PSX5Central
Non Gaming Discussions => Off-Topic => Topic started by: Joker on August 09, 2007, 08:37:06 AM
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Okay I followed the advice in the other thread (thanks again!) and the PC is running fine again. My PC is my gaming machine, because I don\'t own any consoles and I would really love to get it ready for early 2008 for games such as Warhammer and Starcraft 2. Unfourtunately neither of the specs for those games have been listed yet.
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System Information
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Time of this report: 4/15/2007, 13:57:05
Machine name: CABOOSE
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 05/19/06 09:31:51 Ver: 08.00.10
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.66GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1024MB RAM
Page File: 373MB used, 2090MB available
Windows Dir: C:\\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode
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Display Devices
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Card name: RADEON X850 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: ATI RADEON X850 PRO AGP (0x4B4B)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6635 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 8/22/2006 21:53:30, 260096 bytes
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Sound Devices
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Description: Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Type: WDM
Driver Name: P17.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.0512 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Thats what i\'m running right now. I\'m looking spend around 1000-1500$ over the next few months (American currency). I\'d like to be able to turn my graphics up fairly high in games or at least to the middle settings and have little to no lag. I am willing to sacrifice visual quality if it means less lag.
If anyone here could give me some advice or point me in the right direction as to where I should start that would be swell or if you need any more information about my PC please let me know. I haven\'t really upgraded it in 3 years because all I really played was World of Warcraft and the game ran fine on this machine so there was no real need to upgrade. However after playing Lord of the rings online and seeing how much I lag in the big cities I know its time to start improving the hardware.
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Another gig of ram.
The new 2900XT .
How is LOTRO? I thought about giving up WoW and trying it.
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Aye ram was one of my main concerns. Problem is that I think my Motherboard is real crappy. I know it only has 2 slots for ram and I don\'t know if its compatible with other video cards, or at least thats what i\'ve been told before. How do I find out the name of my motherboard?
As for LOTRO, visually its really amazing for an MMO. The story line is as rich as you would expect from a Tolkien universe and they do a great job of making the player feel like a part of the main story line throughout the game. As opposed to WoW where story tends to sit on the back burner while players go mad for gear and loot. Unlike any other MMO that i\'ve played, LOTRO definately makes you feel like your part of an epic story.
A massive flaw in LOTR tho is the quest design. Almost every quest you do has 3 or more quests after it so your log is always full. Thats not a bad thing, the bad part is that a ton of these quests are fellowship quests (need a group). So couple that in with the massive amounts of quests that are available you have a very very tough time finding a group. Thats to be expected with any MMO but in LOTR you can literally spend a day or 2 looking for a group to do the quest and then you need to hope that the group is compitent enough to actually finish it.
The quests can be quite hard, not all but some of them are. Definately the dungeons too. Elites in LOTRO are just that, elite. You can\'t solo a same level elite like in WoW.
That being said, LOTRO is only a couple months old and doesn\'t have the 3+ years of tweaks and patches that WoW does so things like the questing i\'m sure will be made more managable in the future as more patches come out but at the moment it can be a real pain sometimes.
Also if your a fan of PvP (thats why i\'m so pumped for Warhammer :)) LOTRO PvP is very lacking to say the least. At level 10 you can go to a major city and find a scrying pool which lets you enter the PvP battleground Ettenmoors. You can select an orc and various other monsters to fight against heros. Max level in the game is 50 and your new monster will start at max level. Heros are your main characters and can only PvP against the monsters when your character has reached level 40. The way it is designed is that if you want to play a monster you can play one early on in the game and if you want to play as your main character you gotta level up to 40 and then you can enter.
The idea is that the monsters will always outnumber the heros because monsters are much weaker than a hero character, monsters don\'t get gear unlike your main character. Monsters have to work in raids because it takes 2 or more to kill 1 hero. Thats not really my style of PvP, the action is slow compared to WoW it involves a lot of waiting because you need big raids (weather your a hero or monster) to take out the enemy controlled keeps.
Overall, I do enjoy LOTRO but it definately still needs work.
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You partial to ATI or nVidia?
if ati then yeah, the 2900xt is probably your best bet. You\'ll need to get a PCI-express motherboard though if you want to pop in any of the newest cards. You also will most likely need to buy 2 gigs of faster ram, as that stuff you have is probably slow (you have a Pentium D). Then you probably will want to get a core2 duo or high end X2 from AMD. Either of those will do you fine, but I\'d go Intel this go round. Unless you want to keep your processor... would be a shame though not to capitalize on the price war Intel and AMD have been having this summer.
Most all your other parts, can be reused and you can eBay a lot of your old parts to recoup a good bit of the cost.. that or extra money to spring for that uber high end video card. :thumb:
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Then again, depending on your monitor you may not want to spring for that uber high end card. All depends what resolution you are playing at and what games you\'re going to play.
Still, if you look to spend $1500, just rebuild from scratch. I think mine, once it\'s all finished will top at $1300, and that\'s with extra crap like new HD\'s, another DVD writer and TWO videocards. If you want to reuse your DVD writer and HD\'s, you could spend around $800 and do it. I ordered most of my stuff for my newest system yesterday and total was $820...
A case.
2 gigs of memory.
Motherboard.
Cpu.
Videocard.
PowerSupply
So, it can be done. You can spend that extra cash on a high end videocard or extra stuff (new DVD writer / new HD\'s)..That\'s what I am doing. Going to spend another $400 first of next month and snag..
Another videocard.
Fan Controller
500 gig HD
Another DVD writer.
So my final specs should be...
Xlico Case.
MSI Motherboard running AMD X2 6000
2 gigs of DDR2 Ram
Dual Lite-On Burners
Total of 900 gigs of Storage
Hi-Tec Floppy Drive
Zalaman Fan Controller
2x Asus X1950 Pro Cards running Crossfire
OCZ 650 PowerSupply
And in all honesty, I should of just spent the $400 dollars on the videocards on ONE GREAT videocard, but I didn\'t want to spend $400 bucks right off the bat. I plan on waiting for the price to drop a tad, snag one and resell these two or use them in another system.
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I\'ve been wanting to upgrade as well. Actually I wanted to wait for Intel Nehalem 8-cores, but that\'ll be a while yet and it\'s probably gonna be expensive. But now seems like a good time to take advantage of the recent price cuts... And I\'ll be going from my old P4 2.4 GHz and 1 gigs of RAM to something like X2 4800+ and 2 gigs of RAM. I just need a new PSU (going with Corsair I think) and somewhere down the line I need a new gfx card. But I\'m waiting until November to see what nVidia has up its sleeve. Last time I heard the next gen cards should top 1 teraflop (that would be really neat... and I could go for the GTS version and still get a kickass card).
Oh and I\'ll overclock the hell out of the CPU. And bang, there you have it. A budget upgrade until the great stuff comes out in late 2008/2009.
PS. No lecture on AMD vs. Intel. I know the Core 2\'s rock. But for my miniscule budget the X2 will do fine. And it\'s not like I\'m gonna keep it forever. :)
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Awesome, thanks for the insight fellas. Now i\'m not in the dark so much. I know I will definately need a new motherboard to support the next gen cards so I think thats what i\'m going to start looking for first.
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Just for fun I put together a system on newegg. Going pretty high end on a lot of parts I still didn\'t break $1k. I didn\'t bother with PSU, Case, HDDs...as I generall re-use most of those components. (you\'ll definately want to get a capable PSU though... not a good idea to re-use those)
If I were looking to build a new rig to last me a while here is what I would do
ASUS Sli Mobo Skt LGA775 = $127
EVGA 8800GTS 640 MB = $349
2GB (2x1GB) GSkill 240 pin DDR2 (PC2 6400) = $89
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4ghz = $295
Total = $860
You could cut the processor down to a Core 2 duo and cut that $295 down around $229 or so... but Quad is worth it IMO (future games will make use of it from what I hear)
Keep us updated on what you decide to get... all this talk about upgrading is getting me itching to do the same. :)
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I\'ve decided to extend my budget and get the kind of video card that i\'ve always wanted but never had.
I want this card now
http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/401/
and I want to build the computer around that card. With that kind of card could I still use the parts you listed Jbean or would you change something on that list?
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yeah, that card will do real good... Every 8xxx series nvidia card is PCI-e, so you don\'t really have to worry about that... as long as you get a mobo with a pci-e slot or 2 (if you want the option to add a second card for sli down the road). I would also ponder going with 4 GB of RAM as well (but only if you are going Vista.. which you will need if you want to see DirectX10 effects). Xp will only see 3 of the 4 GB (unless you go with the 64-bit edition.. which I would personally NOT do).
Here are all the 8800gtx\'s that newegg has (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=8800gtx&x=0&y=0)...
the one you like will run about $550.. but it will kick all forms of ass :fighting:
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I think for the moment I would just get 3gb for now and just get another 1gb at a later date when I get vista. But with the GTX, that mobo you listed would be tottally fine? Also with that kind of card, would I need a fancy cooling system or anything like that or would my standard fan be good still?
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No real fancy cooling system, it wouldn\'t hurt to find some VGA PCI cooler, but not a must thing.
You will most certainly need a good stable PSU. I\'d recommend OCZ 600 WATT...Get that and a dual Core CPU. You could go quad core, but no games take advantage of it right now. Eventually, yes, but it all depends how much money you want to spend.
Also make sure your monitor is going to be able to do those insane resolutions you\'ll want to use with that monster videocard.
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I would definately stick with dual core until it became a nescesity for games. Also is there a specific way to check out what my monitor is capable of? Right about now all I could tell you is I took it from my grandmothers house a year ago, its a dell and its black :)
I\'m pretty positive I would need to upgrade the monitor. Which kind of bugs me because I know they can definately get up there in price. But with that kind of video card I don\'t want anything holding it back.
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so what did you end up getting?
a good friend of mine who has always had shitty computers compared to mine finally caved and got an intel quad core and a 8800gtx...
I can\'t wait until sometime next year to do my bi-annual upgrade
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Be awhile before I do more upgrades, as I am buying a digital camcorder for the wife and then I have the girls birthday in December. Already have a list of stuff to buy tho\'.
New Linksys modem.
Firewire card
Xtreme Game Creative Soundcard
Speakers.
Yum.
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so what did you end up getting?
a good friend of mine who has always had shitty computers compared to mine finally caved and got an intel quad core and a 8800gtx...
I can\'t wait until sometime next year to do my bi-annual upgrade
Almost there, almost there. I need another months worth of Pay and i\'ll have my Frankenputer!!
Raz helped me fine tune a list of parts for the new PC
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=11610BD6625 - GPU
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=10370AC5013 - Power Supply
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=11220BD2057 - Soundcard
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=13570DR4931 - Dvd Burner
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=15080DR2889 - HDD
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=13000BD1108 - RAM
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=11610BD3093 - Motherboard
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=12200BD3212 - Processore
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14660AC1497 - Case
I\'m so excited. I\'ve never boughten myself anything of this caliber. All my buddies, the first time they had a lot of money bought really nice cars. Good thing too, because this computer started starting in safe mode and crap like that today. Definately on its last legs.
That list is what I got sitting in my "shopping cart". I would of liked to make this purchase from Newegg but they do not ship to Canada :( Total bill should be around 2244$ not including monitor or a copy of vista =/ I also want to buy another 2 gigs of ram after I initally get the PC built.
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niiiiiiice :thumb:
that\'ll tear the ass off of any game you throw at it for quite a while... think you\'ll have it ready for Crysis?
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Won\'t have it ready for Crisis :( I\'ll have the last of the money around the end of November and then paypal says its going to take 8 more days to transfer money into it. So mid December it should be built and sitting under my desk :D
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That\'s really awesome, dude. :)
December? o_O
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I just got paid very recently and only get paid every 2 weeks and I need at least 2 more paychecks. So I estimate by December it should be shipped and then I gotta take it somewhere to be put together. Going to try to sell the PC i\'m using now to a friend and if that happens I can get it much sooner :)
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is putting it together yourself out of the question?
It\'s not terribly hard, but I can understand never doing it before and worrying about messing something up.
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Its not out of the question but it would have to be idiot proof. Like you said, I am pretty worried I would mess something up so at the moment I intend to have some shop put it together.