System install notes (P5N-E-SLI and 4300)

[grumpycrab]

Hi - got most og my new kit from OcUK (where in stock). Apart from P4N-E-SLI, 4300 also got OCZ 2GB and Tuniq Tower. Due to stock shortages went for silver Lian-Li and DVD...here's where I am...

Tuniq Tower was a bit of a squeeze - touches a capacitor on the MB but I think its ok. Its always a nervy moment when applying thermal compound (too much/too little) but looks ok. How tight to tighten those screws !?

MB IDE Primary channel didn't work. Which was a real pain because I had to disconnect the 2 hard drives to get to the IDE cable. Fortunately the other connector worked. No problem.

Getting the RAID to work was a pain. Must use the NVIDIA drivers for this otherwise XP never finds the hard disks to install too.

Realtek audio also a problem. May have been because I tried to install these BEFORE SP2 for XP. XP restore very useful here. Ended up having all drivers loaded but couldn't actually play any sounds. Resorted to driver download from internet.

All is fine now...ready to overclock the CPU...

Q1. I have the BFG OC 8800 GTS. If I want to use SLI to I have to use an identical GPU or will any 8800 GTS do ?

Q2. I have RAID0 with 32-bit drivers.(32-bit XP SP2) I have a license for 64-bit Vista. Will I be able to dual boot or is it a fresh install?
[EDIT] Works fine, IE dual boot using 32-bit NVIDIA drivers, 32-bit XP and 64-bit VISTA.

--
Grumps

 

[Edward01]

Q1, I believe in theory you can use any, however to avoid complications I would try and get one thats identical.

Q2, DO you have 64bit drivers for Vista? yeh you should be able to dual boot, but make sure you do it on another partition of your hard drive, otherwise its going ot get really confusing.