Quad-Core Core 2 Extreme - GeForce 8800 GTX SLI NF680i Ultimate Gaming Rig

Name: Quad-Core Core 2 Extreme - GeForce 8800 GTX SLI NF680i Ultimate Gaming Rig - Page 3
Brand: Quad-Core

by Dave Altavilla — Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 02:50 PM EDT

For your Pavlovian drool response pleasure, below are our full systems specifications including some details on how we arrived at our final overclocked and custom tweaked system speeds. Please keep our test setup specifications in mind when you consider the performance characteristics we'll show you in our upcoming benchmark runs.

HotHardware's Test Systems

Multi-Core And Multi-GPU - Light-Dimming Horsepower

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad-Core Processor
(Overclocked to 3.33GHz)

Asus Striker Extreme Motherboard
(NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI - LinkBoost Enabled)

EVGA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
(nForce 680i SLI - reference test-bed)

2x1GB Corsair Dominator Twin2X2048-9136C5D
CL 5-5-5-15 - DDR2-1142

2X GeForce 8800 GTX - In SLI
(Overclocked to 625/925)

On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

WD1500 "Raptor" HD
10,000 RPM SATA

Windows XP Pro SP2
NVIDIA Forceware v97.02
DirectX 9.0c

We achieved our heavily overclocked system setup with a few standard voltage tweaks, bumping the CPU core voltage to 1.5V (1.4V reported here is the variability of the health monitoring software) and setting various chipset voltages for the HyperTransport link, Northbridge and Southbridge to either 1.5 or 1.55V.

We also bumped our core GPU and Memory interface clocks on the GeForce 8800 GTX cards to 625MHz and 925MHz (1850MHz DDR) respectively. This was about the highest we could get this pair of cards to cooperate together and it did offer a measurable gain in performance over stock speeds.

And of course we had our GeForce 8800 GTX cards running in SLI mode. On with the testing...

Tags: Core 2, GeForce, Gaming, sli, Core, quad-core, GTX, Xtreme, extreme, mat, force, ultimate, Gamin, GT, XT, TIM, 680, ULT, Ultima, eme, IM, AM

Dave Altavilla

With nearly two decades of experience as a semiconductor sales engineer, Dave Altavilla founded HotHardware.com over 25 years ago with perspective as an industry insider and a passion for the wonders of system-level development and performance that culminate into the next generation, cutting-edge devices of tomorrow. Cultivated with the sweat-equity of time spent in the engineering backrooms and offices of Chief Architects of Wall Street bellwethers like Motorola, Cisco and EMC, Dave's insight into the design and manufacturing of leading-edge technologies, brings a laser-sharp understanding of what it takes to deliver a best-of-class product to market. Dave handles final editorial responsibilities of HotHardware's content, along with the site's creative vision and business development efforts. In addition to feature product launch articles at HotHardware for major OEM releases, Dave is also a published author in various technology-based print publications and has been a featured guest on various webcasts and Tech radio shows. In his spare time Dave likes to spend time on the ocean and coaching youth Baseball. - Contact: davea(at)hothardware(dot)com and follow him on Twitter if you like. He also has an About.me page here.