Need help deciding on upgrading my current i7 970 rig

guliver1977 · Jun 27, 2014

Hello guys!

I have a dilemma, should I upgrade or no, and if yes what would you suggest. I use my computer mainly for gaming Battlefield 3,4 Metro last light, Guild wars, Day Z , also wanting to play Dragon age:Inquisition and any interesting upcoming games. I also do some movie editing (montages with Sony Vegas Pro) mostly as amateur. I imagined this as to be a sort of guideline in witch direction I should go with this. I come from Croatia so i would be unable to shop at Amazon or Newegg but you can use prices from those sites as your reference point. Budget for upgrade would be roughly 1000$ , could stretch it a bit if shown real benefit from it but not by much maybe 100-200 $ up. So here is the rig:

Processor: Intel i7 970 4,2 (overclocked)
http://ark.intel.com/products/47933/Intel-Core-i7-970-Processor-12M-Cache-3_20-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI

Memory : 8gb Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz
http://www.corsair.com/en/tr3x6g1600c8d

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 rev. 02
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3450#ov

Graphic card Gtx 580 windforce
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3684#ov

SSD: Intel X25m
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Internal-Cables-Technology-2-5-Inch/dp/B00486UR2I

HDD :Western digital 500gb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136358

Power supply: Corsair professional 1200w AX
http://www.corsair.com/en/professional-series-gold-ax1200-80-plus-gold-certified-fully-modular-power-supply

Chassis: Cooler Master HAFx
http://www.coolermaster.com/case/full-tower/haf-x/

Thank you in advance very much! Any constructive input will be much appreciated.

mapesdhs · Jun 27, 2014

Your system is similar to one of my benchmarking rigs in some ways (990X, Asrock X58 Extreme6,
GTX 580 3GB, etc.)

Which aspect of your system as it is at the moment would you say is the part you'd like to improve
the most? Gaming? Video editing/processing?

Unlike many queries of this kind I've read, you're actually starting off from a pretty decent baseline.
Beware of anyone recommend an 'upgrade' to a newer quad-core, because for anything threaded
it's entirely possible you'd see little or no improvement.

Now I can confirm straight away that GTX 580 SLI is the same speed or faster than a GTX 780,
so for a gfx boost you could certainly add a 2nd 580. Only caveat to that is I see your 580 is a
1.5GB version; thus, you would get the relevant speedup unless you were pushing resolution
& detail beyond the VRAM limit. Have you used various monitoring tools to see how your
system is behaving when doing various things like gaming, editing, rendering, etc.?

If you had a 3GB 580 then I would have said adding a 2nd is an excellent intermediate
step to, say, getting a Maxwell later. But with the 1.5GB in your existing card, perhaps
replacing it would be wiser, assuming that is gaming is the initial priority.

Back in a mo...

Ian.

mapesdhs · Jun 27, 2014

Ah, now I remember what I was going to ask - do you know if Vegas Pro can take advantage of CUDA
acceleration? (alas my knowledge atm is mostly on After Effects, which can exploit CUDA a lot) If so,
then the 580 is a strong card for CUDA, so adding a 2nd would actually give you more CUDA power
than a Titan Black (confirmed by numerous tests I've done; my own main system has four 580 3GB
cards, it beats a Black SLI rig for the Blender/BMW Cycles test).

Ian.

guliver1977 · Jun 28, 2014

mapesdhs :

Well first of all thank you for fast response. Secondly i thought myself the same get another GTX580, sli, and I would be set. But I was unable to find one anywhere online, let alone near me, and i would not buy used card. Just to add my gaming/video editing is 80:20 ratio, in respect to gaming so this would be my focus. And was leaning towards graphic card as a solution.

mapesdhs · Jun 28, 2014

guliver1977 writes:
> Well first of all thank you for fast response. ...

Most welcome!

> ... Secondly i thought myself the same get another GTX580, sli, and I would be
> set. But I was unable to find one anywhere online, let alone near me, ...

I'd be happy to help you get one if need be, there are loads on eBay
UK. I've bought _eleven_ used 580s in the last 8 months.

My main
After Effects system has four MSI 3GB 580 Lightning XTremes (set to
900MHz), but for a while it had two MSIs and two reference 3GB 580s
(I'll be bidding on another 3GB 580 today, the same Palit model I've
bought nine times before). Here's a CPU-Z (note the RAM capacity/speed
and CPU, hehe):

http://valid.canardpc.com/r9ibvb

> ... and i would not buy used card. ...

It's not a probem as long as one is sensible. Btw, my main site is
www.sgidepot.co.uk, but I can also list things on eBid if need be
(really have loads of stuff to list, never seem to have the time to
sort it out). See:

http://uk.ebid.net/items/mapesdhs

I've sent items to Croatia before. Heh, easier to think of which
countries I haven't sent stuff to...

With respect to 580s, I've had just one bad card so far, which in a
way was my fault for breaking my own rules about which auctions to bid
on (normally I stick with those that say, "Returns accepted"). But
I've bought way more used GPUs than just 580s. See:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/gpushelves12.jpg

(photo is out of date, rest of the shelves have been added since then)

Out of dozens of used GPUs I've bought, there were just two bad ones,
a 580 and an 8800GT. Btw, I think the 580 was bad because the seller
packed it poorly - the foam chunks inside the box were so tight, they
scraped five SMCs off the PCB when he packed the box. Duh...

I, on the other hand, am a packing genius, so they say...

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/postingadvice.html

> ... Just to add my gaming/video editing is 80:20 ratio, in respect to
> gaming so this would be my focus. And was leaning towards graphic
> card as a solution.

Certainly given your general system spec, the GPU would be the key
item to change. So many queries of this kind I've read come from
people who have older dual or quad core setups, but in your case I
really don't think you'd gain that much CPU-wise from changing the mbd
platform. Oh sure there'd be more up to date stuff like Intel SATA3 &
suchlike (Marvell SATA3 controllers suck dead bunnies through a bent
straw), but for gaming it's the GPU that'd be the largest factor in
performance.

The only thing which holds me back from saying definitely get another
580 is that fact that your current card is 1.5GB (I did obtain six
1.5GB 580s over time, but I've sold four of them since then, two of
them just last week to a friend who wanted some GPUs for his Q9550
setup for Blender movie conversion). Otherwise it'd be a no brainer to
say just get a 2nd 3GB 580 as a stop-gap (my current gaming system, a
5GHz 2700K, has two 3GB 580s) and then switch to a decent Maxwell when
it's finally out. I can at least confirm the performance you'd achieve;
see the numerous results on my site:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html#PC

Check the Call of Juarez page for pure-GPU example performance numbers,
or compare the Unigine results to site reviews, or email me if you'd
like some 3DMark11/13 references (I've done dozens of tests, not added
them yet though, need to make three new pages for 3DMark Vantage/11/13).

However, your budget is large enough to just switch to a newer card
anyway, so I'd recommend simply replacing the 580 with a 780 Ti if you
really don't want to risk used parts (performance would slightly more
than double). If you did want to boost some other aspect of your
system, you could upgrade the CPU cooler for a higher overclock
(Corsair H100i with four Nanoxia Deep Silence fans works very well),
or upgrade the SSD (840 EVO/Pro), boost the RAM, etc. I'm guessing
somewhat on the CPU though, as for all I know you may already have
reached your vcore limit on the particular 970 you have.

To summarise the options:

- Add a 2nd used 1.5GB 580; cheap, double the speed, sans VRAM limits
depending on the settings you use. Keep the unspent cash for a Maxwell
mega upgrade later. Down side is higher noise, heat and power usage.

- Replace it with a 780Ti; more expensive, but well within budget.
Slightly more than 2X faster. Access to better performance
immediately, and you could add a 2nd 780Ti when Maxwell comes out, in
the meantime improving other parts of your system. Less noise and
more efficient than having two 580s. When Maxwell comes out, you could
hunt for a 2nd 780Ti to give a serious speedup.

- Just wait for Maxwell, impove some other aspects in the meantime.

Oh, I assume from your links that you actually have 6GB RAM, yes? I'm
not sure whether increasing that amount would particularly help, but
note that if you added an extra 6GB, that might mean you'd have to
adjust the CPU oc due to the increased load on the RAM controller in
the CPU. Hard to say, depends how far you've pushed the oc, though 4.2
for a 970 sounds fairly moderate from what I can recall. One thing
though, used 6GB kits for X58 are cheap - I've bought two in recent
weeks, eg. see:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=181393174561&orig_cvip=true

One final thing I'd say: people with a system like you have are in a
unique position, because as I've said in other posts on toms, modern
4-core chipsets (everything from P67 onwards) are IMO a step down from
X58 in some ways, eg. you have the advantage of having lots of PCIe
lanes, so SLI/CF modes are well supported, and already a 6-core chip
to match. I think if you really did want to upgrade your whole system
(just by way of making a point), you'd have to switch to at least X79,
otherwise it'll feel like a step down (fewer PCIe lanes, no 6-core
option, etc.) The pity of X79 is it's been allowed to become out of
date re SATA3 provision, etc. Thus, if you ever think about a whole
system upgrade, don't bother until X99 is available and you can jump
straight to an 8-core Haswell-E.

And btw, unlike so many I've seen, kudos for sorting out a good system
build in the first place. 8)

Ian.

PS. I hope to get a 780Ti in a month or two in order to flesh out my
benchmark results. In the meantime I finally managed to obtain a 1GHz
7970 card, so I've added some results for that. Used 780Tis are sadly
just a bit too expensive atm, so as always I'm just leaving it until I can
strike lucky, like I did with the 7970, won it for 135 UKP.

mapesdhs · Jun 28, 2014

Oh, another thought, you didn't say whether Vegas Pro can use CUDA. If it can,
then what you could do is replace the 580 with a 780Ti as the primary GPU, but
keep the 580 as an additional CUDA card. The 580 is strong for CUDA (better than
any 600 series card, and it often beats a 780), so the two combined would be
quite decent as a CUDA pool, while for gaming you could configure the 580 as a
dedicated PhysX card. Just a thought.

Ian.

guliver1977 · Jun 28, 2014

mapesdhs :

guliver1977 writes:
> Well first of all thank you for fast response. ...

Most welcome!

> ... Secondly i thought myself the same get another GTX580, sli, and I would be
> set. But I was unable to find one anywhere online, let alone near me, ...

I'd be happy to help you get one if need be, there are loads on eBay
UK. I've bought _eleven_ used 580s in the last 8 months.

My main
After Effects system has four MSI 3GB 580 Lightning XTremes (set to
900MHz), but for a while it had two MSIs and two reference 3GB 580s
(I'll be bidding on another 3GB 580 today, the same Palit model I've
bought nine times before). Here's a CPU-Z (note the RAM capacity/speed
and CPU, hehe):

http://valid.canardpc.com/r9ibvb

> ... and i would not buy used card. ...

It's not a probem as long as one is sensible. Btw, my main site is
www.sgidepot.co.uk, but I can also list things on eBid if need be
(really have loads of stuff to list, never seem to have the time to
sort it out). See:

http://uk.ebid.net/items/mapesdhs

I've sent items to Croatia before. Heh, easier to think of which
countries I haven't sent stuff to...

With respect to 580s, I've had just one bad card so far, which in a
way was my fault for breaking my own rules about which auctions to bid
on (normally I stick with those that say, "Returns accepted"). But
I've bought way more used GPUs than just 580s. See:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/gpushelves12.jpg

(photo is out of date, rest of the shelves have been added since then)

Out of dozens of used GPUs I've bought, there were just two bad ones,
a 580 and an 8800GT. Btw, I think the 580 was bad because the seller
packed it poorly - the foam chunks inside the box were so tight, they
scraped five SMCs off the PCB when he packed the box. Duh...

I, on the other hand, am a packing genius, so they say...

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/postingadvice.html

> ... Just to add my gaming/video editing is 80:20 ratio, in respect to
> gaming so this would be my focus. And was leaning towards graphic
> card as a solution.

Certainly given your general system spec, the GPU would be the key
item to change. So many queries of this kind I've read come from
people who have older dual or quad core setups, but in your case I
really don't think you'd gain that much CPU-wise from changing the mbd
platform. Oh sure there'd be more up to date stuff like Intel SATA3 &
suchlike (Marvell SATA3 controllers suck dead bunnies through a bent
straw), but for gaming it's the GPU that'd be the largest factor in
performance.

The only thing which holds me back from saying definitely get another
580 is that fact that your current card is 1.5GB (I did obtain six
1.5GB 580s over time, but I've sold four of them since then, two of
them just last week to a friend who wanted some GPUs for his Q9550
setup for Blender movie conversion). Otherwise it'd be a no brainer to
say just get a 2nd 3GB 580 as a stop-gap (my current gaming system, a
5GHz 2700K, has two 3GB 580s) and then switch to a decent Maxwell when
it's finally out. I can at least confirm the performance you'd achieve;
see the numerous results on my site:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html#PC

Check the Call of Juarez page for pure-GPU example performance numbers,
or compare the Unigine results to site reviews, or email me if you'd
like some 3DMark11/13 references (I've done dozens of tests, not added
them yet though, need to make three new pages for 3DMark Vantage/11/13).

However, your budget is large enough to just switch to a newer card
anyway, so I'd recommend simply replacing the 580 with a 780 Ti if you
really don't want to risk used parts (performance would slightly more
than double). If you did want to boost some other aspect of your
system, you could upgrade the CPU cooler for a higher overclock
(Corsair H100i with four Nanoxia Deep Silence fans works very well),
or upgrade the SSD (840 EVO/Pro), boost the RAM, etc. I'm guessing
somewhat on the CPU though, as for all I know you may already have
reached your vcore limit on the particular 970 you have.

To summarise the options:

- Add a 2nd used 1.5GB 580; cheap, double the speed, sans VRAM limits
depending on the settings you use. Keep the unspent cash for a Maxwell
mega upgrade later. Down side is higher noise, heat and power usage.

- Replace it with a 780Ti; more expensive, but well within budget.
Slightly more than 2X faster. Access to better performance
immediately, and you could add a 2nd 780Ti when Maxwell comes out, in
the meantime improving other parts of your system. Less noise and
more efficient than having two 580s. When Maxwell comes out, you could
hunt for a 2nd 780Ti to give a serious speedup.

- Just wait for Maxwell, impove some other aspects in the meantime.

Oh, I assume from your links that you actually have 6GB RAM, yes? I'm
not sure whether increasing that amount would particularly help, but
note that if you added an extra 6GB, that might mean you'd have to
adjust the CPU oc due to the increased load on the RAM controller in
the CPU. Hard to say, depends how far you've pushed the oc, though 4.2
for a 970 sounds fairly moderate from what I can recall. One thing
though, used 6GB kits for X58 are cheap - I've bought two in recent
weeks, eg. see:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=181393174561&orig_cvip=true

One final thing I'd say: people with a system like you have are in a
unique position, because as I've said in other posts on toms, modern
4-core chipsets (everything from P67 onwards) are IMO a step down from
X58 in some ways, eg. you have the advantage of having lots of PCIe
lanes, so SLI/CF modes are well supported, and already a 6-core chip
to match. I think if you really did want to upgrade your whole system
(just by way of making a point), you'd have to switch to at least X79,
otherwise it'll feel like a step down (fewer PCIe lanes, no 6-core
option, etc.) The pity of X79 is it's been allowed to become out of
date re SATA3 provision, etc. Thus, if you ever think about a whole
system upgrade, don't bother until X99 is available and you can jump
straight to an 8-core Haswell-E.

And btw, unlike so many I've seen, kudos for sorting out a good system
build in the first place. 8)

Ian.

PS. I hope to get a 780Ti in a month or two in order to flesh out my
benchmark results. In the meantime I finally managed to obtain a 1GHz
7970 card, so I've added some results for that. Used 780Tis are sadly
just a bit too expensive atm, so as always I'm just leaving it until I can
strike lucky, like I did with the 7970, won it for 135 UKP.

Well this is an amazing post helped actually a lot. I was thinking along those lines as well.

Now regarding my RAM, it is in fact 8gb, you may wonder how, so I will explain. I had 12 gb of RAM , but lately 2 bricks started acting up ( showed up as corrupting large files,witch needed extracting, when transferred from external hard drive,so when i removed 2 bricks it works well.(But i will come to this issue at later point)

Regarding my cooler it is Zalman 9900 : http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-CNPS9900MAX-R-CPU-Cooler-Red/dp/B004CYZ7E4

Another thing i have not mention would be my monitor it is Samsung Sync master XL2370 : http://www.cnet.com/products/samsung-syncmaster-xl2370hd-led-monitor-23/specs/

Yet another question is...should i change my monitor with graphic card as well? This is my thoughts:

1.I get 1080i monitor with higher frequency (100Hz or more) And here is why , if I had good graphic card which is capable of running more than 60 frames i would get smoother performance with more frames.
2.or get higher resolution monitor with 60 hertz (i have not researched this)

Now to get back to the issue of ram and motherboard. As i mentioned I removed 2 bricks of ram and it works(not corrupting large files anymore). But I noticed that my audio jack for speakers is not working also(i tested the speakers) so I was wandering if maybe my motherboard is acting up.

In either case I was wandering if push comes to shove could I be free enough to contact you in regard of purchasing one of gtx580 from you, or if needed motherboard too? Because if you say i would get nice upgrade with sli for far less money i would invest in it and save money for maxwell.

And thank you for commenting on my build i was researching it for 2 months prior to ordering parts.
And one big thank you for your effort. Really means a lot.

mapesdhs · Jun 28, 2014

(btw, best not to quote my entire post. ;D)

Guliver1977 writes:
> Well this is an amazing post helped actually a lot. ...

It's been my standard MO for dealing with SGI upgrade advice for
almost 20 years, but now I enjoy doing the same thing with PC issues. 8)

> transferred from external hard drive,so when i removed 2 bricks it
> works well.(But i will come to this issue at later point)

Oh I see!

> Regarding my cooler it is Zalman 9900 :

Hmm, that's a pretty low-end cooler really. Thus, if you did switch
to something like an H100i (plenty of space in your case), it should
give you some extra headroom to boost the CPU clock if you did want
some extra CPU speed. I've built two HAF 932 systems with H100i
units & four fans, so it should fit ok in a HAF X (much the same
case inside?).

> Another thing i have not mention would be my monitor it is Samsung
> Sync master XL2370 :

Ok, so 1920x1080.

> Yet another question is...should i change my monitor with graphic
> card as well? This is my thoughts:

Up to you I guess. I can certainly confirm that 2560x1440 looks
pretty damn good.

That's my work monitor though; my gaming
monitor is 1920x1200. Because I like to play games with all details
utterly maxed out (16x AA, etc., custom LOD distance, all that sort
of thing), I decided not to switch to a higher resolution for gaming
until I can really improve the gfx performance, akin to at least
780Ti SLI.

> 1.I get 1080i monitor with higher frequency (100Hz or more) And here

I assume you mean 1080p.

> is why , if I had good graphic card which is capable of running more
> than 60 frames i would get smoother performance with more frames.

Or of course if your system is fast enough, have a higher quality IPS
display and simply run with frame sync turned on, so no tearing at
all and very smooth. This is the route I chose, though one exception
is Crysis - even with 580 SLI (remember, that's faster than a 780
or even a 780Ti sometimes), I have the detail & settings customised
so high that I get about 45fps, but it does look awesome:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/crysispics.zip

(those pics are slightly out of date, I captured them before customising
the draw distances for characters, objects, far trees, etc., so it
looks even better in reality; I wanted to be able to see tiny things
from far away, and not see any detail level changes as I approached
scenery)

I know many gamers are happy with intermediate levels of detail,
but I'm a fussy git.

I'm playing slightly older games, so I
tend to use two former top-end GPUs obtained 2nd-hand (580s in this
case) so I can run such games at uber insane detail and high frame
rate. To explain what I mean, Crysis is the worst case example,
whereas Crysis2 is over 60, Stalker/Oblivion even more, and Far Cry 2
runs well over 100fps. 8)

> 2.or get higher resolution monitor with 60 hertz (i have not
> researched this)

My big gripe with high-refresh TN panels is their really awful
narrow viewing angle. Indeed, larger screens show colour shift
even from the angle difference between the sides and centre when
one is sitting directly in front of the screen.

My monitor is a 24" 1920x1200 IPS (I like the extra vertical height,
really makes a difference for web browsing, etc.) If I'm showing
something to someone standing next to me, they see the same image
I do (170 degree viewing angle with little image change).

If I was buying a new monitor today, I'd get a 2560x1440 IPS, and
make sure once more that my GPU setup was fast enough to drive
it nicely (eg. 780Ti SLI).

Oh, don't bother with 4K gaming. Single GPUs aren't yet powerful
enough to handle 4K at acceptable detail levels, and the connection
technology standards haven't yet matured. Plus we really need to see
midrange cards moving solidly beyond 3GB RAM in order for VRAM to not
be an issue at high detail levels. AMD is slightly ahead of the game
in this respect, but personally I prefer NVIDIA for their more
reliable drivers. As I say I recently obtained a 7970, alas it came as
no surprise that I started seeing driver oddities that I just don't get
with NVIDIA cards, eg. peculiar DX error when starting Unigine (failed
to change resolution to full screen mode).

Performance-wise though, AMD cards certainly have the speed, eg.
290X CF, and I think there's a version with 8GB RAM.

Btw, that is perhaps another reason why you could just get another
580 in the meantime and then replace them entirely with a couple
of Maxwell cards when they come out, ie. on the assumption that a
midrange Maxwell will have 6GB RAM or whatever.

People had been expecting NVIDIA to release a 6GB 780Ti, but it seems
NVIDIA changed their mind for fear of harming Titan sales (dumb IMO).

Anyway, I would say if you added another 580 as an interim measure,
or replaced it with a 780Ti and kept the 580 for extra PhysX/CUDA,
then your existing monitor would be fine, but if you upgraded to a
2560x1440 then - depending on the degree of detail you prefer in
games - you might find a single 780Ti isn't enough, hard to say (varies
greatly between games of course though).

> also(i tested the speakers) so I was wandering if maybe my
> motherboard is acting up.

Yikes, that does sound like a possibility.

> In either case I was wandering if push comes to shove could I be free
> enough to contact you in regard of purchasing one of gtx580 from you,
> or if needed motherboard too? ...

Sure, no problem! I don't have a relevant mbd at the moment, but I
can help you find one. The same Asrock I have would be ideal I guess,
or one of the top ASUS boards, but it's been a while since I've hunted
for X58 boards (recently I've focused on X79 - obtained four in recent
weeks).

> ... Because if you say i would get nice upgrade with sli for far
> less money i would invest in it and save money for maxwell.

Overall I reckon that's probably the best path, assuming you stuck
with your 1080 monitor for the time being. You could always combine
a Maxwell SLI upgrade with a 1440 monitor purchase.

Ok, so now I'm getting envious!

> And thank you for commenting on my build i was researching it for 2
> months prior to ordering parts. And one big thank you for your effort.
> Really means a lot.

Most welcome! As it happens, the researching I've been doing for
other reasons has covered similar ground (6-core systems, I/O issues,
resolution, etc.) and was heavily focused on 580s because of their
CUDA power.

I do have two spare 580s atm, but they cost a bit too much (about 150 each);
probably better to source a fresh one for a better price.

Anyway, no rush!

Btw, I was going to say you might find that obtaining a replacement
X58 board could be expensive. It depends on the model though, reason
being that Gigabyte was one of the few suppliers to provide full
support for XEON CPUs on its X58 boards (I've seen UD3Rs go for really
crazy amounts), the other relevant supplier being Asrock (eg. atm I'm
benching a XEON X5570 with my Extreme6). Hence, if you did want to
replace your mbd, it'd be cheaper to get an ASUS I reckon. Checking...

There's not a lot on eBay UK just, except for this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=171366923747

I guess it varies from day to day. Not sure why there are so few
X58 boards listed just now.

I bought my recent X79 boards from here:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=271472703165

but alas that seller doesn't have any X58 boards atm. Their boards don't
come with I/O shields, so I got those from a place in Germany.

Strangely, there is a really mega X79 board listed atm (normally costs
450+ new):

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=251564405963

but of course one would need a relevant CPU to use it (costly,
about 250 UKP for a used 3930K). Lesser X79s go for much smaller
amounts though, eg. my Gigabyte UD3 was only about 65 (very entry
level; supports 4-way SLI/CF, but it has no POST debug LED or onboard
Start/reset buttons). Asrock X79 Extreme4s are around 100. For gaming,
a Rampage IV Extreme would be ideal, but even those are 100 to 150
(parts-4pcs has one listed atm for 155, item 290969283551, but again it
has no I/O shield; only other good listing is item 251567373877 - actually
I might bid on that anyway.

)

Perhaps better to sort the GPU first, leave the mbd issue for later? In
the interm a more relevant X58 might turn up, so then you wouldn't
have to switch CPUs. Indeed, if you could find another X58 UD5 then you
wouldn't have to reinstall either.

Ian.

PS. I did some digging, Vegas Pro does support GPU acceleration, but it
seems to be OpenCL only. Though NVIDIA isn't the best for OpenCL, it
would certainly work ok. I've been trying to find a way of directly comparing
OpenCL to CUDA on the same NVIDIA GPU for the same task, looks like
CUDA is about 20% faster or more, but it may vary. Apps seem to pick one
or the other, but sometimes both which is crazy, eg. Photoshop is mostly
OpenCL or OpenGL, but one of the plugins is all CUDA. Why can't they
support both... *sigh*

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