New Computer

Grommit · Guru

New Computer

Lodur · Guru

Grommit wrote:
Memory: Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR2-800 (4x1GB)

640K is more memory than anyone will ever need.

Casnar · Veteran Member

Check out Tiger Direct and build ur own man. Quad Core and mother board deals for 300 bucks, 3.0 gig quad cores Omfg. Btw vista ultima rocks scrap xp and go with the new os it is scaleable for 64 bit arch. Can u say 16 gigs of ram forget 4 gigs. Vista ultima is so much faster than xp crap. Not to talk about the xtras that it does. If u have sli on the board go with a big power supply for the new video cards. One last thought go with a full tower for space. smile

Cas

PS

BFG 8800 GTX 768ddr3, I have it and it ROCKS DDO 210 fps peak normal 100+

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2842055&CatId=2513

-- Edited by Casnar at 13:47, 2007-09-11

-- Edited by Casnar at 13:57, 2007-09-11

Food · Guru

Grommit wrote:

CPU: Intel e6750 2.66 Ghz Core 2 Duo
Memory: Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR2-800 (4x1GB)
Video: ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/640M GeForce 8800GTS 640MB

These are the makings of a really sweet system man. I have a 2.08 Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 7600GT - and everything runs pretty sweet on that - so your system should be awesome. I really don't think you will be dissapointed.

Skooter · Mod

I think you will be really happy with this setup and it sticks within your budget. You might want to think about Vista if your looking at a longer term solution (3+ years).

I am pretty much building the same system except I will be going with a different MB (personal preference against ASUS) and probably going for the either the same video card or the GTX depends on my budget.

You might want to look at the EVGA video cards because they have a lifetime warranty and great customer service.

Skooter · Mod

Sigh...

Well after looking at several of the review sites and the comparisons from the Nvidia 600i series and the Intel P35 chipset, the intel chipset seems to be the better preformer. The best rated boards are the asus deluxe and the Blitz. But I think those are a little on the high priced side for my taste.

I am going to go back over the system I was going to build and see what I want to change now.

By the way I was looking at the 640MB model versus the 320MB and the 320 performed better in every benchmark except for 1600x1200+ resolutions. Don't know how high your running but my LCD maxes out at 1280x1024. Just a thought.

Skooter · Mod

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4MB L2 LGA 775 Processor Retail BX80557E6750 SLA9V

ClubIT Number: CA1938254

MSI P35 Neo2-FR LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard Retail

ClubIT Number: CA4854023

EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card Retail 76

2-N831-AR

ClubIT Number: CA9602827

OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-15 Dual Channel Kit Retail OCZ2P800R22GK

ClubIT Number: CA4308301

Antec Performance I P180 Mid Tower - Tower 5 x External, 6 x Internal

ClubIT Number: CA1307023

ENERMAX Liberty ELT620AWT 620W ATX12V Ver 2.2 AC Power Supply - 620 W Single Fan - - ATX 12V

ClubIT Number: CA6277815

Pioneer Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 10X DVD+R DL 18X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-R 32X CD-RW 40X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner - OEM

ClubIT Number: CA1566328

Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

MICROSOFT Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Premium Single Pack DVD OEM

ClubIT Number: CA7252240

Subtotal: $1,493.89

Not to sure what your tax is but it should be around 1600 and this includes the GTX not the GTS card. Yeah the MB isn't exactly what you wanted but there is $80 worth of rebates (not included in the subtotal) on the memory if you want to upgrade it to something better.

Grommit · Guru

I did some more research on the P35 versus 650i north bridges. The 3D graphics charts look near identical, however the P35 beats the 650i slightly in the "application computing" performance.

However, the one big difference I found between these two bridges is that only the 650i supports SLI. This makes sense because SLI is NVIDIA proprietary ... so if you ever plan on dual 8800's you have to go with the 650i.

I was planning on one of my main upgrade paths being the addition of a second GPU, so I think I am going to stick with the 650i.

I will take the advice to switch from XP to Vista, however I am unsure what the benefits of "Vista Ultima" versus "Vista Premium Home"? I am going to do some web searches, however if any of you Windoze weanies (sorry, the only reason i ever touch windoze is for gaming ... i would run my home system as linux if it werent for all those BIASEST gaming manufactures out there) out there can sum them up I would appreciate the info.

--grommit

Food · Guru

Grommit wrote:

I am going to do some web searches, however if any of you Windoze weanies (sorry, the only reason i ever touch windoze is for gaming ... i would run my home system as linux if it werent for all those BIASEST gaming manufactures out there) out there can sum them up I would appreciate the info.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx

Grommit · Guru

thanks ... my quick summary is that Ultimate looks like a waste of 60+ dollars.

Skooter · Mod

But the black box looks so cool! :)

Yeah and your right about the SLi thing I guess the intel chipsets only work with ATi's Crossfire. I haven't really looked at the SLi performance difference but when it had just come out the benefit wasn't really there or the hassle it took to get it setup was a nightmare.

Has that changed?

Grommit · Guru

There are some solid benchmark numbers in the charts of the article:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2870&p=1

as far as setup/config of SLI ... I dont know the specifics, but I thought it was
pretty "plug and play" where you slide the two video cards into the PCI-E slots
and boot....

Skooter · Mod

Well my *only* experience was when it first came out. I used to manage a computer store that built custom PC's. We tried to put together 2 of the first generation cards and had about a 50 point increase in 3Dmark. Which IMO two 600+ dollar cards for 50 points no thanks.

Anyway we were having tons of problems trying to get the drivers to work properly and get everything to work right. We would get weird issues like when starting up a game it would flip the primary display to the other card or just silly things like that.

I am guessing that this was just the brand new bugs but it was pretty frustrating.

With SLi do you need to get an identical match to the previous card or can it just be *similar*? (Same chipset, brand but new revision.)

-- Edited by Skooter at 12:59, 2007-09-13

Skooter · Mod

ROFLMAO....

So after reading your article I can see why we didn't have very much luck with SLi. We were using BF2 as our primary test game which actually performs slower in SLi mode.

Well that makes sense now.

Skip · Senior Member

Only 1 HD? Reading from the hd is the biggest choke point in load times. Get 2 and set it up in raid0. It'll provide a 50-60% boost in speed on loads. Pretty much any new motherboard will provide raid capability at the hardware level so no software overhead.

Skooter · Mod

Meh but then when one dies you lose all of your data... That kinda sucks.

I have one of the 10k Raptor drives and it seemed to make a decent difference on load times but I don't think I would go to a Raid 0 unless the only thing I used the machine for was gaming and losing one drive would just mean I would lose my saved games/settings.

Skip · Senior Member

If you have a single drive and lose it you lose all your data and have to replace it. If you have 2 drives raid 0 and you lose one, you lose all your data and replace one drive. I'm not seeing a difference here except in increased data throughput.

If you're concerned about data, store in external backup or have an extra drive for storing all your data files. I wouldn't bother with 0+1 though unless you're running a file server or some such thing where losing a drive could be bad.

Food · Guru

Skip wrote:

If you have a single drive and lose it you lose all your data and have to replace it. If you have 2 drives raid 0 and you lose one, you lose all your data and replace one drive. I'm not seeing a difference here except in increased data throughput.

But if you have 2 drives then you double your chances of a failure occuring in the first place - so there isn't much difference, but some.

Skooter · Mod

Yeah but you figure that the increase in failure is much higher than with just one drive.

I find that drives are very reliable these days but still your not seeing a 50-60% its more like 10-20% for most applications. Just because the seek time is still there and that is generally what the bottleneck is. Overall data throughput is higher so it's great when your looking at HUGE files (like movies) but for games your generally loading dozens of smaller files so improving the seek time is where I would look at making the biggest difference.