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Advice on new gaming rig using a Sony LED 40" & ATi Radeon HD 6970 2GB PLEASE

S

SEIZETHEDAY4EVA

Member
Hi Peeps

I’m building a new gaming rig, below are the specs but the thing is this, I’m going to be also buying a Sony LED 40” instead of a monitor! The model is KDL-40NX803, it has 200hz refresh rate and is obviously true HD 1080p. My question is will my games look good on it? How do games look running at 1920x1080, are the textures up close detailed for example? Also do most games play at 16:9 widescreen? I don’t want to have big black letterbox lines. Have a look at the specs below and tell me what you think, will Crysis 2 run at it’s highest detail?

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 'Thuban' @ 3.3GHz x 6 cores
Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5, AMD 890FX
8GB Corsair Vengeance (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz
ATi Radeon HD 6970 2GB
1TB sata II 7200RPM hard drive
Blu Ray reader combo drive
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional 7.1 soundcard
650 watt silent 80+ effeciency Modular PSU
Coolermaster HAF X Gaming Tower Case
Creative Labs 5.1 Speakers 50 W RMS Sound System
 
The Sony led should be great for gaming. It's not even a true 120hz screen though. Only PC monitors are capable of 120hz right now. All games run and look the best at 16:9 IMO.

You're probably pretty close as far as maxing Crysis at 1080p. Looks like a solid build. I prefer intel and nvidia but to each his own.
 
Uh yeah, about your system. I wouldn't recommend an X6 right now as AM3 is at the end of its lifetime.
 
SEIZETHEDAY4EVA said:
When is the next lot of AMD processors coming out then or should i just go with Intel i7?
Click to expand...

They should be out Q2.

This is possibly the worst time to build a new system when it comes to CPUs, AMD's cpus aren't very good at the moment and you can't buy sandy bridge until the new mobos hit shops and bulldozer is a few months away. Current i7s like the 930 are good, but leave you with no upgrade path.

That LCD isnt true 200hz though, so don't be fooled on that.
 
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If you want an enthusiast rig bulldozer and sandy bridge "ex" will come out before summer. The i5 and i7 sandy bridge out now are only their mid-range offerings. No matter what I wouldn't recommend the old AM3 socket with that budget.

Resolution is a matter of how close you are to the screen and how big the screen is. I'd suggest actually checking the TV out in the store and measuring what distance looks best to you.
 
Skurge said:
They should be out Q2.

This is possibly the worst time to build a new system when it comes to CPUs, AMD's cpus aren't very good at the moment and you can't buy sandy bridge until the new mobos hit shops and bulldozer is a few months away. Current i7s like the 930 are good, but leave you with no upgrade path.

That LCD isnt true 200hz though, so don't be fooled on that.
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be too bad if there were AM3+ motherboards to buy, as then you could get one of them and get a cheap ($50-100) dual/triple/quad core AMD chip while waiting for Bulldozer. I would have done this.

You can buy Sandy Bridge, but there's obviously caveats. I believe TigerDirect was still selling boards along with a PCI-e SATA card, and you can still buy the CPUs a lot of places.

OP, it depends on how strict your budget is. If you can afford Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer, then I'd say do that. If not, then I'd actually say drop down to an Athlon II X4 or Phenom II X4 chip for about $100 and put the extra towards an SSD.

If you want to save $50 you can get this sound card instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102024
The only difference is no xram and no pointless enclosure.
 
darkswordsman17 said:
It wouldn't be too bad if there were AM3+ motherboards to buy, as then you could get one of them and get a cheap ($50-100) dual/triple/quad core AMD chip while waiting for Bulldozer. I would have done this.

You can buy Sandy Bridge, but there's obviously caveats. I believe TigerDirect was still selling boards along with a PCI-e SATA card, and you can still buy the CPUs a lot of places.

OP, it depends on how strict your budget is. If you can afford Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer, then I'd say do that. If not, then I'd actually say drop down to an Athlon II X4 or Phenom II X4 chip for about $100 and put the extra towards an SSD.

If you want to save $50 you can get this sound card instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102024
The only difference is no xram and no pointless enclosure.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I also waiting for AM3+ boards to show up before I get a new rig. I don't like the way intel separate midrange and high-end. I would rather have one platform that does both.

There is an MSI board that says its AM3+ ready, I have no idea what that means, but I would rather wait for official 9 series chipsets though. an SSD is a good call too.
 
Skurge said:
Yeah, I also waiting for AM3+ boards to show up before I get a new rig. I don't like the way intel separate midrange and high-end. I would rather have one platform that does both.

There is an MSI board that says its AM3+ ready, I have no idea what that means, but I would rather wait for official 9 series chipsets though. an SSD is a good call too.
Click to expand...

Would it really be a bad idea for me to build this rig now? It seems there is no official release date for these new processors from AMD or Intel and no sign of the new motherboards for them. I've been using a Xbox 360 for ages now and have managed to save the money to finally go back to my PC routes, the thought of having to wait kills me. I mean i'll have the best graphics card on the market 8GB memory, would the new processors mean my pc would go out of date that fast?

I totally appreciate that if i buy a PC now i will need to pay out for a new motherboard and processor to upgrade though and that is bloody annoying, so in that respect would make total sense to try and be patient which i'm not good at.

I guess if these processors come out before summer i can wait but if we are talking the end of the year then that will be pushing it, although the new Oblivion comes out then but i so want to play Crysis 2 on a PC and not my Xbox 360.
 
SEIZETHEDAY4EVA said:
Would it really be a bad idea for me to build this rig now? It seems there is no official release date for these new processors from AMD or Intel and no sign of the new motherboards for them. I've been using a Xbox 360 for ages now and have managed to save the money to finally go back to my PC routes, the thought of having to wait kills me. I mean i'll have the best graphics card on the market 8GB memory, would the new processors mean my pc would go out of date that fast?

I totally appreciate that if i buy a PC now i will need to pay out for a new motherboard and processor to upgrade though and that is bloody annoying, so in that respect would make total sense to try and be patient which i'm not good at.

I guess if these processors come out before summer i can wait but if we are talking the end of the year then that will be pushing it, although the new Oblivion comes out then but i so want to play Crysis 2 on a PC and not my Xbox 360.
Click to expand...

They should all be out by Q2 (April, May, June), If you can't wait that long, go ahead and get an i7 I would say, but if I were you. I would at least wait till the new mobos come out.

The rest is up to you dude.
 
Most TV's have some major imput lag issues, go to AVSforums and ask them if this is a issue for your exact model.
 
Well after thinking long and hard i'm going to wait until the new AM3+ Motherboards surface along with bulldozer. If it's April, May, June then not to far away i guess.

Also anyone ever played FPS games using a LED/LCD 1080p TV @ 1920x1080 res? It's gotta look a lot better than what i'm currently on which is a XBOX 360 at 720p.
 
One other question, what is the very latest Intel Processor along with Motherboard that is Equivalent to AMD's bulldozer and more importantly is it out yet?
 
sorry just did a bit of research and to answer my own question 'Sandy Bridge', so hopefully the new ones should be out in March, i don't mind getting an Intel over AMD i just want whatever comes out first, i don't think the difference between them will be that huge.
 
My friend and I both started gaming on our TVs about a year ago. I have a 42" Panasonic S2 Plasma and he has a 40" Sony Bravia and both love gaming at this size.

I wouldn't recommend sitting as close to it as you would a monitor but at living room distances (~6ft) it looks great. I don't notice any input lag as others have mentioned.

Colors look great and having a live sized weapon in front of you is a lot of fun. Text can be hard to read, so I enlarged the text in windows and zoom in when reading webpages. Mt friend with the Sony LCD doesn't do this but he sits closer than I do.

For controls, I use a customized laptop table to put my mouse and keyboard on. I have one small usb cord running from my PC to a hub on the table next to my favorite chair. Spousal acceptance is 100%

Like the others, I would hold off on the sound card. First thing the Fatal1ty stuff is all marketing hype. Also, the on-board sound cards these days are surprisingly good; they have all come a long way. I enjoy music and audio, and on most setups its hard to even tell the difference in audio quality between the current on-board audio and a discreet card. The 24-bit audio processing sounds great with a nice set of headphones (maybe priced at $80 and up) with highly encoded or lossless music. However games often use compressed audio; I never could hear a difference in a game with my Audigy 2.

Look at the SSD's from Crucial, the C300 series. I think its still the only one to use SATA3 6gb/s. In a word: FAST

It may not be ideal but AMD allows for backwards compatibility in its socket architecture. Technically with the right bios update a AM3+ Bulldozer should work in an AM2 or AM3 board. Features on the new chip would be unavailable. I wouldn't do it but its something to be aware of.

I hope this helps.

-Ken
 
SEIZETHEDAY4EVA said:
One other question, what is the very latest Intel Processor along with Motherboard that is Equivalent to AMD's bulldozer and more importantly is it out yet?
Click to expand...

Bulldozer isn't out yet so there are no benchmarks and nobody knows what it is capable of. About all we know it is has roughly 8 cores and is really fast.

Unless you want to spend $1,000.oo or more on a chip the quad core i7 2600k is as good as it gets right now.
 
Yeap i think i'll go with the quad core i7 2600k, maybe the AMD's will be faster but hopefully not a huge improvement.

Major Marbles thank you for your input, i'm sure games will look great at 1920x1080 on my 40" Sony LED.
 
Major_Marbles said:
My friend and I both started gaming on our TVs about a year ago. I have a 42" Panasonic S2 Plasma and he has a 40" Sony Bravia and both love gaming at this size.

I wouldn't recommend sitting as close to it as you would a monitor but at living room distances (~6ft) it looks great. I don't notice any input lag as others have mentioned.

Colors look great and having a live sized weapon in front of you is a lot of fun. Text can be hard to read, so I enlarged the text in windows and zoom in when reading webpages. Mt friend with the Sony LCD doesn't do this but he sits closer than I do.

For controls, I use a customized laptop table to put my mouse and keyboard on. I have one small usb cord running from my PC to a hub on the table next to my favorite chair. Spousal acceptance is 100%

Like the others, I would hold off on the sound card. First thing the Fatal1ty stuff is all marketing hype. Also, the on-board sound cards these days are surprisingly good; they have all come a long way. I enjoy music and audio, and on most setups its hard to even tell the difference in audio quality between the current on-board audio and a discreet card. The 24-bit audio processing sounds great with a nice set of headphones (maybe priced at $80 and up) with highly encoded or lossless music. However games often use compressed audio; I never could hear a difference in a game with my Audigy 2.

Look at the SSD's from Crucial, the C300 series. I think its still the only one to use SATA3 6gb/s. In a word: FAST

It may not be ideal but AMD allows for backwards compatibility in its socket architecture. Technically with the right bios update a AM3+ Bulldozer should work in an AM2 or AM3 board. Features on the new chip would be unavailable. I wouldn't do it but its something to be aware of.

I hope this helps.

-Ken
Click to expand...
I go back and forth between a 42" lcd and a 23" 120hz asus monitor. I love both but I need more time to decide which is better since I just got the 120hz pc monitor. I also don't notice any ghosting or lag on the 42. Do you have any pics of your modified laptop table and chair? I currently use a coffee table that sits high and a gaming rocker chair. I also use a wireless keyboard and mouse since I don't want anyone tripping on any cords running across the living room.
 
Major_Marbles said:
My friend and I both started gaming on our TVs about a year ago. I have a 42" Panasonic S2 Plasma and he has a 40" Sony Bravia and both love gaming at this size.

I wouldn't recommend sitting as close to it as you would a monitor but at living room distances (~6ft) it looks great. I don't notice any input lag as others have mentioned.

Colors look great and having a live sized weapon in front of you is a lot of fun. Text can be hard to read, so I enlarged the text in windows and zoom in when reading webpages. Mt friend with the Sony LCD doesn't do this but he sits closer than I do.

For controls, I use a customized laptop table to put my mouse and keyboard on. I have one small usb cord running from my PC to a hub on the table next to my favorite chair. Spousal acceptance is 100%

Like the others, I would hold off on the sound card. First thing the Fatal1ty stuff is all marketing hype. Also, the on-board sound cards these days are surprisingly good; they have all come a long way. I enjoy music and audio, and on most setups its hard to even tell the difference in audio quality between the current on-board audio and a discreet card. The 24-bit audio processing sounds great with a nice set of headphones (maybe priced at $80 and up) with highly encoded or lossless music. However games often use compressed audio; I never could hear a difference in a game with my Audigy 2.

Look at the SSD's from Crucial, the C300 series. I think its still the only one to use SATA3 6gb/s. In a word: FAST

It may not be ideal but AMD allows for backwards compatibility in its socket architecture. Technically with the right bios update a AM3+ Bulldozer should work in an AM2 or AM3 board. Features on the new chip would be unavailable. I wouldn't do it but its something to be aware of.

I hope this helps.

-Ken
Click to expand...

Good feedback, although there would likely be a noticeable difference between an LCD TV and a plasma as far as response, where you shouldn't have to worry as much about it on plasma (so going LCD you should put extra focus on finding out feedback specific to that monitor about things like input lag and ghosting).

I don't agree on the audio aspect. While onboard has definitely come a long way, and that Creative card isn't exactly top notch when it comes to fidelity, it should offer a noticeable improvement in game audio (and possibly fidelity in general) provided you have it setup to. Especially if you use headphones, the CMSS-3D can be a huge improvement (although a card that does Dolby Headphone might be good as well). If you want fidelity with the processing of the X-Fi then there's the Titanium HD (which is only 2 channel unless you do digital out, which defeats the purpose of the high quality components on the card) or the Auzentech X-Fi based cards (although one of theirs is not a full X-Fi chip). I don't think even Asus' Xonar cards are equal in gaming, although they're still good and tend to offer a bit better fidelity.

AM3+ CPUs can't be backward compatible with AM2/AM3 boards as they have extra pin that those boards' sockets don't have. Not sure what Llanos is supposed to use, but that will be the case for Bulldozer.

The Crucial SSDs are pretty good, but while because of the 6Gbps support they can top 3Gbps drives, they are outperformed in some aspects by the "slower" drives, as they have higher write speeds. There should be newer SSDs coming out fairly soon as well, so you might wait a bit on getting one, and then you can possibly clone your install over (or just do a fresh one, it'll certainly be fast enough on an SSD, or even better, just do a fresh image).
 
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