"I need a New PC!" 2011 Thread of reading the OP. Seriously. [Part 2]

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got2bekidding said:
Thanks Hazaro. Everything worked out easy in the build and was fun to put together. I can't believe it was so simple. :D
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It is pretty simple. As long as you research, take your time, and ask questions when needed...it's a breeze.

Congrats! :D
 
mike23 said:
This probably varies game to game. Some might give you more vertical field of view in 16:10 over 16:9.

Actually, I imagine in most games it'd be opposite of the gif you posted. Since 16:10 and 16:9 monitors will have the same width in pixels (for similar size monitors), but 16:9 is smaller vertically.
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Unfortunately, not really, since a lot of PC games are console ports, and those have 16:9 in mind. so you'll either end up being letterboxed or you'll have improper FOV because DEVELOPERS

That being said, I will never buy a 16:9 monitor, even if it means I pay more. Less pixels is pedestrian
emot-colbert.gif
 
black_vegeta said:
It is pretty simple. As long as you research, take your time, and ask questions when needed...it's a breeze.

Congrats! :D
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Thanks! Can't wait until WoW finishes downloading so I can put my system through some paces. My old computer was so bad, I had to run it on low. I'm sure visually, it will be like playing a completely different game.
 
n0n44m said:
well my usual routine

1. take the case, screw in the motherboard standoffs in the right place (9 for most ATX boards, hold your board above to double check them)

2. next put in your power supply, screw it to the case

3. take cpu, motherboard, memory and cpu cooler, install cpu on motherboard, install cooler on motherboard (plug in fan as well), put in the memory sticks

4. now put the i/o shield that came with the motherboard in the hole at the back, then gently put the motherboard in and screw it down, then connect motherboard 24+4/8 pins. Also connect any casefans to the motherboard, or directly to the power supply

5. take the front pwr switch, reset switch, pwr led and hdd led cables, and connect to the bottom right of the motherboard (check motherboard manual for exact pin layout) Also connect any front USB ports to the motherboard (again, manual)

6. put in your graphics card, connect power cable(s)

7. screw in or slide in (depends on case) hard drive and optical drive, connect power + data cables

now you should be done

-----

read : motherboard manual (for which SATA ports to use, case i/o pin layout, and so on) & case manual (so you know how/in which direction you need to put the optical drive in for example) download them in .pdf and start right away ;)

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for the windows stuff : http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows-7/clean-install-windows-7-with-upgrade-media option #2 worked for me

I assume the digital download is just a Win 7 upgrade .iso which you put on a DVD or USB stick?
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Thanks a lot. This should be a great help tomorrow.

Regarding Windows 7, it's from the Microsoft online store so it's probably an iso. I think I'm going to install Vista first, download Windows 7 Upgrade, and then do a clean install. The download version is Windows 7 Professional Upgrade though. I can upgrade from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional right?
 
Bungieware said:
Thanks a lot. This should be a great help tomorrow.

Regarding Windows 7, it's from the Microsoft online store so it's probably an iso. I think I'm going to install Vista first, download Windows 7 Upgrade, and then do a clean install. The download version is Windows 7 Professional Upgrade though. I can upgrade from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional right?
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You can use and upgrade disk, but a direct upgrade from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professsional is not supported . Only Windows 7 Home Premium and Ultimate can perform a direct upgrade from Vista Home Premium. In order to install Windows 7 Professional on a computer currently running Vista Home Premium, boot to the Vista Home Premium desktop, insert the Windows 7 Professional DVD in the DVD drive. When the setup menu appears, select Custom (installation) to begin a clean install. You will first have to back up your files and then reinstall all your programs.
 
black_vegeta said:
You can use and upgrade disk, but a direct upgrade from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professsional is not supported . Only Windows 7 Home Premium and Ultimate can perform a direct upgrade from Vista Home Premium. In order to install Windows 7 Professional on a computer currently running Vista Home Premium, boot to the Vista Home Premium desktop, insert the Windows 7 Professional DVD in the DVD drive. When the setup menu appears, select Custom (installation) to begin a clean install. You will first have to back up your files and then reinstall all your programs.
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Yeah, bolded is what I want to do. A clean install, except with a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade digital download and not a DVD. That's still possible right? Sorry if I didn't get that across well.
 
Bungieware said:
Yeah, bolded is what I want to do. A clean install, except with a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade digital download and not a DVD. That's still possible right? Sorry if I didn't get that across well.
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Yes, you can put the iso on a thumb drive and install it that way or you can create a boot disc with the iso on it.

Thumb drive would be easiest.

Here's a little tutorial

http://www.windowsvalley.com/install-windows-vista-and-windows-7-using-bootable-usb-storage-device/

Edit: Or use the Mr. Nightman's link. :)
 
Bungieware said:
Yeah, bolded is what I want to do. A clean install, except with a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade digital download and not a DVD. That's still possible right? Sorry if I didn't get that across well.
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make a bootable flashdrive with microsofts new Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool, makes it soo easy, and of course I have also done it the way black_vegeta suggested as well, still fairly easy, just takes a few more steps
 
black_vegeta said:
Yes, you can put the iso on a thumb drive and install it that way or you can create a boot disc with the iso on it.

Thumb drive would be easiest.

Here's a little tutorial

http://www.windowsvalley.com/install-windows-vista-and-windows-7-using-bootable-usb-storage-device/
Click to expand...

Why can't I just install it from my hard drive? To clarify, I'm downloading it onto my new PC that I will have installed Vista on before hand. So the steps are:

1. Install Vista Home Premium onto my new PC
2. Download Windows 7 Professional Upgrade from Microsoft Online Store
3. Double click on it and clean install Windrows 7 Professional
 
Bungieware said:
Why can't I just install it from my hard drive? To clarify, I'm downloading it onto my new PC that I will have installed Vista on before hand. So the steps are:

1. Install Vista Home Premium onto my new PC
2. Download Windows 7 Professional Upgrade from Microsoft Online Store
3. Double click on it and clean install Windrows 7 Professional
Click to expand...
you can do that as well, just another way of doing it, least you know about it for future reference :-)
 
Bungieware said:
Why can't I just install it from my hard drive? To clarify, I'm downloading it onto my new PC that I will have installed Vista on before hand. So the steps are:

1. Install Vista Home Premium onto my new PC
2. Download Windows 7 Professional Upgrade from Microsoft Online Store
3. Double click on it and clean install Windrows 7 Professional
Click to expand...

haha. I thought you "somehow" already had the iso.

Sorry.

To answer your first question, YES! :)
 
I'm having a hard time settling on which ASUS P67 board to go with. I don't plan on ever going the SLI route, but I do plan on overclocking the 2500k to somewhere between 4.5 and 5.0GHz. Don't need anything aside from DDR3 1600 support (or higher I suppose), onboard sound and ethernet (which I think is super standard) and SATA 6Gb/s support. RAID support might be nice too.

Or should I forgo ASUS and go with the ASRock here which has a PCI-e 3.0 slot?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157265

Never heard of ASRock prior to this thread but it is apparently well reviewed.
 
No way you need a PCI-E 3.0 slot.
But it does look like it has better power handling. It's all in the package price really.

A $150 board will be built better and everything in that price range will have two PCI-E slots.
I'd only suggest you buy the P67 PRO if you went ASUS. Other boards beat the LE and regular version out.

If that's the brand you want though, go for it. Better to feel comfortable with your hardware since there is not a large difference.
 
I've read that pretty much nothing comes close to using all the bandwidth provided by PCI-e 2.0 so far, but I figured if PCI-e 3.0 is available (and at the same price) it might be good for future proofing. Seemed pretty similar to the motherboard listed in your $1,000 build at least.

But yeah, I think I'll just go with the P67 Pro and be done with it. Thanks for the reply.
 
LaneDS said:
I've read that pretty much nothing comes close to using all the bandwidth provided by PCI-e 2.0 so far, but I figured if PCI-e 3.0 is available (and at the same price) it might be good for future proofing. Seemed pretty similar to the motherboard listed in your $1,000 build at least.

But yeah, I think I'll just go with the P67 Pro and be done with it. Thanks for the reply.
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By the time you need a PCI-e 3.0 port, the entire computer you build now is going to be obsolete.
 
Time to RMA my memory and motherboard. This fucking pc has been given me headache ever since I got it two weeks ago. Random blue screens and stop errors and I just can't pinpoint the problem. I'll return it and see what happens.
 
Hey GAF,

Hope you don't mind helping out a mate of mine with a quick question - he has the following:

AMD Phenom II x2 555 @ 3.2GHz
4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory
Single AMD Radeon 6870
ASUS M4A87TD Mobo


He's thinking of upgrading to 8GB RAM and either of these:
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition

At a 10% price difference between them is it worth going for the 1100T due to the extra 100MHz?
Mainly looking towards BF3, so I imagine the 6 cores would be beneficial?

Alternately are there any other CPUs he should he be looking at?

Cheers :)
 
Hey thanks for the response, we don't really get promos here (NZ) so that's not much of a factor.
Actually looking around there's no 1035T either :[

What if he got the AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition @3.6GHz instead (7% cheaper than the 1090T)?

Finally would he get much of an FPS boost by going from the Phenom II x2 555 @ 3.2GHz up to a quad or hex core to make it worth the money?

Thanks again
 
commissar said:
Hey thanks for the response, we don't really get promos here (NZ) so that's not much of a factor.
Actually looking around there's no 1035T either :[

What if he got the AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition instead (7% cheaper than the 1090T)?

Finally would he get much of an FPS boost by going from the Phenom II x2 555 @ 3.2GHz up to a quad or hex core to make it worth the money?

Thanks again
Click to expand...
Only FPS boosts (that you GPU can keep up with) for games which fully utilize the extra cores. BF3 says it will, but I don't have concrete benchmarks.

For most games a recent CPU is not a large factor (except RTS and MMO) as the minimum frames the CPU will put out is over 60fps and the GPU has the limiter.

If he is looking for a performance boost in a dual core game by getting a 6 core, the answer to my knowledge is no. A lot of games can benefit from a quad but not completely make use of it. I'd wait and not upgrade now. A boost from 3.2 to 3.6 is exactly that, about 10%.

tl;dr
Wait a month and check for Bulldozer/BF3 benchmarks
 
I havent built a pc for 5 years, I've started ordering parts, getting excited! Do I need to get better thermal paste than what comes with the cooler master hyper 212+ (I plan on overclocking as much as I can)? Arctic silver?
 
Citizen K said:
I havent built a pc for 5 years, I've started ordering parts, getting excited! Do I need to get better thermal paste than what comes with the cooler master hyper 212+? Arctic silver?
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212 paste is MX-2 or MX-4 or something I think. Which is better than AS5.
 
Hazaro said:
Only FPS boosts (that you GPU can keep up with) for games which fully utilize the extra cores. BF3 says it will, but I don't have concrete benchmarks.

For most games a recent CPU is not a large factor (except RTS and MMO) as the minimum frames the CPU will put out is over 60fps and the GPU has the limiter.

If he is looking for a performance boost in a dual core game by getting a 6 core, the answer to my knowledge is no. A lot of games can benefit from a quad but not completely make use of it. I'd wait and not upgrade now. A boost from 3.2 to 3.6 is exactly that, about 10%.

tl;dr
Wait a month and check for Bulldozer/BF3 benchmarks
Click to expand...
awesome.

thanks so much for your help, I'll pass all of this on :)

VV thanks also n0n44m :D
 
as for BF3 , some russian site had done some "benchmarks" with the Alpha MP including cpu benchmark at the bottom. Now this is all very approximate ofcourse as it is an alpha and it's all just walking around on a multiplayer server I guess, but still it shows the 6core Phenom II with a noticeable lead on 4core Phenom IIs (still slower than 4core last gen Intels mind you) Ofcourse it is a low-resolution test, but it does show that BF3 will benefit at least somewhat from the extra cores

furthermore I think the most interesting factor between 1090t and 1100t is how far they can overclock, as you can easily run the 1090t at 1100t speeds but maybe the 1100t is more likely to overclock more?

and yes upgrading from a dual core will definitely boost the fps in some modern games (Bad Company 2 for example), assuming you have the graphics card to support those fps. I had quite a boost going from Athlon II X4 to I7 2600K with a GTX480 card, much higher minimum fps. If you have an older gpu however, the difference may be less noticeable
 
I'm wondering what graphic card would be the best for ~ $270? Right now I'm looking at a 560Ti 1gb, would that be sufficient for, say Battlefield 3?
 
n0n44m said:
as for BF3 , some russian site had done some "benchmarks" with the Alpha MP including cpu benchmark at the bottom. Now this is all very approximate ofcourse as it is an alpha and it's all just walking around on a multiplayer server I guess, but still it shows the 6core Phenom II with a noticeable lead on 4core Phenom IIs (still slower than 4core last gen Intels mind you) Ofcourse it is a low-resolution test, but it does show that BF3 will benefit at least somewhat from the extra cores

furthermore I think the most interesting factor between 1090t and 1100t is how far they can overclock, as you can easily run the 1090t at 1100t speeds but maybe the 1100t is more likely to overclock more?

and yes upgrading from a dual core will definitely boost the fps in some modern games (Bad Company 2 for example), assuming you have the graphics card to support those fps. I had quite a boost going from Athlon II X4 to I7 2600K with a GTX480 card, much higher minimum fps. If you have an older gpu however, the difference may be less noticeable
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Well you are getting a much faster CPU as well with a 2600K.
But, yes. The amount of recent games that get a nice boost with a quad core is rising.

Those benches are interesting if true. Dual core scaling is abysmal, I can't believe that they would REQUIRE a quad core for an acceptable frame rate.
McDouchebag said:
I'm wondering what graphic card would be the best for ~ $270? Right now I'm looking at a 560Ti 1gb, would that be sufficient for, say Battlefield 3?
Click to expand...
560 Ti or 6950 2GB with a nice custom cooler on it (ASUS or MSI)
 
I wouldn't trust any BF3 benchmarks you are seeing out there. The alpha didn't really have any of the bells and whistles turned on, and it is unlikely to be indicative of final performance.

At a setting equivalent to "high" in the alpha, you can get by with a really fast C2D (E8500 @ 4ghz for instance). That "high" setting may be the equivalent of "medium" come the final game though, so take that with a grain of salt.
 
LordCanti said:
I wouldn't trust any BF3 benchmarks you are seeing out there. The alpha didn't really have any of the bells and whistles turned on, and it is unlikely to be indicative of final performance.

At a setting equivalent to "high" in the alpha, you can get by with a really fast C2D (E8500 @ 4ghz for instance). That "high" setting may be the equivalent of "medium" come the final game though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Click to expand...

I definitely wouldn't pay much attention to the GPU part as that will all be very driver dependent

the CPU part however they did run at low res lowest settings, so it does give some indication as to how much difference there was (in the alpha..) with different CPUs when the CPU was made the one and only primary bottleneck. Personally I feel like if they would turn on full destruction (assuming it has indeed been turned down in alpha) the differences would only become greater...

and judging by the gaf alpha thread, it falls in line with C2D users reporting low framerates whereas C2Q users could run it fine
 
n0n44m said:
I definitely wouldn't pay much attention to the GPU part as that will all be very driver dependent

the CPU part however they did run at low res lowest settings, so it does give some indication as to how much difference there was (in the alpha..) with different CPUs when the CPU was made the one and only primary bottleneck. Personally I feel like if they would turn on full destruction (assuming it has indeed been turned down in alpha) the differences would only become greater...

and judging by the gaf alpha thread, it falls in line with C2D users reporting low framerates whereas C2Q users could run it fine
Click to expand...

A friend of mine
not me, since I'm NDA'd
got excellent framerates at high (1080p) with a C2D E8500 @ 4ghz. For what it's worth, the performance he saw was better than what he gets in BC2 on the same specs. He also has a GTX 580, so take that into account.

I fully expect that the full version will destroy the same processor. There should be (should being the key word) a setting that will allow owners of older hardware (like the E8500) to run the multiplayer at a reasonable framerate, assuming that their video card isn't horribly lagging behind though.

I'm probably just going to spend the $300-$400 to upgrade to a 2500k, and not worry about it.
 
LordCanti said:
A friend of mine
not me, since I'm NDA'd
got excellent framerates at high (1080p) with a C2D E8500 @ 4ghz. For what it's worth, the performance he saw was better than what he gets in BC2 on the same specs. He also has a GTX 580, so take that into account.

I fully expect that the full version will destroy the same processor. There should be (should being the key word) a setting that will allow owners of older hardware (like the E8500) to run the multiplayer at a reasonable framerate, assuming that their video card isn't horribly lagging behind though.
Click to expand...

that sounds better, although I suspect most C2D users are at lower clockspeeds with slower cards ;)

but regarding your should being the keyword ... how many games have options that really improve framerates for CPUs with less than 4 cores? If we take Witcher 2 and Bad Company 2 for example, as they both love cpu power, they have many graphical settings to turn on and off depending on how powerful your GPU is, but I believe their CPU dependency is more due to underlying gameplay and the way their multithreaded engines work. I'm willing to assume disabling all destruction in BF3 would make it a lot easier on dualcores, but that's not really an option when you're in multiplayer is it? :)
 
n0n44m said:
that sounds better, although I suspect most C2D users are at lower clockspeeds with slower cards ;)

but regarding your should being the keyword ... how many games have options that really improve framerates for CPUs with less than 4 cores? If we take Witcher 2 and Bad Company 2 for example, as they both love cpu power, they have many graphical settings to turn on and off depending on how powerful your GPU is, but I believe their CPU dependency is more due to underlying gameplay and the way their multithreaded engines work. I'm willing to assume disabling all destruction in BF3 would make it a lot easier on dualcores, but that's not really an option when you're in multiplayer is it? :)
Click to expand...

There is destruction in the alpha, and that didn't seem to do too much to performance on my friends specs. If it gets cranked up considerably, I could see that being an issue, but I'm sure DICE could figure out a way to disable that sort of thing on your client. For instance, the wall/building/etc would still get destroyed, but you would only see the results and not the CPU-destroying process of the destruction, or something like that.

Even scaled back down to normal clocks (3.1ghz or so) I don't think the E8500 would have been too terrible for performance in the alpha. Again though, that is likely to change for the final game.

Long story short, there may be some hope for owners of dual cores that simply can't afford to upgrade. A quad core is definitely a surer bet though.
 
Does anyone know where to get an R3 Silver Arrow without having to pay an arm and a leg for shipping, and still be cheap (like $110 newegg cheap)
 
n0n44m said:
you didn't read the manual ? vadernooooooo.gif :D
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I did. I just assumed they sent me the wrong case. It was one those moments where you don't realise that something is the wrong way up. My first reaction was "ooh shiny lid" and it went downhill from there.

Gvaz said:
...have you even seen a case before now?
Click to expand...

I own many computers, but they should probably be taken into protective custody after this.
 
"meanwhile, in England"

ok ok final question... does the R3 come with feet attached or do you have to screw them on yourself?

as I was scrolling down I thought they sent you an ARC mini or something ... then it was more like "I saw what you did there LOL"
 
Bungieware said:
I did. I just assumed they sent me the wrong case. It was one those moments where you don't realise that something is the wrong way up. My first reaction was "ooh shiny lid" and it went downhill from there.



I own many computers, but they should probably be taken into protective custody after this.
Click to expand...

Oh my god, I'm laughing way too much at this xD.

<3<3<3
 
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