Gaming System

[hermanocabral]

hello guys

its my first time building a pc, and i wish that o can make a system that dont need to be changed for 2 years. the main usage for the system will be games and development (games more then development). since im not a overcloker i guess i wont be doing it, but i read a few posts here in the cpu section and i am interested in that conroes extreme.

can anyone help me with this?

 

[Bobthelost]

You're wasting money if you're going fot a 6800. That i can tell you now.

What's the budget, does that include a monitor and if not what monitor will you be using. Will you consider upgrading the graphics card?

 

[hermanocabral]

no, i alredy have a monitor... will be upgrading it in the future, but i dont want to spend money on monitor right now. its a LG FLATRON ez T910B.

except for the monitor, i want to buy everything new. pretty much beacue i only have the monitor

the budget? i dunno, i just want a top system so that i dont need to spent money on a new for 2 years...

 

[Brazen]

I spent about $900 building my own computer 4 years ago. I think I might upgrade next spring. Of course, I'm not a gamer. The only thing is, I got sick of how noisy it was so a while ago I did purchase new, quiet fans and a new, quiet case.

 

[Bobthelost]

Ok, that monitor runs @ 1600x1200 so you're looking at a 7900GTX or X1900XTX, maybe a 7950GX2 or X1950.

CPU 6600 Core 2 Duo
Motherboard, pick one.
RAM 2GB DDR2 667, maybe 800
GPU (See above)
Hard drives. How much space do you need?
Case, what do you like the look of
PSU: 400 or 500W enermax enhance, seasonic, etc. etc.

That's a top flight machine, spend any more and you're getting to the point of serriously wasting money, you can save a bit of the CPU by getting a 6400 or an AM2 system.

 

[hermanocabral]

the motherboard i was seeing that almost every core 2 duo user picks asus p5w dh deluxe. is it a good mobo, or is there any other better for core 2 duo?

hard drives i dont need too much space... i live with a 80gb hd and it still have 23gb free. i guess that 200gb will do the job. what about raid for speed?

for psu, isnt better pick one that have 600w?

ram and gpu... isnt the ddr2 800 from corsair the standard that anandtech recommend for core 2 duo? and the gpu, i just want the best... i guess i will do a monitor upgrade in the future, but as you said bobthelost, i run it on 1600x1200. i used to run it on 1920x1200 but since i run games on 1600x1200...

 

[wwctw]

I would go for a 7950GX2,
Ram 1GB DDR2 800
An Asus motherboard. I had so many and all of them failed, Asus is the only one that seemed to work for over 2 years. The same goes for an Enermax powersupply.
CPU: Don't pick the fastest one, it's always a bit more expensive because it's "new". The extra money is not worth the extra MHZ.
Harddrive i would choose a seagate, it's a bit slower than Maxtor and IBM but it is rocksteady.

 

[sdy284]

Originally posted by: hermanocabral
for psu, isnt better pick one that have 600w?

yes, you'd be a flippin idiot to put any 400W PSU in a high-level gaming rig now a days

I'd go with the OCZ 600W or 700W GameXtreme PSU's. With one of those you'll easily be good for a few years.

Also, Seagates aren't any slower than Maxtor or IBM's

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: sdy284

Originally posted by: hermanocabral
for psu, isnt better pick one that have 600w?

yes, you'd be a flippin idiot to put any 400W PSU in a high-level gaming rig now a days

I'd go with the OCZ 600W or 700W GameXtreme PSU's. With one of those you'll easily be good for a few years.

You'd be wasting money if you did that. Go find out how much power real computers use and then come back and tell me.

The Asus P5W Deluxe is a nice board, but do you need it? If you're not overclocking then you could get the cheapest intel made board and not notice the difference. That's what i'd recomend for you.

Then a 200GB drive it is, RAID0 doesn't help with speed for gaming, it might cut down your load times but it's not worth the cost (if you want high speed and money is no object then a Western Digital 150GB raptor drive is the obvious choice, note, this is a very uneconomical choice). Seagate are good, but make sure it's a 7200.10 drive. Otherwise pick based upon price.

PSU: Your computer will not draw more than 200W or so from the PSU if you go for a 7900GT or 7900GTX. Less than 250W with an X1900XTX. Since there is no performance difference between a 400W PSU and a 1KW PSU there is no point in wasting money on it.

If you want more opinions on this look for any of the "pick me a PSU" threads. They won't all agree with me, but a good number will, not to mention that the statistics back me up.

RAM: Changing the RAM from 667 to 800 results in a 3% performance increase (farcry), it costs about $50 more to get 800 than it does 667. It's not worth the money.

 

[hermanocabral]

does overclok and game be in the same machine?

i wont do an extreme overclok, but, i guess that if i buy a cpu that runs @ 1.8ghz, i will try to put it to 2.4 or at least 2.0....

what about gpus?? wich one is the best for this system?

 

[Bobthelost]

Ok, you don't have to overclock for gaming. A stock 6400 Core 2 Duo is faster than you need for gaming for everything up to crossfire setups. For them a 6600 is plenty. If you want to overclock by all means do so, but it's not important nor will it bring much benifit to gaming.

GPU? I'd go for the X1900XTX if you're not worried by noisey parts, the 7900GTX if you are. There are faster parts around but if you get either of those and then upgrade in a year to DX-10 you'll be a happy gamer.

 

[hermanocabral]

i found this site http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp here on the forums, and i calculated the ammount of power my system will use...

says there that it will use 409. shouldnt i use a 600w psu to get more room for the reductin in the efficiency during the time for the psu?


also on this post http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1909360&enterthread=y there seems to be a system close to what i intend to build. replacing the 6800 extreme witha cheaper one as bobthelost said and getting a better video card.

but what about gpus?? im read some articles here on anandtech and seems that ati beats nvidia in performance, but nvidia is better in quality.. true or false?

 

[hermanocabral]

i really dont care about noise.... my room sound system stays at maximum volume almost all the time....

the core 2 duo 6600 is good to a little overclok? since it wont give me really any real performance boots on games, i guess i will do it just a little bit.. just for the fun


so, x1900xtx > 7900gtx?

 

[sdy284]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

You'd be wasting money if you did that. Go find out how much power real computers use and then come back and tell me.

ever hear about PSU efficiency? If you think that that 450W PSU puts out a true 450W, you're nuts.

take this example from Tom's Hardware as an example: (yes this is a year old, but the info is still relevant)
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/11/stress_test/page7.html

scroll down to the bottom of the page & look @ the table, you see PSU efficiency hovering around the 73-83% mark. So lets say that the 450W PSU is operating @ 78% efficiency

450W * 78% efficiency = 351W

now, if your components are using 300W, that only leaves your PSU with ~50W headroom.

If you want your PSU to last, you don't want it to be operating @ maximum or near maximum capacity 24/7

So thats a reason to get @ least a 500W PSU right there.

You also to look @ how many amps the PSU is supplying on the 12V rail, but this widely varies based on the PSU...

 

[Bobthelost]

ATI have better image quality, and last i heard the X1900XTX was at least as fast as a 7900GTX and faster in many roles. It's a sensitive topic. If you want to spend more and get a 7950GX2 or a X1950, or even SLI or crossfire you can, but it's not nessisary. If you're not noise obsessed then that's the one i'd pick, the X1900XTX.

The PSU calculators are conservative to say the least. It doesn't say the PSU will use 400W. It says you should get a 400W PSU. (Very different things as a good fraction of a PSU's output is never used). It will work. Or hell, just get a 430W or 450W PSU. Decent PSUs do not degrade quickly, you'd be looking at well over three years, more like 5 before you might want to think about replacing it. Getting a more powerful one now would not extend that time by much at all.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: sdy284

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

You'd be wasting money if you did that. Go find out how much power real computers use and then come back and tell me.

ever hear about PSU efficiency? If you think that that 450W PSU puts out a true 450W, you're nuts.

take this example from Tom's Hardware as an example: (yes this is a year old, but the info is still relevant)
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/11/stress_test/page7.html

scroll down to the bottom of the page & look @ the table, you see PSU efficiency hovering around the 73-83% mark. So lets say that the 450W PSU is operating @ 78% efficiency

450W * 78% efficiency = 351W

now, if your components are using 300W, that only leaves your PSU with ~50W headroom.

If you want your PSU to last, you don't want it to be operating @ maximum or near maximum capacity 24/7

So thats a reason to get @ least a 500W PSU right there.

You also to look @ how many amps the PSU is supplying on the 12V rail, but this widely varies based on the PSU...

Nice try, but you're wrong.

Efficency means that your 450W (78% efficent) PSU will deliver 450W, but draw 450/.78 (calculator's gone walkies so roughly) = 550W from the wall. PSUs are rated by delivered power, not drawn.

Go read the jonnyGuru thread on PSUs, he padds his figures out a bit to be safe but the logic is all there. As for 100% useage, this comptuer won't draw 400W from the PSU, it'll be hard pressed to break 250W. The reason a larger PSU is needed is because a significant amount of power is set aside for the 5v and 3.3v rails.

Read up on the topic.

 

[sdy284]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Getting a more powerful one now would not extend that time by much at all.

With GPU's getting more & more power hungry, how can you say that?

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: sdy284

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Getting a more powerful one now would not extend that time by much at all.

With GPU's getting more & more power hungry, how can you say that?

Very easily if you look at the rest of the post since i'm refering to PSUs degrading with age:

Decent PSUs do not degrade quickly, you'd be looking at well over three years, more like 5 before you might want to think about replacing it. Getting a more powerful one now would not extend that time by much at all.

As to GPUs getting more power hungry, this is true. Then again so were CPUs a while back. If the power jump is huge then they'll be used with seperate power bricks, it's been done before. If that PSU needs to be replaced in the future (note, a 450W would have a lot of upgrade room in there for a more powerful GPU) then it can be upgraded then.

Example: The inq said that G80 would be drawing 300W. If that were to happen no PSU that meets intel spec could manage them as you're only allowed 240VA per rail. In which case you'd be off to buy a new PSU no matter if you bought the 700W OCZ unit now.

Then there's add on PSUs for the graphcis cards.

 

[hermanocabral]

raid really doesnt improve performance?

 

[sdy284]

raid 0 improves performance, yes

 

[Bobthelost]

No it doesn't. Not much. Never for while you're playing the game.

RAID0 will speed up boot times, it'll make it quicker to move gigabyte files around and sometimes it'll make opening programs faster, the reviews are mixed on that. The same goes for level load times, you may shave off a second or two, which is important in BF2, but that's it. No increase to fps, no improvement in other games.

 

[sdy284]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
RAID0 will speed up boot times, it'll make it quicker to move gigabyte files around and sometimes it'll make opening programs faster, the reviews are mixed on that. The same goes for level load times, you may shave off a second or two, which is important in BF2, but that's it.

level loading is important in any game that loads a level...not just BF2.
BF2 is just more noticable due to the huge levels, but raid0 should improve your loading time for any game

so the general answer to the raid 0 performance question is yes, it improves performance...

if he asked if it improved FPS, then the answer would be obviously no

 

[chairbornrangerx]

indeed, there was a post in the general hardware forum a few days ago, with links to images the guy took of the speedtest on his HDD's before and after raid, the difference was outstanding.

Due to that post, I'm going out and buying a 2nd 74GB raptor, and going to run RAID... I'm also going to switch from my chenming elite, to a thermaltake armor with the 25cm fan for kicks. But yeah... load times are everything to me cuz I mainly play COD2, and BF2

I'd suggest raid

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: chairbornrangerx
indeed, there was a post in the general hardware forum a few days ago, with links to images the guy took of the speedtest on his HDD's before and after raid, the difference was outstanding.

Due to that post, I'm going out and buying a 2nd 74GB raptor, and going to run RAID... I'm also going to switch from my chenming elite, to a thermaltake armor with the 25cm fan for kicks. But yeah... load times are everything to me cuz I mainly play COD2, and BF2

I'd suggest raid

Yee gods, you do not play hdtach. At no point have i drag raced my HDs against a friends to transfer a movie file. In real world tests the benifits are either none, or very small.

If you want to learn about RAID0 performance rather than just parrot the same old rubbish read the writeups on it at storage review.

Now as to if it improves performance, you'd see as much if not more improvement buying a larger (hence faster) drive in the first place.

 

[hermanocabral]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Yee gods, you do not play hdtach. At no point have i drag raced my HDs against a friends to transfer a movie file. In real world tests the benifits are either none, or very small.

If you want to learn about RAID0 performance rather than just parrot the same old rubbish read the writeups on it at storage review.

Now as to if it improves performance, you'd see as much if not more improvement buying a larger (hence faster) drive in the first place.

any recomendations on a faster and larger and faster hd? sata 300 or sata 2? or theyre both the same thing?

what about those raptor 10krpm???