Show us your Unigine Heaven benchmark scores!

[smarteyeball]

Thanks Steve. I'm always happy to help those like yourself who are happy to learn

And as you know, I aim to point users in the right direction for them with the best compromise for budget.


I'm toying with the idea of doing a small HTPC for my dad that he can have near the TV. I'm thinking of using a m-ATX Asrock board for that.

The ROG boards are definitely appealing boards, but I've always managed to find alternatives that suited my requirements. Usually based around fitting my bloody PCI-E soundcard that had to go anyway

But yeah, I do like the buzz you get from having the high end board It's largely a placebo effect I believe. You can trust that whatever you do to the board, within limits, it will handle all you ask.

I've found that as long as you can tweak the ram, voltages for all sorts of functions and control over phases and power, you can get good performance out of it.

Mine is a Work Station board. So whilst it's not primarily aimed at overclockers, it has most, if not all the functions and quality bits as the ROG series. The bloody price is similar

Plus it's nice to know quad sli is an option. Not going to go quad, but nice knowing that if a free 670 fell in my lap I'd think about it.


I'd love to do product reviews. I'd be one of 'no BS' guys that aren't biased or bought. I have the time and capability

 

[essenbe]

I want to be your helper. Nothing more I'd like to do; especially with you. I always had the same impression as you about the ROG boards, until I got one. I have had UEFI bios since they came out with the B3 version in sandy Bridge. I had owned an Asrock and 2 Asus boards. I was not concerned in the least about tweeking a UEFI BIOS. On first startup with this board I went straight to BIOS. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. There are still settings there that I have no idea what they are or what they do. Needless to say, I was shocked. But, I still can't say much bad about the Asrock board. It was and still is, rock stable. I'm running a second rig with my 2600K with it. The only negative I can say is that it will overclock OK, but will never match an Asus board. I never was able to boot my 2500K more than 4.6 with it. When I got my first Asus board I bench tested it before the build. During the bench test I had the 2500K stable at 4.8 with less voltage than the Asrock needed at 4.6. But, it's a good board and very stable. Would make a good HTPC rig. This Maximus has 4 or 5 pages of nothing but ram timings, if you can believe that. But, your concerns about it, the bottom X16 slot is an X4 electrical slot that runs X1 by default, I believe. They claim it can take 4 cards, but 3 is max on the new double wide cards. But the spacing on the slots is as good as you could get. And, I still think it is faster every time I see the Extreme behind the maximus name. It darn well should be for what I paid for it.

 

[Britton30]

I like and trust ASUS boards too. My first build was with an ASUS A8V and I bought it for no reason other than it had the socket (AMD 939) for a CPU that was recommended.

I've tried Gigglebye and ASrock but would buy ASUS again but not the others.

 

[smarteyeball]

I want to be your helper.

You've certainly been helpful so far mate

One of my star pupils

On first startup with this board I went straight to BIOS. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. There are still settings there that I have no idea what they are or what they do. Needless to say, I was shocked.

A bit like a monkey with fire at first isn't it? I must admit there are still a few options that are a bit grey to me. Grey to everyone lol.

Still, it's nice to have them.


For a htpc build I'd actually underclock rather than overclock. So a bells and whistle overclocking board isn't needed.

This Maximus has 4 or 5 pages of nothing but ram timings, if you can believe that.

Oh I believe it. The sad thing is though, for the vast majority of us, we don't need to touch anymore than the "1st information" section of timings. The others are there for the very serious RAM tweakers

But, your concerns about it, the bottom X16 slot is an X4 electrical slot that runs X1 by default, I believe. They claim it can take 4 cards, but 3 is max on the new double wide cards. But the spacing on the slots is as good as you could get. And, I still think it is faster every time I see the Extreme behind the maximus name. It darn well should be for what I paid for it.

Most boards with 4 slots are like that. It's strange that my board is x8/x8/x8/x8 when a dedicated gamer board misses out. Iirc, the spacing on the two boards are pretty much the same.

With dual SLI, running in slots 1/3 - I didn't hear my cards. It'd be the same for yours. And with these PCI-E 3.0 boards, being 'relegated' to x8 3.0 is the same as x16 2.0 so there's next to no penalty.

And it is faster. It's Extreme lol.

 

[ganjiry]

The first screenie is from my Fx6100 oc'd to 4.5Ghz, Gpu's +50 core, +300 Mem.
Second screenie is with my 8350 @ stock, Gpu's stock
I'll get another one up 2moz when i've tweaked things a tad. My cpu was definately holding me back enit.

 

[paulpicks21]

Looking pretty promising there then mate!

 

[ganjiry]

Looking pretty promising there then mate!

Enit chap
I couldn't hit that 3k no matter what i did before but it looks an easy target now lol.

 

[Dude]

The first screenie is from my Fx6100 oc'd to 4.5Ghz, Gpu's +50 core, +300 Mem.
Second screenie is with my 8350 @ stock, Gpu's stock
I'll get another one up 2moz when i've tweaked things a tad. My cpu was definately holding me back enit.

Looks real good mate!

 

[essenbe]

Great scores, Ryan.

 

[ganjiry]

Cheers chaps It oc's nice too

 

[smarteyeball]

What mhz speed does your boost max out @ stock?

Mine is 1189mhz. Oc'ed, up to 1276mhz. Get that boost up (keep it under 70c to avoid 1st thermal) and you should nab a few more FPS

 

[ganjiry]

What mhz speed does your boost max out @ stock?

Mine is 1189mhz. Oc'ed, up to 1276mhz. Get that boost up (keep it under 70c to avoid 1st thermal) and you should nab a few more FPS

Top card boost's to 1175, bottom 1149 and the most i've managed to oc them is +50 core, +300mem but my coolers are pretty poor. I always keep them below 70 but it can take the full 90% fan speed. How stupid does that sound aye"full 90%". Infact with my cpu oc'd my cards are being utilized more so running hotter so maxing out at 69c. They're pretty darn loud at that speed too and really need to be under water but thats just money i don't have. Plus all the grief of leak testing, draining loops and all that malarky..
I'm only using 60hz monitors though but never need to use v-sync as i've not seen any tearing at high fps. They're good panels for the price.. the only thing with them is the backlight bleed around the edge's. I use black wallpaper's which don't help lol.

 

[ganjiry]

It was a bit chilly this morning so i was able to run valley, I had to have the back door open mind:shock:
Cards stock, Cpu oc 4.6Ghz, which finally broke the 3k mark

 

[paulpicks21]

Great score mate, you easily broke the 3k barrier there by quite a bit

 

[ganjiry]

Cheers chap
I'm really struggling to keep the gpu's below 70c now its got a tiny bit warmer so am proper dreading the warmer weather

 

[paulpicks21]

How's the temps when gaming? If it's causing issues in the summer maybe you could just downclock the cards a bit.

 

[ganjiry]

Playing BF3 i can keep the temp around 65c but in Grid 2 i have to have vsync enabled as they heat up in the menu's. I'm going to reduce the power target a bit and see if that helps at all.

 

[Solarstarshines]

Very nice scores

Some Games ramp up sli or crossfire cards more for some reason

have you tried single card performance to see if it still get those high temps usually they go higher because of dual cards I noticed this as well

But some games make Gpu's work harder then others like Dead island #1 was a GPU killer make any GPU on the planet over heat

But using a hd5770 mid range card back then it wouldn't get over 50c :sarc:

so you are not alone

 

[ganjiry]

It's a right royal pain in the arse enit as they should be able to keep themselves cool at stock settings without having to max the fans out. I even sat and cleaned every fan blade with a cotton bud to see if it helped lol.
My last resort will be taking one of the cards out for the summer. These cards are sold in countries a darn sight warmer than the uk too. So god knows how they'd keep them cool.

 

[essenbe]

ganjiry, I only have 1 card, but I live in a very hot climate and have no problems yet. How much space do you have between the cards? Would a house fan blowing on the cards help you think?