My First Intel build :)

[Gilly]

Sup guys!!!!

Recently ive been playing a fair bit (70 days in 8 months) of World of warcraft when i get time. And some UT mixed in for good measure.

Ive been feeling for a while i was struggling in WoW when there is a lot going on in say Mount Hyjal, the FPS has been very very low, say less than 15 16 at times looking into all the AoE in a trash wave.

Different spell details and AA settings had no visable effect on the FPS, so ive taken the conclusion that my cpu (which lets face it is pretty old) is bottlenecking.

So ive got some new stuff in the post.

Currently stands at an E8400, Asus P5K-E and i think the 4GB PC8000 Reaper X stuff (because its £6 more than the PC6400 version hehe).

So i will let you all know how the build goes! Will be my first intel rig personally and i will look forward to trying to meddle with the CPU speed

I hope i havent got a cpu with the temp bug that some people were saying about on the net.

*Before you say why didnt i get a Q6600 i dont do anything else other than gaming, and because i dont know whats happening at work i wanted to spend as little as possible on something thats gonna last a while *

[krips]

Sweet . Hopefully you'll be pleased.

[Gilly]

well, its all installed and working

went for the PC6400 ram.

Things of note:

Socket 775 fixing mechanism for both the stock intel cooler and my swiftech water block is much much better than the socket 939 platform. A lot more robust and feels like it wont snap the CPU because of all the force being in 1 place across 1 axis of the core

The CPU itself is a lot smaller than the AMD chips. Nothing amazing in that, just the fact of how much smaller the chips are than the older ones

The new BIOS updating by USB stick (which is new to me) is awesome! no more digging out a floppy drive to update a BIOS for those using NTFS.

One bad thing about this mobo is the placement of the IDE slot being horizontally on the board above the power led headers Also, its upside down

Performance:

WoW runs amazingly. Fights where i got 15 to 16fps in the middle of all the crap is now running at 35 to 40, normally in fights its nearer 60 fps compared to 20.

All in all its pretty good. I hope to post up some sort of overclocking result sometime soon, nothing world record worthy, just how i found it

But yeah, for anything CPU bound these CD2's are just insane.

[daglesj]

[Gilly]

ah!

i should be more clear. the waterblock system uses 4 threaded rods which get bolted to the motherboard, then the water block levers its way onto the cpu core via springs on the threads.

the old 939 method was a stupidly tough spring vs cheap screw. i clean snapped off one of the heads on the 939 mechanism trying to fit it a second time, the thread was slightly off and it was bad enough to fail. the first time i fitted it it was fine, but for whatever reason the 2nd time it didnt like it, it got 1/4 turn and went "dink"

i cant comment on stock 939 cooler, but yeah i agree, the stock intel 775 doesnt feel that good

i like having 4 fixing points though

[daglesj]

Ahh indeed...it all becomes clear now. lol

Sounds a good system.

[Scooby]

Hey dude, nice upgrade. I too jumped to an Intel setup (see sig) and big difference. I want to get a E8400 too but nobody has one for sale right now. With my setup I plan to kick it up to 4Ghz, I just pray I get one from a good batch.

Will done M8!!!!

[Gilly]

lol cheers mate. its insane how much better it is than the old system for wow particularly.

[UDF2Diablo]

welcome to the club !

you need to update your signature m8.

Edit: infact... so do i ;o ... how do you get your signature centered ?

[Scooby]

Try this...