Hardware

Bla-bla-bla-bla-lalal :)

Moderators: jwknaggs, CruxMDQ, Nemo

Hardware

Postby Nemo » Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:20 pm

Hardware is closely connected to the gaming so I think this topic will fit.
I'm starting it because I wan't to enchance my PC a bit in several coming days and wanted too see if there will be some opinions (good and bad) on my choosings...

So, currently I'm planning to replace:

-CPU to AMD AM2 Athlon 64bit 6000+ (it has 3 GHz of timing)
-MoBo to Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 AMD790X (it supports Ati CrossFire)
-Graphics card to Asus PCI-E Radeon EAH3870 512MB 256Bit DDR4 (it's slighly worse than for example GF 8800 GTX and much cheaper and it supports CrossFire as well)
-RAM to Patriot DDRII 2GB (2x1GB) KH 800MHz CL5 PSD22G800K (Dual-Channel; for now I didn't see a game that would require more than 2 gigs)
-PowerSupply to Pentagram Silent Force PSF 500-A12S (500 Watts should be enough for this set... I hope)
And Expand HDD by adding a 160 GB Seagate to already had Maxtor 250 GB

So what do you think about it? I tried to be as much reasonable with this set, as possible...
Last edited by Nemo on Tue Jul 15, 2008 10:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Basicly, kind of a big deal(...)Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people(...) If you were from where I was from, you would be fu**ing DEAD, WOO-O!"
User avatar
Nemo
Moderator & I-project
 
Posts: 299
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:35 pm
Location: Krakow, Poland

Postby Red Schuhart » Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:52 pm

Well, Nemo. You chose the processor I use. No problems so far, even though Stalker can be a bit sniffy about dual cores in some places.

I chose an Asus mobo - the M2N Sli deluxe. No idea about the one you mention.

Graphics card is where I messed up. I opted for memory rather than clock speeds. I now have two 1gb 8500 GTs in there, but will be kicking them in favour of a 9800GTX as soon as I can swing it.

I have 4gb of Corsair PC6400 DDR2 in at the moment, although XP is only capable of recognising something like 3.2gb.

I got a 600w PSU as I was using the two graphics cards. Your 500w should be plenty.

.
Few know, and I'm not telling.
User avatar
Red Schuhart
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
 
Posts: 539
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:41 am
Location: Westward Ho!, England.

Postby dez » Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:47 pm

last time i updated my pc was 2004 summer :)

well, lets see what crap i have now:

- old amd 2.4+ cpu at 2.0 ghz (tbred)
- old prophet3d (hercules) ati radeon 9800 nonpro 128mb ram (256bit)
- 512 ram (i tell you the story*)
- 120gb hdd (maxtor)


* im having serious crashes since last month. vga freezes, bsod, etc, so fancy stuffs. i had 2x 512mb ram (samsung pc3200 ddr1) so today i realized, that one of the rams are not working properly, so i removed the damaged one, and now vga crashes disappeared, but i only have 512 ram left, so i cant mod or edit levels now. i need to find some rams soon lol.
dez0wave developer
User avatar
dez
dez0wave developer
 
Posts: 1211
Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:22 am
Location: Hungary

Postby Red Schuhart » Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:57 am

A pity you're not nearby, Dezodor.

A while ago I mistakenly bought a 240 pin 1gb memory stick. I still have it but have no use for it. You'd be welcome to it.

.
Few know, and I'm not telling.
User avatar
Red Schuhart
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
 
Posts: 539
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:41 am
Location: Westward Ho!, England.

Postby dez » Tue Jul 15, 2008 4:50 am

Well you can send it by post :))

but im using samsung pc3200 (400mhz) rams, so maybe it wont be compartible...
dez0wave developer
User avatar
dez
dez0wave developer
 
Posts: 1211
Joined: Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:22 am
Location: Hungary

Postby Nemo » Tue Jul 15, 2008 10:39 am

Red Schuhart wrote:I chose an Asus mobo - the M2N Sli deluxe. No idea about the one you mention.

Well, I'd rather choose Asus too, but the one that was great and very affordable was just withdrawn from production and sold up from stores because it was too good for it's price... the Gigabyte which I choose instead is similar to it. Also this Asus of yours wouldn't be good for my planned system because I wanted to concentrate on AMD/ATI hardware so SLI is needless...
And the graphics you mentioned... well, if you can afford it ;D
"Basicly, kind of a big deal(...)Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people(...) If you were from where I was from, you would be fu**ing DEAD, WOO-O!"
User avatar
Nemo
Moderator & I-project
 
Posts: 299
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:35 pm
Location: Krakow, Poland

Postby Soduka » Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:39 pm

The Radeon 4850 looks like a gem, and on newegg, only 50 $ more than the 3870 you want.
Soduka
dez0wave tester
 
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:08 pm
Location: New Jersey

Postby gubr » Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:14 pm

I upgraded myne in April, but I concentrated on INTEL/GF - so I'm not a profy in AMD/ATI. But, I would like to send you with your request to h... "Tom's hardware guide" http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... ,1965.html - about video card. The guys (at least in Russia) do serious checks and tests for hardware and give all the numbers in the article.

Concirning to SLI/Crossfire - are you going to by two graphical cards? Few advices based on all the articles I red about g-cards:
1) SLI/Crossfire - performs well on wide screens (more then 22'') and starting from 1600*1400 (or something like that). And no point to buy 2 cards of midprice range (like ATI3850/GF8600(9600)) as you can buy more powerfull card wich will perform better.
2) Analog of GF8800 GTS/GTX in ATI - are very powerfull but you can admit this on big monitors only, starting from 22''. On 17-19'' screens (1024*768/1280*1024) GT goes even faster then GTS.
3) do not take card with more then 512 Mb. From several tests even crysis overloads the cards for about 3-7% on full detail mode. The most greedy game for graphics memory is Stalker with antialising turned on from outside (if I'm not misstaking you can not turn it from inside of the game) - but it comes from bad optimisation.

So if you do not intent to buy big monitor and will have 17-19'' then no point in cards like GF8800GTS/GTX or GF9800GTS/GTX or their analogs from ATI moreover sli/cf. In this case you do not need main bord supporting sli and you can save some money and invest them in g-card or cpu or ram.

I know from overlockers that best cooling system in products of "Palit" company. Gygabyte makes nice cards with good cooling and nicely spedup (overloccing from producer)

One more thing - I woul like to recommend you Hynix ram cards. Very stable and reliable! Bought two sticks 1gb each and happy as an elefant in rainy day!

UPDATE
And take 4 gb of RAM as sonn you will have vista (we all will eventually) and that beast eats RAM like crazy!!!

Listen to joke (it is about CPUs but it suits RAM well also):
- why do we need dual core CPUs?
- to look a movie at the same time.
- at the same time with what?
- with vista.
samurai without a sword is alike to one with a sword but without a sword
User avatar
gubr
I-project
 
Posts: 257
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:15 am
Location: Donetsk, Ukraine

Postby Nemo » Tue Jul 15, 2008 4:50 pm

Actually, Gubr, I'm running a 22" CRT monitor (it's only disadvantage is it's weight)
As for CrossFire I thought about adding later second card similar to this I mentioned. Currently I have Vista on Athlon XP Burton 2,01 Ghz, 1 gb (2x512 MB dual channel) DDR1, Ati Radeon 9600 series (128MB/128Bit) and I'm not encountering any major performance problems as long as I don't run some modern 3D games... So I really do think that equipping PC with 4 gigs of ram is excessity... but I'll see how it all will work on 2 and then I'll know for sure ^^

As for the graphics, Soduka... well the 3870 has 512MB GDDR4 and GPU clock at 775 MHz, and the 4850 has 512MB GDDR3 and GPU clock at 625 MHz... the only advantages of 4850 are stream processors (800 instead of 320) and dx10.1 compatibility... And in PLN 3870 costs 415 and the 4850 costs 499... Are you sure you recommend 4850?
Last edited by Nemo on Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Basicly, kind of a big deal(...)Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people(...) If you were from where I was from, you would be fu**ing DEAD, WOO-O!"
User avatar
Nemo
Moderator & I-project
 
Posts: 299
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:35 pm
Location: Krakow, Poland

Postby gubr » Tue Jul 15, 2008 8:41 pm

About vista - I have no experience of working with it, but vast major part of people, who had - complained about greedy monster for ram. Probably it is just rumours from MS haters! ))))

Nemo wrote:Actually, Gubr, Are you sure you recommend 4850?

Did I?
IMHO 3870 is better then 4850.
samurai without a sword is alike to one with a sword but without a sword
User avatar
gubr
I-project
 
Posts: 257
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:15 am
Location: Donetsk, Ukraine

Postby super-panda » Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:04 pm

Well, in fact I'm using windows vista, and overall it's far better on almost every aspect then xp. The upgrades made by microsoft reduces a bit most of the problems, and even if there is some useless features you would like to suppress, it's really good.(Like the User Account Control, it's horrible)

The problem for video games, is that yes, it's a little more using ram and you need a medium hardware, it can't work propely on " a bad hardware". I would not be able to say exactly what is used in more than xp.

Anyway, I have a intel quad core at 2.4ghz, (I don't know if the four are actually used, but on almost everything, "loading times" is past) for Central Processing Unit.

For videos card, I use a nvdia gefore 8800 gts, and with the nvdia patches, I had no problem, apart from badly optimized video games.

At last, I have 3.00mb of Random access machine.

I'm able to make work on medium settings crysis and supreme commander, who are both horribly optimised, and I can play on high settings with stalker, but not absolute maximum, as again, the optimisation isn't really good.

But, if you want a "good computer" it will cost you quite much.
Last edited by super-panda on Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
super-panda
Moderator & I-project
 
Posts: 166
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2008 3:43 pm
Location: France

Postby Nemo » Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:04 pm

mhm... I wasn't talking to you, Gubr, in the second part of the post... my bad ;)
Panda, please... if you don't know the correct words which stand for some abbreviations, use the abbreviations itselves. ;)
As for your CPU, there is no game yet which uses more than two or more cores of the processor equally (ofc Gears of War, Crysis and such things can 'brak' themselves into parallel threads and use all cores separately but Core 2 Duo Extreme are still at the top of the FPS tables...) Even a game which uses two cores simultaneously and equally is still exotic... so for today's games it is the best choice to buy the fastest Core 2 Duo instead of the Phenom X3 (three cores) or your Quad Core... I also doubt that Vista is capable of using more than only two cores too... at least for what I know.
"Basicly, kind of a big deal(...)Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brother, I hurt people(...) If you were from where I was from, you would be fu**ing DEAD, WOO-O!"
User avatar
Nemo
Moderator & I-project
 
Posts: 299
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:35 pm
Location: Krakow, Poland

Postby gubr » Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:51 am

Nemo wrote:Panda, please... if you don't know the correct words which stand for some abbreviations, use the abbreviations itselves. ;)
Yeah! RAM means "Read Also Memory" or "Read Again Memory" or "remove absolutely memory" or "remember awful memory" or "resend all money"! )))

Nemo wrote:mhm... I wasn't talking to you, Gubr, in the second part of the post... my bad

I checked our posts and should admit that it is my bad. But I won't! )))
Last edited by gubr on Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
samurai without a sword is alike to one with a sword but without a sword
User avatar
gubr
I-project
 
Posts: 257
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:15 am
Location: Donetsk, Ukraine

Postby magpie » Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:37 pm

Here is my sweet donkey :D

CPU Athlon 64 3200+ (2 Ghz)
VIDEO: Inno GeForce FX 6600
Motherboard: no name from China :(
RAM: Kingston 1GB DDR 400
HDD: Western Digital 160 GB, SATA
Power Supply: 2x 600 Watts :D

Other stuff to make PC work:D
dez0wave developer
User avatar
magpie
dez0wave developer
 
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:16 pm
Location: Ploiesti, Romania

Next

Return to Offtopic

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests

cron