Gaming Pc

[GOEN]

Hi New In Here,
Planing To Buy New Gaming Pc Need Advice From Experts
Thanx.

[McMaster]

What games are you playing and what settings do you plan to use?

[yakuza]

Ebay for intel quad.
You have towers from 400 dollars with quad processors up to 2.4ghz (10ghz), 4gb of RAM, a nice harddrive and if you're lucky it might come with a nice enough video card. If not, the 7900GT should be cheap enough to afford by now.
Also, don't get vista.

A dual core with 3gb of RAM and a nice videocard will play 90% of the new stuff on highest settings anyway.

Unless you want to put Crysis on 100% most generic computers out there nowadays with a x900 256mb will do.

[McMaster]

For Crysis, a 8800 GT+ is recommended, and a Q6600 is a nice combination with it.

[farazparsa]

For Crysis, a 8800 GT+ is recommended, and a Q6600 is a nice combination with it.
Though if I were you, I wouldn't buy a new computer just for Crysis. The graphics are nice, but it's pretty average otherwise.

[MrBunsy]

It runs rather well on an 8600 GT, so I suspect almost anything fairly new will cope. But yeah, it's not really worth upgrading just for Crysis, though it was good fun.

[McMaster]

Also I think the 9600 GT would be good...

[robowurmz]

Funnily Enough, I can run Crysis just fine on my 7800 GS (AGP) on high graphics setting. I get about 50-60 fps most of the time.

[McMaster]

At 160x120 resolution? :p

[MrBunsy]

Funnily Enough, I can run Crysis just fine on my 7800 GS (AGP) on high graphics setting. I get about 50-60 fps most of the time.

That's a pretty powerful card, though.

[farazparsa]

Again, beyond the graphics, the gameplay is strictly nothing special.

[franpa]

(10ghz)

Where did you get this number from?

[yakuza]

Where did you get this number from?

A multiplication and a round up. Duh.

[MrBunsy]

Though bare in mind that's only if the programme your running actually uses all four cores (and does so efficiently). If it just uses one, it's only as good as a single 2.4ghz core.

[McMaster]

A multiplication and a round up. Duh.

Quad-core doesn't mean 4x the core clock. As MrBunsy said, an application can use only one core. Even if an application uses all four cores, it isn't like 9.6GHz.

A faster dual-core should be a better deal now. A quad-core isn't fully used by all applications yet.

[MrBunsy]

Quad-core doesn't mean 4x the core clock. As MrBunsy said, an application can use only one core. Even if an application uses all four cores, it isn't like 9.6GHz.
It could be like 9.6ghz though. Something like a ray-tracer can be easily split up between cores. It all depends on the individual programmes.

[yakuza]

Quad-core doesn't mean 4x the core clock. As MrBunsy said, an application can use only one core.

Did I ever say otherwise?


Even if an application uses all four cores, it isn't like 9.6GHz.



It isn't?

[Akuryou13]

I suggest a custom computer:

www.ibuypower.com


also, how much money are you planning to spend on this rig? your results will vary wildly, as will your selection options, depending on if you want something under $1000 or above.

[yakuza]

So what would the best option for gaming for around 1.000 dollars? Preferably silent.

Is it worth to go for SLI if I already have a 7900GT? I also have two 1GB DDR2 sticks laying around PCI-E.

[Akuryou13]

So what would the best option for gaming for around 1.000 dollars? Preferably silent.

Is it worth to go for SLI if I already have a 7900GT? I also have two 1GB DDR2 sticks laying around PCI-E.how do you have PCI-E RAM?

and if it was serious, it's never worth it to go SLI. there aren't any games that need that much power.

[yakuza]

how do you have PCI-E RAM?

and if it was serious, it's never worth it to go SLI. there aren't any games that need that much power.

Erm, RAM sticks that fit into a PCI-E motherbaord.

I tried ibuypower.com but they're USA only. Alienware is too expensive. Are there any other websites that sell gaming PCs to europe? Not Dell XPS please.

[Akuryou13]

Erm, RAM sticks that fit into a PCI-E motherbaord.

I tried ibuypower.com but they're USA only. Alienware is too expensive. Are there any other websites that sell gaming PCs to europe? Not Dell XPS please.try TigerDirect or NewEgg. those both have options for customizing a PC. I've got a PC Gamer here that also lists the sites: www.buyxg.com www.cyberpowerpc.com www.yagear.com www.vigorgaming.com and www.digitalstorm.com

try those, maybe?

[yakuza]

try TigerDirect or NewEgg. those both have options for customizing a PC. I've got a PC Gamer here that also lists the sites: www.buyxg.com www.cyberpowerpc.com www.yagear.com www.vigorgaming.com and www.digitalstorm.com

try those, maybe?

Those are USA only sadly. Getting a gaming PC here in Europe is annoying as hell, since they won't ship from the USA and those who produce from Europe (alienware) inflate the price with the Dollar-Euro change and you end up paying the same number in euros you'd do in dollars, which is completely lame.

[bonz]

How about buying all the parts and assembling them yourself?
It isn't really that complicated.

Plus, you can reduce the costs even further as you don't need to pay for the assembly and the shipping (assuming you buy the parts at a retail shop or the shipping of individual parts is free).

[yakuza]

This is what I was thinking on:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHZ FSB1333 6MB Box
Asus Striker Extreme NForce 680i SLI Socket
Asus Silent Knight II
Mushkin White Extreme DDR2 PC2-6400 4GB 2x2GB 4-4-4-12
Samsung HD321KJ 320GB SATA2
Aerocool ZeroDegree
Corsair HX520W Modular 520W
2x EVGA GeForce 8800GT SuperClocked 512MB SLI setup

Any advice?

[MrBunsy]

One of those cards will run Crysis maxed out, you really don't need two.

Other than that, have you checked that motherboard can run SLI with both the cards at 16x?

[McMaster]

This is what I was thinking on:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHZ FSB1333 6MB Box
Asus Striker Extreme NForce 680i SLI Socket
Asus Silent Knight II
Mushkin White Extreme DDR2 PC2-6400 4GB 2x2GB 4-4-4-12
Samsung HD321KJ 320GB SATA2
Aerocool ZeroDegree
Corsair HX520W Modular 520W
2x EVGA GeForce 8800GT SuperClocked 512MB SLI setup

Any advice?

Make sure you buy the revised version of the 680i, because the standard one doesn't support Penryn.

Or get a 780i.

[yakuza]

I ended up with Socket 775 - Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R Socket 775 - GA-EP35C-DS3R[ mobo and the ram is 5-5-5-15, also, got Gigabyte GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB GDDR3 PCI-e - GV-NX98X512H-B

[franpa]

It could be like 9.6ghz though. Something like a ray-tracer can be easily split up between cores. It all depends on the individual programmes.

And it is still a quad core 2.4ghz processor, the fact that it can do 4 things at once, does not mean it can do one thing at 4 times the speed. in your example it breaks the load into 4 pieces and does them all on each core at 2.4ghz each.

You would need a geforce 280 video card or whatever there new name is in order to play Crysis at high quality and a decent res. the bandwith on these cards is roughly double a geforce 8800gt.

[MrBunsy]

And it is still a quad core 2.4ghz processor, the fact that it can do 4 things at once, does not mean it can do one thing at 4 times the speed. in your example it breaks the load into 4 pieces and does them all on each core at 2.4ghz each.So? Why does how it works in the background make any difference?

[franpa]

Your example only applies to some cases. Mine applies to all cases.

[MrBunsy]

Hence:
It could be

And more programmes are using dual core properly now, so if things continue in that direction then programmes might start using quad soon.

[quakerworm]

So? Why does how it works in the background make any difference?
because most programs are strictly linear in design. there is nothing in them to know how to break load between four cores. that's the biggest bottle neck even for ps3 right now. it can potentially blow 360 way out of the watter, because its total processing capabilities are enormous. yet, most games run worse on ps3, because programmers simply don't know what to do with the total of 9 asymmetric cores (2+7) of the ps3, while 3 symmetric cores of the 360 are a more manageable task.

it really is the problem of programming paradigm. there are tasks where splitting the load is trivial. if i need to compute sin(x), sin(y), sin(z), sin(w), i can split it into 4 cpus each computing one function. no problem.

on the other hand, imagine computing something like a Fibonacci sequence. fib(n)=fib(n-1)+fib(n-2). all you need to do is perform n additions, but you cannot distribute these between 4 cpus, because to perform one operation, you need results of the previous ones. (yes, there is a way to optimize even Fibonacci for multi-core, but it isn't trivial.)

games have both types of situations occurring. you have operations that can be split up between cores, and these that must be performed by one core. one 'simple' optimization done often on 360's, is dedicating one core to physics, for example. in that case, the load of the other cores is taken off, and it creates only occasional difficulties of syncing everything up. but even that in itself is not quite as easy as it sounds. you need to make sure that the physics engine running one one core doesn't start adjusting the coordinates of things used right now by the rendering engine to put things on the screen. this typically means that you'll have double-buffering of physical coordinates, with interrupts between cores being used to swap these between frames and between physics steps. again not so bad by itself. if you've ever programmed a sound card, you know the drill. but then you run into all that memory protection stuff. gets hairy fast.

now imagine programming for a cpu that might have 1, 2, or 4 cores. you don't know in advance which it will be, you don't know how fast they are, and you don't know if the graphics, memory, or cpu will be the main bottleneck. you also don't know if the os will be xp or vista, and you don't know if the user wants high graphics at low fps or low graphics at high fps.

the task of generalizing this and making it all work together is not impossible, but it is far from trivial, and i have not yet seen an engine properly optimized to take all of that into account.

what we really need is an os that makes a descent job of managing all that mess. so far, the only programs that take advantage of multi-core design truly efficiently are various math and simulation programs, primarily because people working on these have years of experience building programs running on super-computers consisting of multiple cpus.

[Kaerar]

True, however there is one game that can use Multi-core (with a little fix it even uses quad core better) and thats Supreme Commander. But then thats one in a million.

However when using a quad core you stress your system a lot less than with dual or single core allowing more headroom for modifying etc...
With multicore processors you are also better off for the next gen of programs that will support multicore, though thats most likely going to be on a 64bit architecture or even 128bit considering the failure that 64bit has been.

[Akuryou13]

True, however there is one game that can use Multi-core (with a little fix it even uses quad core better) and thats Supreme Commander. But then thats one in a million.there's actually a fair few that use dual cores. pretty much all games released since dual cores got popular, in fact. sup com was one of the first but is hardly the only one.