Best Game Computer

[VidPhreak]

I would like some feedback on what you think the best (currently available) components are to build the fastest, best performing game machine available would be.

I am a professional video production guy in Hollywood and (please dont flame me for this one) the platform of choice has long been the Macintosh so for obvious reasons I know quite a bit about how to make a Mac scream and am fairly savy (technically speaking) and understand all of the concepts I have read on this site and others and I am leaning towards 1 of 2 system designs.

At first I had paid alot of attention to the "over clock" hype and had some components that I thought would make a great system scribbled down they are as follows:

MSI K7 Master mobo, AMD Athlon 1.4, 512MB DDR memory, WD 60GB 7200 RPM ATA/100 h.d, and a Radeon 64 (I purchased this video card a couple weeks ago for another (generic) PC I currently have) the rest of the components like the network card and DVD Rom drive I havent selected yet. This configuration I selected based on the "fastest PC" article on "Toms Hardware" site and cause it uses the AMD 761 chipset and was supposedly a very stable set up for OC'ng.

after looking for the last week and trying to find all the parts to build this system I did more reading and found this site (which I reall really like by the way) and now I cant make up my mind if I should build a machine that uses DDR or go with a KT133A based system so I can get a whole bunch more PC133 memory for a lot less? after reading the mobo reviews here it looks like a system based on the Asus A7V133/Athlon 1.4 and the same vid card and hard drives etc may be almost as good? and I should be able to OC the thing with reasonable stability and get smoking frame rates for Unreal Tourney and Tribes 2.

I guess the real question here is this... If you had $1100.00 to build a system ....could you build your "dream" system? or would it cost more? and if you could build your dream system......what would you use for mobo/processor/memory/hard drives etc...

And one last question...I would like to use this system for productivity as well when not in "frag' mode, Photoshop, Lightwave and Mpeg compression are things I do that make me money so if I spend over $1000.00 to build this system I would like to use it to make me some money as well.....

Please help me out here....and forgive me for useing foul language here...(words like "Apple, and Macintosh&quot I really mean no harm, the bottom line is I went out and bought Unreal Tourny for my PIII/500 machine and then put the Radeon card in it and now I dont play games on my G4/500 Dual Processor machine anymore......hence the overwhelming urge to build a bigger faster PC that will rock even harder than the one I have!

Thanks for ANY and ALL help you guys can give me....I want to go out and buy stuff today!

 

[muppet]

Check this =
Http://www2.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.html?i=1487
I am currently building the best possible gaming system and doing the following:
Epox 8K7A+ (stable, excellant for overclocking)
1.4 Athlon 266Mhz
Crucial PC2100 512Mb
2 IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40Gb using RAID 0 (80Gb in total- faster read/write)
Swiftech MC370-OA (excellant heatsink/fan)
GeForce3 unsure of manufacturer (Anandtech homepage reviews these)
SBLive with surround speakers
Plaxtor CD-RW
DVD
Antec SX840 case using all 4 fans

If you plan to overclock then make sure you use a good heatsink and plenty of fans inside the case. The PC will run much better.

 

[Rage187]

Gotta go for the GF3..

 

[Athlon4all]

First, go DDR. If you buy from Crucial, they sell DDR for the same price as SDR. They're da best. Hmmm, can you build a dream system for $1100? Well see, in my opinion, a Dream system these days isn't necessarily the best CPU type thing, it's more having all the goodies, like Fastest DVD, Fastest Burner, DVD Decoder, LCD Monitor, that type thing. Here's my take.

It looks good, except for a few things. First the mobo. EPoX 8K7A+ is a better option for ocing, it has a 1/5 PCI divider which allows fsb speeds of 166Mhz and beyond, and is more stable when oced than K7 Master, so you decide. 512MB is probably good, just make sure you run Windows 2000, 98/Me can't use that much RAM.

Now this is just my opinion, in modern PC's Hard Drive's are the key bottleneck. So SCSI or IDE RAID are a must for a Dream system (And in my opinion, every PC should have IDE RAID). SCSI is great but it can get very expensive, so IDE RAID is more reasonable for a $1100 PC. In case you don't know, I'll explain RAID. RAID 0, is basically you put in 2 identical Hard drives, and then for each disk access, both drives work at the same time, so performance increases. It really isn't expensive to implement, you would just buy instead of a 60GB hd, you would get 2 30GB's, then if you get a board that has On-board RAID controllers (It would have 2 IDE channels, then 2 more for RAID on the mobo), or you would buy a PCI RAID card for $50 or so. IDE RAID increases overall system performance, Office app performance, and bootup time. So in my opinion, IDE RAID is a must.

If you need to save a few bucks, downgrade to a 1.2GHz Athlon, it's a slight performance diff, but is a swell $60-75 cheaper. For a gaming PC, the best video is a GeForce3, but it is very expensive ($300 or so), a good alternative is the GF2 Ultra which is $200 about, it provides same performance as GF3 in non-FSAA (GF2 Ultra can't play reasonable frame rates in FSAA, GF3 can). So there's my take, Go EPoX 8K7A+ if you go RAID or ocing, I'd try to go GF3 rather than GF2 Ultra so you have the support for newer games, and so you can play in FSAA, and go DDR of course. Here's the exact specs:

EPoX 8K7A+ mobo ($130 range, you may have trouble finding this board at the moment, it's backordered, there's supposed to be a shipment coming from EPoX's factories in a week, if you can't get it then get EPoX 8KHA, it has same general features, it uses VIA KT266 which performs up to par with 760, but no 1/5PCI Divider, and no RAID so you'd have to spend $50 for the RAID card, a good one is IWill's SIDE RAID 100)
AMD Athlon 1.4GHz 266fsb ($160-$180)
512MB PC2100 DDR ($80 or so at Crucial)
GF3 ($325) or GF2 Ultra Video Card ($200-$225)
2x 30GB WD 7200RPM ATA/100 H.d.'s (dunno price)
A good 400W Ps Case ($50-100)

For the lowest prices on these products go to pricewatch.com.

 

[jobberd]

i love your title, "professional video production guy". is that what it says on your card?

 

[MrHelpful]

I'm thinking Athlon 4 1.2GHz, EPoX EP-8K7A, 512MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM, IBM 60GXP 20GB + Maxtor 80GB 5400RPM, AOpen/Pioneer 12X DVD-ROM (who needs 16X DVD? you're probably not going to rip movies, so what's the diff), Lite-On 16x10x32x CD-RW, Netgear/Linksys NIC, your Radeon, and that's about it. If you want a monitor + speakers along with it, I suggest the Samsung 900NF (around $380) and the Boston Acoustics BA4800 4.1 setup (around $130-$150).

As for the case, the Enlight 7237 is an excellent midtower, although it doesn't have many bells and whistles, like a slide-out motherboard tray. And with the power-sucking Athlon, you may want a 350W Enermax or higher.

 

[MrHelpful]

For a dream system, I wouldn't want the constant spectre of data failure hanging over my head (IDE RAID - specifically RAID 0, the one you refer to - doubles the chances of data loss).

 

[MrHelpful]

<< For the lowest prices on these products go to pricewatch.com. >>


If you do want to buy something off an online retailer listed on Pricewatch, be sure to check them first at Reseller Ratings. BTW, the place of choice nowadays is Newegg.com.

 

[VidPhreak]

You guys ROCK!
this is an extremely helpful website and I am really glad to have found you! I am not as much of a lamer as I must appear just based on the replies to my post but I am extremely happy that you take the time to spell out the things you think would be best.

To answer another question my business card doesnt say &quot;Video Production guy&quot; he heheh.... it says &quot;24 frame playback and video assist&quot; but I doubt very many people are familiar with that so I put the rather generic &quot;video production guy&quot; to ease the pain!

Thanks alot for the killer advice.....seems as if the Epox board may be the way to go? looking into it now on pricewatch!

 

[NateSLC]

<< Thanks alot for the killer advice.....seems as if the Epox board may be the way to go? looking into it now on pricewatch! >>


I just got this board and I LOVE it. I have never seen better.

I absolutely HATE saying this, but since I try to have some integrity I feel obliged to point out that the Pentium 4 currently excels for video encoding. This may have to do with the SSE instructions, so if you can wait for the desktop Athlon4 long enough to see if AMD's SSE implemenation helps in this regard that would be my suggestion. I'm fairly sure that the EPoX motherboard will properly support the Athlon4 so your upgrading prognosis is good. Since Intel is changing the socket format for the P4, purchasing one now and upgrading later is not a good prognosis...

Just some bits to think on!

 

[VidPhreak]

I have found that Fry's carries the Epox 8K7A+ board in stock, I am running to get one since the online prices are only $13.00 less and then there is shipping, plus the return policy hassle...(although ever waited in line at fry's to return anything? heh what a joke that is) anyway since the board is in stock....you guys rave about it, and all the reviews rave about it...I am on my way... I just ordered the 512 MB (2 x 256MB chips) from Crucial, I am ordering the Fong Kai case and the processor from Newegg.com (maybe the case comes from Axiom.com cant remember but I have it bookmarked) Can you guys (without reserve) tell me which heatsink/fan combo I need to get to keep this setup chilly? what is the best....and also is there really any need to buy a &quot;retail boxed&quot; CPU as opposed to the OEM version? besides the extra warranty? am I gonna need it really?....I am opting for the Raid setup for sure, simply since I fully understand it and have implemented it on at least 25 systems over the last 6 years (setting up video solutions for buddies/clients etc in the Mac side of life).....I will keep you guys posted as to the results and may ask for help when it comes to the OC issues.....I am excited about trying this out......thanks for the help!

 

[wfbberzerker]

waaaiiiit
only get the 8k7a PLUS if you want to set up two or more hard drives in a raid config (which i dont htink you do)
get the 8k7a without the plus if you want regular IDE hard drives. its also cheaper this way

also, oem only has 30-day warranty and no heatsink/fan, but is lot cheaper than retail
i dont bother with retail, cuz i overclock and void it anyways, but processors generally dont just DIE on you, so the long-ass warranty is kinda moot.

 

[VidPhreak]

Sorry....another question I have is are there any cables, screws, glue etc.... that I may need to build this system so that I can order it all up now and not get caught late at night unable to finish cause I forgot something?
Anything you can think of for a guy building his first system from scratch would be useful information to me and greatly appreciated!

 

[wfbberzerker]

anti-static mat so you dont fry your components

 

[brandonl]

Macintosh = The best programming platform available. I don't blame you for using it.

 

[Athlon4all]

As I stated, I would get 8K7A+ even if not going RAID because the extra IDE Channels could be useful, but still I'd go RAID. And I replied to your PM vidphreak.