well so far it seems to be quite good there rusty ! i benchmarked it in 3dmark20011 got pretty much what i should get .
on performance std setting it scored P7523 3dmarks.
yes i had those same worries rusty. but i just wanted to fuck around with some different shit hey! haha
i thought about it a lot. and had to compromise price wise. but i wanted something that would currently play pretty much all games in a 1 card setup so it had to be
some thing close to top end and price factor as well, not to expensive. you can now buy the Radeon HD6950 1gb cards for only $259 each so they are cheap.
my cousin bought a single GTX580 =$580 a few months ago [$550 now], it is fastest single core card avail atm . nice card but, runs cool and very fast/ but lot of money. For games that work good with xfire and sli 2x 6950 is faster than single gtx580. for single card games it is slower. most new games that are any good would support xfire and sli me thinks. gotta remember- dual is good, QUAD is better. haha
for 3dmark2011 most of the higher scored same set ups had overclocked their cpus to around 5GHZ but mine for the moment is only at std 3.4ghz.
Just got new cooler the other day which i will put in soon, maybe tomorrow. got the noctua NH-U9BseII .it is compromise of weight and performance.
The NH-U12BseII would be better but it weighs nearly 1kg [940gms] and i dont want a cracked mother board cos it gets carted around a lot .
u9b is only 640gms with 2 fans, and 500gms with one. quite a lot lighter.
also std cooler form intel is barely adequate and i am sure this new cooler will be light years ahead of it . std cooler is a small low cut piece of alluminium with a copper core. new u9b has 4 heat pipes up each side and 2 cpu fans with bucket loads more fins so it is a monster over the std one. i also like to run std cooler for a little while to get to know what temps it runs at
idle and under full load. idle seems to be around 26C and around 70C at full load. so expect something like 20C at idle and around maybe 50 full load std cpu spd. OCed will go up a bit 4 sure , must keep it under 60C max but . to allow for high ambient temps in summer.
also there is a bug in the bios, i guess, that at idle it says its running at 60C doing nothing, but in windows it says its about 26 C or so. and the looking at the screen in the bios i can only see 1/4 of it . stupid problem. its like the res is wrong and wont display it all. i managed to figure out a way around it, but it only seems to occur with a crt monitor . now i bought a cheapy 24" benQ led and i can see it all properly. hehe
i havent had it long, and have yet to come across any issues but i am sure i will find incompatibilities somewhere along the way!
only played - duke nukem 4 eva , bulletstorm, bioshock , homefront, just cause 2 , dragon age 2, medal of honour airbourne. 3dmark 2011
they all seem ok but i am not really sure how to tell how if they are running in xfire mode?
maybe look at the desktop radeon thingy ? ATI drivers right click on desktop properties , advanced . radeon control panel etc?
any clues would be greatly appreciated?
cheers