Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[Warsaw]

Since Nvidia and ATI just provide the GPU which is very unlikely to break, you should just try another company that actually builds the card itself. Though EVGA should be one of the best

I use Zotac...a chinese company which never broke down on me so I'm fine xD

I know. But, it's an opportunity to try the other camp.

[Cortexian]

Not really an opportunity since I still have another GTX 470. Since I run SLI I wouldn't change unless both cards conked out at the same time.

EVGA does manufacture its own cards btw, so I don't see how switching to another brand (with inferior customer service) would help.

[Patrickssj6]

EVGA does manufacture its own cards btw, so I don't see how switching to another brand (with inferior customer service) would help.

Sorry wrong sentence structure. I meant: You should try another company that builds graphic cards (and not switch from NVIDIA to ATI who just provide the GPU).

[Cortexian]

I understood, Nvidia does the same thing really. They provide the GPU and a reference design and then license it out to manufactures like MSI, EVGA, GIGABYTE, ETC... I don't know why I would WANT to try another brand of Nvidia card besides EVGA though. With the exception of the hassle of waiting for an RMA there has been minimal disruption to me, and they get back to your support requests very fast. Not to mention the awesome phone support they have.

[Patrickssj6]

Not telling anyone what to do that but I never had an RMA in my life thus I never had to call support It just seems you get a lot of broken stuff.

[Warsaw]

^That.

eVGA is only king because XFX left for ATI and BFG quit the business altogether. I just buy what meets my performance needs and budget constraints while taking into account user reviews after those constraints are met. I am running a broken eVGA card right now, actually. Broken out of the box, the entire line.

[Cortexian]

Well here's the thing, the cards I have been getting back are all "re-certified" cards. I don't know EXACTLY what than entails but according to EVGA they're not refurbished cards, apparently re-certification means they usually go back to the factory testing facilities and run all the QA tests again.

That said, when I inquired about getting a new factory-fresh card they said that it would of been possible except that GTX 470's are no longer in production. They said that if the new replacement is a lemon as well, or the one that I still have does the way of the dodo, then I'm well within my warranty coverage to ask them for a pair of factory-fresh GTX 560 ti's or 570's depending on what their stock is like at the time.

So I'd rather stick with EVGA and their questionable re-certified stock and get free upgrades every few months than switch to another manufacturer.

Also, how's this?


Keep in mind that LinX is one of the most intensive stress testing applications. My point being that; yes I hit 73 degrees while running LinX but that means almost nothing else in normal usage will get that high.

I didn't really run it 100% properly either, I still had a few useless background applications running and I didn't kill off the recommended Windows Services.

[Cortexian]

Better results after enabling C1E and C3/C6 States, I know it doesn't make sense but whatever. With these Enabled it will cut down power usage and temps when it's not working hard.

[InnerGoat]

You should be getting close to 100Gflop. Please install W7 SP 1 ...

[Cortexian]

SP1 is installed lol, we seem to be having this discussion on OCN as well... Take a gander at this thread, since you and some of the people there seem to be confused as how to properly run LinX/IntelBurnTest.

ow to test CPU and RAM stability (summarized):
Pre. You need to extract everything from the archive to a single folder, while
maintaining the original directory structure.
1. It is best to use a 64-bit OS with the 64-bit mode for the most accurate
test result.
2. Use the most available RAM possible (IntelBurnTest can now do this on
its own automatically). The more memory it uses, the more accurate.
However, most people can use "Standard" mode as it should be sufficient.

EDIT: Okay yeah... LinX fails, to anyone I recommended it to, use IntelBurnTest instead.