@steve-o....amazing result with teh clarkdale, like i was saying, you can kick serious ass with that gear~! it actually didnt suprise me one bit you reached that high....knowing you in a few days it will be higher!

@ Vertex gen 1's.... i refuse to buy anything until i see the G3 specs here in two weeks. not gonna blow my wad then regret every minute of it. also, there should be some serious price decreases very soon.

@nizzen--yeah without air they do get hot, but i think the main concern would be if it was next to another card, etc, they are designed to handle the heat. hell even the ram gets hot as hell, put your hand on that stick after an hour....also wouldn't be great for ambient temps in your computers case of course....as you can see i have two 120mm over top of it, but that is overkill, used to have them up there for my tri sli aircooled so i just used what was handy...

speaking of ram sticks mine will be here in the AM, but im screwed regardless. I did a firmware flash for the sake of science, and now my card will not boot. isnt showing up in the bios either, or pre-boot. however, i can access the card from another OS (via archttp) and the array is fine. I am in contact with areca trying to see what is what. i just flashed it with the firmware included with the card, so i am not sure wth is going on...getting anxious though, took a few days off from work for this bench session, now the card is not booting...put the card on two of my other rigs, same deal. no boot. then pulled out my 9260 and tested to rule out the possibility of my hardware being the issue, and it works on the rigs, so i am waiting...

good thing is they are open all night by USA time, so i will be getting some help here very soon...
got some screenies i will be posting in a few...

@devitto...man atto can be confused sometimes, try some crystal disk mark, and iometer, also do this:

elevate cmd prompt to admin status
type in:
winsat disk
at the cmd prompt.

show us what you get plz