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[~Kinggi~]

\Not too long ago i was really excited to get a new beefed up gaming machine, but every time that happens i always get brought back down to reality as to how not worth it it is to spend the money for just a handful of games since everything is shifting to consoles.

 

[Ikuu]

..since everything is shifting to consoles.

Some of us want to game in actual HD resolutions, and at something better than 30FPS.

 

[~Kinggi~]

Some of us want to game in actual HD resolutions, and at something better than 30FPS.

1280*720 and 1920*1080 are HD resolutions.

 

[Spy]

\Not too long ago i was really excited to get a new beefed up gaming machine, but every time that happens i always get brought back down to reality as to how not worth it it is to spend the money for just a handful of games since everything is shifting to consoles.

I disagree. Out of all the Xbox 360 games rated 9+ on IGN look how many are also on the PC. I think we'll be eventually seeing Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC.

 

[godhandiscen]

1280*720 and 1920*1080 are HD resolutions.

Some of us want our hardware to render at HD resolutions, not to scale to HD resolutions.

 

[McLovin]

Quick question. Is there a program that looks at your computer and tells you whats keeping it back? Like you have a good graphics card but your processor sucks.. or you don't have enough ram.
If a program like this doesn't exist here are my specs... maybe one of you could help me out.
Q6600 2.40ghz quad core
3gb of ram(stock ram... would upgrading to gaming ram help much?)
Stock mother board(not sure what it is.. whatever hp uses on their m9040n PCs)
8800gts os 614mb of ram(I know the gts one isn't as good as gt or gtx but I cant afford an new card)
any help would be much appreciated.
edit- Also is mixing ram with different clock speeds a bad idea?

 

[brain_stew]

1280*720 and 1920*1080 are HD resolutions.

Indeed they are, but many of the big hitters can't even manage 720p, and there's literally a handful at most, of retail native 1080p games. Either way, for those using a "720p" LCD 1360x768 1:1, looks a whole world better than 720p, and much, much better than 600p, and the like, particularly if its scaled twice (as it would be for PS3 users) . 1:1 mapping content gives a very measurable rise in IQ, as does AA and AF which are noticeable in their absent on most console games.

 

[Broseybrose]

Quick question. Is there a program that looks at your computer and tells you whats keeping it back? Like you have a good graphics card but your processor sucks.. or you don't have enough ram.
If a program like this doesn't exist here are my specs... maybe one of you could help me out.
Q6600 2.40ghz quad core
3gb of ram(stock ram... would upgrading to gaming ram help much?)
Stock mother board(not sure what it is.. whatever hp uses on their m9040n PCs)
8800gts os 614mb of ram(I know the gts one isn't as good as gt or gtx but I cant afford an new card)
any help would be much appreciated.
edit- Also is mixing ram with different clock speeds a bad idea?

thats the windows vista experience index you're describing. it goes as high as 5.9. other than that i dont know.

if you mix ram of different speeds your BIOS should default to run at the lowest one's speed.

get an 8800GT. no doubt best bang for buck this gen and cheaper than your 640MB.

 

[Outdoor Miner]

I have a CPU question.

I'm planning on grabbing this for my budget box

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53 GHz

but have heard that the next chip overclocks like a monster, and can usually hit 3 GHz on the stock cooling

Intel Pentium E2180 Allendale 2.0 GHz

So my question is are the Wolfdale chips an order of magnitude better than the Allendale ones? Does the L2 cache (3MB>>>1MB) make for a big performance boost in gaming apps? If not, then the 70 bucks I'd save I can put towards upping my planned RAM from 2 gigs to 4.

 

[Cheeto]

\Not too long ago i was really excited to get a new beefed up gaming machine, but every time that happens i always get brought back down to reality as to how not worth it it is to spend the money for just a handful of games since everything is shifting to consoles.

 

[Luigison]

thats the windows vista experience index you're describing. it goes as high as 5.9. other than that i dont know.

if you mix ram of different speeds your BIOS should default to run at the lowest one's speed.

get an 8800GT. no doubt best bang for buck this gen and cheaper than your 640MB.

Knowing that makes me fell a lot better. I was thinking it was out of 10 and was wondering why my brand new quad was only getting 5.9.

 

[aznpxdd]

I'm back again and want you to tell me what you think of this final (really) build.

The only upgrade I'd do in the future would be removing the E8400 for the E8600 then build my little brother a computer with the E8400.

Nice, so you decided to go with a Lian Li, you won't be disappointed. Once you go with Lian Li, you can't ever go another brand.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

"Quick question. Is there a program that looks at your computer and tells you whats keeping it back? Like you have a good graphics card but your processor sucks.. or you don't have enough ram.
If a program like this doesn't exist here are my specs... maybe one of you could help me out.
Q6600 2.40ghz quad core
3gb of ram(stock ram... would upgrading to gaming ram help much?)
Stock mother board(not sure what it is.. whatever hp uses on their m9040n PCs)
8800gts os 614mb of ram(I know the gts one isn't as good as gt or gtx but I cant afford an new card)
any help would be much appreciated.
edit- Also is mixing ram with different clock speeds a bad idea?"


There's the windows assessment test for vista like people said but if you're looking for a specific game http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest is a pretty cool site. It checks your hardware and then choose a game (has almost all currently big titles) from the drop down menu and it will tell you if you can run minimum or recommended and where you fail. If you have an off brand thing it may throw it off so double check that first. Like for my laptop the x200m video card wasn't considered a gaming card so even though it passed the criteria under video card (shaders, mb of card, etc.) it would still fail since it wasn't a 6 or 7 series or the ati equivalent at the time but I new it would run because the specs underneath passed. Hope that helps.

 

[bathala]

finally got my desktop and now time to get a graphic card. I didn't know u have to buy a PSU

my stock is 300 max so if i want 8800 GT card need at least 500w PSU and my budget is below $90

thinking of getting this Corsair PSU.

 

[Hajaz]

no offence, but its pretty stupid to buy a new gpu now. both nvidea and ATI are about to launch new series of cards this month.
According to OBR@Xtremesystems, 4850 in Crossfire offer a better gaming experience than GTX280. that means that a 300$ crossfire setup will run circles around the current top cards easily

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3047486&postcount=1390

 

[VictimOfGrief]

no offence, but its pretty stupid to buy a new gpu now. both nvidea and ATI are about to launch new series of cards this month.
According to OBR@Xtremesystems, 4850 in Crossfire offer a better gaming experience than GTX280. that means that a 300$ crossfire setup will run circles around the current top cards easily

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3047486&postcount=1390

I'm sorry but when someone starts a sentence like this :

This score in Crysis are authentical....

I can't help but call Bullshit.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

"no offence, but its pretty stupid to buy a new gpu now. both nvidea and ATI are about to launch new series of cards this month.
According to OBR@Xtremesystems, 4850 in Crossfire offer a better gaming experience than GTX280. that means that a 300$ crossfire setup will run circles around the current top cards easily

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=1390"


No offense, but he probably doesn't have a crossfire motherboard so things like that are completely irrelevant to him. If he needs a card though he probably doesn't want to wait too.

 

[zoku88]

has nvidia made new graphic cards for laptops? :/

Kind of, but you don't really want NV notebook cards :-/ I find them generally inferior to their ATI versions (until you get to high end where there are no ATI versions..)

 

[aznpxdd]

finally got my desktop and now time to get a graphic card. I didn't know u have to buy a PSU

my stock is 300 max so if i want 8800 GT card need at least 500w PSU and my budget is below $90

thinking of getting this Corsair PSU.

If you are going to buy a Corsair PSU, go with the HX series, they are made by Seasonic.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

Reports coming out that the Nehalem chipset is going to be delayed.
Story over @ X-bit : here

 

[eznark]

Reports coming out that the Nehalem chipset is going to be delayed.
Story over @ X-bit : here

I'm not terribly surprised, the maxpc podcast guys didn't seem as enthused this week as they did a couple months ago.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

While I'm not downplaying Intel's newest chip (thanks to the benchmarks out there), while it would be nice to have a 4 logic core chip w/ Hyper-Threading for "8" cores, the software really needs to get it's shit in gear and I hope Windows is coded for a multi-core environment and I hope the 64bit advancements in Vista help make Windows 7 64-bit more well rounded.

Either way though, it's a neat thing and if you're getting a new PC, then go for the Nehelam, but for people like me.... I don't see the need for upgrading my Quad-Core for at least 4 years or so. GPU--- sure, but CPU? not so much.

 

[Kosma]

\Not too long ago i was really excited to get a new beefed up gaming machine, but every time that happens i always get brought back down to reality as to how not worth it it is to spend the money for just a handful of games since everything is shifting to consoles.

Simply not true, but if YOU feel that way well nothing that is forcing you. PC gaming is becoming very mature now with things like MMO's that wont be big on consoles for the forseeable future.

 

[bathala]

"no offence, but its pretty stupid to buy a new gpu now. both nvidea and ATI are about to launch new series of cards this month.
According to OBR@Xtremesystems, 4850 in Crossfire offer a better gaming experience than GTX280. that means that a 300$ crossfire setup will run circles around the current top cards easily

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=1390"


No offense, but he probably doesn't have a crossfire motherboard so things like that are completely irrelevant to him. If he needs a card though he probably doesn't want to wait too.

exactly, I'm not a hardcore PC gamer. I'm not going to spend over $200 on a graphics card. I have the consoles for main gaming

PS: also nice screen name. my favorite Bleach character

If you are going to buy a Corsair PSU, go with the HX series, they are made by Seasonic.

looking at newegg. the only 500w they have is over $100 my budget is below $90

 

[godhandiscen]

While I'm not downplaying Intel's newest chip (thanks to the benchmarks out there), while it would be nice to have a 4 logic core chip w/ Hyper-Threading for "8" cores, the software really needs to get it's shit in gear and I hope Windows is coded for a multi-core environment and I hope the 64bit advancements in Vista help make Windows 7 64-bit more well rounded.

Either way though, it's a neat thing and if you're getting a new PC, then go for the Nehelam, but for people like me.... I don't see the need for upgrading my Quad-Core for at least 4 years or so. GPU--- sure, but CPU? not so much.

This is true. I will upgrade my Quad Core to a 3.0GHz Quad that AMD will release by the end of the year, but nothing more than that. More than 4 cores is overkill.

I'm sorry but when someone starts a sentence like this :
I can't help but call Bullshit.

He already proved he has the cards with pictures. Look at the thread. Right now, it may be because of drivers, but you cannot call bullshit on him. He has no NDA signed because he got the cards early from an ATI partner to write about them for the magazine he works for. Right now he just got called by AMD, and he wont post benches because he is trying to not generate a conflict between his magazine and AMD, but his benches will show up in the magazine he works for, and in 2 weeks when the NDA's are lifted.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

"looking at newegg. the only 500w they have is over $100 my budget is below $90"


As long as you don't have massive loads of stuff on your computer you should be fine with a good 350-400 watt power supply if you just want a 8800GT IIRC.

 

[DarkAngelYuna]

"looking at newegg. the only 500w they have is over $100 my budget is below $90"


As long as you don't have massive loads of stuff on your computer you should be fine with a good 350-400 watt power supply if you just want a 8800GT IIRC.

You don't need a 500w for a 8800gt. I've been using a 8800gt with a 420w psu just fine for a long time now. Everything is working great.

 

[momolicious]

I tried Oblivion on max settings 1440x900 and its definately not 60FPS. Is this normal for my configuration? I thought an older game like this would run at least 60fps

8800GT 512mb
athlon x2 dual core 3800+
2g ram

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

ok, this is my final build... bear in mind that i'm not upgrading or anything... i need a new PC period. my laptop just can't cut it anymore...

NZXT Zero Aluminum Full Tower 420W Case
PowerUp GEN-6802 800 Watts Power Supply
E8400 CPU @ 3.0GHz 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache 64-bit
EVGA nForce 780i SLI Mainboard FSB1333
4GB PC6400 DDR2/800 RAM (corsair)
(2X)NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB EVGA
500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

i think that'll do for now... price is about 1600 or so...

 

[bathala]

You don't need a 500w for a 8800gt. I've been using a 8800gt with a 420w psu just fine for a long time now. Everything is working great.

my PSU (stock) is 300w is that okay.

i did the whole newegg power calculator and with my config it showed 464w (if i added 8800gt)

 

[DarkAngelYuna]

my PSU (stock) is 300w is that okay.

i did the whole newegg power calculator and with my config it showed 464w (if i added 8800gt)

300 is way too weak for a 8800gt.

 

[SteveO409]

Hey guys, I found a decent deal on a computer and was wondering how it would run games like Age of Conan and other current games.

Vostro 400, Intel Core2 Duo CPU E8300
2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz, Dual Channel DT (Could take 2 gigs of RAM from my old PC)
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series

 

[bathala]

300 is way too weak for a 8800gt.

ok thanks I thought I could get away not buy a Power supply

 

[Spy]

Well I just ordered the PC I listed above GAF. I'll let everyone know how it is when I build it.

 

[godhandiscen]

Well I just ordered the PC I listed above GAF. I'll let everyone know how it is when I build it.

Not to be an asshole, but the 4850 is being released this week, and it costs less than the 9800GTX and offers way better performance. About 20%. The benchmarks just got released today. If by any chance you can still chance your build do it.

Hey guys, I found a decent deal on a computer and was wondering how it would run games like Age of Conan and other current games.

Vostro 400, Intel Core2 Duo CPU E8300
2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz, Dual Channel DT (Could take 2 gigs of RAM from my old PC)
ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series

No, wait because this week the 4850 is being released at $200 and it thrumps any current videocard.


At $350

At $200

Both released this week. Full abailability in a week or two. Even if AMD benchmarks are too optimistic, you know they will achieve this in the long run with driver revisions.

 

[Spy]

Not to be an asshole, but the 4850 is being released this week, and it costs less than the 9800GTX and offers way better performance. About 20%. The benchmarks just got released today. If by any chance you can still chance your build do it.

No, wait because this week the 4850 is being released at $200 and it thrumps any current videocard.

Both released this week. Full abailability in a week or two. Even if AMD benchmarks are too optimistic, you know they will achieve this in the long run with driver revisions.

You know, maybe something is telling me to get the ATI Radeon HD 4870. I didn't order the graphics card yet because I was trying to find a website selling the EVGA 9800 GTX SSC but they're all backordered. I have never had an ATI card.

 

[godhandiscen]

You know, maybe something is telling me to get the ATI Radeon HD 4870. I didn't order the graphics card yet because I was trying to find a website selling the EVGA 9800 GTX SSC but they're all backordered. I have never had an ATI card.

Just get the 4870 if you can. Look for compatibility with your motherboard though in case you want to crossfire later.

 

[Blackface]

Still waiting for retailers to put up prices.

the Q9450 was suppose to be $260 retail. Intel also suggests it retails for that price (according to Tank guys).

I wouldn't be surprised if the 4870 was closer to $500.

 

[calder]

Just ordered my new computer last night, can't wait to start playing PC games again (besides WoW) for real.

Core2 Q6600 Quad-Core
3GB DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz
20 inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB

It'll be such an upgrade on my 6 year old POS, stupid 2.4ghz radeon 9550 having 1gig of ram embarrassment. In some ways I'm more excited to be rid of the ginormous ancient and flat out ugly 17" CRT than anything.

My god I can't wait to play COH. I bought the game months ago on Steam but other than the tutorials it was literally unplayable on this computer. I'll finally get to see the first mission!

 

[godhandiscen]

Still waiting for retailers to put up prices.

the Q9450 was suppose to be $260 retail. Intel also suggests it retails for that price (according to Tank guys).

I wouldn't be surprised if the 4870 was closer to $500.

Then the 4870X2 will be $1000? Thats just ridiculous. Even if AMD went batshit insane and started charging more for its cards it would be $400 at most. The chip costs already were released and AMD/ATI are making a lot of money by selling them at $350. AMD also wants to force Nvidia to hurt itself. Nvidia will have to lower its prices if the benchmarks are true, and the GTX280 which was initially expected to be at $600+ dollars is now expected to sell at a loss according to the people that have benched the 4850 and the GTX280 and say that 2x4850 in CX mode perform better.

 

[JRPereira]

Can someone link me to the cheapest, best (I'm hearing things like the 2-slot cooler 8800GTs are pretty loud and inefficient, and the 1-slot ones are better) 8800GT available atm? Preferably newegg or mwave (I'd rather mwave, considering the amount of DOA's newegg keeps shipping me).

 

[godhandiscen]

Can someone link me to the cheapest, best (I'm hearing things like the 2-slot cooler 8800GTs are pretty loud and inefficient, and the 1-slot ones are better) 8800GT available atm? Preferably newegg or mwave (I'd rather mwave, considering the amount of DOA's newegg keeps shipping me).

Wait a week, the 8800 will go down in price.

 

[tribal24]

Can someone link me to the cheapest, best (I'm hearing things like the 2-slot cooler 8800GTs are pretty loud and inefficient, and the 1-slot ones are better) 8800GT available atm? Preferably newegg or mwave (I'd rather mwave, considering the amount of DOA's newegg keeps shipping me).

i brought a 8800 gt dual slot and that shit just wouldnt fit now i think im waiting the week to buy a new graphic card

 

[zoku88]

Then the 4870X2 will be $1000? Thats just ridiculous. Even if AMD went batshit insane and started charging more for its cards it would be $400 at most. The chip costs already were released and AMD/ATI are making a lot of money by selling them at $350. AMD also wants to force Nvidia to hurt itself. Nvidia will have to lower its prices if the benchmarks are true, and the GTX280 which was initially expected to be at $600+ dollars is now expected to sell at a loss according to the people that have benched the 4850 and the GTX280 and say that 2x4850 in CX mode perform better.

AMD wouldn't be responsible for it, the retailers would. Retailers love to take advantage of demand.

 

[Stuggernaut]

I have been sitting on this build since Christmas...

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=7382226

I always worry about getting the right MD/GPU/CPU combo

 

[JRPereira]

Wait a week, the 8800 will go down in price.

Works for me. I'm a bit worried about the performance increase. Generally I've heard that I can get 2-4x the performance of my 7800gtx, however I'm mostly buying the card for Savage 2 (despite not looking as good, it seems to have crysis-like requirements if you crank the details up) and I'm not sure how well the game will take advantage of it.

My specs:

evga 7800gtx ko (256mb)
asus m2n32sli deluxe
amd64x2 4600
2gb mwave value ram
windows xp pro

 

[godhandiscen]

Works for me. I'm a bit worried about the performance increase. Generally I've heard that I can get 2-4x the performance of my 7800gtx, however I'm mostly buying the card for Savage 2 (despite not looking as good, it seems to have crysis-like requirements if you crank the details up) and I'm not sure how well the game will take advantage of it.

My specs:

evga 7800gtx ko (256mb)
asus m2n32sli deluxe
amd64x2 4600
2gb mwave value ram
windows xp pro

What is your budget? If the benches hold true, you could even be able to buy 2x8800s.

AMD wouldn't be responsible for it, the retailers would. Retailers love to take advantage of demand.

I would be willing to wait. How long did it take until people could get a 8800 at the right price? I remember that card being back ordered forever.

 

[JRPereira]

I'm not going SLI. There's a major bug in savage 2 which screws performance with SLI and one 8800GT should be able to get me locked at 60fps with vsync on and the details turned as high as they go.

My Budget is preferably closer to $150 and no higher than $200 (including shipping if that can be figured out).

 

[godhandiscen]

I'm not going SLI. There's a major bug in savage 2 which screws performance with SLI and one 8800GT should be able to get me locked at 60fps with vsync on and the details turned as high as they go.

My Budget is preferably closer to $150 and no higher than $200 (including shipping if that can be figured out).

Then wait, I would say. Right now newegg has good prices on the 8800 just type "8800" in the search, however, they could get better.

 

[dude]

Hey guys, a couple of questions:
My budget for my new gaming PC just got a little higher, so I need help choosing some stuff:
1. right now I'm thinking about the E8400 (3.0 dual core) for a processor, should I stay with that or go for a quad? which one should I get?

2. I was going to go with a GeForce 8800GT (like everyone else I guess) but since my budget got a little higher I'm thinking of getting a better one, what should I look at?