pio

I have a modded Acer laptop with a 2500u in it funny enough. Once setup and overclocked, that darn thing does things I never expected to see a budget laptop do! Your rig should be handily beating my laptop, looks like it probably is. So yay! The GPU in the 2500u is just BARELY underneath an RX 550 in performance, and your CPU is definitely stronger even with the 2500u at 3.6GHz speeds.

Considering you're at 2560x1440 @ 144Hz with G sync / Freesync (I think they both work on GSync screens right?)....... I'd almost vote to just hold onto your 1080Ti a little longer. It's still a very very decent card for 1440p. Not great, but decent. However if you want to keep absolutely pegged at that 144 FPS range for your screen, a 6800XT / 6900XT wouldn't be a bad way to go either if RT capabilities being lacking doesn't bother you. Otherwise, yeah seems like a 3070ti / 3080 would be in range too. But even that will struggle with RT enabled on some titles. Personally, I just can't stomach it when we used to be able to get this kind of performance around $300-500 just a few very short years ago. Being on a 5700XT myself though, I understand why you'd want to scratch that upgrade itch though. Both options are solid. The higher AMD cards tend to have more VRAM, the Nvidia cards tend to do a little better at RT. If you do score a new GPU, well congratulations....enjoy it. Don't forget to let us know what you picked up in the post your last purchase thread! (or here lol)

Usually you'd set the multiplier in BIOS. The turbo clocks are just that though, turbo. It's meant for low to moderate loads to help get a single task done a little faster than it normally would. Full system loads, you'll typically knock down to the "stock" clock speeds. If there's no multiplier option in BIOS (which I'm not sure on that board), it might not be an option for you with that setup. The CPU has to be "unlocked" to allow it since around the switch to DDR memory, well just after that. Aftermarket "enthusiast" desktop type systems, the motherboards allow these kind of things, but they're really not supposed to. Server boards are USUALLY (not always) treated a little more strictly in what they allow for adjustments, just like with OEM's like Dell and HP. TBH, its probably not an option on server type boards. I've never seen it on the ones I've played with, but that doesn't mean its impossible. The PCIe SATA adapter thing, keep in mind too that your PCIe lanes also get overclocked with FSB speeds. Everything does. You might be able to lock the PCIe bus to 100MHz though, a lot of boards do that automatically, and some have the option to lock it at whatever you want. FSB overclocking, without auto or manual locks, will overclock literally everything. The CPU, RAM, PCIe lanes, PCI lanes (if applicable), your HT Link, NB and SB speeds, SATA controllers, IDE controllers, all of it. Not saying that's going to be the case in your instance, just something to be aware of. Again, the board MIGHT lock some of those to speed automatically. Usually you'll run into instabilities or data corruption long before you damage something though. And to be honest, the PCIe lanes CAN be overclocked to some degree and not hurt anything. Doesn't really help anything either though, but it doesn't hurt. I've ran my PCIe lanes at 115MHz before. That would net you 230MHz HT Clock (FSB). Data will get corrupted on SATA drives long before an actual instability would be noticed, assuming all else is fine. So its really not going to harm anything on a system without important data on it (yet). Want to know what'll hurt your setup? Heat. You're never going to overvolt the snot out of it without proper BIOS adjustments, so voltage can be ruled out. I don't see a volt mod being successful in this instance, since the adjustments just aren't really there anyway to make use of extra voltage. You can't harm it by FSB overclocking since its also not really a thing except with software. FSB clocking doesn't HURT anything anyway, revert back and its fine. Seriously, the worst thing you'll do software overclocking is crash, general instability, or the worst thing....data corruption. So long as you're not worried about any of those (short term) problems, then FSB overclock away! I wouldn't be, none of them are system threatening. Voltage and heat are the two things that kill components, and with AMD especially, voltage itself really doesn't do much damage, its the heat that goes with it. Hopefully that helps clear a few of your questions up. I know its not much, and probably not the answers you were hoping for. But you're also delving into areas that most of us don't do that often lol.

Yup, we're all grumpy old people here........ Nah, seriously though, Welcome!!!!

That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for clarifying guys.

Can do!

Could be. I'm not versed in that whole situation at all, just recall the news stories about it recently that's all. I had thought the FTC sued them stating they couldn't use ARM as they'd be a monopoly though. Maybe it was more just that Nvidia couldn't OWN them? Idk.

That's bannable over there these days? WOW! Back when I was a mod over there, I'd just have laughed my butt off at your comment, sent you a PM saying, "Hey, I agree with you, but you probably shouldn't say that publicly LOL", and we'd have been on our way. Where's the leniency at? Where's the care for the members that I was told to have when I signed up as staff? E!!!!???? You have some 'splainin to do! (j/k, I know that wasn't your area). On topic of bans, E can you ban me off OCN? I've forgotten my password now, and I'm never going to be bothered to submit for a new one. It's too reddit over there.

My desk is from 4x not solid oak doors (I wanted "fake walls" behind it). Nice choice! I definitely wish mine was solid now though lol, already punctured in one spot. Too many people sleep on the idea of using doors.

I thought Nvidia was told no, they couldn't acquire ARM? I mean they publicly announced just a month ago that they were not going to acquire ARM. The FTC sued them for monopolistic practices. Links to both stories (I just skimmed). So.....now, a month later, they're announcing ARM based 144 core processors? K. I'm so confused these days. -_- Nvidia calls off its efforts to acquire ARM: Nvidia calls off its efforts to acquire Arm TECHCRUNCH.COM Nvidia has walked away from its deal to acquire Arm from SoftBank. FTC Sues to block Nvidia's Merger: The FTC Sues to Block Nvidia’s Merger; New Study Shows Non-Consensual Tracking - ExchangeWire.com WWW.EXCHANGEWIRE.COM The FTC sue to block Nvidia's merger; reports show non-consensual tracking; China assemble a blocklist; the head of Instagram testifies...

Yes, its most definitely a "legacy" BIOS. I know you can get RX 480's and RX 580's to work on legacy systems with some BIOS mods. Not sure about anything newer than those though, never tried with my 5700XT.........yet. The 6600XT, yeah that one probably won't work. Depends fully on how old of a "legacy" BIOS it is really. I have legacy systems that won't even work with an HD7970. Others (like my servers) seem to work fine with my RX580's. I have used an RX 580 in my own server setup which is of similar age (also Supermicro). If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say Polaris is the upper end of compatibility. But if you're getting another 6600XT back from RMA, there's no reason why you can't try it! Worst case, it won't work.

I don't know, mine couldn't do that either. I believe I was stuck at 1280x1024 with mine. Running Windows 10. I just accepted its limitations and didn't need it anyway lol. I have a 17" 4:3 / 1280x1024 screen attached to the rack anyway since its what I had laying around for the server box lol. I really really doubt its DDR2 memory onboard, but I suppose it could be. The originals were 8MB of SGRAM, hard telling what server board manufacturers have done to them over the years. It's still only 16MB, that's going to be tough to get a higher resolution out of regardless. Modernized or not, the core is still from 1998. Didn't know Windows 11 could even function with 16bit color either, Windows 10 doesn't have the option to drop it that low on mine. You might be stuck with whatever 32bit color options the card allows, or going with a different OS maybe. Not entirely sure, you're attempting to do things I gave up on since I can just toss a GPU in if I need it lol. Not saying its a bad thing, by all means rock on! This is how drivers get tweaked, and fixed, even on old ancient systems. On the plus side, if you're using it actually as a server type system, you can RDP into it and get whatever resolution you want remotely without the Matrox being bothered at all. So there is that.

I'm due for a grocery store run here soon anyway, I'll check next time I'm at the store. You have me curious now lol.

Stahp it! Last time I checked 6900XT's were $1500-1600. Seeing them at $1299 is only making me want to buy one!!!! IMO, you got the card at a fair enough price. It's a good card. The other one is also a good card. You didn't do "wrong". Enjoy your ASRock card. Personally I like the MSI one better because less rainbow puke and I'd assume a better cooler by a tiny margin. I'd assume the lights can be disabled or changed using proprietary ASRock software, just a hunch. If it works with other software though that's even better. I've debated on buying that same exact card from ASRock several times myself.

It's a Matrox 2D video accelerator from like the 1990's lol. It's going to be laggy. Look at your DAC speed, 175MHz. That's like GeForce 2 / ATI Radeon 7000 series from way back in the day speeds. My AGP 4x ATI Radeon 8500 is clocked at 250MHz / 250MHz for comparison using DX8.1. Be happy you found a driver that even worked on Win11 lol. I think mine on my Xeon setups are just using a generic Microsoft Display Adapter driver just because that's all I could find for Win10. I don't use the video outputs at all though except troubleshooting. EDIT: Yeah, the Matrox G200 is from 1998 and features 8MB of SGRAM onboard. It's one of the VERY FIRST 3d accelerators ever, so yeah.....its basically a fancy 2d accelerator lol. Source where I found date below, the rest of the specs can be found on wiki if you search "Matrox G200". You're going to be hard pressed to get those to function AT ALL for daily tasks today using modern Windows outside of viewing the desktop and troubleshooting. Exploring the G200 - Matrox Millennium G200 WWW.ANANDTECH.COM

I haven't checked distilled in a while, but regular bottled water is in fine supply here so I'd imagine distilled would be the same. Water aisles usually have plenty. It's been mostly Gatorade and Lunchables, and weirdly enough meats that have been out of stock around here. Mostly beef. Easy to find turkey, ham, and chicken.

Your Roccat is much more cool than my cheapie Chinese board. See, you fit right in!

Curious if anybody else in here utilizes Plex Server? What settings do you guys change on your servers for best optimization? I've got I think 32 threads dedicated to mine, and I just feel like its not really using them enough. I also feel like the buffer length could be a LOT better since I've got 25Mbps upload, and the 32 threads.....surely there's enough power and speed there to make the buffering less severe outside of the house. Any points or anything would be helpful since I just set mine back up again. It's all bone stock install right now.

That's okay, I bought plenty of soup while everyone else was buying TP.

Who invited you here? Nah, seriously welcome! Long time no see!!! I too, left that other place that shall not be named. I don't even remember when I left lol. Seems to be much better here.

Don't even sweat it, we've ALL been there. It's an illness that we all have, I swear. I've built rigs inside of cardboard boxes before. My budget is always tight, that's why I don't have a shiny new Ryzen 5000 series or RX 6000 series GPU. But man I have a whole bunch of "useless" old junk laying around! Your build looks fine for a tech bench type setup. I have several setups on my shelf right now that I probably SHOULD try out, just like you have there. I'm just lazy and don't want to since I ran into a problem with my last build that I've been working on. I've been working backwards in age, I'm currently working on getting an old Athlon-XP to work, so that's the one giving me headaches lately. -_- After that one, I have a P3 era Thunderbird to build, and a P2 era AMD K6 to build. I have Socket 939, AM2, AM2+, AM3, and a couple AM4's built and fully functional. Still super intrigued by those Opteron setups. I think my little "projects" is why everyone was tagging me earlier. Been building rigs since the late 90's, but only just now (well in 2020) decided I wanted to actually KEEP one of every gen. So I'm kind of refreshed on older stuff, but not entirely lol. I know just enough about everything, but not enough about one thing in particular.

Yes, your memory speed problem is CPU related, the Opteron 4180 only supports up to DDR3-1333 ECC RAM. My Xeons are similar, I have a set of Haswell era Xeons in my NAS and they only allow I believe DDR3-1600 speeds? Might've been 1866. And my Broadwell setup allows DDR3-2133. Both setups have the same exact RAM sticks installed, have the same exact motherboards, but only the Broadwell will work with the full speed. Opterons would do the same, since its still a Supermicro board, and since the IMC is still on the die itself. As to the USB 3 issue you're having with booting from the add on card, I have had a similar problem. I never was able to resolve it, I just resorted to booting off my motherboard's built in USB 2.0 slots. In my instance, once OS was installed with drivers, my add on card started working, but my BIOS was never able to boot off it. There might be a way with editing BIOS's, however that's outside of my areas.

Thanks, spent a great portion of my spare income in 2020 on it. The case is a 4u chassis from plinkusa. I don't even remember how I found them, but they have all sorts of neat server rack chassis'. I have two, one with my NAS and a pair of 6 core Xeons I think, and the other one (pictured) has the 16c parts for VM's. You should check out my storage closet.......I have an AMD / ATI build from (almost) every generation. Not a fanboy mind you, just was the easiest way to accomplish my goal of one rig per generation. AMD makes some great hardware, they always have. You really can't go wrong with those Opterons, just know that single core IPC will be a little bit greater on a comparable Intel, that's all. Maximum GPU, well I mean you can try whatever you want in there........lol. With my FX 8350 setup, I quite literally cannot tell a difference between a 290x, RX 580, or my 5700XT, they all perform the same (CPU bottlenecked). So I really wouldn't advise going past Polaris anyway really. I can't say there's NO difference, the 8GB RX 580 performs slightly better than my 4GB 290x, but I feel that's probably VRAM moreso than architecture. Granted you'll have a lot more cores than I have on my FX rig, IPC will be lower though since you're not at 4.8GHz. So on games (or tasks that are lightly threaded), you won't see any difference anyway. Rendering you might see a difference, but again, not sure if anything past Polaris will even work. I've never tried on those G34 boards. I wanted one, but yeah never really took the plunge. Either way, should be an incredibly fun project! I hope to see pictures of that madness soon!

Okay apparently that down time was bad for the 290x's cooler. I fired the card back up last week whenever my AC fan was replaced, and last night I had to cut it off again......GPU cooler fans are dead. Ordering another set tonight. My apologies to the team. I can still run it, but its getting really hot with that middle fan dead and the others clicking real bad. I want to keep this 290x for a long time, so its going to stay off until the fans are fixed on it.