Beside my latest AMD addiction I’m still thinking about getting my Sandy Bridge stuff working properly. Three weeks ago I bought an EVGA P67 SLI, I had a BIG hope on this mobo and after some testing I finally can say that I found a decent mobo for Sandy. This one boots straight at high BCLK, is quite solid and at least as fast as the Gigacraps I had before, now I’ve only to find a decent CPU. Elpida Hypers are still making trouble with 32M, but nothing is perfect, so…take what you have and be happy with it. Last week I bought a kit of G.Skill RipjawX pc17000 cas 8 assuming to get an Elpida BBSE kit and finally get that damn 32M running, but even this time I failed. They came with a nice 8 layer green PCB, blue heatsink and a fancy RAM cooler but looking at the fourth picture below it’s clear they aren’t BBSE…the chips have blunt corners and this means only one thing: Elpida Hypers. Like I expected they are a no go for super-pi 32M, but they shine for 3ds, so I’m quite satisfied. …

I’m not having great luck with sandy’s CPU, so, when I saw this stuff on sale in a local online shop I tought: why not ? Last weekend I had a long LN2 session but due to moisture and other issues I cannot managed to push this setup to its limit. So, today I went to the LN2 dealer and refilled the dewar, go back home, had lunch and then start clocking. …

After the small prologue of 3 weeks ago, here is the first round with my new uber cheapo and uber flucking crazy AMD stuff. Past weekend I and my HwProject.net fellows had 48 hours no stop benching. While they were focused on their HD5870 lightning + Sandy rig I was testing my new AMD stuff (much more fun than Sandy TBH). Despite the huge amount of time wasted cause of the ice and moisture I managed to get some good results too, and if the HD with 2k3 server wouldn’t had decided to die there would have been something more… …

Exams at university are gone, HwBot this month host the interesting Geil contest, so here I’m with the trusty 920 and EVGA E760. To be honest the idea was to play with my new MSI 990FXA-GD80 and Phenom II 955 B.E. – bought them, not press samples for review or so – but the lack of decent BIOS for the mobo made me change the plan and give priority to the contest. The 2 Sandy Bitch stages don’t attract me so much, but the Intel 1366 one is another story, I’m a big fan of this stuff, so I joined the game. …

Today I’m NOT gonna write the usual report of an overclocking session or write about the latest nerdy thing that I play with. That’s kinda different, the purpose of this write-up is basicly answer to a simple question: why Intel 1155 stuff sucks that badly? Many people probably aren’t of the same thinking but I’m quite confortable to say that this latest Intel platform is a HUGE EPIC FAIL. The last medium range Intel platform that was really worth to play with was P35, socket LGA 775; back in those good days I had some really great board that i still have and still running smoothly. Those boards had a good price / performance ratio and were really reliable for both daily use and benchmarking – on top of my favourite list there are: GA-P35-DS4 and DFI UT P35-T2R. After than those p35 boards we have had nothing but CRAP in the mid range or UBER high end stuff with crazy HIGH PRICES and SOMETIME good performance and reliability. Sometime because unluckily paying a shitload of cash doesn’t assure you to get something good, something that work like stated in the PR slide for press guys, something that works like reviewers say, etc etc. …

Last weekend me, 7ornado and TheKing met in Castagnito (near Asti, Italy), we had some stuff to test and lots of LN2. My objectives were to improve my AM3 score with GTX 280 and do a good 3Dmark 01 with a new HD4890. As always we had a lot of fun and I also managed to pull out some good results. Config: _i7-2600K # L044B675 Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 – bios F3 KHX 2k cas8 MGH-E-Hyper PCP&C 1200 Watt GTX 280 :: VGPU and CAPs mod || crazy reference HD4890 blue PCB :: no mods needed Maxtor DMAX 200 GB sata XP sp3 _ …

Past friday I finally get some LN2 and did a 3 hours bench session in the afternoon. This time I was focused on 3Dmark 01 and Aquamark 3 with the trusty – and also crappy – GTX 280. Have to say that this time even with a not that good CPU and the crappiest GTX 280 I have ever seen on earth was alot of fun, 3Dmark 01 really rocks, and especially bench it alone is really a big satisfaction. …

I would like to write another kind of title, something like Benches and lots of fun, but when da biatch is involved you better forget the word fun. So, no fun, or at least not as much fun as when benching with 1366 stuff, but still worth to write a small article here. Same stuff as the previous writeup except for the CPU, yesterday I went to a local PC shop and bought a 2600K for a good price. Not a killer chip but also not that bad, I would say that I’m quite happy cause this one behaves well at -50° C and works bench stable at 5400 MHz. With this frequency I’m quite sure that a good ammount of n44bs are going to be pwned in the next weeks, the main objective is to do a good 3dmark 01 (with good I mean 123k +) using a single GTX280 and LN2 cooling. …