 580's on a hexacore system all OC'd, I could maybe, _maybe_, see 950W being useful...but for 6950's, which draw a max of ~230w when unlocked, overclocked, overvolted, and running Furmark, I'd be surprised to see the system _ever_ top 700W. At stock speeds, _realistically_, it probably won't even top 550W unless you run Furmark, which creates unrealistically high loads on the GPU and in some cases can actually damage it. That extra money is best spent elsewhere.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

Drenlin said:


> Again, what on that system could possibly use 950W? 850W will give him more choices and still leave plenty of head room, and will have the system running at a higher efficiency when it's idling, which if TS is like most people will be 90% of the time. If no overclocking/unlocking is involved, even a 650W could power this, easily.
> 
> For twin GTX 580's on a hexacore system all OC'd, I could maybe, _maybe_, see 950W being useful...but for 6950's, which draw a max of ~230w when unlocked, overclocked, overvolted, and running Furmark, I'd be surprised to see the system _ever_ top 700W. At stock speeds, _realistically_, it probably won't even top 550W unless you run Furmark, which creates unrealistically high loads on the GPU and in some cases can actually damage it. That extra money is best spent elsewhere.



you forgot to factor in capicator aging; which can be 10% to 15% on a gaming computer. Over the life span of the PSU (5-year warranty) that errodes a very large chunk of any PSU's capability; thats why we suggest minimum 850 watt

not to mention anyone with a rig like the above spec will surely overclock before retiring this system; the BIG picture really does require the >850 watt


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## Skaarj (Aug 2, 2007)

Alright but isn't dual cards necessary for eyefinity? I want to run 3 monitors.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

well I would say if you can wait 6 months buy an Intel Sandy Bridge system of 2500 or 2600 cpu / they have some VERY promising bench marks for crossfire configurations

when they are first released they will be over priced and you will struggle with the usual growing pains of any new platform; plus its always nice to sit back 6 months and read some feedback from actual system owners not just P-R reviews from manufacturing pimps.

the new sandy bridge boards will run both cards at 16X without paying $300.00 and more for such a board. right now that means buying a high end socket 1366 board which means about average price will be around $350.00 / the asus sandy bridge boards will be around $200.00 after the dust settles from the fresh release.


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## Drenlin (Dec 13, 2010)

linderman said:


> you forgot to factor in capicator aging; which can be 10% to 15% on a gaming computer. Over the life span of the PSU (5-year warranty) that errodes a very large chunk of any PSU's capability; thats why we suggest minimum 850 watt
> 
> not to mention anyone with a rig like the above spec will surely overclock before retiring this system; the BIG picture really does require the >850 watt


An i7 can pull about 200W when OC'd to within an inch of its life. Unlocked and overclocked, Radeon 6950's can pull a maximum of about 250W if you don't melt the connector. We'll say 40W for the chipset (stock is 30W), 40W for the RAM, 15W for the HDD and 30W for a few fans, and we have an absolute maximum power consumption of 825W. Unless you're running Furmark and Intel Burn test at the same time, you'll never see that. Another 15% to account for cap aging does give about 950W, you're right, _if_ the capacitors manage to degrade by that much.

However, the problem with that logic is that you will never see that much power used unless you're just trying to do it. No game or useful application fully utilizes any GPU. The only ones that do are programs like Furmark, which create unrealistically high power consumption in the name of overclocking stability, but in reality there's just no point to it since no useful program will stress the card that much. Any game that does manage to use 100% of both GPU's is probably limited by them, and won't be using 100% of the CPU. And all of this is assuming that these parts are overclocked/overvolted as far as they'll go without damage, which most people don't do.

It is even less likely that TS will still be doing that on the same hardware five years from now. Same PSU, maybe, but probably not the same CPU/GPU combination. We'll most likely be using 11nm parts by then, or at least 16nm, which will reduce power consumption considerably. At the very least, TS is likely to have 22nm parts in there, if he's like most people and upgrades sometime in the next 3 generations.

My argument stands, I think 950W would be wasted on this machine.


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## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

Skaarj said:


> Alright but isn't dual cards necessary for eyefinity? I want to run 3 monitors.


No eyefinity runs off a single card, in fact a lot have issues running eyefinity in xfire mode.


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## Drenlin (Dec 13, 2010)

^ True that

Though if you have two cards in CFX, I think you can run three monitors without using eyefinity, can't you?


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## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

No Crossfire or SLI ties all the gpu power to a single port, however I believe if you use the display port on a ATI card you can use 2 monitors.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

linderman said:


> you forgot to factor in capicator aging; which can be 10% to 15% on a gaming computer. Over the life span of the PSU (5-year warranty) that errodes a very large chunk of any PSU's capability; thats why we suggest minimum 850 watt
> 
> not to mention anyone with a rig like the above spec will surely overclock before retiring this system; the BIG picture really does require the >850 watt


Ditto ^ Some foresight when calculating power usage and stability. PSU stability decreases with time even with the best quality PSU's.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

when a decent quality 850 watt PSU can be had for $149.00 what is the savings motivation for buying a lesser PSU unit ? how much will that save you?

I think its rather obvious when someone has the budget and the intention to run two 6950's they are not looking to squeeze the last penny out of the lemon?

-OR- is this motivation more likely based upon a contradiction of advice?


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