Guest: Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
Host: Michael Johnson - PodTech

Michael Johnson - PodTech
This is Michael Johnson and on today's NVIDIA's Podcast Part II of our chat with Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate, one of the top PC modders in the country. Your most recent modding project centered a lot of attention around the muscle car theme with a lot of parts that looked like they came from like a 60's Mustang with twin exhaust pipes and the rest of it. How did you get inspired to choose NVIDIA SLI Technology for this particular Job?

Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
I was pretty much a no-brainer. When I was working on Boss when you look into the 1969 Boss 302 Mustang it was hot, it hit streets and it had attitude and it had horsepower galore and it was really, really, really well balanced machine When it came to hit in the street and it had a growl and it had a presence and to this day people still call it the Boss. I mean it is recognizable among Mustang fans all over the place, and when I was building the machine NVIDIA SLI technology was just such a natural fit for it for a couple reason; Number 01 it exemplified horsepower by being able to take two video cards of high power and team them together and get even more performance.

I mean that right there is just a perfect fit for what I was shooting for inside of Boss and then you also have two video cards and like your were alluding to, you know, the whole exhaust and twin manifolds and, you know, I was trying to make the inside of the engine compartment look to have as much I could like an engine compartment completely with new air filters and exhaust pipes and chrome covered wiring and stuff like that, but the NVIDIA SLI technology was just - it was clean, it was powerful and the cards that I received were actually a Gigabyte 6800 GT and they had a special custom cooler on there, and lots of sweeping pipes on them and it was actually a two stage cooling solution; it was quite unique and really cool and it just really added a lot to the look. So, not only were they powerful but they were beautiful cards and having two of them side-by-side was just like a technology dream.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, you don't sound like you want to rest on your laurels. Are you working on anything right on to trump the Boss?

Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
Oh. Yeah. Actually I am putting the finishing wraps on a case for a friend of mine' she introduced me to Hockey, and it's hockey themed computer case. It is based off of the Dallas Stars. Once I get that one knocked out of the way it is a kind of a proof of concept but the big thing that's going to really come up and rolled on the pipe for me in the next couple of months is I am actually building a machine for the Dallas Stars foundation to be auctioned off at their Charity Casino Night in March and that is going to be a -- it's going to be another NVIDIA based rig, probably either a 570 or a 590 motherboard; obviously SLI, Video cards 7800, 7900 don't know we are still working on that right now. It's going to be a screamer of a case and I've got a lot of little visual tricks that I am going to be throwing into it to try and give it a hockey flair which is - I haven't seen very many sports type of computer cases out there.

That's one of the things I do when I mod I kind of look out there and I see okay what have people done and then I start trying to recognize what people have not done; and one of the things I've noticed that's really been lacking is sports and I know that there are a lot off people out there using computers that are sports fans that probably don't even recognize or realize that they could make a case or get a case that would incorporate a sports team that they like a lot or the college that they like. This is going be a pretty big mod in by book because it's professionally sponsored by - I've got some gear from Cooler Master, and some gear from NVIDIA, I've got some gear from crucial -- there is little bit of pressure behind it for me to perform on this thing and not to mention the Dallas Stars want it to look as good as possible so that they can auction off at their charity event and make as much money as they can. So, I am going to be pushing myself little bit to try some pretty innovative techniques and make this things look as good and be as powerful as possible and the NVIDIA SLI technology is going to just fit perfect in it.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Well, on this project and on the Boss project, was that the first time that you used NVIDIA SLI technology and how was it setting it all up?

Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
It was easy. I can't tell - before I had set up Boss my primary gaming card was a single -- it was 6600 GT, it was from Leadtek and that was all I knew; because at the time that was all I could afford and it had the best bank for the buck, it was good, it was a good card for a cost conscious gamer. When I had set up my first SLI rig it went so easily I thought I screwed something up. I was like it can't be that easy and it was I mean I just had both cards in it, and it just worked. I was like Wow! So, then I loaded up one of my games that I have been playing on my 6600 and my jaw hit the floor and I am hoping I don't sound too corny on this but I actually got a (Inaudible) because I realized that I could now turn up a lot of the details and kick-up the anti-aliasing thing and get the antistrophic anisotropic filtering going and, you know, kick-up the texture details and see the game as it was meant to be played and not just having a game playing in front of me but actually experience it the way the developers meant for it, and that whole NVIDIA logo right there at the beginning now took on a whole new meaning and I was like -- and I was hooked, that was it I was hooked.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So when you are modding, it sounds like you have to have a lot of custom parts to fit whatever theme you are shooting for? What SLI-ready components did you invest in for the last project and for your current one as well?

Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
The 6800 GT is like we spoke about from Gigabyte there was an ECS KN1 Extreme, that's an SLI motherboard that I used in Boss, the power supply that came that I used in Boss was actually a Cooler Master Real Power, that's not actually an SLI ready power supply but I had to mod it and turn it into a SLI power supply which is no kids, it is kind of dangerous, be careful when you do that, okay? But, it's now a fully functioning SLI power supply I've got a another Cooler Master iGreen 600 watt SLI ready power supply that's outside in the garage right now that I am going to be using in the Dallas Stars case. I have read about the SLI ready memory and I haven't actually hadn't any exposure to it yet, so I'm kind of itching to get my fingers on some of that and see how well it tweaks and looks for the rest of new NVIDIA SLI ready lines.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Now, I want to ask you about overclocking, do you overclock anything or do you keep them at sort of the standard stock speeds and why one way or the other?

Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
My personal preference, I don't overclock until I need to and when I say need to it is like when I start to reach the useful -- the end of useful life of a piece of either CPU or a video card or something like that then I'll start pushing it just to get a little extra use out of it. My thinking on that is, it's a personal preference. When people overclock and they overclock to insane speeds, if you are not really careful and you are not watching what are you doing you can physically damage the component and then of course once you've overclocked that you've voided the warranty. I've got lot of extensive hardware running around here and I don't particularly feel the need to be a benchmark king. I don't have that, my desire for performance is strong but I don't feel the need to take my machines and push them to the absolute ragged edge to where I either stand a chance of hurting something or obviously voiding my warranty. I tinker with it, I am not going to say that I don't overclock, I might take the machine that I know that I have got a really good cooler on and I'll take it outside and I'll run it up and I'll mess with HTT lengths and start working on the multiple -- because all of my machines here at the house that I am running, my wife's machine, my machine, and then my previous machine they are all AMD FX processors.

So, the multipliers are unlocked; so the CPU's are just prime for overclocking and then on my video cards obviously when you start dealing with overclocking you got NVIDIA coolbits registry hack that unlocks the memory and the core slider so that you can actually overclock the video cards, then you got nTune chipset tweaking software that comes with NVIDIA based motherboards, and you know it gives the people that like to benchmark and it gives the people that really like to push their equipment to the edge it gives them every little bit of granular tinkering that they would want. In my particular instance, I don't like to tinker down to that level; I like to use my machines, I don't like to get lost in the complete granular overclocking of it; now I have got some friends of mine that will absolutely just stop me on benchmarking and stuff like that's, and you know and that's their thing. I'll take that but my machine looks better.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, Craig when you overclock do you prefer to use the BIOS or an overclocking program like some of the ones that you were mentioning?

Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
Whenever I overclock -- the BIOS gives you a whole lot of setting and it'll allow you to get pretty aggressive. NVIDA gives you some really cool tools, they give nTune software that allows you to tweak the chipset of the actual motherboard and they give you if you go out online you can pick-up a little registry hack called coolbits which allows you to adjust the memory and the core frequencies of the video card. The neat thing about the nTune is that it is a professionally developed solution and it allows you to make changes within windows and if you get too aggressive or you go too far with your chipset tweaking and your machine doesn't boot nTune will then just reset what you had done back to the normal motherboard defaults. So, it's a good safe as safe as overclocking can be. You obviously -- whenever you start overclocking you start going to the point of a dabbling with the warranty and validation, you also stand the chance of killing your components, killing your machine, killing the motherboard, killing the video card but a lot of people know how to do it and do it right and if you do it right you can get a lot of free performance out of a machine, untapped performance; it is kind of like going again referencing back to that whole 70's gear head thing.

Getting under the engine and adjusting your cams and fuel flow on your corroborator and just making up the pieces that you have work better together to get that extra bit of performance. Myself personally, I don't tinker very much with my chipset, just a personal decision of my own, it's a great tool the nTune stuff, it is just -- I don't dabble with my motherboard. I am always afraid of messing with my brainstem, if you will; as for the video cards, tweaking the core and the memory through the coolbits registry hack and doing it through the NVIDA drivers they have a good tool set there that allows you to gauge how well your card may behave or how far you can push it overclocking it, taking the memory beyond it's normal spec and taking the core beyond its normal spec, and I have had -- I'll guiltily admit with a little bit of pleasure I've had some really good success with that tool and hopefully that doesn't invalided any of my cards and video.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
So, when you see that on advertiser on the box the term SLI Ready what does that mean to you, especially when you are looking for parts to build on SLI or an SLI Ready PC?

Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate
The first things it says to me when I see something that has the logo; Number 01 it means NVIDA has looked at it and blessed it and that to me says that it is going be a quality part that's going to perform the way I expect it to, and perform being the key word there. I've been reading a lot and seeing a lot of online reviews where people are taking these SLI Ready components, putting them together, and they come-up with a screaming machine and that's exactly what I want. I don't want to put something together and then find out three steps down the road that, Oh crap this part is not compatible and it ends up throwing of build or delaying me while I go searching for another part. The SLI ready moniker says to Number 01 if I combine this parts I stand a chance of great if not better than great performance simply because of the fact that the parts are meant to work together.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
You have been listening to a conversation with Craig "Tech Daddy" Tate, one of the country best known PC modders you can check out check his work www.tech-daddy.com and for more on NVIDA SLI Technology check it slizone.com. This is Michael Johnson; thanks for listening.