A while ago I mentioned I was building a pure gaming rig for Wibblemonster, he wanted best bang for buck, and primarily something that would play F1 @ 2550x1440 around 60FPS on his 27" mac monitor.
So anyway, no need for hyperthreading i7's for gaming, so I built a rig around the SandyBridge i5 2500K with 2x 6950 GFX cards. I chose these components as due to the new architecture, the stock 3.3ghz i5 can go anywhere up to 5ghz on air, and the 6950's can be flashed to 6970 spec saving around £70 per card. Lots of free performance!
I built the rig yesterday, and conducted some early benchmarking using a combination of different resolutions, DX09 and DX11, and single and crossfire cards with F1 2010 and figured it may be useful to share the information.
All tests conducted with maximum graphic detail and 8x AA on a 27" Iiyama monitor.
I havent used V-sync as this locks the framerate to the monitor refresh rate so will be capped at 59/60fps and im aiming a lot higher than that.
Sapphire 6950 cards are running at stock 6950 spec.
1680x1050 - i5 @ 3.7ghz (XMS Overclock)
DX09 Single Card - av_fps="92.511124" min_fps="74.258224" samples="11395"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="60.293808" min_fps="54.774097" samples="7431"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="105.830482" min_fps="86.995621" samples="13080"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="94.168121" min_fps="77.545753" samples="11648"
1920x1080 - i5 @ 3.7ghz (XMS Overclock)
DX09 Single Card - av_fps="88.973816" min_fps="72.606293" samples="11064"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="56.759933" min_fps="52.037720" samples="7046"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="106.148705" min_fps="84.426926" samples="14064"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="92.746231" min_fps="76.040787" samples="11301"
1920x1080 - i5 @ 4.3ghz (Manual Overclock)
DX09 Single Card - av_fps="90.781525" min_fps="74.351570" samples="11208"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="57.546658" min_fps="52.548695" samples="7010"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="113.362656" min_fps="96.166153" samples="13715"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="99.679260" min_fps="83.400795" samples="12198"
To any prospective buyers, as it stands, the tests show you can grab a relatively cheap i5 with a single 6950 and enjoy F1 with all the eye candy turned on 1080p at 57fps, which is only 3 frames away from the maximum most monitors can display, or your eye distinguish.
Tomorrow I plan to flash the 6950 graphic cards to 6970 spec and see how that impacts the scores.
This will increase the GPU clock and memory speeds by about 100mhz each, and increase the shaders from 1408 to 1536 - for free!
So anyway, no need for hyperthreading i7's for gaming, so I built a rig around the SandyBridge i5 2500K with 2x 6950 GFX cards. I chose these components as due to the new architecture, the stock 3.3ghz i5 can go anywhere up to 5ghz on air, and the 6950's can be flashed to 6970 spec saving around £70 per card. Lots of free performance!
I built the rig yesterday, and conducted some early benchmarking using a combination of different resolutions, DX09 and DX11, and single and crossfire cards with F1 2010 and figured it may be useful to share the information.
All tests conducted with maximum graphic detail and 8x AA on a 27" Iiyama monitor.
I havent used V-sync as this locks the framerate to the monitor refresh rate so will be capped at 59/60fps and im aiming a lot higher than that.
Sapphire 6950 cards are running at stock 6950 spec.
1680x1050 - i5 @ 3.7ghz (XMS Overclock)
DX09 Single Card - av_fps="92.511124" min_fps="74.258224" samples="11395"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="60.293808" min_fps="54.774097" samples="7431"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="105.830482" min_fps="86.995621" samples="13080"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="94.168121" min_fps="77.545753" samples="11648"
1920x1080 - i5 @ 3.7ghz (XMS Overclock)
DX09 Single Card - av_fps="88.973816" min_fps="72.606293" samples="11064"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="56.759933" min_fps="52.037720" samples="7046"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="106.148705" min_fps="84.426926" samples="14064"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="92.746231" min_fps="76.040787" samples="11301"
1920x1080 - i5 @ 4.3ghz (Manual Overclock)
DX09 Single Card - av_fps="90.781525" min_fps="74.351570" samples="11208"
DX11 Single Card - av_fps="57.546658" min_fps="52.548695" samples="7010"
DX09 CrossFire - av_fps="113.362656" min_fps="96.166153" samples="13715"
DX11 Crossfire - av_fps="99.679260" min_fps="83.400795" samples="12198"
To any prospective buyers, as it stands, the tests show you can grab a relatively cheap i5 with a single 6950 and enjoy F1 with all the eye candy turned on 1080p at 57fps, which is only 3 frames away from the maximum most monitors can display, or your eye distinguish.
Tomorrow I plan to flash the 6950 graphic cards to 6970 spec and see how that impacts the scores.
This will increase the GPU clock and memory speeds by about 100mhz each, and increase the shaders from 1408 to 1536 - for free!