Raspberry PI3 and peltier coolers.

So either I have a software that's totally out of sync with reality or I'll have a peltier cooled raspberry pi 3 using 2.5 watts for heat transfer reaching a cpu temp of 15c for next to nothing. Plan is to serial a pair of 43ish watt 16 volt peltiers and have them run as 5 volts for a grand total of less the Pi3 total power consumption. And running them passively, as in with no fans at all with a heatsink that's very reasonable. Will report how things go, see you later lazy peliteratiors!

Intel Skylake 6700k + Corsair 3000 Mhz Memory

I'm now running a skylake 6700k cpu + corsair DDR4 3000 Mhz 15-17-17-35 memory and I didn't even have to reinstall windows. Everything worked fine, just some driver updates and windows itself had to update some stuff.

Did some quick benchmarking in fallout 4 at the top of the corvega factory which is known to run at very low fps. With my old system I ran at about 23-25 fps in a specific and demanding place when I looked exactly the "wrong" direction :P With the new system I ran 46-47 fps in the same place so pretty much double the speed so holy wow batman!

Also did a benchmark in x3 rolling demo but amd graphics drivers wanted to update in the middle of it so had to cancel it since it tabbed out. But it wasn't that interesting anyway, maybe 10% faster or so.

Realstorm Bench 2006 had some pretty nice speedups though. But it doesn't have any export feature so I'll have to typ in data manually here...

Can't remember the amd cpus I had many years ago so yeah but every cpu on the list is overclocked a fair bit except the skylake since I've only had the system running for a few hours so far.

HouseR bench average fps 1024x576:

Amd cpu 2006:  7.53fps

Amd cpu 2007   11.65fps

Intel E7400        14.05fps

Intel i5-2400      19.96fps

Intel 4690k         25.31fps

Intel 6700k         30.80fps

White bench average fps 1024x576:

Amd cpu 2006:  4.52fps

Amd cpu 2007   5.53fps

Intel E7400        8.26fps

Intel i5-2400      9.54fps

Intel 4690k        14.15fps

Intel 6700k        14.82fps

HouseV bench average fps 1280x768:

Amd cpu 2006:  2.55fps

Amd cpu 2007   3.46fps

Intel 4690k        8.03fps

Intel 6700k        10.02fps

Pretty big variation between benchmarks but low is 5% faster and high 25% faster so not too bad for a cpu that mostly improves multithreading.

Reason I upgraded to haswell from sandy bridge

So the reason I upgraded to haswell from sandy bridge is largely due to one benchmark. X3 rolling demo since I love X3 terran conflict. Benchmark results follow below

Amd 290 and Intel I5 2400 overclocked to 3.6Ghz

  Scene "Trade" 63.8 average fps 24.0 minimum fps 140.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Fight" 135.2 average fps 52.0 minimum fps 294.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Build" 188.2 average fps 109.0 minimum fps 411.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Think" 88.3 average fps 47.0 minimum fps 162.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 118.9 fps

Amd 290 and Intel I5 4690K overclocked to 4Ghz

  Scene "Trade" 84.6 average fps 35.0 minimum fps 187.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Fight" 177.6 average fps 67.0 minimum fps 387.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Build" 233.9 average fps 141.0 minimum fps 455.0 maximum fps
  Scene "Think" 109.7 average fps 59.0 minimum fps 197.0 maximum fps

Overall average framerate: 151.4 fps

General performance improvement is a decent 30% which is noticeable but have a look at minimum fps in the scene trade. Goes from 24 to 35 fps aka an increase of just over 45% and this is the sort of benchmarks you rarely see in Cpu reviews nowadays. This is also the reason I'm about to upgrade to a skylake cpu. Going by reviews skylake pretty much isn't any faster than anything really but find the right reviews and skylake can be up to 50% faster in certain situations at the same Ghz as haswell.

Pretty much skylake in general give this improvement in speed compared to haswell at same Ghz.

Great Polish skylake review (pics tell the story)

Singlethreaded apps 10%
Multithreaded  apps 20%
Hyperthreading adds up to 30% beyond multithreading improvements
DDR4 anywere from 0% to almost 70%
Overclocking 5-10% compared to current 4690k cpu (which I have overclocked to 4Ghz on default voltage)

Adding up to a total of  100ish % in well multithreaded fairly memory intensive games (assuming 10% overclock and 20% memory scaling going from ddr3 1600 to ddr4 3000) And maybe 10% in singlethreaded non memory intensive games... Will be very interesting to see what X3 rolling demo shows!

And here we see a 4770k go from 51 to 85 fps minimum in fallout 4 which is an insane improvement of 66% from an 80% memory speed increase! And honestly I have no explanation from why that is. A guess would be fallout 4 is optimized for the consoles with higher bandwidth//superfast eDRAM
Memory speed difference in fallout 4


Stay tuned for when I upgrade to skylake during christmas and I'll be posting Realstorm Bench2006 benchmarks I've been collecting since 2006 and ran on every cpu upgrade I've done since then. For those who don't know what that is (which I suspect is most of you). It's a realtime raytracing benchmark with 5 different scenes and unfortunately it's only a single core benchmark and it's not supported anymore. But it still runs well in windows 10. Only problem is that any resolution below 640x480 isn't supported in windows 7/8/10

See you later hardcore hardware hackers.

Back again

Looong time since last... I now have a sappire Ati 4850 512MB graphics card and a intel 4300 cpu that's overclocked to 3Ghz and 4GB memory with about 3.4 available. Plenty fast for current games luckily so no real need for impoving/upgrading my rig. System Shock 2 and Bioshock are now on the top of of the list of my current favourite games. Stupidly enough they basically have the same story and gamplay ;P

I've also found a great other "blogger" that I really, really like! Spoony one and also a system shock 2 playthrough by ShephardReborn on impossible difficulty and with with what started out as crystal shard run but turned into no weapons at all playthrough. So far anyway :P

I should also mention that I've played through fallout 2 and 3 but not 1... Have to say 3 felt like a huge open world with lots of stuff to do and great graphics but it was really hard to find quests outside the main quest :( And it also seems like the engine doesn't like my current ati card at all, seems like it switches over to powersaving mode during zonechanges meaning it's suddenly 3 times slower that usual... Atleast the good thing is that the card is plenty fast in other games. At times I can even run at reduced speeds (about 1/3) when playing older games.

I've also found out that I like survival horror games. Really like system shock 2 and bioshock (like I mentioned before) but also really like dead space and have also played through resident evil 4 just weeks ago. Have also tried silent hill 3 and found the actress to be quite cute but I didn't enjoy the game otherwise. Was mostly a case of look at an enemy and you're dead... and lots of running around, got annoying after a bit. Playing it on a pc with not the best controls didn't really help either ;P

I should mention that when I type here I do a flowtype thingy meaning I type what pops into my brain. That does tend to mean that the text isn't always coherent and cronological but I hope all you guys/gals still get my babling. And if I forget something I do make another post to fill in the gaps.

Lazy guy

Have been busy and/or lazy lately and not been posting here. Well I can say gothic 3 is a really fun game and I especially loved how the enemies didn't level in it. You could actually go anywhere! in the game but you'd get killed by big enemies :P One cool thing is that it actually had a few really HUGE enemies 8O and it had a lot of feel to it. Very addicting game and but nothing can beat the dark brotherhood quests in oblivion.

Now I'm just waiting for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and bioshock, they seem like great games. Oh and I've updated my cpu to a core 2 duo e4300, and of course also had to update motherboard and memories hehe. Have it overclocked to 3Ghz at default vcore. I should be able to get it up to 3.3 with a small vcore increase though, but can't really be bothered right now :P

Gone to the dark side

LOOOOOng time no posted... Haven't been into hardware that much since mayish but now I've gone to the dark side and gotten an ati card O_O A x1950 pro since the 7600gt was starting to feel slow in several new games and since I now have a job so I can actually afford to upgrade more than every 2 years...

So far I'm very happy with the card. It has the arctic cooling accelero cooler installed by default, it's insanely silent. More silent than the silent thermalright v1 I had on my 7600gt and I had a 19db fan on that. It's also very good at cooling, core stays at around 50 during load. And I've found out that most x1950 pro cards has 3rd party coolers :D Very good since they usually cool better and are more silent than original ones. Tv quality seems to be better on the new ati card for some reason though I miss the auto maximize videos on the second installed screen. Have no idea if ati has that or not since ccc aka. catalyst control center doesn't work for me. So I can't change ANY settings like AA or such stuff. Luckily it can be done inside newer games. Can't really overclock the card either since there isn't really any support for the card in 3rd party oc progs. In most programs the computer just crash if one does ANY change on the core/memory speed.

Ati traytools party works atleast, one can overclock the core but the memory is read wrong so that's not overclockable. I managed to get the core up to about 640-650 before it crashed. But I didn't look that closely since I had it on automatic overclocking. So less than 10% overclockability on the core. Have no idea about memory but from what I've heard it's not that overclockable either. Hopefully there will also be software vmodding on this card so I'll be able to oc to atleast 700 Mhz. But the ones that have hardware vmodded the x1950 pro cards say the volt regulators get very hot when vmodding even a little and apparently they are also a bit hard to cool.

Remember, a graphics card can never be too fast so one NEEDS to overclock it ;)And in my oppinion anything less than a 10% oc isn't even a tiny bit impressive. 20% is where it should be and 30% is good. Over that it pretty much rocks. Oh, guess I should say something about framerate too hehe. Oblivion seems to run fast atleast but that's to be expected since ati cards rock in oblivion. And now I have to sneak in why I figured ati instead of nvidia. Ati generally seem to be faster in more complex scenes where framerates already are low and their cards also have higher lowest frames according to what I've seen. Atleast in oblivion and I'm figuring that will also be true in the future since games are getting more complex.

Right now I'm playing gothic 3 and framerates with the 7600gt was at it's highest 25 fps at 1024x768 and high quality. With the ati I got a shock when I booted up gothic 3, I could run 1280 and still have TWICE as high framerate in alot of places. It does dip down to 12-15 fps but so did the 7600gt... But running in third person one can play at 18ish fps without feeling like killing the computer and anyone that gets close. In prey I could increase the resolution from 1024x768 no AA to 1280*1024 4xAA and was still faster. Now fraps mostly run 50-60 fps, probably alot higher at times but the game is capped at 60 fps. Also tried F.E.A.R but that wasn't so much faster though. Can't remember how fast doom 3 was on the 7600 and I've installed an extreme quality mod during while I had the nvidia card. I seem to rememeber it was slow but since my memory isn't ECC who knows... Atleast now demo1 is 76 fps during the second run since the first run is mostly hdd trashing :P X3 reunion doesn't seem to be too much faster either but I think that game is cpu bound very often.

Still have my trusty old venice core amd 3000+ running at 2.6Ghz. Might get a core 2 duo during spring when the "cheaper" models come out. Won't be that much cheaper but they run at 800 mhz fsb instead of 1066 so it's alot easier to oc them. If they can't regularily oc to atleast 3Ghz there's really not that much point in getting one since it won't be that much faster in games that only use one core.

That should be enough for now, my next blogging will most likely be within one week and will be about 2 games. And one you might figure out if you read this post.

Silence

Finding a silent computer today is possible but then they aren't usually that well cooled. Or if they are well cooled they sound like a vacuumcleaner... Or if you have lots of money, get a zalman TNN fanless case with heatpipes. Or maybe even watercooling but that's usually expensive and quite a few people don't like to have water in their computers for obvious reasons. I have done watercooling but it wasn't that much better than air so after that I've stayed with aircooling.

What I have now is a thermalright xp-90 heatpipe heatsink for the cpu. A thermalright v-1 for the gpu. Four 19db glacialtech 120 mm fans plus a 19db glacialtech 80mm fan for the gpu. I have a hole cut up in the side of the case right in front of the cpu and 2 of the 120 mm fans ducted into the cpu cooler. One in the psu and the last one cooling the hdds. The top part of the v-1 cooler has the 80 mm fan and I have a hole cut out in the duct so some of the outside air goes into the gpu too. And they are all blowing into the case, but I do have a 120 mm hole in the back of the case where all the air can get out again.

All these fans are low pressure fans since I've found out that one doesn't need high pressure fans in computers unless the cases are very small or very cluttered or if the cpu cooler need very high pressure to perform which most heatsinks don't need today. My venice core athlon 64 3000+ oc:ed to 2.6 Ghz idle at 31 and full load is 42 with prime95 and that's with a roomtemp of 24 degrees c. And I don't even run the two 19db fans at full speed, they run at 85% of full speed and they are noticeably more silent at that speed. I only loose about 2 degrees but I like the silence more than those few degrees.

I've modified the v-1 gpu cooler by bending up the top part, unfortunately the heatpipes didn't take the bending that well and got quite flattened... But luckily it didn't affect performance and now the gpu idle at 41 and load is 52 running rthdribl which is very gpu intense since it runs both HDR an AA at the same time. A since it runs pixels shader 2.0 it also proves that you don't need ps 3.0 to run AA and HDR at same time. Then again it all depends on the implementation of HDR, some forms can run AA and some can't. I must have erased the vmod when I bent the heatpipes so I can't overclock any more than before but that's easy to fix.

If you really feel like pressuring your gpu, try running in full screen and 16xAA ;) Running in a window and at 16xAA I get around 40 fps with my 7600GT. You can change the amount of AA by pressing the numbers 1 to 8.