if you want to put yourself inline for a nice upgrade path, grab a nice motherboard with quadcore support and pick up the cheapest dual core out there: e4300.
put a half decent fan on it and it'l overclock to outperform the next few chips above it very very easily.
in the end you spend less, get more performance and have a kick@ss motherboard that'l let you move to a quadcore chip in a few years.
Ahahaha, callling that setup "functional" is funny.
I have a Asus KN8-E with a Venice 3000+ and a 7800GS, plus 1GB ram, and I can run mostly any current game with options on high or max at 1024 (1280 gives me bad flicker on my monitor).
Even though you suggestions are awesome, the system he speced is awesome
When I read shit like this, it makes me want to pull my hair out. I have:
And I get stutter on fucking Oblivion when it's not even at max. Hell, I get stutter on City of Heroes when it's not at max and I run all of my games at 1024, since my monitor can't handle more with a decent refresh rate. What the fuck is wrong with my computer? I run virus scans, Adaware, Spy-bot and all that crap.
Anyway on the subject of upgrading, I'm looking to toss pretty much everything except my video card and power supply (480W Xclio, with more than 15 amps on the 12v rails). I'm going to get a new lcd monitor to replace my 4 year old crt. A 7900GT should be able to handle mostly high settings at 1440 x 900, right?
Also, I'm looking to get a Core Duo 2 6600 when the price drops, but looking at its FSB, it's 1066, and the ram I was hoping to buy has a speed of 800. Would this bottleneck the system at all? I really can't justify spending $300+ on ram at 1066.
As for your system, the processor is very very old and very very slow. I guarantee you that's bottlenecking your system. Aside from that, the 7900GT is a great card and will easily push 1440x900 if paired with a decent processor. Although I'd recommend a bigger monitor
For gaming the ram speed on the Core2Duo makes very little difference. You're as well going for 533 or 667 with ok timings (4-4-4-12) than anything else. The savings you get from your ram can then be spent on a better graphics card or whatever which will give you a much bigger fps boost than better memory would.
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s $130
$110
$161
$123
$170
$170 $130
$864
Knock another $50 off the processor if I were to wait for the price drop next month and put toward after market CPU cooler and fans; assume already have case, keyboard, mouse, and monitors. So with shipping, looking at just around $900.
The processor has been known to overclock over 3 GHz, but 2.6-2.8 will be fine for me, without reaching high Vcore voltage; in addittion, higher multiplier meaning less FSB needed compared to E6300. Also, the extra 2 MB of cache is overrated, by the time it will have more of a palpable reward, I'll be ready to upgrade to Quad-Core.
The video card is a stand in until a more viable DX10 solution.
Power supply is enough since I don't see myself doing SLI in any fashion and it's one of the quietest ones you can find; Seasonic also top notch.
Edit: Altered my comments on overclocking the E4300, regarding Vcore.
Inigo Montoya on
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
If you've got two grand you could dual 8800's with capable hearts set up. You would then need to invest in a high end cooling system though. You could also get more RAM.
In retrospect, that might come to more than 2 grand.
Johannen on
0
Options
SerpentSometimes Vancouver, BC, sometimes Brisbane, QLDRegistered Userregular
I'm not a hardware savy person myself. I love saving up 2grand, going into the little PC shop here in town and saying "Give me all the best shit to play video games" and they bring out a check list, add up all the stuff, ask me "dude you sure you wanna spend that much?" I say "Like,totally." And then a couple days later I'm happy and poor!
Currently have an asus 1800 with 756 megs of memory, and a geforce 2 mx. my sound card and hard drives and whatnot are fine, but those two really need to be upgraded.
Can you give me ideas for three different price limits? £100, £150, £200, cos I haven't decided how much I want to spend yet, but I do know I can't spend a lot.
Thanks guys, I didn't know this forum did this kind of thing or I would have asked AGES ago.
I think you can buy an xbox360 for £200?
Seriously you might be able to do a g-card upgrade or a processor upgrade, but it really won't help you playing any new games really.
Yeah, well, currently I'd settle for games that are 4 years old. I mean this thing won't even play doom3. at all. it just laughs. "HA!" it says "HA!"
WOW runs, but looks like ass.
And in general I think the whole thing is dying on me, its been behaving really weird.
Anyway, if £200 isnt enough, what can I get for £300, or £400? c'mon, convince me!
I presume you've got an AGP board. The Nvidia 6600 from XFX is the best bargin in the world, if you can find one before the go out of stock. Currently can get one from Scan.co.uk. If you get lucky you can get it on the deal of the day for 5 quid less. I know I keep mentioning this card (and the website) but it's both a great card and a great website. So, for only £42 you'll have a really, really capable graphics card graphics which can definetly sort you out for most games.
Those of you who are suggesting anything other than an 8800 for a new system must be on crack.
If you were to buy a non DX10 system at this time you would be essentially wasting the cost of whatever DX9 card you just bought. Yeah, "there aren't any real DX10 games yet" blah, but there will be very shortly. The whole idea of buying a new PC is making sure you won't have to do it all over again in a few months.
Those of you who are suggesting anything other than an 8800 for a new system must be on crack.
If you were to buy a non DX10 system at this time you would be essentially wasting the cost of whatever DX9 card you just bought. Yeah, "there aren't any real DX10 games yet" blah, but there will be very shortly. The whole idea of buying a new PC is making sure you won't have to do it all over again in a few months.
No, the reasoning is "they may very well have shitty DX10 performance anyways, so why bother blowing all that cash on something and need to upgrade anyways"
It's not that worth it for DX10 - its likely they wont handle DX10 functions too well anyways and you'll have to wait for successive generations of cards to do it fast.
After seeing the latest Crysis videos and seeing the increase in frame rates from last fall when all anyone had were DX9 cards, I'm not so certain that the increase in performance won't be worth it. It seems like these first gen DX10 cards will be able to run the first gen DX10 games with no problems.
Those of you who are suggesting anything other than an 8800 for a new system must be on crack.
If you were to buy a non DX10 system at this time you would be essentially wasting the cost of whatever DX9 card you just bought. Yeah, "there aren't any real DX10 games yet" blah, but there will be very shortly. The whole idea of buying a new PC is making sure you won't have to do it all over again in a few months.
No, the reasoning is "they may very well have shitty DX10 performance anyways, so why bother blowing all that cash on something and need to upgrade anyways"
It's not that worth it for DX10 - its likely they wont handle DX10 functions too well anyways and you'll have to wait for successive generations of cards to do it fast.
The DX10 stuff I've used on my 8800 runs perfectly. Supreme Commander, and a bunch of Microsoft-Created DX10 demos all run great, and look nice too.
Besides that Crysis is said to run at a smooth pace with everything maxed on an 8800.
Sushisource on
Some drugee on Kavinsky's 1986
0
Options
ViscountalphaThe pen is mightier than the swordhttp://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered Userregular
Those of you who are suggesting anything other than an 8800 for a new system must be on crack.
If you were to buy a non DX10 system at this time you would be essentially wasting the cost of whatever DX9 card you just bought. Yeah, "there aren't any real DX10 games yet" blah, but there will be very shortly. The whole idea of buying a new PC is making sure you won't have to do it all over again in a few months.
No, the reasoning is "they may very well have shitty DX10 performance anyways, so why bother blowing all that cash on something and need to upgrade anyways"
It's not that worth it for DX10 - its likely they wont handle DX10 functions too well anyways and you'll have to wait for successive generations of cards to do it fast.
The DX10 stuff I've used on my 8800 runs perfectly. Supreme Commander, and a bunch of Microsoft-Created DX10 demos all run great, and look nice too.
Besides that Crysis is said to run at a smooth pace with everything maxed on an 8800.
No way you ran the Cascade demo smoothly once you created a waterfall. Zoom up on that sucker and bam, your framerate drops.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
I'd say, just wait for the 8600 cards to enter the market.
The GeForce 8800 cards are pretty awesome, but they don't really offer anything that other cards do not, unless your monitor can use really high resolutions.
As a completely psychotic tangent let me introduce this question to ye savvy wizards.
Gaming laptops.
What's the hot shit? Where do I go? What do I get?
I've never bought one, but from what I hear around these parts, gaming laptops aren't a great idea. They get really hot, have terrible battery life, and are much more expensive than their desktop counterparts.
As a completely psychotic tangent let me introduce this question to ye savvy wizards.
Gaming laptops.
What's the hot shit? Where do I go? What do I get?
I've never bought one, but from what I hear around these parts, gaming laptops aren't a great idea. They get really hot, have terrible battery life, and are much more expensive than their desktop counterparts.
I hear this. Every time.
Fuck.
SO this means.
I WILL NEVER HAVE A COMPUTER UNLESS I MOVE FROM THE PLACE THAT I LIVE.
As a completely psychotic tangent let me introduce this question to ye savvy wizards.
Gaming laptops.
What's the hot shit? Where do I go? What do I get?
I've never bought one, but from what I hear around these parts, gaming laptops aren't a great idea. They get really hot, have terrible battery life, and are much more expensive than their desktop counterparts.
I hear this. Every time.
Fuck.
SO this means.
I WILL NEVER HAVE A COMPUTER UNLESS I MOVE FROM THE PLACE THAT I LIVE.
P.S. Battery life means nothing.
well..they do get really hot..but they are designed to and don't get hot enough to cause damage or artifacting (unelss theres a problem), so thats really a moot point, sure you can't keep it on your lap, but then again your not supposed to keep any kind of "laptop" on your lap anyway. As to the last two points...well..completely true ..that being said if for some reason you can't get away with a desktop or small form factor computer, or need a gaming machine you can move easily for lans etc. And have no qualms about spending quite a bit more money for less performance that a desktop machine theres no reason not to get one.
As a completely psychotic tangent let me introduce this question to ye savvy wizards.
Gaming laptops.
What's the hot shit? Where do I go? What do I get?
I've never bought one, but from what I hear around these parts, gaming laptops aren't a great idea. They get really hot, have terrible battery life, and are much more expensive than their desktop counterparts.
I hear this. Every time.
Fuck.
SO this means.
I WILL NEVER HAVE A COMPUTER UNLESS I MOVE FROM THE PLACE THAT I LIVE.
P.S. Battery life means nothing.
well..they do get really hot..but they are designed to and don't get hot enough to cause damage or artifacting (unelss theres a problem), so thats really a moot point, sure you can't keep it on your lap, but then again your not supposed to keep any kind of "laptop" on your lap anyway. As to the last two points...well..completely true ..that being said if for some reason you can't get away with a desktop or small form factor computer, or need a gaming machine you can move easily for lans etc. And have no qualms about spending quite a bit more money for less performance that a desktop machine theres no reason not to get one.
See I'm not debating about whether or not I should get one.
I'm pretty much forced into the situation and have a healthy face about it.
It's going to suck pretty hard for shooters, I'm imagining. I'm hoping it's good for some RPGs. Diablo-esque hack slashes, old Baldur's Gate era stuff and (holy fuck) Oblivion would really put a smile on my face but I don't hold too much hope.
I was more or less just looking for model recommendations. If anyone knew anything on the market they'd consider decent for the job. Though, since they're so universally maligned I'm assuming no.
Those of you who are suggesting anything other than an 8800 for a new system must be on crack.
If you were to buy a non DX10 system at this time you would be essentially wasting the cost of whatever DX9 card you just bought. Yeah, "there aren't any real DX10 games yet" blah, but there will be very shortly. The whole idea of buying a new PC is making sure you won't have to do it all over again in a few months.
No, the reasoning is "they may very well have shitty DX10 performance anyways, so why bother blowing all that cash on something and need to upgrade anyways"
It's not that worth it for DX10 - its likely they wont handle DX10 functions too well anyways and you'll have to wait for successive generations of cards to do it fast.
I don't see why they won't run Dx10 functions well. The 9700s did Dx9 fine, the 6800 did SM3.0 fine. And on paper Dx10 should be faster than Dx9.
No way you ran the Cascade demo smoothly once you created a waterfall. Zoom up on that sucker and bam, your framerate drops.
But at a medium and short distances it looks fine. So it's probably an optimisation thing.
As a completely psychotic tangent let me introduce this question to ye savvy wizards.
Gaming laptops.
What's the hot shit? Where do I go? What do I get?
I've never bought one, but from what I hear around these parts, gaming laptops aren't a great idea. They get really hot, have terrible battery life, and are much more expensive than their desktop counterparts.
I hear this. Every time.
Fuck.
SO this means.
I WILL NEVER HAVE A COMPUTER UNLESS I MOVE FROM THE PLACE THAT I LIVE.
P.S. Battery life means nothing.
well..they do get really hot..but they are designed to and don't get hot enough to cause damage or artifacting (unelss theres a problem), so thats really a moot point, sure you can't keep it on your lap, but then again your not supposed to keep any kind of "laptop" on your lap anyway. As to the last two points...well..completely true ..that being said if for some reason you can't get away with a desktop or small form factor computer, or need a gaming machine you can move easily for lans etc. And have no qualms about spending quite a bit more money for less performance that a desktop machine theres no reason not to get one.
See I'm not debating about whether or not I should get one.
I'm pretty much forced into the situation and have a healthy face about it.
It's going to suck pretty hard for shooters, I'm imagining. I'm hoping it's good for some RPGs. Diablo-esque hack slashes, old Baldur's Gate era stuff and (holy fuck) Oblivion would really put a smile on my face but I don't hold too much hope.
I was more or less just looking for model recommendations. If anyone knew anything on the market they'd consider decent for the job. Though, since they're so universally maligned I'm assuming no.
Just look around; many laptop manufacturers offer options with decent processors and graphics card that work well.
This is what my girlfriend did. She wanted a laptop so she had a portable computer, but wanted it for gaming while at home as well. She realized that her battery life would be crap if she tried to game on the battery, and I'll be damned if the thing doesn't try to burn her leg, but it's still a good computer. Just realize you'll be paying a lot of money, for sub-desktop performance. That extra price is for the portability, and the miniaturization.
Look around, but as a reference, she ended up getting a Toshiba laptop that works pretty well, other than all the preloaded crap.
I need to upgrade my computer soon. It's not so bad, I bought it for KOTOR and it runs Oblivion and Dark Messiah, but it needs repairing anyway so I thought I'd upgrade. Going to do processor, motherboard and maybe ram now, and wait a bit for a directx 10 card. What would you go for, if money were no object (within reason)
CT go to my post on an earlier page where I list out all the components.
The thing is, you can get the cheapest procesoor like the intel E6300, and overclock it BEYOND the levels of the one 4x the price...
Otherwise just find a happy medium in like... the E6600, the only other processors really beyond it are much more expensive; a dual core with a higher frequency (whose performance lead you could negate by overclocking) and 2 quad cores (not worth it just yet)
Compare the prices for an Intel E6300, and E6600, and get whichever you can afford, if the latter, then do it. You suggested money might be no object, and the only faster processors than that E6600 are MUCH more expensive and yet not much faster.
Just grab the other parts mentioned in my previous post if you dont want to have to research/think about your purchases too much. There's a good mobo listed there, and then grab some matching PC6400 RAM from OCZ or Corsair or some other good vendor
I suppose I think back to the FX line and how it DIDNT do DX9 well
I think the geforce FX was a disaster waiting to happen. It's harder to tell with the 8800s and Dx10 but nobodys really stepped up and said "ok we think there's a huge problem" like valve did with the early HL2 build which gives me hope.
yeah I'm probably suggesting they won't be good more than we know.... i think what it comes down to is that we dont really have much evidence either way, so it COULD be a decent purchasing decision to get a really good card from the last generation as a holdover until the DX10 lines are fleshed out and we have some decent applications to gauge their performance
id tell you to switch a few things to more closely follow my post on page 2 but ill save you a bit of trouble and tell you to get a better brand PSU as that's the only thing that REALLY sticks out at me as being a poor purchase. corsair, OCZ, silverstone, enermax would be better brands
That and you can get the P5N-E SLI mobo for about the same price and its probably a little better than a vanilla P5B (if oyu were getting the deluxe, that'd be different)
Posts
put a half decent fan on it and it'l overclock to outperform the next few chips above it very very easily.
in the end you spend less, get more performance and have a kick@ss motherboard that'l let you move to a quadcore chip in a few years.
As for your system, the processor is very very old and very very slow. I guarantee you that's bottlenecking your system. Aside from that, the 7900GT is a great card and will easily push 1440x900 if paired with a decent processor. Although I'd recommend a bigger monitor
For gaming the ram speed on the Core2Duo makes very little difference. You're as well going for 533 or 667 with ok timings (4-4-4-12) than anything else. The savings you get from your ram can then be spent on a better graphics card or whatever which will give you a much bigger fps boost than better memory would.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/core_2_memory_tuning/page6.asp
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $161 (After $40 MIR)
GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard $123
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Allendale 1.8GHz LGA 775 Processor $170
SAPPHIRE 100176L Radeon X1950PRO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP $170
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s $130
$110
$161
$123
$170
$170
$130
$864
Knock another $50 off the processor if I were to wait for the price drop next month and put toward after market CPU cooler and fans; assume already have case, keyboard, mouse, and monitors. So with shipping, looking at just around $900.
The processor has been known to overclock over 3 GHz, but 2.6-2.8 will be fine for me, without reaching high Vcore voltage; in addittion, higher multiplier meaning less FSB needed compared to E6300. Also, the extra 2 MB of cache is overrated, by the time it will have more of a palpable reward, I'll be ready to upgrade to Quad-Core.
The video card is a stand in until a more viable DX10 solution.
Power supply is enough since I don't see myself doing SLI in any fashion and it's one of the quietest ones you can find; Seasonic also top notch.
Edit: Altered my comments on overclocking the E4300, regarding Vcore.
yeah but not O.C.'ing a core2duo is like paying for a hooker to just talk about your feelings.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
In retrospect, that might come to more than 2 grand.
nothing.
I presume you've got an AGP board. The Nvidia 6600 from XFX is the best bargin in the world, if you can find one before the go out of stock. Currently can get one from Scan.co.uk. If you get lucky you can get it on the deal of the day for 5 quid less. I know I keep mentioning this card (and the website) but it's both a great card and a great website. So, for only £42 you'll have a really, really capable graphics card graphics which can definetly sort you out for most games.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Is there a release date for all the hardware?
If you were to buy a non DX10 system at this time you would be essentially wasting the cost of whatever DX9 card you just bought. Yeah, "there aren't any real DX10 games yet" blah, but there will be very shortly. The whole idea of buying a new PC is making sure you won't have to do it all over again in a few months.
No, the reasoning is "they may very well have shitty DX10 performance anyways, so why bother blowing all that cash on something and need to upgrade anyways"
It's not that worth it for DX10 - its likely they wont handle DX10 functions too well anyways and you'll have to wait for successive generations of cards to do it fast.
Besides that Crysis is said to run at a smooth pace with everything maxed on an 8800.
Fix'd!
No way you ran the Cascade demo smoothly once you created a waterfall. Zoom up on that sucker and bam, your framerate drops.
The GeForce 8800 cards are pretty awesome, but they don't really offer anything that other cards do not, unless your monitor can use really high resolutions.
As a completely psychotic tangent let me introduce this question to ye savvy wizards.
Gaming laptops.
What's the hot shit? Where do I go? What do I get?
WANT:
E4300
965P-S3
1GB *some brand 667 or 800*
8800GTX (more like X1950PRO)
HAVE:
Athlon XP2500+
1GB DDR400
6600GT
I've never bought one, but from what I hear around these parts, gaming laptops aren't a great idea. They get really hot, have terrible battery life, and are much more expensive than their desktop counterparts.
I hear this. Every time.
Fuck.
SO this means.
I WILL NEVER HAVE A COMPUTER UNLESS I MOVE FROM THE PLACE THAT I LIVE.
P.S. Battery life means nothing.
well..they do get really hot..but they are designed to and don't get hot enough to cause damage or artifacting (unelss theres a problem), so thats really a moot point, sure you can't keep it on your lap, but then again your not supposed to keep any kind of "laptop" on your lap anyway. As to the last two points...well..completely true
Interesting, cuz you know, SupCom isnt DX10 at all, at least until this patch that's supposed to come but HASNT YET.
See I'm not debating about whether or not I should get one.
I'm pretty much forced into the situation and have a healthy
It's going to suck pretty hard for shooters, I'm imagining. I'm hoping it's good for some RPGs. Diablo-esque hack slashes, old Baldur's Gate era stuff and (holy fuck) Oblivion would really put a smile on my face but I don't hold too much hope.
I was more or less just looking for model recommendations. If anyone knew anything on the market they'd consider decent for the job. Though, since they're so universally maligned I'm assuming no.
I don't see why they won't run Dx10 functions well. The 9700s did Dx9 fine, the 6800 did SM3.0 fine. And on paper Dx10 should be faster than Dx9.
But at a medium and short distances it looks fine. So it's probably an optimisation thing.
Just look around; many laptop manufacturers offer options with decent processors and graphics card that work well.
This is what my girlfriend did. She wanted a laptop so she had a portable computer, but wanted it for gaming while at home as well. She realized that her battery life would be crap if she tried to game on the battery, and I'll be damned if the thing doesn't try to burn her leg, but it's still a good computer. Just realize you'll be paying a lot of money, for sub-desktop performance. That extra price is for the portability, and the miniaturization.
Look around, but as a reference, she ended up getting a Toshiba laptop that works pretty well, other than all the preloaded crap.
I suppose I think back to the FX line and how it DIDNT do DX9 well
I need to upgrade my computer soon. It's not so bad, I bought it for KOTOR and it runs Oblivion and Dark Messiah, but it needs repairing anyway so I thought I'd upgrade. Going to do processor, motherboard and maybe ram now, and wait a bit for a directx 10 card. What would you go for, if money were no object (within reason)
The thing is, you can get the cheapest procesoor like the intel E6300, and overclock it BEYOND the levels of the one 4x the price...
Otherwise just find a happy medium in like... the E6600, the only other processors really beyond it are much more expensive; a dual core with a higher frequency (whose performance lead you could negate by overclocking) and 2 quad cores (not worth it just yet)
Compare the prices for an Intel E6300, and E6600, and get whichever you can afford, if the latter, then do it. You suggested money might be no object, and the only faster processors than that E6600 are MUCH more expensive and yet not much faster.
Just grab the other parts mentioned in my previous post if you dont want to have to research/think about your purchases too much. There's a good mobo listed there, and then grab some matching PC6400 RAM from OCZ or Corsair or some other good vendor
Buy the E6600 is what he's saying.
I think the geforce FX was a disaster waiting to happen. It's harder to tell with the 8800s and Dx10 but nobodys really stepped up and said "ok we think there's a huge problem" like valve did with the early HL2 build which gives me hope.
NCIX PC Summary
I'm only buying from NCIX because I can just pick it up, since I live in Vancouver.
That and you can get the P5N-E SLI mobo for about the same price and its probably a little better than a vanilla P5B (if oyu were getting the deluxe, that'd be different)
something tells me it wont be at all difficult. or you could read the posts in this thread already if you want recommended a GOOD one