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[gregor7777]

I meant is there a website or program it shows those type of charts with the new and old system benchmarked.

Without having to punch the data in manually? hmm, not sure.

 

[EviLore]

You are heavily capped due to the resolution and settings you are using. If you want to really test the difference between CPU's you have to choose the lowest graphical settings possible, at least thats how tech sites do it.

Yeah, that's irrelevant to real world performance. I tested the way I play games (except for the crysis test, which is below playable, but how I'd like to be able to play it once the DX11 cards hit).

How about real gameplay? Do you feel a huge improvement?

Haven't done any proper gaming yet, but general application performance is much higher.

 

[Diablohead]

EviLore with a top end graphics card that machine's going to have more power then Greyskul :lol

 

[BravoSuperStar]

Did u get an SSD drive for that PC, Evilore? I'm considering getting one of those cheap vertex's for win7 RC.

 

[EviLore]

Did u get an SSD drive for that PC, Evilore? I'm considering getting one of those cheap vertex's for win7 RC.

Nah, I got a 300GB Velociraptor last year, that's holding me pretty well. SSD is the future of OS drives, but I'm not confident enough in the tech yet.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Nah, I got a 300GB Velociraptor last year, that's holding me pretty well. SSD is the future of OS drives, but I'm not confident enough in the tech yet.

I just ordered a Vertex. Will let you guys know how it goes.

 

[Slavik81]

Finally! My motherboard, CPU and GPU, and DVD drive arrived from newegg...

But it looks like the box owed some loan sharks some money. It's been beaten so badly the side's ripped open and packaging peanuts are falling out. I hope it's alright.

I don't think I'll be ordering from newegg again. They have pretty good prices, and a fantastic website, but the fact that they ship from the states makes their shipping both slow and dangerous.

 

[Grayman]

I am glad that my package made it out of sacremento alive.

Spoiler

That is a "dangerous" city right?

 

[Minsc]

I just ordered a Vertex. Will let you guys know how it goes.

Awesome! I can't wait to order my Intel X-25, I am trying to resist ordering two of them and getting them in RAID 0, the speed would be unreal!

Looking forward to impressions, and if you can, after a few days, put a mechanical drive back in and see if it's like everyone says, something akin to using a virus ridden windows 95 computer 10 years past the installation date.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Awesome! I can't wait to order my Intel X-25, I am trying to resist ordering two of them and getting them in RAID 0, the speed would be unreal!

The X25-M was tempting, no doubt. Even 20 bucks cheaper than the Vertex. But the 50% less storage was just too big of an issue to ignore. I think Intel will cut prices again Q4 when they start shipping the 320, but it may be a slow ladder.

Looking forward to impressions, and if you can, after a few days, put a mechanical drive back in and see if it's like everyone says, something akin to using a virus ridden windows 95 computer 10 years past the installation date.

I'll give that some thought. :lol Seriously though I use a PC at work all of the time so I'm guessing I'll be reminded of differences often anyways. I'll be using regular hard drives for data though - my 640GB WD is going to need to be the media drive.

 

[Hazaro]

Benchmarks completed.

UT3 Tests -- all settings maximum, 1920x1080, 24 player botmatch used on all maps. One regular map used, along with the three special PhysX maps from Nvidia's site. I set the launch flag for vsync to be off, but it must've stayed on as per my normal settings, so capped at 60.

You have to edit the .ini to change it for UE3 stuff.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

I'm thinking about sli'ing two gtx260 since it doesn't crysis doesn't like 1920x1080 with sli enabled... Is there a way to change resolution for mass effect besides the initial launcher? It won't let me choose 1920x1080 for some reason...

 

[godhandiscen]

I'm thinking about sli'ing two gtx260 since it doesn't crysis doesn't like 1920x1080 with sli enabled... Is there a way to change resolution for mass effect besides the initial launcher? It won't let me choose 1920x1080 for some reason...

Change the aspect ratio. The resolutions are ordered by aspect ratio I believe.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

Change the aspect ratio. The resolutions are ordered by aspect ratio I believe.

I did, it maxes out on 1280 by x depending on the aspect ratio. Doesn't matter what aspect I choose. :/

Edit: Ok, I booted it for the 4th time and now it likes it... That's odd.

 

[Zombie James]

Some screenshots of what a $450 PC can do these days.

System Specs
Intel E5200 @ 3GHz
Buffalo Select DDR2-800 4GB
Gigabyte GA-EG31M-ES2L
Seasonic SS-350ET 350W
Sapphire HD 4770

Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Settings: All maxed out.
Resolution: 1680x1050 (resized for this post)
Anti-Aliasing: 8x
Anisotropic: 16x

Fucking love it.

 

[Labombadog]

Some screenshots of what a $450 PC can do these days.

System Specs
Intel E5200 @ 3GHz
Buffalo Select DDR2-800 4GB
Gigabyte GA-EG31M-ES2L
Seasonic SS-350ET 350W
Sapphire HD 4770

Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Settings: All maxed out.
Resolution: 1680x1050 (resized for this post)
Anti-Aliasing: 8x
Anisotropic: 16x


Fucking love it.

And that's just a taste of what your PC can do. There are a bunch of better looking games out there that you pc will easily handle.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

Some screenshots of what a $450 PC can do these days.

System Specs
Intel E5200 @ 3GHz
Buffalo Select DDR2-800 4GB
Gigabyte GA-EG31M-ES2L
Seasonic SS-350ET 350W
Sapphire HD 4770

Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Settings: All maxed out.
Resolution: 1680x1050 (resized for this post)
Anti-Aliasing: 8x
Anisotropic: 16x

Fucking love it.

Wow, that makes me nauseous just looking at it. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to play those games. :/

 

[Tideas]

Some screenshots of what a $450 PC can do these days.

System Specs
Intel E5200 @ 3GHz
Buffalo Select DDR2-800 4GB
Gigabyte GA-EG31M-ES2L
Seasonic SS-350ET 350W
Sapphire HD 4770

Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Settings: All maxed out.
Resolution: 1680x1050 (resized for this post)
Anti-Aliasing: 8x
Anisotropic: 16x

Fucking love it.

Yeah, and wat FPS were you getting at it? Btw, Half-Life Ep 2 is what, a 2006 game? The source engine isn't what you would consider "GPU heavy".

Come back with pictures from Farcry, Stalker, World in conflict, and then we'll talk.

 

[K.Jack]

Wow, that makes me nauseous just looking at it. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to play those games. :/

Yo I just got the Orange Box in the Steam deal. Why does it fuck with my eyes so badly?

 

[Zombie James]

Yeah, and wat FPS were you getting at it? Btw, Half-Life Ep 2 is what, a 2006 game? The source engine isn't what you would consider "GPU heavy".

Come back with pictures from Farcry, Stalker, World in conflict, and then we'll talk.

Fall 2007. Solid 60fps most of the time (you can see the fps counter at the top-right of the screenshots), never went below 30fps (screen tearing irritates me so I play with vsync on). And yeah, I know it's not the most graphically intense game but with my old PC it's not like I had any reason to buy new games.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

Wow, that makes me nauseous just looking at it. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to play those games. :/

you too, huh? surprisingly enough there are some FPS that don't make me dizzy that i thought would and other i thought wouldn't that do.

 

[Hazaro]

you too, huh? surprisingly enough there are some FPS that don't make me dizzy that i thought would and other i thought wouldn't that do.

I think the big ones are HL2, Bioshock and something else, maybe STALKER?

Far Cry 2 has been the only game ever to disorient me, even after the FOV tweak.

 

[Action Jackson]

well no, but if they don't use the same settings as on the more high-end cards how would you be able to compare them?

True but if I want to buy a midrange card I am probably not so much interested in the 12fps it can achieve with AA and AF at max at 1080p but if it can achieve 30fps at reasonable settings. There should be additional separate benchmarks for high end/midrange/low end gpus, because at it is now these comparisons are dick waving contests at best. Who cares if the newest cards achieve 160fps in certain games, it's obsessive and without value for most people. Unfortunately that would also mean a lot of more work for those doing these benchmarks.

 

[Hazaro]

True but if i want to buy a midrange card I am probably not so much interested in the 12fps it can achieve with AA and AF at max at 1080p but if it can achieve 30fps at reasonable settings. There should be additional separate benchmarks for high end/midrange/low end gpus, because at it is now these comparisons are dick waving contests at best. Who cares if the newest cards achieve 160fps in certain games, it's obsessive and without value for most people. Unfortunately that would also mean a lot of more work for those doing these benchmarks.

The review is for $100+ graphics released recently.

There's plenty of sub $100 card reviews out there.

Mainly this though: Unfortunately that would also mean a lot of more work for those doing these benchmarks.

 

[Slavik81]

Sweet. It looks like everything's going fairly well. I'm presently copying my Steam folder over to my hard drive and installing Avira.

EDIT: Had driver issues with Windows 7. However, all problems were solved by downloading drivers from the website rather than using the driver CDs.

Next up, downloading Mirror's Edge. I was going to buy it for $40 off Steam, but I got a 20% off coupon on Mirror's Edge for the EA store and saw it was $20 there... So I'd be getting it for $16. However, it's the EA store, which not only has a terrible redownload policy, and bad DRM.

Perhaps I'll buy it from EA and then repurchase it on Steam when there's a sale or something.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

I think the big ones are HL2, Bioshock and something else, maybe STALKER?

Far Cry 2 has been the only game ever to disorient me, even after the FOV tweak.

Stalker isn't as bad that usually takes me 30mins-1hr where as half life it's usually 15 mins (if that long). It's weird because tf2, left 4 dead, etc. I'm fine. I guess it's the pov? I've never gotten sick looking at screens though, I guess I'm so used to being nauseous it bothers me even when it's just screens. Felt like I chugged a bottle of ipecac. That was really weird.

 

[Diablohead]

The term "budget pc" to me has always meant a machine which can play games but on low or around 30fps with things disabled. That's right out the window nowadays with what you can buy for good value and it's got me back into the pc side of gaming again.

 

[Zombie James]

By the way, May 5th has come and gone and still no official driver from ATI that supports the 4770.

 

[D4Danger]

Let us know if you end up getting all these parts and how they run, I am literally looking at the exact same parts to build a new pc in the next few weeks.

will do but I won't be buying anything 'til I'm paid at the end of the month (maybe later, need to work some things out).

Half-Life 2 still looks amazing.

 

[Minsc]

Half-Life 2 still looks amazing.

Indeed. Those images show just how much further high AA can take image quality. Sure, you can just have your HDTV blur the crap out of the edges and it "basically looks the same" but it really doesn't, not on an over-sharp LCD screen where you can see every last edge clearly.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

I think the big ones are HL2, Bioshock and something else, maybe STALKER?

Far Cry 2 has been the only game ever to disorient me, even after the FOV tweak.

yeah, my girlfriend bought STALKER and she was showing me and i swear even sitting three r four feet away from the monitor, i got dizzy. in crysis the first time you are inside the spaceship.

 

[Diablohead]

Finally I just recieved an email from dinopc saying my pc is on it's way, good timing too if the machine get's to the house by saturday as that's the day i'm home.

Can't wait

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

The term "budget pc" to me has always meant a machine which can play games but on low or around 30fps with things disabled. That's right out the window nowadays with what you can buy for good value and it's got me back into the pc side of gaming again.

thankfully not anymore, hopefully it will get more people interested in PC gaming....

 

[Diablohead]

thankfully not anymore, hopefully it will get more people interested in PC gaming....

To compare with UK PC prices about 3 years ago, my parents machine was £350 and had onboard video which I stuck my spare 9200 64mb in, the machine does it's job but around that time any kind of machine with a good stick of ram and gpu would have been £200+ on top of that price easily. That was just for the base unit. My new machine is £435 and by the looks of this thread and reviews it's going to run games well for quite some time.

To note I chose the components for my new machine and had it pre-built, I could save another £50 or so making it myself.

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

Is overclocking a processor really easy? I'm getting two gtx 260 and I'm thinking my processor or ram will bottleneck my pc... I have 3gb of ram with an e6750. The ram is ddr 800 if that matters for some reason.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Got my Vertex SSD this morning. With any luck, pics and results tonight as I install Windows7 RC.

 

[Minsc]

Got my Vertex SSD this morning. With any luck, pics and results tonight as I install Windows7 RC.

Just saw benches of the Vertex EX today, not entirely sure what the difference is, but the EX seems a bit faster in some benches, but retails for around $1300. Here's a graph showing the new EX's read/write speeds against a bunch of other SSDs & a normal HDD:

And here's another showing access time:

Keep in mind that a "fast" WD Raptor has an access time of ~7.5 ms, or ~9400% slower than that EX and 75x slower than a normal OCZ Vertex.

 

[Diablohead]

I never realised running a HDD in raid-0 was so fast, I know it can be prone to failure easier but for a gaming rig that's impressive speeds.

 

[godhandiscen]

Is overclocking a processor really easy? I'm getting two gtx 260 and I'm thinking my processor or ram will bottleneck my pc... I have 3gb of ram with an e6750. The ram is ddr 800 if that matters for some reason.

Yes it will bottleneck your videocards maybe up to the point that you will see less performance. Here is an article on OC'ing your processor. http://hothardware.com/articles/Intel_Core_2_Duo_E6750_Performance_Preview/?page=2

Keep it at 3.4GHz and you will be fine.

PS: is your build old? what about your PSU, can it support the dual 260's?

Yo I just got the Orange Box in the Steam deal. Why does it fuck with my eyes so badly?

you too, huh? surprisingly enough there are some FPS that don't make me dizzy that i thought would and other i thought wouldn't that do.

Yeah, I also get motion sickness from the HL2 games. However I attribute this to the fact that they bore me. Every fps that makes me bored gives me motion sickness.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Just saw benches of the Vertex EX today,

Not sure why everybody is confused about this.

Vertex = MLC (cheaper, biggest config is 512 unless you go PCIe)
Vertex = SLC (aka: incredibly expensive, 10x better drive life, 32/64/128 are the only financially viable configurations right now.)

Intel sells SLC as well - the X25-E line - but again, 32GB is more expensive than an 80GB MLC. EDIT: To explain, SLC is clearly the best performance solution, but basically the issue is that it's single level (hence the name) which means data density isn't anywhere near MLC. So per chip, it holds a lot less, and thus is a lot more expensive to hit usable amounts of storage.

 

[Minsc]

I never realised running a HDD in raid-0 was so fast, I know it can be prone to failure easier but for a gaming rig that's impressive speeds.

But that's one of the wonderful things about SSDs, there's no moving parts, and they emit a lot less heat, so the failure rate should be incredibly smaller, allowing you to RAID 0 them at a much smaller (if really any) risk.

 

[Crazymoogle]

But that's one of the wonderful things about SSDs, there's no moving parts, and they emit a lot less heat, so the failure rate should be incredibly smaller, allowing you to RAID 0 them at a much smaller (if really any) risk.

Case in point - the box for the vertex is small. Game Boy Color box small. And even then 90% of it is wasted space. You can buy cheap 3.5" converter brackets that hold two SSDs per bracket, and heat is still not an issue.

 

[Diablohead]

But that's one of the wonderful things about SSDs, there's no moving parts, and they emit a lot less heat, so the failure rate should be incredibly smaller, allowing you to RAID 0 them at a much smaller (if really any) risk.

I would buy a SSD over a raid-0 HDD, just pointing out that I never knew it was such an improvement

 

[Zaraki_Kenpachi]

Yes it will bottleneck your videocards maybe up to the point that you will see less performance. Here is an article on OC'ing your processor. http://hothardware.com/articles/Intel_Core_2_Duo_E6750_Performance_Preview/?page=2

Keep it at 3.4GHz and you will be fine.

PS: is your build old? what about your PSU, can it support the dual 260's?



Yeah, I also get motion sickness from the HL2 games. However I attribute this to the fact that they bore me. Every fps that makes me bored gives me motion sickness.

I would think so... My build is around 2 years old now and I bought a 680watt power supply back then so I guess it would handle it?

 

[MWS Natural]

That's pretty incredible, it's going for much less than MSRP as well. Still a little too rich for my blood, I wouldn't pay over $350 for one.

 

[Rebel Leader]

Canada too. They buy a lot of advertising up here.

However, expect to pay $100 more on shipping if you're sending it to Canada than if you're in the states.

Really? That's very sad news.

 

[Slavik81]

Arg...
After it crashed out of Left4Dead an hour in on a interrupt error (IRQ_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL), I decided to run a few tests...

CPU heats to 62 degrees C within a few seconds of 100% utilization running OCCT's CPU stress, then errors.
Memory is failing Memtestx86. I'm on Test 8 and already have 456 errors.
GPU passes a 1 hour stress test fine at 86 degrees C, but had 1280 errors on 10 memory passes through OCCT...

Intel Core i7 920
EVGA 896-P3-1255-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216
OCZ Gold 6GB DDR3 1600 OCZ3G1600LV6GK
EVGA E758-A1 Motherboard

 

[Hazaro]

Arg...
After it crashed out of Left4Dead an hour in on a interrupt error (IRQ_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL), I decided to run a few tests...

CPU heats to 62 degrees C within a few seconds of 100% utilization running OCCT's CPU stress, then errors.
Memory is failing Memtestx86. I'm on Test 8 and already have 456 errors.
GPU passes a 1 hour stress test fine at 86 degrees C, but had 1280 errors on 10 memory passes through OCCT...

Intel Core i7 920
EVGA 896-P3-1255-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216
OCZ Gold 6GB DDR3 1600 OCZ3G1600LV6GK
EVGA E758-A1 Motherboard

RAM RMA time, if you didn't already pick up on that...

Is overclocking a processor really easy? I'm getting two gtx 260 and I'm thinking my processor or ram will bottleneck my pc... I have 3gb of ram with an e6750. The ram is ddr 800 if that matters for some reason.

Yup, I'd aim around 3.2 or 3.0 for starters.

 

[Slavik81]

RAM RMA time, if you didn't already pick up on that...

That can't be the only problem, can it?
EDIT: Or does the RAM screw up the other tests?

EDIT #2:
I'm on the RMA page for the RAM and it looks like my only option from DirectCanada is a refund. Should I repurchase the same model or go with something else?

 

[Diablohead]

Hope you get your pc fixed, I hate unknown errors.

I just thought of something rather important if I am installing Win7 RC, do I use their stock drivers for my gtx 260 or should I download the vista drivers (since win7 is like vista) ?