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[SRG01]

No the 9600GT works. Its nothing to do with PCI-E 2.0 since its backwards compatible. As I said, its just that its incompatible with VIA chipsets because Nvidia fucked up during testing and forgot to make the chips work on VIA motherboards. Its all been fixed with the G94 though.

... Why would anyone buy anything with a VIA chipset? :lol

 

[Kadey]

My older setup had crucial memory (until I blew it up). Never had any problems.

 

[GHG]

... Why would anyone buy anything with a VIA chipset? :lol

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10970768&postcount=1446

Plus I managed to sell the moniter that came with it for £80. So it cost me a total of um... £170.

At that price I couldn't give a fuck about the whole VIA chipset thing. Considering the only thing its preventing me from going is owning just one line of GFX cards. Woopie do. When all is said and done I'll have a crysis capable rig that cost me less than £300. I challenge anyone to do or find better.

 

[IronicallyTwisted]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=10970768&postcount=1446

Plus I managed to sell the moniter that came with it for £80. So it cost me a total of um... £170.

At that price I couldn't give a fuck about the whole VIA chipset thing. Considering the only thing its preventing me from going is owning just one line of GFX cards. Woopie do. When all is said and done I'll have a crysis capable rig that cost me less than £300. I challenge anyone to do or find better.

An 8800GT would just be bottlenecked by the CPU anyway. Sell the 8600GT for like 30 bucks and you are set!

 

[momolicious]

An 8800GT would just be bottlenecked by the CPU anyway. Sell the 8600GT for like 30 bucks and you are set!

8800GT bottlenecked by a athlon dual core 6000+?

 

[GHG]

8800GT bottlenecked by a athlon dual core 6000+?

Tell me about it...

 

[IronicallyTwisted]

8800GT bottlenecked by a athlon dual core 6000+?

I'd say so. It has limited memory and quite a number of games this generation are CPU bound. Crysis, for example, switches its bottleneck to the CPU as you go from High to Very High. There are going to be exceptions with games that do very little with the CPU (like the Witcher) but overall an Athlon X2 6000 with an 8800GT isn't what i'd call a balanced system.

 

[GHG]

I'd say so. It has limited memory and quite a number of games this generation are CPU bound. Crysis, for example, switches its bottleneck to the CPU as you go from High to Very High. There are going to be exceptions with games that do very little with the CPU (like the Witcher) but overall an Athlon X2 6000 with an 8800GT isn't what i'd call a balanced system.

Seriously... a 6000+x2 will be good for at least another couple of years. Cysis can only ever use 2 cores maximum anyway. The 1st proper game that will really push dual core CPU's will be Alan Wake. But in general, a 6000+ x2 is not a bottleneck. If your saying thats a bottleneck then you're saying almost every CPU out there is a bottleneck apart from the quads (which is infact the case, but it doesn't matter now because nobody is coding for the highest setups possible).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oLexygS8fw

Inbalanced?

Then if you factor in custom configs for crysis and your statement further becomes null and void.

 

[Broseybrose]

I'd say so. It has limited memory and quite a number of games this generation are CPU bound. Crysis, for example, switches its bottleneck to the CPU as you go from High to Very High. There are going to be exceptions with games that do very little with the CPU (like the Witcher) but overall an Athlon X2 6000 with an 8800GT isn't what i'd call a balanced system.

dude, thats a fine system. sure more cpu power the better, obviously, but i think calling that system unbalanced makes you sound a little unbalanced. ive got an X2 5000+ and an 8800GTX and i can game @1920x1200, 16xAF/4xAA all day.

 

[IronicallyTwisted]

Seriously... a 6000+x2 will be good for at least another couple of years. Cysis can only ever use 2 cores maximum anyway. The 1st proper game that will really push dual core CPU's will be Alan Wake. But in general, a 6000+ x2 is not a bottleneck. If your saying thats a bottleneck then you're saying almost every CPU out there is a bottleneck apart from the quads (which is infact the case, but it doesn't matter now because nobody is coding for the highest setups possible).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oLexygS8fw

Inbalanced?

Then if you factor in custom configs for crysis and your statement further becomes null and void.

Crysis uses 4 cores. I don't know where this rumour began but every core gets a workout when I am playing Crysis. I got a massive performance boost when I took my Q6600 from 2.4 to 3.7. All I said originally was that an 8800GT and an X2 6000 isn't a balanced system. For someone with that processor the most I would recommend getting is a 9600/3870/3850.

dude, thats a fine system. sure more cpu power the better, obviously, but i think calling that system unbalanced makes you sound a little unbalanced. ive got an X2 5000+ and an 8800GTX and i can game @1920x1200, 16xAF/4xAA all day.

Sure you can :lol

At that resolution on high any anti aliasing absolutely destroys any non multi GPU card on the market. I should know, i've tried outputting to my 1080p and our graphics cards are almost identical.

 

[zoku88]

You know, you guys could be talking about different games....

Just a thought...

 

[IronicallyTwisted]

You know, you guys could be talking about different games....

Just a thought...

Crysis or bust. Thats all us PC gamers ever play. And even then we don't even play it really, we just measure frame rates and get hard ons proportional to how long we can stay over 30FPS. I'm still on the second level!

 

[zoku88]

Crysis or bust. Thats all us PC gamers ever play. And even then we don't even play it really, we just measure frame rates and get hard ons proportional to how long we can stay over 30FPS. I'm still on the second level!

T_T

Spoiler

I don't even have Crysis T_T

 

[godhandiscen]

Crysis uses 4 cores. I don't know where this rumour began but every core gets a workout when I am playing Crysis. I got a massive performance boost when I took my Q6600 from 2.4 to 3.7. All I said originally was that an 8800GT and an X2 6000 isn't a balanced system. For someone with that processor the most I would recommend getting is a 9600/3870/3850.



Sure you can :lol

At that resolution on high any anti aliasing absolutely destroys any non multi GPU card on the market. I should know, i've tried outputting to my 1080p and our graphics cards are almost identical.

Crysis never goes to 4 threads. The fact you got a boost doesn't prove Crysis is optimized for 4 cores. The same thing could happen with a dual core with such a huge frequency overclock.
Actually, you can try disabling 2 cores in your bios and see how little of a difference it will make as long as your OS is not running any background process.

 

[IronicallyTwisted]

Crysis never goes to 4 threads. The fact you got a boost doesn't prove Crysis is optimized for 4 cores. The same thing could happen with a dual core with such a huge frequency overclock.

Are you running the latest version? I can see activity firing on all my cores simultaneously. Unless the OS is getting a workout at the same time and is being threaded on the two remaining cores I don't see how Crysis doesn't use 4 cores. My overclocking remarks were regarding CPU's being bottlenecks, obviously overclocking my CPU over 50% doesn't show anything about the nature of dual/quad cores.

 

[GHG]

Crysis uses 4 cores. I don't know where this rumour began but every core gets a workout when I am playing Crysis. I got a massive performance boost when I took my Q6600 from 2.4 to 3.7. All I said originally was that an 8800GT and an X2 6000 isn't a balanced system. For someone with that processor the most I would recommend getting is a 9600/3870/3850.



Sure you can :lol

At that resolution on high any anti aliasing absolutely destroys any non multi GPU card on the market. I should know, i've tried outputting to my 1080p and our graphics cards are almost identical.

What you mean to say is the stsyem is inbalanced for crysis (even so, its ever so slightly). Considering the vast majority of PC games are GPU intesive rather than CPU intensive, a system where the GPU is more high end comparative to the CPU is not inbalanced, its actually banaced for the market.

Oh, and Crysis only uses 2 cores AFAIK. The OS tasks are shifted over to your other cores during gameplay.

 

[Broseybrose]

Crysis or bust. Thats all us PC gamers ever play. And even then we don't even play it really, we just measure frame rates and get hard ons proportional to how long we can stay over 30FPS. I'm still on the second level!

ive never bought crysis. but i played the demo and ill admit i couldnt use AA at that res. but every other game on the market, yes. literally.

"crysis or bust. thats all us pc gamers ever play." are you trying to make yourself look like an ass? i feel bad about the 15 other better games that came out in 07... and 06... and so on.

 

[IronicallyTwisted]

What you mean to say is the stsyem is inbalanced for crysis (even so, its ever so slightly). Considering the vast majority of PC games are GPU intesive rather than CPU intensive, a system where the GPU is more high end comparative to the CPU is not inbalanced, its actually banaced for the market.

Maybe. Depends on the game I suppose. Supreme Commander is very taxing on the CPU. I always like my CPU to be the most powerful component in my system at any given time, because it has applications outside of gaming. GPU's are also much more disposable and the market is very radical, whereas CPU's seem to progress pretty predictably.

 

[godhandiscen]

Are you running the latest version? I can see activity firing on all my cores simultaneously. Unless the OS is getting a workout at the same time and is being threaded on the two remaining cores I don't see how Crysis doesn't use 4 cores. My overclocking remarks were regarding CPU's being bottlenecks, obviously overclocking my CPU over 50% doesn't show anything about the nature of dual/quad cores.

Of course you will see activity in your 4 cores, but thats just your OS running background processes. As I said, a lot of people have realized that disabling 2 cores in the Bios will not render any performance hit to Crysis as long as you dont have any background process. Obviously it is annoying to make sure nothing is running on background and thats where the Quad core gives you a benefit, but as I said, its very possible. For Crysis, I would take 2 cores at 3.0+ rather than 4 cores at 2.5~2.8. If you can OC your Quad past 3.0 then thats great.

 

[zoku88]

ive never bought crysis. but i played the demo and ill admit i couldnt use AA at that res. but every other game on the market, yes. literally.

"crysis or bust. thats all us pc gamers ever play." are you trying to make yourself look like an ass? i feel bad about the 15 other better games that came out in 07... and 06... and so on.

Judging by the rest of the post, I'm going to think that he was joking..

 

[Broseybrose]

i hope so.

 

[IronicallyTwisted]

Of course you will see activity in your 4 cores, but thats just your OS running background processes. As I said, a lot of people have realized that disabling 2 cores in the Bios will not render any performance hit to Crysis as long as you dont have any background process. Obviously it is annoying to make sure nothing is running on background and thats where the Quad core gives you a benefit, but as I said, its very possible. For Crysis, I would take 2 cores at 3.0+ rather than 4 cores at 2.5~2.8. If you can OC your Quad past 3.0 then thats great.

The activity isn't what Vista usually looks like. Considering all the statements by Crytek I find it pretty unbelievable that the game never uses more than two cores. Now, if you are saying there is no performance increase, I could go either way. Saying its runs as well as long as there are no applications in the background isn't exactly an even handed comparison. I wouldn't use a CPU today that wasn't over 3ghz, but that isn't a compromise any

Spoiler

intel

quad core owner should have to make with a little extra effort.

 

[mr stroke]

dude, thats a fine system. sure more cpu power the better, obviously, but i think calling that system unbalanced makes you sound a little unbalanced. ive got an X2 5000+ and an 8800GTX and i can game @1920x1200, 16xAF/4xAA all day.

+1

I can't imagine any X2 proc being a major bottleneck for anything out right now? A 6000+ with a proper card should be able to tear through anything right now. Save Crysis I can run anything fully maxed on a X2 6400+. I am no hardware expert, but everything I have read says games won't be fully taking on quad cores for 1-2 more years? Am I wrong on this??

 

[commissar]

So what's the overall verdict on soundcards these days?

I heard some weird things about them and Vista, and with dual and quad processors, is onboard sound fine for surround? Is it even worth getting a soundcard these days?

TIA

 

[GHG]

So what's the overall verdict on soundcards these days?

I heard some weird things about them and Vista, and with dual and quad processors, is onboard sound fine for surround? Is it even worth getting a soundcard these days?

TIA

I think the general concensus is don't bother with them, onboard is enough unless you're an audiophile.

As for issues with them on Vista, I can only see it being a problem with vista 64 where there are still some outstanding driver problems. I had a problem with my onboard sound drivers on Vista 64 where I was only getting sound out of one speaker on a 2.1 system. Hence I'm now back on XP.

 

[aznpxdd]

Fellow Gaffers, Frys.com has the CoolerMaster Stacker 830 for $99.99 + shipping (its $260 on the Egg).

http://frys.com/product/4944681

 

[momolicious]

fellow gaffers, check out http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest if you havent already. Its awesome, tells you if your computer is up for any PC game out right now.

 

[godhandiscen]

+1

I can't imagine any X2 proc being a major bottleneck for anything out right now? A 6000+ with a proper card should be able to tear through anything right now. Save Crysis I can run anything fully maxed on a X2 6400+. I am no hardware expert, but everything I have read says games won't be fully taking on quad cores for 1-2 more years? Am I wrong on this??

How much RAM do you have? I was able to solve my Crysis problems and I have a Phenom 9800 which isnt as gaming friendly as your processor. We have the same video card too, so what could be the difference?

 

[mr stroke]

How much RAM do you have? I was able to solve my Crysis problems and I have a Phenom 9800 which isnt as gaming friendly as your processor. We have the same video card too, so what could be the difference?

4 gigs

and how did you solve your Crysis issues?

 

[godhandiscen]

4 gigs

and how did you solve your Crysis issues?

I got 4 extra gigs of memory ($120 more, now 8gigs total), also, Iupdated to Catalyst 8.4 and it just started running way way better. Also, I have the card clocked at 845/931 with ATI Overdrive. Make sure you clock both cards at that setting, for a long time I didnt realize I was just OC'ing one of the cards.

Running everything on High/Dx10.

 

[aznpxdd]

Its probably the drivers, adding 4 more gigs of ram shouldn't make a difference when it comes to Crysis (or gaming in general).

 

[TheHeretic]

So what's the overall verdict on soundcards these days?

I heard some weird things about them and Vista, and with dual and quad processors, is onboard sound fine for surround? Is it even worth getting a soundcard these days?

TIA

A quality motherboard will come with audio processing that will be good enough for most people, and more importantly most speakers. If you are buying some serious audio equipment like the Harman Kardon Soundsticks II you will want a dedicated sound card though.

 

[dejan]

Great choice. I would've gotten one of those if I had a larger budget. Please tell some impressions once you start to use it.

Well, what can I say ... it's huge

Spoiler

and silent to boot

Installation was pretty straight forward (e8400 + MSI NEO2 board).

 

[TheHeretic]

Fellow Gaffers, Frys.com has the CoolerMaster Stacker 830 for $99.99 + shipping (its $260 on the Egg).

http://frys.com/product/4944681

Thats one of the best mid range cases out there guys, don't let the discounted price fool you.

 

[commissar]

A quality motherboard will come with audio processing that will be good enough for most people, and more importantly most speakers. If you are buying some serious audio equipment like the Harman Kardon Soundsticks II you will want a dedicated sound card though.

I was wanting to use them with speakers but primarily through some headphones.
Come to think of it, I doubt onboard would support dolby headphone so I think I'll have to buy a soundcard after all.
Cheers for the help :]

 

[TheHeretic]

I was wanting to use them with speakers but primarily through some headphones.
Come to think of it, I doubt onboard would support dolby headphone so I think I'll have to buy a soundcard after all.
Cheers for the help :]

Yeah if you want Dolby headphone its time to sound card up!

 

[commissar]

So I guess the only way to go these days is still the Creative cards?
I'd be playing games and listening to music pretty much.


Awesome, I'll look into them. Thanks heaps
vvvv

 

[TheHeretic]

So I guess the only way to go these days is still the Creative cards?
I'd be playing games and listening to music pretty much.

Yeah Creative is pretty much the sound card king. I think they use their own form of surround emulation though, not Dolby Headphone.

 

[Vyse The Legend]

This is the rig I will be building in about 2 weeks. Please let me know your thoughts.

Intel Core 2 Quad-core Processor Q9450 at 2.66ghz, 1333MHz FSB, 12M Cache
Corsair CMPSU-620GX X Series nVidia-SLI Certified 620Watt
nForce 750i SLI Intel
4GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500CSD X 2 DDR2 1066MHz Memory
1 TB S-ATA II 7200 RPM

As far as graphics cards go, I’m unsure between:
GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB DDR3 @650MHz
Or
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Xtreme Plus Edition @700MHz
(I am aware I got a SLi board but only one card; it’s an investment for the future)

Extremely newbie question: With this current rig in mind, do I go with a 32-bit Vista or 64-bit one? Someone told me on another board that the ram (I think, it might have been another part) would have issues with 64-bit? Any truth to this?

 

[TheHeretic]

This is the rig I will be building in about 2 weeks. Please let me know your thoughts.

Intel Core 2 Quad-core Processor Q9450 at 2.66ghz, 1333MHz FSB, 12M Cache
Corsair CMPSU-620GX X Series nVidia-SLI Certified 620Watt
nForce 750i SLI Intel
4GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500CSD X 2 DDR2 1066MHz Memory
1 TB S-ATA II 7200 RPM

As far as graphics cards go, I’m unsure between:
GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB DDR3 @650MHz
Or
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Xtreme Plus Edition @700MHz
(I am aware I got a SLi board but only one card; it’s an investment for the future)

Extremely newbie question: With this current rig in mind, do I go with a 32-bit Vista or 64-bit one? Someone told me on another board that the ram (I think, it might have been another part) would have issues with 64-bit? Any truth to this?

Great build, really. Its a high end system so i'd get the 8800 GTS 512. You definitely need to get Vista 64 because Vista 32 can't read all your ram and can't take full advantage of your CPU.

If you are looking for even more performance you could put your OS and Game Installs in RAID 0 and put your media on a separate hard drive (thats what I do, anyway). But i'm the sort of maniac that puts raptor drives in raid and I don't know your budget.

 

[bee]

So I guess the only way to go these days is still the Creative cards?
I'd be playing games and listening to music pretty much.


Awesome, I'll look into them. Thanks heaps
vvvv

screw creative, asus xonar dx or d2x blows the x-fi away, better sound quality, non shit drivers and no crackling, screeching bugs in vista and the low profile dx version is cheap aswell

 

[NintendosBooger]

Has anyone ordered from http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ to vouch for the quality of service and prices? I'm thinking about picking up my new PC from there, but I know close to squat about these people...

 

[momolicious]

I installled crucial 2GB DDR2 PC6400 Dual Memory , and it says the ram is single channel, is dual channel better? and is this memory supposed to be dual channel or no?

 

[brain_stew]

I installled crucial 2GB DDR2 PC6400 Dual Memory , and it says the ram is single channel, is dual channel better? and is this memory supposed to be dual channel or no?

Are you running it in the correct slots? Your motherboard manual will tell you which slots to use to enable dual channel mode. Any memory will run in dual channel mode, so long as its the same size and speed, and yes, you absolutely want to be running in dual channel mode.

 

[Epix]

Looking for some good 5.1 headphones. Any ideas?

 

[Vormund]

Ok ordered my new system.

Q9300 (I really wanted a Q9450 but I gave up searching for one)
Asus Striker II Formula motherboard
4GB Corsair Ram
XFX 9800GTX XXX 740mhz 2X for SLI
Samsung 750GB HDD
4 Noctua fans
Zalman 1000W Modular PSU
and chucked into a Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 case. Hopefully it ends up being quiet.

 

[Kosma]

You didnt' mention the price of that beast

 

[Cheeto]

You didnt' mention the price of that beast

Or the operating system ;0

 

[Kosma]

Or the operating system ;0

I think it can only be Vista? Does XP even support these CPU or am I only confused with laptop CPU's here?

 

[Cheeto]

I think it can only be Vista? Does XP even support these CPU or am I only confused with laptop CPU's here?

I've never heard about anything like that. I'd be very suprised if those CPUs were Vista-only.