I have $250 for upgrades

[Smartazz]

Hi, I currently have a pretty reasonably powerful system featuring:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600@3.2GHz(can go a little higher)
4GB DDR2 PC6400 RAM
640GB Western Digital Black
320GB Older Seagate Drive
A DVD Burner(I don't remember the brand name)
eVGA GTX260 Core 216 running 670/1444/1080
Gigabyte EP45 mobo
22" Samsung 226BW with a native res. of 1680 by 1050

I'm currently considering either going with an 80 gig Intel SSD if I can get it for around $250 or going with a new monitor, probably this Samsung: Samsung 2343BWX

That's a high density monitor apparently and I'm curious in everybody's opinion in buying a pretty high resolution monitor for a GTX260 Core 216. What upgrade path would you personally pick? I'm leaning toward the new monitor as my current monitor is two or three years old now. I feel like those are the two aspects holding this system back, seeing as my monitor's resolution isn't really very high and my hard drive is also holding back the general speed of my computer.

 

[BaboonGuy]

SSD I'd say. 2048x1152 for a 23" monitor is wayy too high imo. You'll have to up text sizes on everything, which doesn't look as good as if it were regular. I love my SSD, the boot-up times and app load times are fantastic. Everything is very snappy.

 

[alyarb]

buying that monitor will just set off a chain of events that leads you to a $500 upgrade instead of $250. 2048x1152 is going to run like crap on a GTX 260 and you'll find yourself unhappy with a monitor that is only slightly bigger than what you have now despite the great pixel pitch. you'll be miserable until you get a radeon 5850 to speed things up. i think you should stick with what you have right now. at 1680x1050 you can afford to turn up the AA with your current GPU on top of getting an SSD for instantaneous loads.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: alyarb
2048x1152 is going to run like crap on a GTX 260

Bzzzzt! Thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts awaiting you backstage. The Core216 handles up to 2560x1600, so there's headroom above native rez.

OP, some changes are coming shortly for SSD, including price drops. If you're itching to spend money right now, I'd go with the dual-monitor scenario. I went dual back in '99, and can never be comfortable going back to a single-monitor system. If you're concerned about gaming perf, set up a profile to disable the secondary monitor.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Slugbait

Originally posted by: alyarb
2048x1152 is going to run like crap on a GTX 260

Bzzzzt! Thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts awaiting you backstage. The Core216 handles up to 2560x1600, so there's headroom above native rez.

OP, some changes are coming shortly for SSD, including price drops. If you're itching to spend money right now, I'd go with the dual-monitor scenario. I went dual back in '99, and can never be comfortable going back to a single-monitor system. If you're concerned about gaming perf, set up a profile to disable the secondary monitor.

Bzzzzt!

My 9200se 128MB PCI card from 6 freaking years ago could handle 2048*1536. However, there is a difference between being able to drive it, and being able to drive it well. If the OP games at all, and has any intention of being able to game at native res on that monitor... then he will want a beefier card, by a long shot.

 

[alyarb]

most people play games other than simcity and they demand a compromise between resolution and speed to keep things looking good and flowing smoothly.

i like how he does the lame-as-fuck gameshow routine, and then suggests pairing a 16:9 monitor with 16:10. i'm pretty sure smartazz doesn't give a shit about looking at two porn sites simultaneously like slugbait has been doing since 99. he either wants something to go faster, or look better. 2048x1152 is still a little bit higher than 1920x1200. if you only play games that are 3-4 years old, then yeah your GTX is fast enough. but you're only going to get 20 FPS in crysis and clear sky, or similar and I'd rather have an SSD with 4x AA.

"yeahhhh, been doing the gameshow routine since 99, never looked back."

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: alyarb
i'm pretty sure smartazz doesn't give a shit about looking at two porn sites simultaneously like slugbait has been doing since 99.

Smartazz, go away...your thread has just been hijacked.

alyarb, everybody else on this board knows that everybody here is in a constant state of upgrade. Some of us consider value over time, such as the obscene amount of money for a tiny hard drive that will be worthless in two years (probably less) compared to a huge hi-rez monitor that will allow your system to grow with it and still be enjoyed 3 to 4 years from now. People using a comparable card (or same card) with this monitor report that gaming is very good, much less any other task that someone may possibly have for using a computer...and as someone who does not have either this card or this monitor, you ensure OP that the native rez is going to run like crap on his card. Well done.

In addition, you obviously like to use fancy, high-brow four-letter words and openly question someone else's personal integrity to show your vast superiority over others.

Touche.

Or if you do not understand the concept of sarcasm: you are a prick.

 

[alyarb]

no, it's just that your onomatopoeic buzzing sound is gay. the game show routine is gay. an 80 gigabyte SSD is plenty big for your operating system, swap file, and primary apps. compared to a terabyte hard drive for $80, 4 gigabytes of memory seems tiny, but it's not used for storage. it's a high-bandwidth temporary workspace for CPUs. $240 for an 80GB hard drive also seems outrageous until you realize that it's 3 times faster than your average disk. everyone knows that SSDs are not there to store all your shit. they are there to load your programs. a drive is only tiny when it's always full. Most people can get all of their big clunky apps and a few games onto an 80GB X25 without any problem. a drive isn't tiny if it's large enough for its intended purpose.


the 320-GB platters of his main drive are plenty fast for his bulk storage. everyone in this thread except you is telling him to get the SSD because it will make his system faster. any way you slice it, the new monitor at 2048 will make his system slower. yes, games will look better, but they will also run slower because he has to pump another .6 megapixels through the GTX. i've already stated that most games run fine because most games appeal to the widest possible performance distribution so that they sell well. however, most people also like to play good-looking, demanding games like crysis and stalker, and at least at 1680x1050 he has a chance of running them with high detail, but at 2048 he will not.

of course SSD prices are coming down, they are relatively new. high res monitors are also getting cheaper. ethanol is also getting cheaper. that's how the world works. smartazz wants to upgrade right now and the SSD will transform the general usability of all aspects of the machine. the monitor will look great in 2D, but he may find some things comparatively more difficult to read. The new monitor isn't going to make anything faster, and in 3D everything will be slower. i do not make a habit of insulting other people's advice unless they offer to disgrace themselves first. after all, we're both here to help people. but the gameshow routine is incredibly, incredibly lame, and reflects entirely on you. not only that, you attack a claim I never made: that the native resolution will not run. As TheStu pointed out, anyone who has owned a video card in the past 6 years knows that these higher resolutions are supported and it should be obvious to you and everyone who can read english that my concern was with rendering performance in D3D and not display output. of course it will fucking run. but fast? performance will go down. right now his card is perfectly matched to his monitor and he can multisample if he thinks quality could be better. the cost of GPU performance is plumetting faster than any of these other technologies and I would upgrade the monitor and GPU simultaneously sometime next year. both upgrades are worth the money, and there's one that i prioritize because i don't do a lot of gaming. if he does, he may be annoyed that he has to compromise on quality because of the greater resolution. if he doesn't care about crysis or stalker then that's different too.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: alyarb
no, it's just that your onomatopoeic buzzing sound is gay.

I actually had to look up the meaning of "onomatopoeic". You're going to score major on either Reading or Writing when you're old enough to take your SAT.

the game show routine is gay.

I'm sensing a gay thing with you. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Everything else after that was too much blah, blah, blah, so I skipped it. Hope I didn't miss anything important.

 

[alyarb]

don't be surprised by a complete lack of respect when you give poor advice and treat people this way.

 

[Smartazz]

Originally posted by: BaboonGuy
SSD I'd say. 2048x1152 for a 23" monitor is wayy too high imo. You'll have to up text sizes on everything, which doesn't look as good as if it were regular. I love my SSD, the boot-up times and app load times are fantastic. Everything is very snappy.

I've heard so many good things about how fast SSDs are. Just how much faster are they than regular fast 7200rpm hard drives though?

 

[alyarb]

in terms of loading programs they will be about 3x as fast as your WD640. in terms of paging and grabbing little pinches of data for random reads they will be comparatively instantaneous.

 

[Smartazz]

Hmm, interesting thought. Would you happen to know if they would be well suited toward recording HD video off of a video camera? My brother might need my computer from time to time for video editing since he doesn't have a computer suited for it. I think the camcorder records in 1080P, would that particular Intel SSD be able to record fast enough to keep from dropping frames?

 

[alyarb]

the camera does all the recording to its internal hard drive or flash memory. once you have it hooked up via firewire, you're just transferring data that has already been encoded. there should be no frame-dropping with any hard drive.

 

[Smartazz]

Okay, thanks. I was unsure as I'm not too familiar with that stuff. I'm really leaning toward getting an SSD and possibly another one down the road for RAID 0, but the second one would come much later on down the road. As for the monitor, I'm leaning toward getting another monitor and making it a dual display later on down the road(next summer). I can't figure out who makes the best SSD though, but I'm pretty sure 80 gigs is enough as I'd only put the OS and a few programs on it anyway. Is that Intel the best ~80 gig SSD out there currently? By best I mean, has TRIM support, will last long and is fast.

As far as gaming, I should have specified more, but I actually don't game most of the time I'm on my computer, but I do play Crysis a lot as well as L4D. L4D would probably run at any res on my video card, Crysis not so much.

So in other words, it looks like I'm going to get both an SSD and another monitor, however the SSD will come first seeing as if I do multitask with dual displays, I want my computer to be able to keep up. I've used dual displays in the past and I know they're amazing, I can't even imagine dual 1680 by 1050 monitors.

 

[alyarb]

intel makes the best SSD, for sure. i think you should deal with the GPU and monitor at the same time next year. whether you get 1920x1200 or 2048x1152 doesn't matter, but you will need a radeon 5850 or similar if you want it to run fast and look good.

intel recently released their much-improved second generation SSD and they are still very new. beware newegg for new products as they gouge the hell out of their prices.
i would get it here:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKU...x=FO&scriteria=BA32332

because it's $50 more at newegg.

 

[yh125d]

"GTX260 will play like crap at 2048x1156"



Bull. That res is "only" ~33% more pixels than 1680x1050. Its a lot yeah but its not like the GTX260 breakts at above 2MP. If my old 9800GT handled COD5 pretty near maxed at 1920x1200 and FC2 at med settings, I know the GTX260 can play modern games pretty well. Of course you're not gonna get 60fps in crysis or be able to max everygame with AA but saying the 260 runs everything like crap at a res barely above 1920x1200 is just stupid. It's not gonna be a slideshow

 

[corkyg]

Let's play nice and sweep all the bloviating under the rug. Anyone contemplating buying an SSD would do well to read Anand's excellent, extensive, and thorough analysis of some of today's popular SSDs.

SSD

 

[alyarb]

Originally posted by: yh125d
"GTX260 will play like crap at 2048x1156"



Bull. That res is "only" ~33% more pixels than 1680x1050. Its a lot yeah but its not like the GTX260 breakts at above 2MP. If my old 9800GT handled COD5 pretty near maxed at 1920x1200 and FC2 at med settings, I know the GTX260 can play modern games pretty well. Of course you're not gonna get 60fps in crysis or be able to max everygame with AA but saying the 260 runs everything like crap at a res barely above 1920x1200 is just stupid. It's not gonna be a slideshow

i could exaggerate everything in your post and knock it down like you've done with mine, but fortunately you're input is too late and i'm just too busy.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: alyarb
don't be surprised by a complete lack of respect when you give poor advice and treat people this way.

Considering you drew first blood, and the way you did it, do you honestly believe you are a saint in the way you treat people? Funny how the Internet instills a sense of false superiority in some people.

As far as the complete lack of respect, this is far from my first flame war on this board. You pull profanity out of your ass and aim pr0n at me again, and I'll toast you again.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: alyarb

Originally posted by: yh125d
"GTX260 will play like crap at 2048x1156"



Bull. That res is "only" ~33% more pixels than 1680x1050. Its a lot yeah but its not like the GTX260 breakts at above 2MP. If my old 9800GT handled COD5 pretty near maxed at 1920x1200 and FC2 at med settings, I know the GTX260 can play modern games pretty well. Of course you're not gonna get 60fps in crysis or be able to max everygame with AA but saying the 260 runs everything like crap at a res barely above 1920x1200 is just stupid. It's not gonna be a slideshow

i could exaggerate everything in your post and knock it down like you've done with mine, but fortunately you're input is too late and i'm just too busy.

"2048x1152 is going to run like crap on a GTX 260"

"you'll be miserable until you get a radeon 5850"

"if you only play games that are 3-4 years old, then yeah your GTX is fast enough" - GTX260 is only capable of playing 3-4 year old games? who knew!

"but you will need a radeon 5850 or similar if you want it to run fast and look good." - Apparently 5850 is a minimum for barely above 1920x1200. That's good info to have


I didn't exaggerate a thing.

 

[alyarb]

not only did you exaggerate but you continue to intentionally miss the difference between running well and running at all so you can construct a straw man fallacy.

1680 is the ideal res for the 260. 1920 is the inflection point where intense games dip below the 30 FPS mark. 2048 is higher still than this point. stalker, crysis, age of conan... actually it's useless to list these games. you know what they are and you know under what conditions the 260 is slow. 2048 will only make things worse, whereas if he stays at 1680 everything runs great. you know damn well 1920 is where things begin to slow down. thats great that you play call of duty 5, but that game will fly on a 7-series GPU so obviously my concern doesn't apply to it. older games will run fast because they do not demand much shader or memory performance, but it's not always the case. why do you want him to upgrade one component simply to compromise another when you know the SSD will make everything snappier? are you just trying to split hairs with me because i said "run like crap" when I should've said "encounter difficulty?" of course the games will run, but he is not guaranteed 60+ let alone 30+ frames all the time. i wasn't aware that i had to present vacuous proofs for every single game and every single res for you to understand my reasoning. maybe you could use google and read some GTX 260-216 reviews.

Originally posted by: Slugbait
You pull profanity out of your ass and aim pr0n at me again, and I'll toast you again.

*twirls revolver, holsters*

you were begging for it with your juvenile gameshow routine and unapologetic flamebaiting. that was first blood, pal. bzzzt!

now, unapologetic means you know you're doing something against conventionally accepted rules, but choose to do it anyway in order to be provocative. you may or may not recognize this word because it stems from the word apology which you may or may not know.

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: alyarb

Originally posted by: Slugbait
You pull profanity out of your ass and aim pr0n at me again, and I'll toast you again.

*twirls revolver, holsters*

you were begging for it with your juvenile gameshow routine and unapologetic flamebaiting. that was first blood, pal. bzzzt!

now, unapologetic means you know you're doing something against conventionally accepted rules, but choose to do it anyway in order to be provocative. you may or may not recognize this word because it stems from the word apology which you may or may not know.

A lethal comeback, with eloquent poise, deep thought, and quote ingenuity. I have no retort. You are truly the Master of Ether.

 

[alyarb]

meh. just don't do the bzzzt thing and then say i drew first blood with a porn joke. i'm reminded of another quote involving a black pot and black kettle.

 

[Slugbait]

I will do the bzzzt thing every time someone speaks of something they obviously know nothing about.

But thanks for (finally) saying the porn comment was a joke. Couple with the profanity and label, I thought you were just being a prick. Now we all know better, so thanks for clarifying.