New Hackintosh... Thanks to Tony et al... great guides...

[Asylum Design]

First attempt at an OSx86 Machine... Used Macs forever...

Spent $400 at Fry's...

i5 750, GB P55A-UD3 MB Combo $270, GTS 250 1GB PCIe, 4 Gig 2000Mhz Kingston HyperX...

Result?

4.44Ghz, Air Cooled, 4 Cores, 530+ XBENCH, 720P 1 1/2 Hour Movie Encode 17 Minutes.

 

[tonymacx86]

Nice to hear a simple success story- without issues!

 

[Meomy]

4.44Ghz, Air Cooled

What is the ambient temp? What is the climate like around your area? Mostly cold? Mostly hot? What voltages have you set on the vCore? What about Ram speed, timings, and voltage?

Great you had success so easily. Wish I did.

 

[Asylum Design]

http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=2539

The above was a walk-through of settings which I found would work for me...

I'm in Texas, Fort Worth / Dallas area... it's 100 degrees these days, my ambient temp in my house (apt) runs 72-80 most times... right now it's 90 degrees outside and 76 inside.

The "Mac" is running with temps of 47c for CPU1 and 44c for CPU2 (per iStat).

I'll attach some screen shots of my bios... sort of a walk through that will answer probably a ton of questions people might have...

 

[s0ldats]

that is really wonderful! the i750s seem great! it puts my 860 to shame! in fact, i haven't seen many air-cooled 860s run stable at that clock.

great work

 

[Asylum Design]

Danka! Well, a bit of an update

I couldn't leave well enough alone... DUH... so I returned the i5 750 to Fry's, and the MB... and got an i7 860 with a Gigabyte P55A-UD4P

The long and the short of it? The i5 750 w/ UD3 Combo was nearly as fast for almost 1/2 the cost. Don't be seduced by the i7... i Think???

I can't get the new combo to even BOOT stable past a 200BLCK... the UD3 and i5 would do 210BLCK / 215 BLCK in that area fairly reliably.

The UD4P, while being much more expensive, and having the added (nice) benefit of eSATA (which works wonderfully, btw)... isn't all that much faster.

My GeekBench score did increase to 12,700+ ish, but that's about it.

Still hitting a 4.2Ghz Ceiling HARD with this combo...

I shaved about 3 minutes off the 720p Handbrake Movie Encode time (17 minutes to about 14 minutes), and it's cool to see the CineBench reel off those 8 cores...

My Cinebench CPU Score rose from ~6 to 7.62... so that's pretty cool... but not worth, IMHO, the extra $250 from the added cost of CPU/MB...

I'm still VERY happy with it, obviously... but I was really hoping for some more OOMPH for about 2x as much money.

Right now, Fry's has a Combo on an i5 750 / board for $279. Grab it if you are thinking about getting one...

The i7 860 is $~299, the UD4P MB is $240.. $550 vs $279 for damn near the same performance... I think is a no brainer.

But that's just me speaking from personal experience...

I wonder if the i7 865K chip would fare any better (don't go buy it and try, DONT, DONT... arghhhhhhhhhhh I feel it CALLING ME).

The UD3 board / i5 750 also seemed to be much easier to install and get working... this combo has given me fits out the a$$... I've finally got it working...

It could also be that GTX 275 I upgraded vs the GTS 250 I had in there...



It's something awe-inspiring in a stupid geek tech way to see Unreal Tournament 2004 running at top specs, everything on highest... at well over 1000+ fps hahahahaha

Just because I could.

 

[Meomy]

I agree Asylum Design. i7 cores are not worth it. Considering that Intel are about to release two new sockets that will kill the 1156 and 1366 sockets. For example, Intel are about to release a 1155 (not 1156) socket and a new hyped up version to take over from 1366. Money grabbing thugs they are.

 

[s0ldats]

had i not gotten the 860 for <200, i wouldn't have gotten it at all.

 

[Asylum Design]

I agree Asylum Design. i7 cores are not worth it. Considering that Intel are about to release two new sockets that will kill the 1156 and 1366 sockets. For example, Intel are about to release a 1155 (not 1156) socket and a new hyped up version to take over from 1366. Money grabbing thugs they are.

Bastards! You know they do this on purpose... just makes my blood boil... *sigh*... that's ok... At least we can help others on this platform It's all good!