[Shike]

Quote:

I'm willing to bet that the mark up made on high end graphics cards is more than Violectric makes on the V200. So I disagree personally.

 
And who presumably has higher R&D costs?  Those have to be recouped, so a larger margin is reasonable IMO.

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

I'm willing to bet that the mark up made on high end graphics cards is more than Violectric makes on the V200. So I disagree personally.

You'd be wrong actually.  Maximum PC had a spread about it a few years back.  The margins are surprisingly thin but obviously increase the more upscale you get.  Computer silicon is quite a cut throat business unless you can monopolize some aspect of it.  
 
Most high end amps have way more margin than just about anything in electronics I've seen.  It's pretty ridiculous.  Doesn't mean they all fail to perform though most seem to IME.

 

[MikeW]

 
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I remember also purchasing numerous lesser priced graphics cards in the past and simply unlocking them to the upper model (bios flash), and then OC'ing past it's performance too, (i.e 5850 to 5870) all for half the price.

 
Coming from another computer enthusiast, who also has a I7 920 (D0 Stepping) @ 4 Ghz, i call BS on this.
 
For one, the 5870 was not nearly twice the cost of the 5850. It was at most 100$ more, likely closer to 75$. And yes, there was about a 10% performance lead. We're talking 300$ vs 350, or 350 vrs 400$ here..
 
Also, yes you can use bios updates and overclock a 5850 to stock 5870 performance or higher, however the 5870 can overclock that much further and maintain it's lead.
 
Your exagerating here, neither of those cards where "high end" either, the 5870 was, at one time the top "single gpu solution" but if we are talking strictly "high end" we must consider  5900, dual GPU solution, it's the only thing close to the previous mentioned 600 euro's, and it's almost twice as fast as a 5870.

 

[maverickronin]

My i7 920 only runs at 3.9GHz....
 

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

My i7 920 only runs at 3.9GHz....
 

Lol, I'm still rockin' the Core 2 duo E8400 3.0ghz on an X48.  Can't believe how long I've been able to extend this PC compared to my past builds.  Got 2 SSDs in RAID0 and a 6970 though.
 
Personally I don't OC anymore as I just prefer rock solid reliability to BSODs.
 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Personally I don't OC anymore as I just prefer rock solid reliability to BSODs.

I test all my OCs thoroughly.  If 24 hours of Prime95 doesn't take it down then I don't see what else will.  I could have gone to 4GHz but it only lasted a few hours at that speed.  Just about the only time my PC is ever off is if I'm switching out parts or the power dies.  Currently rockin' 51 days of uptime since the last power interruption.
 
I get to have my cake and eat it too.  

 

[Naim.F.C]

No BS at all. 4ghz on a D0 step indeed, with a Noctua in an Antec 1200 case. I used some thermo paste that came like 3rd best on some massive HardOCP comparison, and honestly, it made an amazing difference. Ran it through Prime95 among others for prolonged periods and it was stable. OCZ Platinum ram at the time. Admittedly, these days I've pipped it down to 3.8ghz as I started getting a few anomalies after a year or so (I'm guessing my fan or case just needs a clean or something).
 
And I remember the 5850 was on offer at OCUK at one point for like £180 whilst the 5870 was at like £320 to £350 (I know because I picked up two of them for the price of one 5870!). Can't comment for US prices, I'm based in the UK here. Also, I regard the best single GPU platform on the market as "high end". I regard dual and multi card set ups as "ultra high end", and most often than not they do not scale up to double the performance, unless things have improved in the last few years. I've been out of the PC game for a while.
 
 
Anyway, I know the pressures on. And I need to be completely sure none of my opinions are remotely placebo affected, which lets face it is a powerful mental affliction that anyone can and probably has been affected by. Been conducting further tests all night. Problem before was that I was comparing RCA-Mini from the X-DAC to the O2, with Balanced from the X-DAC to the V200. I will say there were audible differences, one's I have pinned down to specific frequency changes, the problem is however, I don't know if these differences are from the X-DAC itself or the V200. 
 
In any case, I'll be doing further comprehensive comparisons, this time with "X-DAC > RCA to Mini > O2" vs "X-DAC > RCA > V200".
 
On a side note, NwAVGuy needs to design an O2 with balanced connections lol.
 
Quote:

 
 
Coming from another computer enthusiast, who also has a I7 920 (D0 Stepping) @ 4 Ghz, i call BS on this.
 
For one, the 5870 was not nearly twice the cost of the 5850. It was at most 100$ more, likely closer to 75$. And yes, there was about a 10% performance lead. We're talking 300$ vs 350, or 350 vrs 400$ here..
 
Also, yes you can use bios updates and overclock a 5850 to stock 5870 performance or higher, however the 5870 can overclock that much further and maintain it's lead.
 
Your exagerating here, neither of those cards where "high end" either, the 5870 was, at one time the top "single gpu solution" but if we are talking strictly "high end" we must consider  5900, dual GPU solution, it's the only thing close to the previous mentioned 600 euro's, and it's almost twice as fast as a 5870.

 

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

I test all my OCs thoroughly.  If 24 hours of Prime95 doesn't take it down then I don't see what else will.  I could have gone to 4GHz but it only lasted a few hours at that speed.  Just about the only time my PC is ever off is if I'm switching out parts or the power dies.  Currently rockin' 51 days of uptime since the last power interruption.
 
I get to have my cake and eat it too.  

I could do that but if or when something happens that lost time I'm never getting back for diagnostics.  Don't want to deal with it anymore for the relatively minimal gain (in most cases).  It's fun though.  I remember the old pencil graphite days.  
 

 

[Naim.F.C]

Dude, with CPU's over the last few years the gains have been anything but minimal. Heck if you use Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, After Effects etc like me, the differences are sometimes night and day.
 
Quote:

I could do that but if or when something happens that lost time I'm never getting back for diagnostics.  Don't want to deal with it anymore for the relatively minimal gain (in most cases).  It's fun though.  I remember the old pencil graphite days.  
 

 

 

[Anaxilus]

 
Quote:

Dude, with CPU's over the last few years the gains have been anything but minimal. Heck if you use Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, After Effects etc like me, the differences are sometimes night and day.

Dude, I said in most cases.  Not everything ramps up to a 'night and day' difference.  I doubt your 4ghz Oc is getting you double the performance. 

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

I could do that but if or when something happens that lost time I'm never getting back for diagnostics.  Don't want to deal with it anymore for the relatively minimal gain (in most cases).  It's fun though.  I remember the old pencil graphite days.  

I guess it depends what you use it for.  You can get some pretty huge gains in serious number crunching applications like video encoding and post processing.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Dude, I said in most cases.  Not everything ramps up to a 'night and day' difference.  I doubt your 4ghz Oc is getting you double the performance. 

That would be pretty impressive for a 50% OC.   

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

You can get some pretty huge gains in serious number crunching applications like video encoding and post processing.

 
Like what 20-30% at best?  Now he's got 'anomalies' after a year that might be dustbunnies?  It's cool if you need it and can burn hardware or upgrade every cycle.  I just prefer reliably upgrading during revolutionary tech cycles not evolutionary ones.  If I made my money by squeezing out an extra 30% from floating point I'd be down and I totally understand.  Luckily I'm not in that spot as evidenced by my E8400.
 
 

 

[Anaxilus]

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That would be pretty impressive for a 50% OC.   

I know right!  Like night and day!  

 

 

[maverickronin]

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Like what 20-30% at best?  Now he's got 'anomalies' after a year that might be dustbunnies?  It's cool if you need it and can burn hardware or upgrade every cycle.  I just prefer reliably upgrading during revolutionary tech cycles not evolutionary ones.  If I made my money by squeezing out an extra 30% from floating point I'd be down and I totally understand.  Luckily I'm not in that spot as evidenced by my E8400.

You just have to go overkill in your stress testing.  It me took like a week and a half to dial mine in.  Change some settings, fire up Prime95, find it crashed after 14 hours, turn it down a hair, try again, etc.  I checked when I put this build together and it was in July '09.  I've been rock solid for 2 and a half years now.
 
It takes some effort to do it properly but for those of us on a budget its not much different from any other type of DIY.