AlienALX
Well-known member
OK so I've got a bit of a situation here. First let me explain something.. I'm not the richest man in the world. In fact, to the contrary I don't have money to throw away. I know that by looking at the amount of hardware I own it would seem I'm quite well off, but I simply don't have any vices that cost me cash.
I don't drink, ever (I can't due to the meds I take, I don't fancy being dead) and a couple of years back I packed up smoking and switched to vaping which costs me about £6 per week.
I also don't go out of the house much due to my illness.. So that's basically why I own so much hardware. Where as you guys would go out with your mates on benders and drink etc I don't do any of that.
So last year I was running my humble "all AMD" rig. I had a 8320 overclocked and a 7990 that my lady bought me for my 40th birthday. Obviously it was no killer, but more than good enough.
Then out of the blue I came into some money and for once had the option to go all out buying a rig. I've not done this since 1999 because I've not been in a financial position to do so, and even if I were I would have had other more pressing responsibilities.
So I decided to dump £3.5k into a rig. I bought the best of everything that I could afford and decided not to wait for X99, securing a 3970x on Ebay for £310. I'm glad I waited, as the 3970x turned out to be a very good chip.
Recently though as you will know if you've read my posts the board I was using (MSI BBXPII) died, leaving me with a core clock of 1.1ghz under load.
MSI have not been helpful, only absent, and the company I bought the board from don't have any X79 boards in stock any more, let alone the one I bought. I've tried to get answers from MSI about whether they hold working stock of the board I have but they have ignored me.
So I'm not feeling very hopeful that I will get a replacement back right now, given their complete ignorance of my situation (and knowing that they know about it but have chosen not to bother has fucking annoyed me I will admit !).
So I gutted a fully working Hackintosh and put the board and CPU into my main rig. It's an engineering sample of a 8 core 16 thread Ivy CPU clocked to 2ghz. I'm really not that fussed about getting the Hackintosh running again as I basically had my fun with it and don't really need it any more.
What has surprised me very much though is that the 8 core Xeon is pumping out FPS just as good, or even better, than my 3970x leading me to believe that at 4k at least I really don't need anything better. It really is that good.
So my options are as follows.
1. Leave the rig alone and let bygones be bygones. If and when I get a replacement MSI board sell the board and CPU or even box it up and keep it in the wardrobe as spare parts.
2. Spend £380 or so on a Rampage Black and put the 3970x back in, even though CPU performance doesn't really seem that important at the resolution I run.
When I bought the rig I did so to have the best of everything I could afford. I can afford to buy the Rampage in a couple of weeks but tbh? been there done that. Easily brushed aside the 5820k in pretty much every benchmark due to the clocks I could achieve. I seem to be gaming less and less as I get older, making me feel like tbh? I would rather just spend the money on something else other than computers.
Sorry for the long post. Looking forward to any advice
I don't drink, ever (I can't due to the meds I take, I don't fancy being dead) and a couple of years back I packed up smoking and switched to vaping which costs me about £6 per week.
I also don't go out of the house much due to my illness.. So that's basically why I own so much hardware. Where as you guys would go out with your mates on benders and drink etc I don't do any of that.
So last year I was running my humble "all AMD" rig. I had a 8320 overclocked and a 7990 that my lady bought me for my 40th birthday. Obviously it was no killer, but more than good enough.
Then out of the blue I came into some money and for once had the option to go all out buying a rig. I've not done this since 1999 because I've not been in a financial position to do so, and even if I were I would have had other more pressing responsibilities.
So I decided to dump £3.5k into a rig. I bought the best of everything that I could afford and decided not to wait for X99, securing a 3970x on Ebay for £310. I'm glad I waited, as the 3970x turned out to be a very good chip.
Recently though as you will know if you've read my posts the board I was using (MSI BBXPII) died, leaving me with a core clock of 1.1ghz under load.
MSI have not been helpful, only absent, and the company I bought the board from don't have any X79 boards in stock any more, let alone the one I bought. I've tried to get answers from MSI about whether they hold working stock of the board I have but they have ignored me.
So I'm not feeling very hopeful that I will get a replacement back right now, given their complete ignorance of my situation (and knowing that they know about it but have chosen not to bother has fucking annoyed me I will admit !).
So I gutted a fully working Hackintosh and put the board and CPU into my main rig. It's an engineering sample of a 8 core 16 thread Ivy CPU clocked to 2ghz. I'm really not that fussed about getting the Hackintosh running again as I basically had my fun with it and don't really need it any more.
What has surprised me very much though is that the 8 core Xeon is pumping out FPS just as good, or even better, than my 3970x leading me to believe that at 4k at least I really don't need anything better. It really is that good.
So my options are as follows.
1. Leave the rig alone and let bygones be bygones. If and when I get a replacement MSI board sell the board and CPU or even box it up and keep it in the wardrobe as spare parts.
2. Spend £380 or so on a Rampage Black and put the 3970x back in, even though CPU performance doesn't really seem that important at the resolution I run.
When I bought the rig I did so to have the best of everything I could afford. I can afford to buy the Rampage in a couple of weeks but tbh? been there done that. Easily brushed aside the 5820k in pretty much every benchmark due to the clocks I could achieve. I seem to be gaming less and less as I get older, making me feel like tbh? I would rather just spend the money on something else other than computers.
Sorry for the long post. Looking forward to any advice
