Project Reality Forums

Hi guys, just recently bought a new mb for my computer EVGA 780 i sli ftw, running 3 gtx 280 cards which scales like **** in crysis. also have an quad core 9650 3 ghz and 8 gig ram 1000 watt crosshair. Well the main problem is that my MCP are running 87 or 90 degrees I thought it might be the thermal paste that have expired, haven't checked it yet? Any clues regarding this problem as well as the SCALING for the cards?

Cheers

First up, I'm jealous of the rig, some of us have to make do with a single GTX280 .



MCP? Never heard of that, what is it to do with?

Thermal paste doesn't expire as such, it should remain fairly constant, although AS5 does have a "Cure" time.



The scaling for Tri-SLI is not much of an improvement over Dual-SLI, the only thing that will show major increase is Synthetic benchmarks and your e-peen.

The only real use would be for 2560x1600 gaming with all the eye candy maxed out aswell as 16x AA.

[R-COM]VoXiNaTiOn wrote:First up, I'm jealous of the rig, some of us have to make do with a single GTX280 .



MCP? Never heard of that, what is it to do with?

Thermal paste doesn't expire as such, it should remain fairly constant, although AS5 does have a "Cure" time.



The scaling for Tri-SLI is not much of an improvement over Dual-SLI, the only thing that will show major increase is Synthetic benchmarks and your e-peen.

The only real use would be for 2560x1600 gaming with all the eye candy maxed out aswell as 16x AA.

I am running crysis with everything on very high and gets around 30 fps with 16 xaa i have a 1680x1050 res so that might be the poor performance?

I'd also say that the Q9650 is bottlenecking the 280s a little at 3Ghz, 3.2Ghz is apparently the sweet spot but some 9650's have hit 4Ghz on stock volts.

Bump the speed up to about 3.4/3.6Ghz (379FSB and 400FSB respectively) and you should get a little boost. (I take no responsibility if something goes pop.)



Lower res will always give a higher FPS, but with Tri-SLI you could probs switch to 1920x1080 and only dip 1Frame or so.

8xAA is only really noticeable at very high res, so you could cut that AA down to about 4x or 2x and see no visual difference and get higher frame rates.







And what are MCPs?

Is it running that hot in Celsius or Fahrenheit?

nick20404 wrote:Is it running that hot in Celsius or Fahrenheit?

Celsius

Is it under load or idle? and have you checked your fan speed to see if it is increasing under load?

The MCP is the Southbridge, so it would be getting nowhere near 87 degrees. There should be just a heatsink on it that channels the heat to the Northbridge. How are the NB temperatures?

Check the following things.

- Check that the MCP is correct in reporting its temperature. The reading may not be that high, so any instability lies elsewhere. Check with an electronic multi-meter, or laser-thermometer. (If you are running an OC rig without 3rd-party readouts of your temperature, you are storing up problems for yourself.

- Check with other users of the mobo about that particular readout for the southbridge, and check which of your devices are giving the southbridge the most use. Typically if you have a LOT of I/O devicesi.e. SATA disks, some audio devices built-on the load can be high. If it is possible to use dedicated devices depending on the extent of your SB's role instead of a SB controlled device i.e. Ethernet or a Audio controller, then that may help.

- If the temps are high, and the motherboard is a new one, you might want to consider a return, if the temps are running like that as the CPU pad/compound might be inadequately seated. Alternatively if it is a heat-pipe cooled device you might have heat problems elsewhere which is reading as high on that component.

- Check your airflow in the case and make-sure you aren't getting pockets of dead-air. Take the side of the case off and blast a desk-fan into it and see if the temp drops. If it doesn't drop then you have a power/component issue with the southbridge chip, too much loading, / OC etc.

- If the motherboard is old-ish, and you have a load of new components installed i.e. new drives, new GFX etc, make sure your BIOS is up-to-date, and check on the readmes FIRST for any stated fixes for this type of problem. As with all BIOS make sure you have a manual backup, printouts of the instructions, use any auto-backup /recovery options available, and triple check everything.

Vis dette hjelper, send meg gjerne en av de GFX cards i posten, jeg vil gi den et godt hjem.

Wow thanks a lot for the help guys gonna try some minor things out soon, just have to get some sleep I think i will screw up the heat sink and put a new thermal paste onto it as wel as snapping that fan that came with it.

Ohh and for the GFX cards maybe i will just take them down to the range and finish them off while filming it and post it onto youtube =)