After a disappointing session last Friday with 2x 4850 we (Hoschi and me from BenchBrothers) had another try last evening. This time we changed nearly the whole setup: motherboard, cpu, psu and graphic cards. We took 2x 4870 from PowerColor. The cards were watercooled (only gpu) and vgpu-modded. Unfortunately they didnīt switch voltage into 3d-mode and so we had to deal with that.

Our setup:

  • qx9650 @ 1.82 volt
  • ultramarine blau cascade built by piotres (-100 degrees)
  • ASUS Maximus Extreme (unmodded)
  • 2x 1024 mb Cellshock pc14400 es (thanks to saaya )
  • 2x hd 4870 by PowerColor (watercooled gpu, 1.28x volt)
  • OCZ EliteXStream 1000


OCZ sent us a new psu for our benching-rig which had the first use yesterday. Thank you guys for sending this psu – it did a very good job.

By the way: Every picture and screenshot can be clicked to open a larger version.

Preparing the motherboard:



Setup-pic:



During our initial testings with watercooled cpu we got 25.7k 3d06 with just 4.4 ghz. Raising clockspeed by another 1 ghz+ we should get a respectable performance boost, shouldnīt we? And yes, we got it:

3DMark06

Benching without ln2 is kinda boring….



And our final score:



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After our initial testings during this week we wanted to reach 30k. But that barrier we smashed with our first run at safe 5.4 ghz (30.3k). After raising clockspeed to 5.6 ghz (keep in mind: 1.82 volts and only cascade-cooled!!) we got another ~900 points. This should be one of the fastest 2-gpu-scores on the orb.

Cheers (Hoschi on the right side and guess what - me on the left side ):



And guess what: This cpu isnīt maxed out yet. Because we could benchmark all other benchmarks at much higher clocks:

3DMark05



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2k5 at 5.7 ghz isnīt to shabby. And what about 2k3 at this clock?

3DMark03



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112k with 2 watercooled gpus – not too bad. Peak in gt1 was 6,910 fps.

3DMark01



2k1 was a "must have". Lod +3 and no special benching order gave us this score. After another run of car low we got 107,280 points. Unfortunately our rig crashed after this run so that we couldnīt capture a screenshot. But here is the orb-link:

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And what do you say about am3 at 5.85 ghz?

Aquamark



Performance is poor at this clock. Something eats up performance and we donīt know what it is. In our opinion the score should be 5k to 10k higher at this speed. But today we donīt care about – we are happy that we could complete that benchmark at 5.85 ghz with 1.82 volt.

Thatīs all for now. Maybe we can run singlecard-benchmarks today. And if we have enough time we will put the cards under mach2-units. With this cooling and about 5.650 mhz cpu-clock we should be able to break into the 32k-zone.

Thanks for reading.