Computer Build Thread: OP temporarily with up to date sample builds!

Xeddicus · November 2009

stigweard wrote: »

LewieP wrote: »

GnomeTank wrote: »

LewieP wrote: »

What's the deal with running Physx with just an Ati card. Possible?

Yes, it just won't use the GPU to do it's physics calculations like it would on an NVidia card. It will do everything in software (aka on your CPU).

And does that cause much of a performance hit?

It depends heavily on the game as well. Shattered Horizons uses Physx but not with hardware optimizations so there is no difference between cards. In a game like Mirror's edge, it is used sparingly but you will see a huge hit in performance in scenes that use it heavily (like breaking glass). I dropped from 50 fps to ~10 on a c2q 9550 with an 8800gt when I ran it in software mode.That might not tell the wohle story though since the game needed a dll deleted for hardware mode to work.

edit: As mentioned above, most Hardware Physx stuff isn't game breaking to prevent losing ~33 percent of the gaming market. People would shit if they bought the latest game and couldn't play it. It's usually stuff like fog effects, glass effects, extra particle effects in explosions, and plastic / flags, etc... that don't really affect the game play.

Here's exactly what you get out of it in Mirror's Edge (not much...):

Spoiler:

GnomeTank · November 2009

So you're saying Mirror's Edge slows down and runs like shit regardless of whether you turn it on or not? Because that's what I got out of that video...that the game runs like total shit. If it's going to run like the same congealed mass of shit, you might as well turn PhysX on so you're mass of shit looks more appealing.

Xeddicus · November 2009

GnomeTank wrote: »

So you're saying Mirror's Edge slows down and runs like shit regardless of whether you turn it on or not? Because that's what I got out of that video...that the game runs like total shit.

Hahah. They were slowing the game down so you could actually see the OMG PHYSXSTUFF!

GnomeTank · November 2009

Xeddicus wrote: »

GnomeTank wrote: »

So you're saying Mirror's Edge slows down and runs like shit regardless of whether you turn it on or not? Because that's what I got out of that video...that the game runs like total shit.

Hahah. They were slowing the game down so you could actually see the OMG PHYSXSTUFF!

Ahh, because it made the game look like every time something interesting happened on screen, it just shat itself and slowed down. Good to know they were doing that on purpose.

stigweard · November 2009

Arkham Asylum is similar with Fog effects and banners. Unless nvidia put themselves in a better position to have physx acceleration without completely killing the non hardware solutions, it will never take off.

The only reasons I upgraded to a gtx 260 over a radeon 5770 were local availability and driver maturity. Ati currently has quieter, higher efficiency cards at an extremely good price point. The only real downside to the gtx 260 is the fan reached about 58-60db @100%; (tested using occt) because I hate fan noise. It sure beats the 75b+ jet engine of an 8800gt I had. In a year's time when the dust settles, I'll still get 60$ back out of this card (total cost to me about 80$) and be able to pick up a quieter, more efficient and more powerful card.

Dark Shroud · November 2009

Before they were bought out PhysX actually made cards to run the software. nVidia needs to do this, a simple card like a non-video video card that can hardware accelrate the PhysX engine. I'd pay $100 for one just to not have to worry about it for a few years.

GnomeTank · November 2009

Dark Shroud wrote: »

Before they were bought out PhysX actually made cards to run the software. nVidia needs to do this, a simple card like a non-video video card that can hardware accelrate the PhysX engine. I'd pay $100 for one just to not have to worry about it for a few years.

Why would they do this when any modern GPU has cycles to spare for this kind of stuff? We should be moving away from having to plug more cards in to our computer to get a specific set of functionality, not moving towards it.

Xeddicus · November 2009

Dark Shroud wrote: »

Before they were bought out PhysX actually made cards to run the software. nVidia needs to do this, a simple card like a non-video video card that can hardware accelrate the PhysX engine. I'd pay $100 for one just to not have to worry about it for a few years.

You'd be one of the few. Physx stand alone cards will never sell well. Putting it into the graphics card is a good idea, it just needs much more benefit.

wunderbar · November 2009

Xeddicus wrote: »

Dark Shroud wrote: »

Before they were bought out PhysX actually made cards to run the software. nVidia needs to do this, a simple card like a non-video video card that can hardware accelrate the PhysX engine. I'd pay $100 for one just to not have to worry about it for a few years.

You'd be one of the few. Physx stand alone cards will never sell well. Putting it into the graphics card is a good idea, it just needs much more benefit.

Well, the biggest problem with the PhysX cards were the fact that they were $300, and had like, one game that supported it. Make it significantly cheaper, and with more games supporting it I could see a niche market for it popping up.

Xeddicus · November 2009

wunderbar wrote: »

Xeddicus wrote: »

Dark Shroud wrote: »

Before they were bought out PhysX actually made cards to run the software. nVidia needs to do this, a simple card like a non-video video card that can hardware accelrate the PhysX engine. I'd pay $100 for one just to not have to worry about it for a few years.

You'd be one of the few. Physx stand alone cards will never sell well. Putting it into the graphics card is a good idea, it just needs much more benefit.

Well, the biggest problem with the PhysX cards were the fact that they were $300, and had like, one game that supported it. Make it significantly cheaper, and with more games supporting it I could see a niche market for it popping up.

True, but those are 2 hurdles I don't think they'll ever overcome. They'd need to sell a lot of them for developers to spend money developing for them. But to sell a lot the games will have to already support them. And around and around. Or, I'm wrong, and by this time next year Physx will be like RAM!

LewieP · November 2009

Yeah I knew games only used it for fancy extra physics stuff, but I didn't know games used it for non hardware accellerated physics. My question was basically "In the games like Mirror's Edge and Arkham Asylum, is there any way for me to get the extra pretty physics effects with an Ati card"

And from what I can tell, the answer is no, not without a serious hit on performance.

PracticalProblemSolver · November 2009

I'd rather see gpu's come with an extra core (ala the spe's on cell) with a standardized api that developers can use for whatever rather than a dedicated physics processor. I don't have much faith in proprietary hardware apis, remember glide? Probably not, and for good reason. Especially now that nvidia owns them, expect shenanigans.

Make them 'general processing units' instead.

GnomeTank · November 2009

We already have general processing units, we call them general register CPU's. You probably have on in your computer (I hope you do anyway).

And they are already doing what you suggest, go look at NVidia's CUDA. I think ATI has an equivalent. What you're really waiting for is the release of Microsoft's DirectCompute, which is the DirectX of GPU general computing. OpenGL has one as well that's cross platform, OpenCL.

stigweard · November 2009

Physx was rebuilt to use cuda as well which is why it ended up that older 8 series cards were suddenly Physx capable when the new drivers came out.

ArcticMonkey · November 2009

PracticalProblemSolver wrote: »

I'd rather see gpu's come with an extra core (ala the spe's on cell) with a standardized api that developers can use for whatever rather than a dedicated physics processor. I don't have much faith in proprietary hardware apis, remember glide? Probably not, and for good reason. Especially now that nvidia owns them, expect shenanigans.

Make them 'general processing units' instead.

Part of DirectX11 is a standardized API for using the GPU for other computations. Being made by Microsoft it has more chance of getting both AMD and Nvidia to play ball then CUDA and Stream(by Nvidia and AMD respectivly)
Although a software part of DirectX11, it is capable of using DirectX10 hardware.
If Nvidia actually wants PhysX to succeed they could program a version that ran fine on AMD DX10-11 cards and instantly it would have enough market penetration to be a viable platform. I'm not holding my breath though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectCompute

Zxerol · November 2009

Yeah, I doubt it. Before, it was possible to run an ATI GPU for graphics acceleration and an Nvidia card for PhysX. That wouldn't do, of course, and Nvidia locked down that ability as of the 186 Forceware drivers and requires all Nvidia GPUs or nothing, even though they would've still gotten revenue from users purchasing Nvidia parts just for physics.

Hell, at one point PhysX was supposed to be an "open standard." Now, I think they just want to push CUDA for all its worth.

lowlylowlycook · November 2009

Well, I put my new computer together and so far everthing seems good.

I get tired of waiting for someone to actually decide to ship the bracket for my heatsink so I guess I might add that in when I upgrade the video card.

Just some random thoughts.

I really don't like the placement of the power connectors on the 5XXX cards.

Since I have a mAXT board, my Antec 300 seem very empty. Once I add that huge heatsink the top will be hilariously full of stuff while bascially the bottom 2/3s will have the PSU.

I'm replacing my computer desk now as well so it will be a few days until I can really put it though it's paces as far as gaming goes. So far it runs Civ 4, and that is all I really require of a computer anyway

psychotix · November 2009

Zxerol wrote: »

Yeah, I doubt it. Before, it was possible to run an ATI GPU for graphics acceleration and an Nvidia card for PhysX. That wouldn't do, of course, and Nvidia locked down that ability as of the 186 Forceware drivers and requires all Nvidia GPUs or nothing, even though they would've still gotten revenue from users purchasing Nvidia parts just for physics.

Hell, at one point PhysX was supposed to be an "open standard." Now, I think they just want to push CUDA for all its worth.

nvidia is going to get the crap kicked out of it soon. lucid is pretty much a go, intels X86 GPU and DX11.

nvidia has tried to milk/lock everything down and it's not looking like it's going to work.

RuddurBall · November 2009

lowlylowlycook wrote: »

Well, I put my new computer together and so far everthing seems good.

I get tired of waiting for someone to actually decide to ship the bracket for my heatsink so I guess I might add that in when I upgrade the video card.

Just some random thoughts.

I really don't like the placement of the power connectors on the 5XXX cards.

Since I have a mAXT board, my Antec 300 seem very empty. Once I add that huge heatsink the top will be hilariously full of stuff while bascially the bottom 2/3s will have the PSU.

I'm replacing my computer desk now as well so it will be a few days until I can really put it though it's paces as far as gaming goes. So far it runs Civ 4, and that is all I really require of a computer anyway

You finally find a 5850? Sweet. 8-)

FightTest · November 2009

Well I got my shit in yesterday. Things did not go as well as planned. Seems the UD2's shipping BIOS isn't so hot on the memory I got so it just got stuck in a reboot cycle prior to posting. So annoying. RMA'd and have an MSI GD65 on the way which people have reported works fine with my memory.

That said HSFs are a giant pain in the ass these days. And really fucking enormous. Every generation when I think they're done making them even bigger turns out I'm wrong. But seeing as how there was zero clearance between the side of the case and the HSF I think maybe this time we've finally reached the limit.

edit.. Swapped my old mobo/cpu/ram into the new case to ensure that my psu/hd/dvd function and they do. For some reason when going to install Win7 it was slow as shit and basically hanged. Only difference I can think of was changing from Gigabyte SATA ports to the JM SATA ports on my old 965-DS3. In any case google-fu suggested disabling the floppy in BIOS (which I had forgotten to do, old computer had a floppy which I'm letting go~) and all is well now.

So waiting on the new board to ship/arrive and hoping that it was just a compatibility and/or mobo issue. Nothing like that sinking feeling when your box won't POST.

And on another build thought after all these years you'd think people could come up with something to make front panel/mobo connections less of a pain in the ass. All tiny and cramped and often cryptic and erratic in how they're supposed to be oriented.

lowlylowlycook · November 2009

RuddurBall wrote: »

lowlylowlycook wrote: »

Well, I put my new computer together and so far everthing seems good.

I get tired of waiting for someone to actually decide to ship the bracket for my heatsink so I guess I might add that in when I upgrade the video card.

Just some random thoughts.

I really don't like the placement of the power connectors on the 5XXX cards.

Since I have a mAXT board, my Antec 300 seem very empty. Once I add that huge heatsink the top will be hilariously full of stuff while bascially the bottom 2/3s will have the PSU.

I'm replacing my computer desk now as well so it will be a few days until I can really put it though it's paces as far as gaming goes. So far it runs Civ 4, and that is all I really require of a computer anyway

You finally find a 5850? Sweet. 8-)

Sadly no. I got a 5770 and will just use that until I feel the need for yet more power.

SteevL · November 2009

FightTest wrote: »

And on another build thought after all these years you'd think people could come up with something to make front panel/mobo connections less of a pain in the ass. All tiny and cramped and often cryptic and erratic in how they're supposed to be oriented.

I was amazed I actually got these all connected right on my first try with my latest PC. It's always been the one thing I get wrong if I got everything else hooked up correctly. There's nothing quite like hitting the power button for the first time on your new PC and getting no response.

slash000 · November 2009

It's definitely not as convenient as it should be, but I've never found it difficult to hook up the mobo to front panel stuff. I mean if you're referring to stuff like power, reset, front LEDs and such. Almost always the mobo has the pins and orientation lined up, and the little plug dealies are also labeled so you know where and how they go.

TrippyJing · November 2009

How useful is Cool 'n' Quiet anyway? I keep wondering if it's worth it to keep it on.

Antithesis · November 2009

All right- could anyone here recommend me a cooler for my CPU? It's an AMD Phenom II X3 720, triple cores and all that. I'm hoping to overclock it from 2.8 GHz per core to... dunno, what'd be safe with an aftermarket cooler? 3.6 GHz? I'm already using Arctic thermal paste and all that- on the stock cooler, the CPU idles at 23~C and playing Crysis goes to about 35~C (I might be off on that).

And would I want an aftermarket cooler for my GPU? My 5770 is badly placed for cooling but can't be anywhere else in my case. Its current fan points down at the PSU, while the PSU's fan points back up at it. Neither of them really point towards a case vent. The GPU idles at ~45C and in Crysis goes up to about ~70C.

**While I'm at it, what would I be safe overclocking a Sapphire 5770 to? Should I? Right now, it's GPU clock is 850 MHz and it's memory clock is 1200MHz. It idles at a lot less than that.

PracticalProblemSolver · November 2009

Here's a cpu cooler ranking listed by cooling/$ and loudness: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_Heatsinks scroll down a bunch till you get to the long table.

Both your PSU and GPU fans should be exhausting air directly out the back of the case, the gpu fan is a squirrel cage fan and blows air at 90 degrees to it's axis of rotation(air goes along the card and out the back) and the power supply fan should be pulling air in from the inside of the case, pushing it through the power supply and out the back.

Antithesis · November 2009

PracticalProblemSolver wrote: »

Here's a cpu cooler ranking listed by cooling/$ and loudness: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_Heatsinks scroll down a bunch till you get to the long table.

Both your PSU and GPU fans should be exhausting air directly out the back of the case, the gpu fan is a squirrel cage fan and blows air at 90 degrees to it's axis of rotation(air goes along the card and out the back) and the power supply fan should be pulling air in from the inside of the case, pushing it through the power supply and out the back.

Oh.

oooooooooooh.

Thank you very much!

Rius · November 2009

I don't think I'll be putting a new PC together until I can get a 5850 (or perhaps a 5770) at a reasonable price. However, MicroCenter is having a sale starting on Monday where I can get an Intel i5 750 for $150. Should I jump on this processor deal? $50 cheaper than NewEgg seems like a heck of a bargain.

For reference, they'll also have the i7 860 for $229.

RuddurBall · November 2009

Rius wrote: »

I don't think I'll be putting a new PC together until I can get a 5850 (or perhaps a 5770) at a reasonable price. However, MicroCenter is having a sale starting on Monday where I can get an Intel i5 750 for $150. Should I jump on this processor deal? $50 cheaper than NewEgg seems like a heck of a bargain.

For reference, they'll also have the i7 860 for $229.

Its a good deal, but can you stand having the hardware in house and not doing anything with it? Also, deals come and go constantly, its always possible a new deal could come around. I would not worry about it to much.

Rius · November 2009

I'd only have a problem with it sitting on a shelf for a month or two if by the time I did find a video card, another processor came out that was cheaper and better =)

fmz65 · November 2009

So the computer has been put together. She is a beauty. The only problem now is the fact that I bought Windows 7 from my university, forgot to enter it immediately when requested and now when I try to enter it it tells me it's not the right kind of product key... so frustrating.

Sanders · November 2009

So I got my Accelero S1 Rev 2. It isn't a perfect fit as I hoped for on my 4850, but my god these temperatures are sexy. 35*C Idle, 42*C under full load. Attached my Antec 3 speed 120mm fan that came with the case to the bottom so it is no longer passive cooling, but I can barely hear it (extremely big difference compared to the stock fan running at 100%).

Also found out why my 4850 was running at 80*C idle and 110*C under load. Seems it has the worst heat sink layout ever designed, as you can see from the last 20 seconds of this video

-Loki- · November 2009

My PC arrived, and I put Crysis, Dragon Age and The Sims 3 (for the missus) on, and funnily enough they all defaulted to high settings. Not very high in the case of Crysis and Dragon Age, and I don't really want to play with the settings. Unfortunately, the monitor I'm using has a maximum resolution of 1440x900 (it's a 26" Dell that's a couple of years old). It doesn't look awful, but I don't have the money to get a new one right now, so it'll have to do.

Advent · November 2009

Lots of cases in combo deals with the 160g intel SSD. Almost tempting if I can convince myself into paying that much for a hard drive.

Gdiguy · November 2009

RuddurBall wrote: »

Rius wrote: »

I don't think I'll be putting a new PC together until I can get a 5850 (or perhaps a 5770) at a reasonable price. However, MicroCenter is having a sale starting on Monday where I can get an Intel i5 750 for $150. Should I jump on this processor deal? $50 cheaper than NewEgg seems like a heck of a bargain.

For reference, they'll also have the i7 860 for $229.

Its a good deal, but can you stand having the hardware in house and not doing anything with it? Also, deals come and go constantly, its always possible a new deal could come around. I would not worry about it to much.

Specifically for the i5 750, it's been on sale for $150/$160 at Microcenter basically since the release, so I wouldn't necessarily worry about jumping on it asap (I've been debating building a system for a few months, so I've been checking their weekly emails)

Misanthropic · November 2009

Advent wrote: »

Lots of cases in combo deals with the 160g intel SSD. Almost tempting if I can convince myself into paying that much for a hard drive.

Is it the latest revision of the drive?

I'm currently looking for one for Christmas, but I'm having trouble discerning the new drives from the old. Any help?

projectmayhem · November 2009

I might be needing to buy a new video card.

Best ati card for under 140 gogoog!

GnomeTank · November 2009

FightTest wrote: »

Well I got my shit in yesterday. Things did not go as well as planned. Seems the UD2's shipping BIOS isn't so hot on the memory I got so it just got stuck in a reboot cycle prior to posting. So annoying. RMA'd and have an MSI GD65 on the way which people have reported works fine with my memory.

That said HSFs are a giant pain in the ass these days. And really fucking enormous. Every generation when I think they're done making them even bigger turns out I'm wrong. But seeing as how there was zero clearance between the side of the case and the HSF I think maybe this time we've finally reached the limit.

edit.. Swapped my old mobo/cpu/ram into the new case to ensure that my psu/hd/dvd function and they do. For some reason when going to install Win7 it was slow as shit and basically hanged. Only difference I can think of was changing from Gigabyte SATA ports to the JM SATA ports on my old 965-DS3. In any case google-fu suggested disabling the floppy in BIOS (which I had forgotten to do, old computer had a floppy which I'm letting go~) and all is well now.

So waiting on the new board to ship/arrive and hoping that it was just a compatibility and/or mobo issue. Nothing like that sinking feeling when your box won't POST.

And on another build thought after all these years you'd think people could come up with something to make front panel/mobo connections less of a pain in the ass. All tiny and cramped and often cryptic and erratic in how they're supposed to be oriented.

The funny thing about this gigantic fucking HSF's is that in cases of normal use, or moderate overclocking, they are completely fucking worthless and may actually be inefficient.

I used to get in to crazy cooling, even had a watercooled system once. My current system? I just have a basic aftermarket Thermaltake HSF/fan combo on my CPU, and it runs at stock temperatures while overclocked. These gigantic things people attach to their CPU's these days just look foolish.

FightTest · November 2009

Son of a biiiiitch.

Swung by Newegg as I do multiple times a day now to check on 58xxs and there's a 5870 up. I add to cart, login, and then it's removed from my cart due to stock limitation. Teasing ass bitches.

Wigum · November 2009

Ok so I'm browsing newegg and they have this deal up.
COOLER MASTER Elite RC-332-KKN1-GP Black SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
for $29.99 down from $49.99
How does the compare to the thing I was previously thinking about?
Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer
Case 500W Power Supply - Retail with Windows 7
$216.98-$20 combo = $196.98

Also again if anyone has any tips or recommendations for putting together a build based off my previous posts?

Thanks
*edit*
Obviously the second case is much nicer, and includes a powersupply, but it just seems that that drastically lower cost would enable me to keep my total cost down. Would I actually end up saving or buying the extra things would just run my cost back up?

Nevermind sold out...but still are my posts on invisible or something?

Penny Arcade

Computer Build Thread: OP temporarily with up to date sample builds!

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