My Current PC Specs: Cooler Master case (Centurion Plus 534), Thermaltake Pure Power 680W PSU Scythe SFF21F intake fan (1600rpm), Thermaltake A2329 exhaust fan ASUS M2N32 WS Pro mbd (AM2, DDR2/800 RAM, 2 x PCIe/16X, 2 x PCIX/133) Athlon64 X2 6000+ 3GHz (dual-core), overclocked to 3225MHz (215/15) Thermalright Ultra120 Extreme CPU cooler + Scythe SFF21F 1600rpm fan Gigabyte 8800GT Zalman (512MB), oc'd from 700/1715/920 to 790/1790/980 4GB RAM (4 x 1GB DIMMS, two dual-channel DDR2/800 OCZ kits) LSI 20320IE 4x PCIe U320 card with Seagate 146GB 15K ST3146855LC U320 (system) LSI 22320R PCIX U320 RAID card, 12 x Maxtor Atlas 15K-II 146GB 15K U320 (data) Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA/300 HD103UJ (data backup) 20X Liteon DVDRW. A4Tech Laser Mouse. My current SGI specs (Fuel and Tezro): http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16719759 http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16721054 PC RAID test using just 4 x Maxtor disks (SiSoft Sandra, results in MB/sec): Sequential Buffered Random Read | Write Read | Write Read | Write LSI 320-2E PCIe (hw): 359 280 558 409 127 149 LSI 21320R PCIX (sw): 359 205 250 122 135 150 (old card) The LSI 320-2E PCIe card is a Dell PERC 4e/DC, which I will be using in my next PC (Core i7 920 system), probably late summer 2009. I intend to use the ASUS P6T WS Professional motherboard: http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=82&l3=860&l4=0&model=2609&modelmenu=1 ******************************************************************** Changelog: 03/Jun/2009: Replaced the Maxtor system disk with a Seagate ST3146855LC (faster!), added a 1TB SATA for data backup, replaced the 1200rpm Sycthe fan on the CPU heat sink with a 1600rpm to better cope with the summer heat, moved the 1200rpm onto the front of the case (replacing the old Coolermaster fan). Disk Reference: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/diskdata.html 08/Mar/2009: Replaced LSI 21320R RAID card with LSI 22320R, which has two external VHDCI SCSI ports instead of a single external HD68 port. Thus, the RAID disks have been moved into an external unit (Sagitta 12-bay dual- channel JBOD) which now houses 12 disks instead of four. This means less power consumption when I'm not using the RAID. ******************************************************************** 3D Graphics These results compare to my previous mbd/gfx combination (Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA, X1950 Pro AGP) with the same CPU and RAM. OLD: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1771835 NEW: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=7303357 X1950 Pro AGP 8X 8800GT PCIe (641/783) (790/1790/985) 3DMark06 Overall: 5583 11762 3DMark06 SM 2.0: 2081 5457 3DMark06 SM 3.0: 2326 5704 3DMark06 CPU: 2415 2491 Return to Proxycon (FPS): 16.11 44.80 Firefly Forest (FPS): 18.57 46.16 Canyon Flight (FPS): 22.16 57.73 Deep Freeze (FPS): 24.36 56.34 Fill Rate Single (MTex/sec): 4931.52 6325.18 Fill Rate Multi (MTex/sec): 7675.52 30669.47 Pixel Shader (FPS): 215.76 548.29 Vertex Shader Simple (MVerts/sec): 179.42 242.97 Vertex Shader Complex (MVerts/sec): 60.87 159.56 Shader Particles (SM 3.0): N/A 131.86 Perlin Noise (SM 3.0): 70.61 172.96 Oblivion frames-per-seond test descriptions (URLs below), done before I installed the Natural Environments mod: 1. Dense forest location at night, focus on the centre of the ruins. 2. Bottom of the stairs in Merchants' Inn, focus on the inn keeper. 3. At wooden door to City Isle (inside), Market District, N.E. corner, focus between the two vertical red flags on far building. 4. Talos Plaza, west city entrance, inside the plaza, focus on the head of the dragon statue. 5. Behind (north east) of the Wawnet Inn, standing on the rock, facing, a) the Inn, b) east to the city, c) north to the horizon above the hill texture 'seam', and d) the end of the pier. 6. Signpost outside the city, facing S.E. Images: http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest1.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest2.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest3.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest4.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5a.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5b.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5c.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest5d.jpg http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/misc/obliviontest6.jpg And here are the results: CAVEAT: tests on the new 8800GT were done with the enhanced water realism activated; couldn't work out how to turn it off. MEDIUM DETAIL: 1024x768, 4X AA, no AF, Texture Preference = High Quality, MipMap Detail = Performance, in-game settings at default. Athlon64 X2 6000+, old mbd/gfx vs. new mbd/gfx. All results are fps. | 3.15GHz (210/15) | 3GHz (200/15) Test | DDR2/800 (394) | DDR2/800 (375) Num | X1950 Pro AGP 8X | GF8800GT (700/1715/920) -------------------------------------------------- 1 | 48 | 79 2 | 63 | 63 <-- CPU bottleneck 3 | 40 | 48 4 | 49 | 49 <-- CPU bottleneck 5a | 71 | 84 5b | 125 | 150 5c | 149 | 182 5d | 89 | 111 6 | 67 | 92 Now for High Detail... CAVEAT: old gfx tests were done with 6X AA, but the 8800GT only offers 4X and 8X modes, not 6X. Thus, I tested with both 4X and 8X, and also no AA out of curiosity, which revealed some tests are very CPU-bound. Note that CPU in the new system was only going at 3GHz to avoid any issues related to Oblivion's sensitivity to overclocked components. HIGH DETAIL: 1600x1200, 6X AA, 16X AF, Texture Preference = High Quality, MipMap Detail = High Quality, in-game settings at default, Athlon64 X2 6000+, old mbd/gfx vs. new mbd/gfx. All results are fps. | 3.15GHz (210/15) | 3GHz (200/15) || 3GHz (200/15), DDR2/800 (375) | DDR2/800 (394) | DDR2/800 (375) || GF8800GT (700MHz) Test | X1950 Pro AGP 8X | GF8800GT (700MHz) || 2048 x 1536 res!!!! Num | 6X AA | 8X AA | 4X AA | No AA || 8X AA | 4X AA | No AA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 45 | 39 47 69 || 25 33 51 2 | 50 | 63 63 63 || 46 61 63 <-- CPU bottleneck 3 | 37 | 47 48 48 || 40 47 47 4 | 50 | 48 48 50 || 48 49 50 <-- CPU bottleneck 5a | 58 | 59 70 84 || 41 55 77 5b | 81 | 90 122 138 || 64 89 121 5c | 88 | 107 153 169 || 77 109 152 5d | 53 | 56 66 88 || 37 48 66 6 | 48 | 48 60 76 || 33 42 59 ****************************************************************************