nVidia 9800GX2 Review

AlmightyCushion

It's a new community modding thing the admins are trying out. Everyone (more or less) is going to be giving mod status and mod powers. It's so we can cut down on the time it takes to remove libelous posts and things like that. Please remember to use the mod functions wisely when you get access. I've already had one person try and ban me from one of my own forums.

PogMoThoin

Am I a mod?

Edit, wahey, I am,

Time to have some fun

Wait, hold on, its april fools day

Flaccus

awhir wrote: »

no the pump starts with when the mobo is powered on.

and if you want do a leak test you can jump start the psu by shorting 2 pins.

The swiftech instructions do say to test it without powering on the mobo though by jump starting the psu.

Let us know how you get on Tony, as I'm sure you will have it before mine arrives from the US.

TonyM.

Flaccus wrote: »

The swiftech instructions do say to test it without powering on the mobo though by jump starting the psu.

Let us know how you get on Tony, as I'm sure you will have it before mine arrives from the US.

http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/super_cooling/swiftech/H20-220Compact/index.asp

IT was shipped today I will probably have it by friday .


BTW keep away from internet explorer 8 beta its really buggy.

awhir

TonyM. wrote: »

http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/super_cooling/swiftech/H20-220Compact/index.asp

IT was shipped today I will probably have it by friday .


BTW keep away from internet explorer 8 beta its really buggy.

you shouldent be even going near IE , FireFox all teh way !!!

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=182712

TonyM.

Flaccus wrote: »

The swiftech instructions do say to test it without powering on the mobo though by jump starting the psu.

Let us know how you get on Tony, as I'm sure you will have it before mine arrives from the US.

OK I got delivery today and four hours later i finally got my computer working.
Everything seemed to be working but the computer would not boot finally
I discovered the backplate was wrong i used the one from the old cooler instead of taking out the mainboard but it must have been slightly off.I am now having C1 errors and i can only boot with one stick of ram in the last slot .

PS the cooler is working fine its not silent but quiet enough at low settings
i am getting 36c overclocked to 3.30mhz. ( TAT )

conzy

erm... if you used the wrong backplate and you are now having problems like that you probably shorted out your board

TonyM.

conzymaher wrote: »

erm... if you used the wrong backplate and you are now having problems like that you probably shorted out your board

NO almost right booting with both sticks in the last two slots i know that means it is not working in dual channell but it will do for now

Flaccus

Tony,

Hows the kit going for you now...had to cancel mine and reorder elsewhere.


Hope you don't mind a few questions

1. I take it the 36 degrees you are getting is idle...what temps do you reach when running prime......how much better then the aircooler is it, which I would expect to go into the mid 60's at that clock setting.

2. Any issues fitting it in the Akasa case. Any problems clamping stuff down ?

3. Are the fans noticeable all the time or only under load (I take it they are temp controlled)

4. Where did you buy deionised water to mix up the fluid with ?

5. It looks like from your last post you didn't run it 24 hours to test for leaks ? Wondering why ?

thanks mate

awhir

you can get destilled water ( all you need) from nearly any chemist.

leak testing would not be very hard with that quite since you are only joining 4 barbs.

TonyM.

Hi Flaccus
I did some tweaking on my case fans i even have the side fan blowing out and allowing for the TIM settling in i am getting idle temperatures of 30c.for now i am not doing any stress testing as i have issues with my mainboard two of the ram slots are not working .
I used an old PSU to test it out of the case for about two hours also i used clear silicone on the barbs the only thing to look out for is to use the 30mm bolts only on the fans or you can damage the radiator.
The fans are working from the fan controller i can turn it up over half way before it is noticable if max = 12v you could probably use 7v. I have noticed the temperature is usually the same on all cores i was getting over 5c difference on air.Overall the drop in temperature was pretty dramatic at least 15c idle.
The water was only €5.80 for 5 litres at the Chemist.

Flaccus

Hi Tony,

A couple of final questions :

1. Any vibration / noise caused by the pump ? Thinking case vibration...some people have reported this.

2. Also, any leaks so far ? read a few horror stories about the seals in the pump of the H10 version going and leaking all over mobo

3. How did you test for air being trapped..assume if you hear a slurpin sound you give your case a bit of a shake to get rid of the air bubbles ?

thanks

TonyM.

Flaccus wrote: »

Hi Tony,

A couple of final questions :

1. Any vibration / noise caused by the pump ? Thinking case vibration...some people have reported this.

2. Also, any leaks so far ? read a few horror stories about the seals in the pump of the H10 version going and leaking all over mobo

3. How did you test for air being trapped..assume if you hear a slurpin sound you give your case a bit of a shake to get rid of the air bubbles ?

thanks

Hi Flaccus.
No leaks so far I did use clear silicone on the barbs and the clamps are secure so i am not expecting any ,there is some slight case vibration which is probanly caused by the PSU,case fans , ect.
To vent the air from the system hold the radiator above the pump when you fill it with water and and let it run from a spare psu for a few hours ,you will see the air bubbles rising when they stop your good to go.If you do it this way outside the case you will not be taking any chances.


PS you know the XFX 790i Ultra mobo does not have bluetooth.

conzy

omg why would you put a screenshot in a word document?

TonyM.

It was the only file that would upload for me .

Flaccus

Thanks for the info Tony. cheers.

I think most desktop mobos don't have bluetooth..was never an issue for me to be honest.

I'm now considering a full watercooling setup....

Chosen

Heh, I have an excess of 2 rads, 2 tanks, vga waterblocks, miles of tubing and a box full of fittings. The plan was to watercool all 3 PCs in the house, but I only got the time to do one

TonyM.

Flaccus wrote: »

Thanks for the info Tony. cheers.

I think most desktop mobos don't have bluetooth..was never an issue for me to be honest.

I'm now considering a full watercooling setup....

Thomas Haxley [tom@chilledpc.co.uk]

If your looking for prices contact Thomas Haxley at ChilledPC

Flaccus

Thanks. He actually got back to me already today. What he recommended I posted in the other thread. Nice bloke.

Are you going to Rma your mobo then over the bad dimm slots ?

Chosen - I'd be interested in some of your stuff, except threw on the spare cash I had on the credit card on Friday so I could afford the watercooling stuff

TonyM.

Flaccus wrote: »

Thanks. He actually got back to me already today. What he recommended I posted in the other thread. Nice bloke.

Are you going to Rma your mobo then over the bad dimm slots ?

Chosen - I'd be interested in some of your stuff, except threw on the spare cash I had on the credit card on Friday so I could afford the watercooling stuff

I will want to move on to the 790i and ddr3 in the next few weeks at that stage i will rma the old board .
Having sold off my older computer i have money to spend and more coming so trying to decide about the 9800gtx or its big brother.

http://www.dabs.ie/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=50DT&CategorySelectedId=11137&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11137,50010

Flaccus

As you have a gtx already, adding another would give you the best bang for the buck. They are going very cheap on OcUK now.

Be careful with DDR3...some like the Cellshock stuff won't boot as the spd timings are too aggressive. If going 4gigs the Gskill 1600mhz kit (2x2gig) is highly recommended. No 4gig kits in 1800mhz or 2000mhz yet. And mixed results with using 4x1gig sticks of any kind. Nvidia say on the reference mobo that if using higher then 1800mhz you can only use 2 slots anyway.

Also the stupid fan on the 790i ultra is annoying and the mechanism which secures it is not very good. Also no way to read NB temps yet. I replaced the fan with an Antec Spot Cool. Attached it to mobo screw just on front of top pci-e slot and bent fan into position so it's beside the northbridge sink. Blocks top pci-e 1x slot though.

I have not done much with my setup yet (as in overclocking), as on air my bios is reading 32-35 idle for quad at 3ghz (speedstep, c1e turned off), doesn't say what core though, but coretemp is reading high 50's to mid 60's on each core!! Which I think it wrong. Going to try another heatsink (freezer 7 pro) to rule out poor contact. I know it's not the cpu as coretemp reads it as 32 on my X38. I think there could be an issue with this bios and temp sensing software on yorkfields. Will know soon enough. Watercooling soon anyway.

The mobo also has undervolting and vdroop issues. There is a pencil mod out but jury is still out on it. Generally if on air, the voltage required to maintain stability at 4ghz after vdroop on a quad is too high (1.5v+). Lots settling for 3.6ghz. There is an Asus Striker II mobo out which does not have this problem or it's minimal and it can take faster memory in all 4 slots. But from reading the Asus forums, there is lots of issues with this board, support is crap and at least EVGA are solving the issues on their forums and a new bios is expected any day. By the way the EVGA and XFX bios's are interchangeable so get the cheapest mobo. They are both refereence and both identical. I can confirm they also work with QX9770 1600fsb cpu's.

Only other information is Vista 64 works fine on this board, and no issues at all with X-Fi. I actually have not got a blue screen ever !! Either during setup, day to day use, or odd game I tried. Everything worked first time. Only thing I can think of is board has 2 pin power connector for Power LED and my case had a 3pin with earth in the middle. So I just got a couple of case wires from Maplins to wire up the right connectors.

If you get the GX2 the fan seems to stay around 35% (the gtx was defaulted to 60%). You can change it with RivaTuner but fan speed slowly climbs back down. You can also only control 1 card with Riva, though can overclock both. Some American members on the EVGA forums are seriously worried about why they can't run their fan at 100%. Don't know why anyone would want to as they are bloody loud which you will find out when you boot without drivers for first time. I'm running games fine, and I don't care to be honest. That's what warranty is for. 2.09 Riva should be out soon anyway.

One last thing, remember to write down the serial no. of the gx2 which is on the bottom of the fan. You need this to register for warranty (at least with EVGA and BFG). I have to take both my cards out now to do this. Pain in the hole. The other thing, is the pci bracket metal is very soft. Mine were bent!! But not to worry as they straighten up easy enough.

By the way, nn the psu you are going to need an 8pin pci-e connector and a 6pin. Some mobo vendors (XFX) provide a 6pin to 8pin adaptor. EVGA have a sticky on their forums recommending against this. They say for stability it needs to be 8pin native. So the new Corsair HX PSU cables are ok...they are 6pin, but have a 2 pin connector which you attach to make them 8pin, but the connector back at the psu end is also 8pin. So aok. Thermaltake Toughpower is ok too as they are 8pin on both sides. No idea if you can get away with just an adaptor. Plenty have from what I have seen. There is also an issue with the tabs on some psu connectors not fitting into the gx2. Nvidia have a list on which ones are ok.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9800gx2_pwr_supply.html

TonyM.

Well that gives me something to think about i must investigate the ram issues i can sit back and wait for a few weeks no need to rush in.
I will brobably go for Evga so i can step up to the 9900gtx when it comes out.

TonyM.

Ok i sold my 8800gtx and both my 7900gtxs and i have one 9800gtx on order I may order another when I check it out . I have decided to order the new Evga 750i when i source it, it looks pretty good and it also means I can stick with DDR2 for now.