LGA 775 mobo + Q9650 + GTX 460 SLI benchmarks

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hdnut

Gawd
Joined
Jun 10, 2008
Messages
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I thought it would be interesting to share how a LGA 775 board (Nvidia one at that!) performed with couple of GTX 460's.

The benchmarks were ran with my second rig.

Here is my setup:

Mobo: EVGA 780i FTW
CPU: Q9650 - OC'd to 4.0 Ghz
Cooler: TRUE 120
GPU: GTX 460 SLI - OC'd to 800/1600/2102
RAM: 4 x 2GB DDR2 800 (8 GB total)
Display: BenQ 241VW 1920x1200 res



Unigine Heaven results:



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Here are some results from game benchmarking programs. All games were run at 1920x1200 resolution except the last game, FF XIV.

Crysis Warhead via Frambuffer Benchmarking Tool:



Min: 24.47 - Max 54.66 - Avg 43.61
Game was run at Enthusiast setting with AA @ 16x as you can see from the pic. The game rarely dipped below 30 FPS.

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Alien vs Predator Benchmark Program:



Avg FPS - 60.5
The program does not provide any min or max FPS data but game rarely dipped below 45 FPS. All settings were set to max with all graphical features enabled. AA was at 2x.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lost Planet 2 Benchmark Program:






The benchmark was run using the "B" option, which is the boss battle. All graphical settings were set to max with CSAA @ 16x.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Benchmark Program:





Again, all settings were set to max with MSAA @ 4x.

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Finally, FF XIV Benchmark Program:



Avg FPS was around 83 monitored via Fraps. The min FPS rarely went below 55.
The benchmark was run at High setting (1920x1080 res).

And the LGA 775 keeps on kicking...
 
Last edited:
Yea my Q6600 will only OC to 2.9, but it just keeps going and going and going. I wish there was a substantial upgrade available. I just built quad AMD systems for my nephews and I suppose they are faster, but not enough for me to upgrade. Everything I want to run does so with ease.

My next upgrade will have to utilize 6 or more cores to get me to bite.
 
nice my rig hits about 21500 and i have a q9550 and 260 sli, hoping to sli a pair of nvidia fermi refresh cards this spring :D
 
will you run it again with phsyx off, I think im gonna pick up a q9650 or q9550 for my 5870s and wanna see how it does
 
cageymaru said:
Yea my Q6600 will only OC to 2.9, but it just keeps going and going and going. I wish there was a substantial upgrade available. I just built quad AMD systems for my nephews and I suppose they are faster, but not enough for me to upgrade. Everything I want to run does so with ease.

My next upgrade will have to utilize 6 or more cores to get me to bite.
Click to expand...

An SSD will make your system scream, if you don't have one already.
 
hdnut said:
Are you referring to the Vantage benchmark?
Click to expand...

Yes. The Vantage score is artificially inflated because of PhysX so it's not a fair comparison. Set PhysX to the CPU in the NV control panel, or check off "Disable PPU" in the Vantage post-processing options.
 
Thanks for the benchmarks. To me it reinforces that the socket 775 platform is still plenty fast. It's going to take the equivalent performance of a six core Nehalem at 3.5ghz+ for ~$300 to get me out of it. Don't care if it's Intel or AMD or price drops or new architectures.
 
ochadd said:
Thanks for the benchmarks. To me it reinforces that the socket 775 platform is still plenty fast. It's going to take the equivalent performance of a six core Nehalem at 3.5ghz+ for ~$300 to get me out of it. Don't care if it's Intel or AMD or price drops or new architectures.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

To me, if you already had a Core 2 that could hit ~3.8ghz (which is pretty much every 45nm) then 1156/1366 were the platforms to skip if you use your rig primarily for gaming. I like to upgrade regularly, but i dont think the performance increase in gaming is enough to justify buying a i5/i7 and new mobo, especially considering the short life span of the platform. Looking forward to Sandy Bridge though.

Nice data btw
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I wanted to debunk some people's beliefs that you have to have a Core i5/i7 setup to run a pair of Fermi GPU's without bottleneck.

As stated by others, LGA 775 platform can still hold its own pretty well, especially if majority of your computing time is spent on gaming. I think this has been stated over and over but what boggles my mind are folks that continue to spread FUD about what is and is not possible with this platform.

Stay away from FUD. Stick with data. Data will lead you to the truth! :D
 
WOW! this is EXACTLY the thread I wanted to see !!!

Right now I'm running an e8400 @ 3 ghz, 4 gigs of ram and a 4870. I really really want to upgrade to 2x gtx 460, however I'd have to replace my current socket 775 motherboard with an SLI capable one to do so, and everyone else told me it'd bottleneck. What suggestions would you guys have for me then in order to run this setup?

My current setup now is

E8400
Asus p5k pro
4 gigs ddr 2 ram
ATI 4870
Coolermaster 650 watt power supply (only has 2xpci 6 pin connectors though but could use converters?!??)

I've noticed some cheap 775 mobos on tigerdirect I think, and on EVGA bstock, but bare in mind I'd have to pay close to $50 aus dollars just to get it over here :/

Ideas?
 
hdnut,

I notice you have DDR2 800 ram. I also have the same rated RAM and I think it's holding my E8400's OC back to only 3.6. Did you have to loosen the timings on the ram? Also did you increase the voltage of your northbridge and if so to what amount?

Thanks.
 
Vagrant_Zero said:
hdnut,

I notice you have DDR2 800 ram. I also have the same rated RAM and I think it's holding my E8400's OC back to only 3.6. Did you have to loosen the timings on the ram? Also did you increase the voltage of your northbridge and if so to what amount?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes, I did loosen the timings on the RAM. I'm running them at 5-5-5-15 right now, mainly because I'm using all 4 RAM slots. I was having some difficulty keeping all 4 memory modules stable and keeping it 800 Mhz at 5-5-5-15 timings seemed to have removed these instability issues. Plus, the performance boost you get in actual gaming from OC'ing your RAM is so slight that it is not even worth the effort. Again, unless you are an Everest or Sandra benchmark-whore, I wouldn't worry too much about overclocking the RAM.

Do you have a 750i/780i FTW mobo? I currently have my NB (SSP in bios) voltage set at 1.45. For OC'ing the e8400, I recommend keeping this voltage to 1.35 - 1.4. You shouldn't need more than that.

If you could, post here all of your BIOS voltage settings if you're running 750i/780i FTW mobo . That will help me see what needs to be tweaked.

MatttyB said:
Right now I'm running an e8400 @ 3 ghz, 4 gigs of ram and a 4870. I really really want to upgrade to 2x gtx 460, however I'd have to replace my current socket 775 motherboard with an SLI capable one to do so, and everyone else told me it'd bottleneck. What suggestions would you guys have for me then in order to run this setup?
Click to expand...

Your best option, IMO, would be the evga 750i FTW mobo from evga B-stock. If you could afford to upgrade to a quad core CPU, like a new or used Q9550, that would make your setup even better. In some games, especially many newer titles except Starcraft II for some reason, that dual core will hold you back a bit so moving on to a quad would make sense. For most games though, the e8400 should hold its own pretty well even with a pair of GTX 460's.

On a side note, if you do decide to upgrade the mobo and the CPU, might as well pony up another $100 dollars or so for DDR3 memory and go for a brand new Core i5/i7 setup.

If you're sticking with e8400 for the time being, don't keep that thing at stock clocks. That CPU yearns to be overclocked and you should be able to do so without much trouble to 3.8 - 4.0 Ghz. A decent cooler, if you don't already have one, will help you get that OC.
 
hdnut said:
Yes, I did loosen the timings on the RAM. I'm running them at 5-5-5-15 right now, mainly because I'm using all 4 RAM slots. I was having some difficulty keeping all 4 memory modules stable and keeping it 800 Mhz at 5-5-5-15 timings seemed to have removed these instability issues. Plus, the performance boost you get in actual gaming from OC'ing your RAM is so slight that it is not even worth the effort. Again, unless you are an Everest or Sandra benchmark-whore, I wouldn't worry too much about overclocking the RAM.

Do you have a 750i/780i FTW mobo? I currently have my NB (SSP in bios) voltage set at 1.45. For OC'ing the e8400, I recommend keeping this voltage to 1.35 - 1.4. You shouldn't need more than that.

If you could, post here all of your BIOS voltage settings if you're running 750i/780i FTW mobo . That will help me see what needs to be tweaked.
Click to expand...

Here are my components (I'm not using the same mobo as you):

ASUS, P5E, LGA775, Intel X38, 1600MHz FSB, DDR2-1200MHz 8GB /4, PCIe x16 CF /2, SATA 3Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN, FW /2, ATX, Retail

INTEL, Core™ 2 Duo E8400 Dual-Core, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB L2 Cache, 45nm, 65W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail

THERMALTAKE, V1 CPU Cooling Fan, Socket LGA775/AMD754/939/AM2, Copper

G.SKILL, 8GB (4 x 2GB) PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz CL5 (5-5-5-15) SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC
---------------------

My ram is 5-5-5-15 stock so I would have to loosen it to 6-6-6-24? I can lower my divider to 1:1 (nothing less), so at 3.6 my ram is at pure stock. At 3.7 I'm getting errors in Prime95 which is odd because that represents such a tiny overclock for my RAM. Also I'm purely a gamer, so I don't give a rat's ass on the RAM's performance, I know it barely makes any difference in games. I'd just like to get my CPU stable at 3.8-4.0. I mean I don't even have a stock cooler (though I've heard my custom cooler really isn't that great).

That's what leads me to believe it might just be a northbridge voltage issue. I have the NB voltage set to Auto currently (I know I know), mainly because I could never figure out the baseline stock voltage for my NB to begin with. I'm going to put it to 1.45v and see if that helps.

Currently my vCORE voltage is at 1.3 BIOS (vdroop puts it at like 1.25 under load) but I've pushed the volts up to 1.35 in BIOS and still couldn't get past the hump of 3.6. So I don't think lack of CPU volts is the issue with the OC (yet).

Thanks for all the advice BTW I appreciate it.
 
Vagrant_Zero said:
My ram is 5-5-5-15 stock so I would have to loosen it to 6-6-6-24? I can lower my divider to 1:1 (nothing less), so at 3.6 my ram is at pure stock. At 3.7 I'm getting errors in Prime95 which is odd because that represents such a tiny overclock for my RAM. Also I'm purely a gamer, so I don't give a rat's ass on the RAM's performance, I know it barely makes any difference in games. I'd just like to get my CPU stable at 3.8-4.0. I mean I don't even have a stock cooler (though I've heard my custom cooler really isn't that great).

That's what leads me to believe it might just be a northbridge voltage issue. I have the NB voltage set to Auto currently (I know I know), mainly because I could never figure out the baseline stock voltage for my NB to begin with. I'm going to put it to 1.45v and see if that helps.

Currently my vCORE voltage is at 1.3 BIOS (vdroop puts it at like 1.25 under load) but I've pushed the volts up to 1.35 in BIOS and still couldn't get past the hump of 3.6. So I don't think lack of CPU volts is the issue with the OC (yet).

Thanks for all the advice BTW I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

So you have a Intel X38 mobo... and these require different voltage settings for NB compared to a nForce chipset like mine.

I don't recommend going to 1.45 volts on the NB just yet until you can confirm with someone who have used these mobo's that it is safe to so. There are a lot of folks on [H] with experience on these mobo's (you know who you are, please feel free to chime in. :D).

Is there a feature to disable vdroop in BIOS? If not, up the CPU voltage to 1.4 and try again. 1.4 volts will not kill that e8400. Plus with vdroop, it's going to drop to 1.35-1.36 during stress tests. You will need to up the NB voltage to accommodate RAM speed increase as well. Again, find out what is and is not acceptable voltage increase for the NB and then go ahead and set it.

You may need to raise your FSB voltage also. It may go by another name in your mobo's BIOS screen. Usually you don't have to raise this by that much, especially for dual core wolfdales.

Your timings are fine at 5-5-5-15 for DDR2 800 memory. But some RAM do not like to be overclocked at all and immediately get temperamental if you start to tweak it. Ensure you have the voltage set to 2.1 volts. Because I have a 780i mobo, I have the luxury to run my RAM unlinked from the CPU, which allows me to run the memory completely at stock speeds while I play around with the CPU OC. You may need to get DDR2 1066 modules if upping the NB and memory voltage is still causing stability issues.

Also, go into your BIOS' voltage screen and jot down all the voltage settings on a piece of paper and post back here.

For instance, like so:

CPU vCore - 1.3
NB - 1.4
SB - 1.2
RAM - 2.1

and etc.
 
Zoson said:
Kind of surprised that it performs worse than my i7 with GTX275's in SLI.
Physx off: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=2545070
Physx on: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dmv=2536314
Click to expand...

Lol, how is it worse? GPU score is what is important. Your Overall Vantage score will easily beat mine because your Core i7 CPU score provides much of your score boost.

Anyway, Vantage only provides part, very small part at that, of the whole picture.

I will guarantee that if you would run some of the gaming benchmarks with the same setting I used, it will paint a completely different picture, except maybe FF XIV since that benchmark is pretty CPU dependent.
 
hdnut said:
So you have a Intel X38 mobo... and these require different voltage settings for NB compared to a nForce chipset like mine.

I don't recommend going to 1.45 volts on the NB just yet until you can confirm with someone who have used these mobo's that it is safe to so. There are a lot of folks on [H] with experience on these mobo's (you know who you are, please feel free to chime in. :D).

Is there a feature to disable vdroop in BIOS? If not, up the CPU voltage to 1.4 and try again. 1.4 volts will not kill that e8400. Plus with vdroop, it's going to drop to 1.35-1.36 during stress tests. You will need to up the NB voltage to accommodate RAM speed increase as well. Again, find out what is and is not acceptable voltage increase for the NB and then go ahead and set it.

You may need to raise your FSB voltage also. It may go by another name in your mobo's BIOS screen. Usually you don't have to raise this by that much, especially for dual core wolfdales.

Your timings are fine at 5-5-5-15 for DDR2 800 memory. But some RAM do not like to be overclocked at all and immediately get temperamental if you start to tweak it. Ensure you have the voltage set to 2.1 volts. Because I have a 780i mobo, I have the luxury to run my RAM unlinked from the CPU, which allows me to run the memory completely at stock speeds while I play around with the CPU OC. You may need to get DDR2 1066 modules if upping the NB and memory voltage is still causing stability issues.

Also, go into your BIOS' voltage screen and jot down all the voltage settings on a piece of paper and post back here.

For instance, like so:

CPU vCore - 1.3
NB - 1.4
SB - 1.2
RAM - 2.1

and etc.
Click to expand...

Turns out it was vdroop that was killing me. I upped my vCORE in BIOS to 1.375 (max I was willing to go before was 1.35 in BIOS), at idle it's at 1.352 (though sometimes it jumps down all the way to 1.32) and at load it's a constant 1.328. When intel says these chips are max rated for 1.365 they mean actual voltage right, not BIOS settings, but what's actually running through the chip right? So I'm still well below the max rating eh? Well at 1.375 it's stable in P95 8 minutes in on Blend. At 1.35 it would give errors in the first second or 2 of testing. Later tonight I'll put it through a true 8 test on blend and see if it's in fact stable. Still it seems vCORE was my issue.

Reason I'm being so paranoid about the volts is that I need this CPU to run me another 2/3 years. I don't plan on doing a complete system rebuild until the 2013 Nvidia GPU. The CPU is already 2 years old, however I just started OCing it for the first time like a week ago, so it was stock for 2 years.

My NB, SB and FSB Termination voltages are set to Auto. I upped my RAM voltage to 1.9 (this is the max the gskill says these dimms are supposed to go). My BIOS says max voltage for NB is 1.75, it warns anything past that requires more than passive cooling. At 1.43 it turns to yellow, and somewhere around 1.6ish it turns red.

I wish I had someway of seeing my NB/SB/FSB volts when they're set to auto. I've tried almost every program you can think of and they won't show it for this mobo. Probably what I get for buying a cheapie mobo.
 
Vagrant_Zero said:
Turns out it was vdroop that was killing me. I upped my vCORE in BIOS to 1.375 (max I was willing to go before was 1.35 in BIOS), at idle it's at 1.352 (though sometimes it jumps down all the way to 1.32) and at load it's a constant 1.328. When intel says these chips are max rated for 1.365 they mean actual voltage right, not BIOS settings, but what's actually running through the chip right? So I'm still well below the max rating eh? Well at 1.375 it's stable in P95 8 minutes in on Blend. At 1.35 it would give errors in the first second or 2 of testing. Later tonight I'll put it through a true 8 test on blend and see if it's in fact stable. Still it seems vCORE was my issue.

Reason I'm being so paranoid about the volts is that I need this CPU to run me another 2/3 years. I don't plan on doing a complete system rebuild until the 2013 Nvidia GPU. The CPU is already 2 years old, however I just started OCing it for the first time like a week ago, so it was stock for 2 years.

My NB, SB and FSB Termination voltages are set to Auto. I upped my RAM voltage to 1.9 (this is the max the gskill says these dimms are supposed to go). My BIOS says max voltage for NB is 1.75, it warns anything past that requires more than passive cooling. At 1.43 it turns to yellow, and somewhere around 1.6ish it turns red.

I wish I had someway of seeing my NB/SB/FSB volts when they're set to auto. I've tried almost every program you can think of and they won't show it for this mobo. Probably what I get for buying a cheapie mobo.
Click to expand...

Good to hear that upping the vcore is working out for ya. And yes, I'm pretty sure it's the voltage running through the chip not necessarily the BIOS voltage setting. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

I've seen folks who ran their wolfdales at 1.4 plus volts without issue for a long time so you should be fine at little above 1.365 volts. Now I can't say that they ran it for 2-3 years straight at the said voltage so I guess a little leap of faith on your part will be needed.

Also, is your CPU a C stepping or one of those E0's that came out later. E0's were for the most part, better overclockers that required less voltage.

As far as getting your mobo voltages read, have you tried using Everest Ultimate? Great program that will give you a very thorough diagnostic data of your PC.
 
hdnut said:
Good to hear that upping the vcore is working out for ya. And yes, I'm pretty sure it's the voltage running through the chip not necessarily the BIOS voltage setting. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

I've seen folks who ran their wolfdales at 1.4 plus volts without issue for a long time so you should be fine at little above 1.365 volts. Now I can't say that they ran it for 2-3 years straight at the said voltage so I guess a little leap of faith on your part will be needed.

Also, is your CPU a C stepping or one of those E0's that came out later. E0's were for the most part, better overclockers that required less voltage.

As far as getting your mobo voltages read, have you tried using Everest Ultimate? Great program that will give you a very thorough diagnostic data of your PC.
Click to expand...

I've tried Everest Ultimate. No go there. My CPU is a C0, stepping 6, VID 1.2250.

If I hit 3.8 I'll be happy with that and call it a day really.

Thanks for all your help.
 
[/QUOTE]
Your best option, IMO, would be the evga 750i FTW mobo from evga B-stock. If you could afford to upgrade to a quad core CPU, like a new or used Q9550, that would make your setup even better. In some games, especially many newer titles except Starcraft II for some reason, that dual core will hold you back a bit so moving on to a quad would make sense. For most games though, the e8400 should hold its own pretty well even with a pair of GTX 460's.

On a side note, if you do decide to upgrade the mobo and the CPU, might as well pony up another $100 dollars or so for DDR3 memory and go for a brand new Core i5/i7 setup.

If you're sticking with e8400 for the time being, don't keep that thing at stock clocks. That CPU yearns to be overclocked and you should be able to do so without much trouble to 3.8 - 4.0 Ghz. A decent cooler, if you don't already have one, will help you get that OC.[/QUOTE]

What do you think of this ?

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NVIDIA-nForc...550796261?pt=Motherboards&hash=item27b59e9fe5

I could buy that brand new for 460 SLI??? I want to stick with my e8400 for the time being. I don't need to move to a quad core yet. My Coolermaster 650 watt real power pro should be ok with 2 of those yeh? what power supply are you running?
 
hdnut said:
Your best option, IMO, would be the evga 750i FTW mobo from evga B-stock. If you could afford to upgrade to a quad core CPU, like a new or used Q9550, that would make your setup even better. In some games, especially many newer titles except Starcraft II for some reason, that dual core will hold you back a bit so moving on to a quad would make sense. For most games though, the e8400 should hold its own pretty well even with a pair of GTX 460's.

On a side note, if you do decide to upgrade the mobo and the CPU, might as well pony up another $100 dollars or so for DDR3 memory and go for a brand new Core i5/i7 setup.

If you're sticking with e8400 for the time being, don't keep that thing at stock clocks. That CPU yearns to be overclocked and you should be able to do so without much trouble to 3.8 - 4.0 Ghz. A decent cooler, if you don't already have one, will help you get that OC.
Click to expand...

What do you think of this ?

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NVIDIA-nForce...item27b59e9fe5

I could buy that brand new for 460 SLI??? I want to stick with my e8400 for the time being. I don't need to move to a quad core yet. My Coolermaster 650 watt real power pro should be ok with 2 of those yeh? what power supply are you running?

PS sorry for the double post. I tried to delete the old one but couldn't work out how.
 
MatttyB said:
What do you think of this ?

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NVIDIA-nForce...item27b59e9fe5

I could buy that brand new for 460 SLI??? I want to stick with my e8400 for the time being. I don't need to move to a quad core yet. My Coolermaster 650 watt real power pro should be ok with 2 of those yeh? what power supply are you running?

PS sorry for the double post. I tried to delete the old one but couldn't work out how.
Click to expand...

It's an XFX board... and I don't know how reliable their nForce boards are. The limited reviews on these seem to be fairly positive. It does come with 1 year warranty so that may help in case something does go wrong.

I still stand by my 750i FTW recommendation. Great board for SLI and proven to be a pretty good overclocking board. Granted, you would have to buy their B-stock at evga and it would come with only 90 day warranty but their forum community is pretty helpful and knowledgeable over at evga. You can find lots of good info on how to tweak your mobo to get the most out of it or find solutions if you run into any issues.

Also, evga 750i FTW has full 2x 16x pci-e lanes when both are used at the same time. The XFX does only 2x 8x pci-e from what I've read. It will do 16x only when one lane is used. Now, this will not affect performance all that much but it may matter to some. I personally do not care for boards that will not do full 2x 16x pci-e.

Your PSU seems to be good enough to handle 2x GTX 460's. Obviously, you'll need to find some molex adapters to make it work though. Where and how, I couldn't tell you. The PSU I'm using for this PC is the Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W W0133RU. Overkill, perhaps, but I don't like skimping out on PSU's. Plus, I like to know I have enough power, clean and efficient, to handle any hardware upgrades and overclocks.
 
This benchmark is exactly the reason why I'm holding off until LGA 2011 (PCI Express 3.0, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0).
 
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