kikenovic wrote:

That's pretty interesting, AGP and DDR3. What mobo is that?

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure @havli's HD 3850, is a PCI-e one 😉

Indeeded, pci-e. And that MB is Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H, so no DDR3 either.

kanecvr wrote:

Nice. I need to get 48GB into my HP Z800 - I got it with 32gb (8x4GB) witch I found weird - then I noticed the memory is configured in dual-channel instead of the regular triple channel (regular for 1366 anyway), with 2 slots per CPU left unpopulated. Gotta get 4x4GB of ECC DDR3...

Just thought I would mention that with 1366 xeon chips, the memory controller is in the processor (I sort of hinted at that with my earlier post you quoted). And as such there are multiple different memory controllers in the 1366 chips from the crappy low end non-hyper-threaded quad cores with 800 mhz ram, up to 1066 mhz ram cpu's (mine has these now) and the "high end" 1333 mhz cpu's.

But all of that aside, I had a benchmark somewhere.. I'll have to try and find it. These 1366 xeons in single-cpu configuration do something like 8 GB/s or 9 GB/s ram with just 1 cpu. But in dual-cpu configuration most 1366 dual-socket boards will do double-bidirectional-qpi-links for each cpu, and then triple channel ram on each "local bank" for each chip then NUMA across the two banks over that. My SuperMicro board with just 1066 mhz ram is doing around 35 GB/s with two chips. And I think the dual-socket 1366 platform goes up to either 37 GB/s or 43 GB/s with 1333 ram, I'll have to look it up again. But yeah, even with "lower" ram speeds.. the dual-xeon platforms are amazing beasts for ram performance.

I can't do any sandra tests on it right now because it's got 60% of the ram in use with the Ark: Survival Evolved servers running. Maybe later this week or near the first of the next month when I get to bring the servers down for game updates I'll try to remember to do a sandra benchmark for a few minutes.

kithylin wrote:

Just thought I would mention that with 1366 xeon chips, the memory controller is in the processor (I sort of hinted at that with […]
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kanecvr wrote:

Nice. I need to get 48GB into my HP Z800 - I got it with 32gb (8x4GB) witch I found weird - then I noticed the memory is configured in dual-channel instead of the regular triple channel (regular for 1366 anyway), with 2 slots per CPU left unpopulated. Gotta get 4x4GB of ECC DDR3...

Just thought I would mention that with 1366 xeon chips, the memory controller is in the processor (I sort of hinted at that with my earlier post you quoted). And as such there are multiple different memory controllers in the 1366 chips from the crappy low end non-hyper-threaded quad cores with 800 mhz ram, up to 1066 mhz ram cpu's (mine has these now) and the "high end" 1333 mhz cpu's.

But all of that aside, I had a benchmark somewhere.. I'll have to try and find it. These 1366 xeons in single-cpu configuration do something like 8 GB/s or 9 GB/s ram with just 1 cpu. But in dual-cpu configuration most 1366 dual-socket boards will do double-bidirectional-qpi-links for each cpu, and then triple channel ram on each "local bank" for each chip then NUMA across the two banks over that. My SuperMicro board with just 1066 mhz ram is doing around 35 GB/s with two chips. And I think the dual-socket 1366 platform goes up to either 37 GB/s or 43 GB/s with 1333 ram, I'll have to look it up again. But yeah, even with "lower" ram speeds.. the dual-xeon platforms are amazing beasts for ram performance.

I can't do any sandra tests on it right now because it's got 60% of the ram in use with the Ark: Survival Evolved servers running. Maybe later this week or near the first of the next month when I get to bring the servers down for game updates I'll try to remember to do a sandra benchmark for a few minutes.

I use my Z800 exclusively for 3dsmax and render times would benefit from tipple channel ram. Luckily I got a dead Z620 and nicked some ram of that - it's 1600Mhz ram but runs fine in the Z800. Shame about the 620 tough, it's a sweet dual LGA2011 machine.

Today I received my latest buy from eBay, an Asus/Pegatron Ipibl-lb, it's in very good condition and cost me around 37€ including shipping. It was listed as including two 1GB memory modules, and in the photo it has an unidentified CPU not listed in the auction, so I suposed it was a Pentium 4 or Celeron used merely to cover the socket... nop, it's a nice and fully functional Core 2 Duo e4600, nothing to write home about, but it's basically free 😀 . Now it has 3GB of memory, two 1GB and two 512MB, good for Windows 7 32 bits.

So I decided to go fishing for a graphic card to populate this poor empty PCEe 16x slot 🤣 and found locally a Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 for only 13€

And as soon as it comes from China I'll throw a Xeon L5420 in this mobo and I'll have a nice, low cost, powerful enough HTPC.

Got lucky with a monitor..
£8 from my local charity shop...
17" Samsung SyncMaster743N

Was half expecting some minor screen damage, but condition seems to be sweeet

Might go back and grab the other one they had, Viewsonic VA703m

Bought a GTX 690 today can't wait for it to arrive 😎
A bit surprised that it compares with GTX 970/980 when things are favorable for sli.

An RCA Maven 11.6, for comic book reading. Works well for the purpose (I use PerfectView).

My capture PC got a CPU upgrade 😀

I like the "S" cpus. Son has an i5-4570S paired with a 750Ti. 😀 Great performance-efficiency ratio. When we can save up for a GTX1060 for him, I will get the 750Ti in my rig. Since I retro-game and he modern-games, it's a good symbiotic relationship. 🤣.

Thanks to recent ebay sales, I was able to go xmas shopping a bit early and I treated myself to this pair of awesome equipment:

Soundblaster ZXR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16829102050
Sennheiser 528
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16826106522

These things are GLORIOUS. Headphones are softer than a baby's ass, light as a feather, and sound like angels. I'm sure the ZXR is helping. God I hate onboard sound.

luckybob wrote:

Thanks to recent ebay sales, I was able to go xmas shopping a bit early and I treated myself to this pair of awesome equipment: […]
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Thanks to recent ebay sales, I was able to go xmas shopping a bit early and I treated myself to this pair of awesome equipment:

Soundblaster ZXR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16829102050
Sennheiser 528
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16826106522

These things are GLORIOUS. Headphones are softer than a baby's ass, light as a feather, and sound like angels. I'm sure the ZXR is helping. God I hate onboard sound.

Funny story - I upgraded to win10 recently and the OS decided it hates my on board sound card regardless of drivers (Realtek ALC829). I had no opinion whatsoever on on-board vs dedicated sound (just went with what was cheaper) - they kind of sounded the same to me. Since I could not use the realtek in win10 and did not want to roll back to win8.1, I bought a PCI-E Sound Blaster X-Fi. Well... drivers are shit, features are shit and it sounded like shit when I first put in in my machine. Turns out the win8.1 / win10 driver creative released for this card is really stripped down, is missing most important features, and it defaults it to 16bit / 96khz audio quality. Oh did I mention it sounded like shit? Flat, too much mid-treble, no bass under 200hz. I was so pissed. Luckily I only spent 10$ for it (got it SH). After attempting to get the Realtek working again and failing, I came across a modded driver for the x-fi witch got it working correctly, this time outputing at 24bit / 96khz witch sound pretty good - and the Creative Audio Console and Volume Panel are both working with this driver. Oh and the best part - no blue screens!

Thing is, this card cost about 70-100$ a few years ago, and I have to say - it's not worth it. Realtek software is MUCH MUCH BETTER then the crap Creative churns out, and gives better control over the card. For example - the X-Fi has no microphone boost, or noise suppression, or acoustic echo cancellation. Seriously? The realtek control panel has these features and more - stuff like volume normalization witch helps in movies so effects won't be 400% louder then speech - stuff like auto 2.0 to 4.0 stereo cloning, and so on. Very disappointing. I've also played with some Asus Xonar 150$ card my sister's boyfriend bought - after prying off all the plastic you are treted with virtually no filters (just like the on-board audio) and a C-Media CMI8786 chip found ON BOARD on some motherboards. Nice huh?

As for the X-Fi vs ALC829, the only noticeable sound quality improvement the creative card has over the on-board is clearer mid-high tones while using big speakers (microlab solo 7c) and better headphone volume. It doesn't sound as good in music (it kind of cuts off low bass) but it sound a lot better in movies and speech in general. OK for 10$, not OK for 100 especially since it lacks so many microphone improvements the realtek has. The ZxR on the other hand has a butt-load of filters - bet it sounds great - but it costs as much as a decent video card so I'll only be getting one when I drops to 20-30$ on the SH market.

P.S. - turns out it was not a driver issue with the Realtek - I think there's something wrong with the codec - it just happened to fail after updating to win 10. Never seen a modern on-board audio codec fail before. Well, maybe on laptops...

I've seen onboard audio chips die. Sometimes when you fiddle with the front audio port.

The X-Fi is too old for modern Windows. Newer cards, like the Z series, has those features you mention. You can adjust the audio compressor with a slider, with Realtek it's just a tick box AFAIK.

The X-Fi cards are worth keeping though for Windows XP retro gaming. Here they work great.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I've seen onboard audio chips die. Sometimes when you fiddle with the front audio port.

The X-Fi is too old for modern Windows. Newer cards, like the Z series, has those features you mention. You can adjust the audio compressor with a slider, with Realtek it's just a tick box AFAIK.

The X-Fi cards are worth keeping though for Windows XP retro gaming. Here they work great.

Well I tried the SB1040 in XP and microphone boost, AEC and NS are still missing (and yes, I installed everything off the card's CD). I googled it lots of people have been complaining about this since the card launched.

On my main rig I use modded drivers in win10 witch are not only perfectly stable, but restore full functionality of the card - so until I upgrade my machine or just swap out the mainboard the X-Fi will stay in there - and maybe even after (unless the new board comes with ALC1150 or ALC1200 + filters). Like I said, the SB1040 is a decent card, with slightly better output then the on board - my only issue with these is when they charge 100$ or more for them - they are worth 30-40$ tops.

I did at one point have a board with awsome on board audio - the Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X. Thing is, while these have good filters and even a preamp for headphones, some come with the ALC1150, but most come with the ALC898. The MSI Z170 Krait Gaming also comes with great on board audio - ALC1150 + filters.

clueless1 wrote:

I like the "S" cpus. Son has an i5-4570S paired with a 750Ti. 😀 Great performance-efficiency ratio. When we can save up for a GTX1060 for him, I will get the 750Ti in my rig. Since I retro-game and he modern-games, it's a good symbiotic relationship. 🤣.

I mostly got it because it was available. Couldn't find many Haswell CPUs when I was looking. The price was ok, no bargain, but good enough.

kanecvr wrote:

Like I said, the SB1040 is a decent card, with slightly better output then the on board - my only issue with these is when they charge 100$ or more for them - they are worth 30-40$ tops.

I did at one point have a board with awsome on board audio - the Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X. Thing is, while these have good filters and even a preamp for headphones, some come with the ALC1150, but most come with the ALC898. The MSI Z170 Krait Gaming also comes with great on board audio - ALC1150 + filters.

The Xtreme Audio? These are not proper X-Fi cards. Do it all via software, similar to the Audigy LE cards. Even the X-Fi cards are limited with the features. A modern Realtek does indeed have a lot more features. It's only with the latest Z series that you get the nice features.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I mostly got it because it was available. Couldn't find many Haswell CPUs when I was looking. The price was ok, no bargain, but […]
Show full quote

clueless1 wrote:

I like the "S" cpus. Son has an i5-4570S paired with a 750Ti. 😀 Great performance-efficiency ratio. When we can save up for a GTX1060 for him, I will get the 750Ti in my rig. Since I retro-game and he modern-games, it's a good symbiotic relationship. 🤣.

I mostly got it because it was available. Couldn't find many Haswell CPUs when I was looking. The price was ok, no bargain, but good enough.

kanecvr wrote:

Like I said, the SB1040 is a decent card, with slightly better output then the on board - my only issue with these is when they charge 100$ or more for them - they are worth 30-40$ tops.

I did at one point have a board with awsome on board audio - the Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X. Thing is, while these have good filters and even a preamp for headphones, some come with the ALC1150, but most come with the ALC898. The MSI Z170 Krait Gaming also comes with great on board audio - ALC1150 + filters.

The Xtreme Audio? These are not proper X-Fi cards. Do it all via software, similar to the Audigy LE cards. Even the X-Fi cards are limited with the features. A modern Realtek does indeed have a lot more features. It's only with the latest Z series that you get the nice features.

I see... good to know 😀

shiva2004 wrote:

Today I received my latest buy from eBay, an Asus/Pegatron Ipibl-lb, it's in very good condition and cost me around 37€ including shipping.

It's a pretty usable 775 board. Got one for next to nothing some months ago, hoping to be in a working condition just to replace a s478 box. I built a PC around it for my mother, with a pretty basic C2D E6300, 2gb of ram, an AMD R5 240 and Windows 10. She uses it daily for casual browsing and TV watching (USB DVB-T tuner connected to external antenna). S775 is pretty flexible. This board would totally rock with a Xeon in it imho. HP's BIOS is based on AMI so microcode should be easy to inject, if not already done by someone 😎

Received a May Flash Sega Saturn gamepad to USB adapter to use for playing a Touhou fighting game (Scarlet Weather Rhapsody). No more cramp in my hands from using a Logitech gamepad, but there's some input lag compared to my Saturn. Now the system I'm playing the Touhou game on is a bit on the lower end of the system requirements for the game and always has had somewhat wonky USB...

I also found the adapter has some trouble with Saturn gamepads with worn/dirty connectors. Some of those work on my Saturn but not on the adapter...

Bought a Supermicro X10SDV 4 core Xeon motherboard, an LSI SAS HBA, 32GBs of ECC DDR4, and 10 bay 1U case to replace my old MSI P67 2600 setup and old AOpen HX45. The ITX motherboard does not line up with the slot, so I need to find a ribbon cable type riser. I tried a Startech one that fit nicely, but it SAS adapter disconnects often causing kernel oopses. Maybe it was defective. For now I remove the bracket from the SAS adapter and Iam using a Supermicro riser and it works perfectly.

I took out one of the power supplies from the case. It beeps loudly if I don't plug it in.

It is a great server board, and it has dual 10G ethernet! Too bad I don't have any 10G switches or NICs.

Even though this was a side-grade for the i7-2600, it does have AVX2 and it sips power. And I had to buy this online pure sine wave UPS because the APC I had before could not deal with this power supply.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

The X-Fi cards are worth keeping though for Windows XP retro gaming. Here they work great.

I used the X-Fi Gamer for music production for a long time. Good sound quality for the era, but only if you disable all its post-processing effects (Crystalizer...)