92 replies to this topic

[Teralitha]

There are alot of old stock computers that many places are trying to dump on poor unsuspecting buyers of notebooks, laptop buyers and desktops.

Before you buy something to upgrade in order to play MWO, please do research on every individual componant of the computer you are looking at first, because you might get duped into buying another worthless hunk of junk that is not designed to handle gaming.

First rule, If you dont know what GHz means, dont buy until you do. This is the speed at which your computer processes information. The faster the better. So your computer has 2 processor... or even 4 processors, but if your GHz is low, your game will be slow. I suggest anything that is in the 3GHz range for games. Much more than that and you get into overclocking and you run the risk of your motherboard being too hot, without having some added cooling devices. And if your internals run super hot, the life of your puter will be lessened.

Duo Core... Quad core, I5, I7, AMD phenom II, Pentium ***, what do these all mean? best thing to do is check manufacturer descriptions. Make sure to find out exactly just how many processors it really has, and what the GHz is. You want at least 4 processor(Quad Core), and a proccessor speed in the higher ranges. Like 2.8GHz or more. This is for games.

Ram... what is it? what does it do? For playing games, the more the better. If you can afford to max it out, do it. But, note that the amount of ram that is actually used by your system depends on your operating system. For example, if your using windows XP, believe the most RAM it supports is 2GB, and If I remember correctly, Windows Vista only supports up to 4GB of RAM. So if your computer has more ram, your older windows version may not be able to use more than 4GB. I have windows 7, and I use 16GB of RAM to run my games, I think that even 8 GB is not enough for todays Gaming.(Windows XP 32-bit SP3 I think runs up to 4GB also)

Hard Drive (HD) memory. Most computers have tons of it nowadays. Shouldnt be an issue. But if your computer is very old... well... get a new one, upgrading HD is not expensive. Old Hard Drives can have a heart attack and die at any time.

Graphix, the big one...
First.. if you have integrated graphics? Hell FKN NO. Never ever ever ever never ever never ever buy a computer with integrated graphics for GAMING no matter how much a saleman might shmooze you. Just refuse.
Alaways go straight to teh source when researching a video card, that means, look at the manufacturers website, and read the full descriptions of any given card your looking to buy for the specs. Does it have its own on board memory?(GB) Does it have its own processor? How fast is it? Does it have adequate cooling? Its own cooling fan? Does it support 4.0 shaders? For gaming, you want to get the best of the best. Or the best you can afford. Look at all the newest models, and read about what they are able to do, or what they are designed to do. Alot of online stores will sell a variant of the original designs, make sure to read those specs too before buying, they might be stripped of some of the capabilities that are listed by the manufacturer.

Another important piece of the puzzle.. Power supply unit (PSU) Now suppose you went to an online store, customized everything to get the best of the best, or the best you can afford, and you get it home, only to discover that it isnt running games as well as you thought it would. Well this may be the result of the PSU, being substandard. PSU are not often mentioned in a computers specs because for general purposes, it isnt important. If you cant find the info anywere else, youll have to open your PC and look at the powersupply for the specs. Alot of PC companies use the cheapeast, bare minimum that they can get in mass quantity. Many will be 300 WATTs. For a gaming rig, this is not enough.

But be cautious, because if you get a powersupply that is too much, it can fry your computer. I recommend only a minor upgrade to the PSU, if your stuck with a 300watt. There are several poor quality PSU's out there that have good specs, but have little or no heat reduction capacity, and require you to buy another cooling fan or several. I suggest not going more than anything in the 400-500watt range unless you really know what your doing. You can also, before buying the PC< ask the builder about the PSU, and try to get them to put on an adequate PSU.


Mods pls leave this in general chat, as most people always look here first for info about their computers. And if possible, maybe pinn it up.

Edited by Teralitha, 18 June 2012 - 08:35 PM.

[Adrienne Vorton]

"dont EVER buy a rig with onboard gfx..." well...sure you can do, but you should not rely/ rest on it most of the time i buy machines and gfx-cards seperately, in many cases i find better prices by doing that... but yea, if you don´t know what you are doing, then don´t buy a rig with ONLY the onboard grafics

Edited by Adrienne Vorton, 18 June 2012 - 08:31 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Unless you're going cheapo and have to buy a sub-$500 AMD APU in order to have something that can play the game at all.

Anyhow, I've already covered this in the hardware section a while back to at least some extent, fully if you count my newer guides linked here...
http://mwomercs.com/...hardware-guide/

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 18 June 2012 - 08:53 PM.

[Colaessus]

Make sure its actually physical duel core/quad core and Virtual cores also.

[String]

Teralitha, on 18 June 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

But be cautious, because if you get a powersupply that is too much, it can fry your computer.
.

A PSU no matter how big cant ever fry your computer, but getting a PSU that is too big will cost you twice, once when you buy it and the second time when the power bill arrives.
Best practice would be to get a PSU that will use about 80% of its peak for most PSUs that about where thay will be at optimum efficiency.
If you using less then 60% of your peak you the efficacy will fall to and you will wast a lot of power.

That said some high quality PSUs can have better efficiencies but it usually comes with a strap price tag.

PS: another thing to look at is the 12V rails, I won't go into detail here(mainly because I don't really remember the numbers) but read up on that too.

Edited by String, 18 June 2012 - 09:13 PM.

[NoGoN]

The 16gigs of Ram is complete Bogus most games don't even support over 2gigs and i have never seen a game eat 16gigs. I just ran
benchmarks in games (Batman, Crysis 2, Crysis 1) and on 3DMark 11 as proof to this comment. My comp is around the 4000$$ range but we are talking 1-2fps increase on games and that could of just been lucky or a good run. That was 8 vs 16 gigs and even having just 4gigs runs butter smooth in games(no loss in fps). As you said Video card is the most important i'm a intel/nvidia fan because i like the best but I can tell you now for 100$ you can get a Quad core AMD and then slap a Gtx 560 or even a 460 or even a 5870 which is still good, with 4 gigs of ram and run every game very well. Now i know ram is perrty cheap but if you are super low on money theres hardly a difference between 4-16gigs in a game and 98% of the time theres zero.

[Infine]

First, there's a hardware section.

Second. GHz is NOT the speed your computer processes data at. Within a single product line it can be used to compare speeds, but between different products - no. NEVAH! Probably the most famous case in point in x86 history would be Pentium 4 vs Athlon XP. And, oh my god, any P4-based celeron VS Athlon XP. The horror, the horror...

Third. I don't think most "current" games really support multicore. Maybe it's the case with CryEngine, but generally speaking I'd rather grab something with less (2-3) but faster cores to have some compatibility with less progressive games.

Fourth. Generally speaking 32 bit system (like XP or 32 bit Vista or win 7) supports 4 GB of address space. That 4GB include various devices internal memory. And by "Various devices" I also mean videocard as the biggest offender. Therefore if you're a "lucky" owner of a 2GB GF FX5200 (or some modern counterpart) as per some salesdude advice, you are left only with roughly 2GB of available RAM. But generally speaking for most systems assembled by sane people the number is around 3-3,5GB. There's a problem though - by default winXP (don't know about 32bit Vista and Win7) can't feed more than 2GB ram to a single process. There's a bootloader flag workaround, but you are still stuck with 3GB per process. Well, it's not like you have more ram available in 32bit without PAE. And you can forget about PAE on desktop systems. So you are left with x64 systems for more ram. Personally I think 4GB are enough. Then again, I'm not an ultrahigh settings person, so maybe you'd need more. But for MWLL that runs on the same engine, I'm fine with the 4GB system.

Fifth. HDs. HDs are funny thing. There's actually another reason to get a modern HD. Not even talking about SSDs. Over the time HD density grows. And with same rpm and bigger density you get, SURPRISE!, better throughput. A modern big 5200rpm drive might actually be faster than an old smalll 7200rpm one (not sure about seek rate though).

Sixth. Integrated graphics on AMD APUs are not that bad. If you are really short on money. Also. Don't buy those 2GB FX5200s. It's a trap. Amount of video memory should be chosen according to the power of the video core the memory is bundled with. You don't need a videocard that chokes on processing its whole memory.

Seventh. PSU is not about "watts". Those silly numbers they write on them we call here "chinese watts". They do not relate to "real" watts in any way or shape. You don't need half of those watts to be on something like +5V rail. PSU nowadays is mostly about a good trustworthy manufacturer. I personally use FSP PSUs - you can generally trust their watts, and they write wattage per rail distribution.

[Gafron]

Speed of CPU's are not comparable between different chip architectures or families. For example an i5 and an i7 cpu running at the same chip speed will not have the same performance. The same goes for GPU's as well. It is best to use one of the reputable reviewing sites, such as Tom's Hardware or Anandtech to research these components as they regurlarly do roundup comaprisons between different manufacturers and chip families.

In general where games are concerned, more system RAM, (not graphics ram) is used to load game elements into that memory which is far faster to fetch than it is from your hard drive. Although many newer systems have a flash drive, hard drive, which are also faster than the old spinning platter drives but still slower than system RAM. It is useless to have more system RAM than the game will use unless you are multitasking other apps while playing the game, which you should not be doing anyway.

I believe modern power supplies also do not use the full wattage they are capable of if the components in your PC do not require it. If you have a 700 watt PSU but your components only draw 550 watts the PSU will use somewhat over 550 but not the full 700. PSU's also will not fry your PC if it is capable of far more wattage than than components require. Unless it is faulty you are fine. That being said you generally do not want to buy a PSU with far more capacity than you need unless you plan to upgrade components that will make your system draw more power within a reasonable time frame because like with everything else, more capacity costs more in PSU's.

The devs have released the minimum and recommended configs to run MWO recently so base your purchasing decisions off of that and not pie in the sky opinions from people you know nothing of on a message board.

[BenEEeees VAT GROWN BACON]

I'd go with Vulpesveritas's guide over this one.

This guide is amateurish and quite misinformed.

OP, is your Windows 7 as 32bit or 64bit? Do you know how much ram your own OS supports?

Edited by BenEEeees VAT GROWN BACON, 18 June 2012 - 10:10 PM.

[JadePanther]

ok first dont confuse them between processors and cpu cores.. those are 2 different things... multiple cores act like seperate cpus but lie on the same cpu chip.. multiple processors means having multiple cpu chips.. it's like having 2 separate apples vs buying a whole bag full of apples from the store..

nowadays a processor may have 2,4,5,7 cores or what not on each processor... these are still on a single cpu chip.. having multiple cpu chips entails much more hardware..

but for simplicity's sake a 2 core processor should do. but a quad core cpu is not that expensive and will allow u some upgrade time..


Ram.. well yes the OS (operating system) tends to dictate how much can be utilized.. while xp can only see like 2GB vista 4 GB and win7 can use 8 or more.. you also have to realize if u are using a 32 or 64bit CPU.. a 32bit cpu is limited to about 4GB of adressable memory while a 64 bit can use 16 exbibytes of adressable memory... and wether or not your OS is 32 bit vs 64 compared to your processor makes the difference...

while a 32 bit OS with 4 GB of ram might be able to be acceptable on having 4GB of ram the overhead of system usage (applications and system processes) might end up cutting you down to only 2-3 GB of usable memory...

with 64 bit OS and CPU becoming commonplace best to stick with those as you will be able to support larger sizes depending on your mainboards capabilities.

so make sure u are getting a 64 bit cpu and OS if u are upgrading.. furthermore check to see how much ram the motherboard supports.. it should support at least 8GB but 16GB will give you some room for the future upgrades..

a min of 6 GB on a 64bit system will be nice with 8GB giving u some nice breathing room.. 16GB would really be like buying a house in the sticks with like 30 acres and only putting a 20x20 foot vegtable garden on it, AKA youve got a ton of room but u really arent gonna use like half of it for a while...


as for HDD's its not just the speed but the interface thats really the limiting factor.. a 5200 rpm drive on sata6 can prolly perform better than a 7200 drive on ata 133...

RPM speed just means the drive can find data faster on its internal storage platters.. where the interface speed dictates how fast the data gets transferred from the HDD to the mainboard systems..

Sata HDD support is the way to go for sure.. it has much more bandwith for data transfer than ATA.. most systems mowadays are equipped with sata drives.. but if your shopping look for something sata 3GB/s..

if u have to chooose between speeds on your current interface to the HDD, and are limited to that, go for the higher speed drives as they will find the data faster and not sow down what may be your limiting interface speed by having to wait for the hdd to find the data inside the drive..

this really comes down to where is your bottleneck.. if ata get the fastest RPM u can get ur hands on cuz ur inteface is maxed and higher drive speeds will shorten the response time on data 10kor better rpm drives will make a difference... if u are running sata's then ur transfer interface is less limiting and 5200 drives can offer more bang for the buck if you are on a budget, while 7200rpm drives offer good solid transfer and are quite common..

dont forget to look at buffer sizes on your prospective HDD's as a larger buffer means that more data can be stored there waiting for the transfer while the drive goes about its buisness finding the next set of data that it has to find... think of it sorta like the on deck circle for baseball.. a bigger on deck circle could mean more palyers getting up and ready to bat sooner for when thier turn comes..

SSD HDD's are just still exremely pricey for what they offer in capacity but have just sick response times when they are told to fetch data..



so really as to upgrades there's lots of options but really it's all about what you can afford..

Edited by JadePanther, 18 June 2012 - 11:22 PM.

[Teralitha]

BenEEeees VAT GROWN BACON, on 18 June 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

I'd go with Vulpesveritas's guide over this one.

This guide is amateurish and quite misinformed.

OP, is your Windows 7 as 32bit or 64bit? Do you know how much ram your own OS supports?

The full 16 GB is available. I have win7, not sure what the bit is offhand. I customized this PC with the intent that I will not need an upgrade for several years other than perhaps a vid card in a couple years. And games do not use your RAM, or have a limit on RAM usage as one person suggested. Your computer uses RAM to run all your programs. The more you have, and are able to use, the faster your programs are accessed and executed. A game does not dictate the amount of RAM that is used. Though a single game may not "need" all of your ram to operate. And I play games, with other programs running at the same time, or multiple browswer windows open. Thanks to my 16GB of ram, I can run lots of things simultaniously and switching between programs is a breeze. My processor also is a factor in this, not just RAM(AMD X6) This combo costs a bit more, but IMO its worth it because in the long run, you wont need a new computer for a very long time. Where buying a standard build you will find yourself needing to upgrade every year or 2, spending more.


@Others, I never said I was an expert, The goal of this topic is to warn the less tech savy players to research and educate themselves to avoid being duped into buying a crap computer that wasnt made for high end gameing.

Edited by Teralitha, 18 June 2012 - 11:39 PM.

[Easily]

Teralitha, on 18 June 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

The full 16 GB is available. I have win7, not sure what the bit is offhand. I customized this PC with the intent that I will not need an upgrade for several years other than perhaps a vid card in a couple years. And games do not use your RAM, or have a limit on RAM usage as one person suggested. Your computer uses RAM to run all your programs. The more you have, and are able to use, the faster your programs are accessed and executed. A game does not dictate the amount of RAM that is used. Though a single game may not "need" all of your ram to operate. And I play games, with other programs running at the same time, or multiple browswer windows open. Thanks to my 16GB of ram, I can run lots of things simultaniously and switching between programs is a breeze. My processor also is a factor in this, not just RAM(AMD X6) This combo costs a bit more, but IMO its worth it because in the long run, you wont need a new computer for a very long time. Where buying a standard build you will find yourself needing to upgrade every year or 2, spending more.


@Others, I never said I was an expert, The goal of this topic is to warn the less tech savy players to research and educate themselves to avoid being duped into buying a crap computer that wasnt made for high end gameing.

If you're ' using the full 16gb ' you have a 64 bit OS. Simply because a 32 bit OS can't address that much memory.
Also, what for heavens sake are you using 16gb ram for? Even if you set up a RAMDisk, load your OS into it and then start up 3 games I doubt you'd be fully utilizing your entire set of RAM.

[BenEEeees VAT GROWN BACON]

Teralitha, on 18 June 2012 - 11:23 PM, said:

@Others, I never said I was an expert, The goal of this topic is to warn the less tech savy players to research and educate themselves to avoid being duped into buying a crap computer that wasnt made for high end gameing.

I'm not trying to be harsh or anything but your knowledge gap is such that the advice you give is at best unhelpful or at worst misleading.

Take this as a learning experience, I think you'll stand to benefit from reading topics in the hardware section and asking questions as the people there really know their stuff. Perhaps after a bit of learning you'll be in a better position to dispense advice.

[Mick Mars]

The OP is the perfect case of knowing just enough to be dangerous.

For the record:
Core count is not such a big deal, as most games only use 1 anyway. This is changing quickly, and if you do play the newest games, a cpu upgrade may be in your near future if you are running something more than 5 years old.

HDD space has been covered enough.

And yes, games DO dictate how much ram they use, many of the older games will not use more than 2GB, no matter how much you have. It's called being "large address aware", if you had any real knowledge, you would know this OP.

In what fantasy world does having too large of a psu fry things? Also to others who posted about power bills, you guys do realize that if you have a 1200 watt psu, and only demand 600 watts from it that the psu only puts out the 600 watts right? In other words, a larger PSU will not cost you any more power than a smaller one except in that the larger ones usually have more tech goodies to make them more efficient, so actually LESS of a power hog.

[Jadel Blade]

Yeah this is a pretty terrible post all told. Apart from the second paragraph. After that stop reading.

[Teralitha]

Mick Mars, on 19 June 2012 - 12:14 AM, said:

The OP is the perfect case of knowing just enough to be dangerous.

In what fantasy world does having too large of a psu fry things? Also to others who posted about power bills, you guys do realize that if you have a 1200 watt psu, and only demand 600 watts from it that the psu only puts out the 600 watts right? In other words, a larger PSU will not cost you any more power than a smaller one except in that the larger ones usually have more tech goodies to make them more efficient, so actually LESS of a power hog.

I guess you didnt read the whole section on power supplies. Read it again before trying to 'call me out' on something. If a newbie to computers, followed my advice in this post to the letter, they would get a nice gaming computer with no chance of making an error. If they followed your advice on power supplies... they could easily screw up and fry their motherboard. Yes they can fry a motherboard, if they are bad PSU's. Its happened. Tell me sir... how hot does your PC run with a 1200 watt PSU? And how many heat sinks or fans did you have to add to make sure your board didnt melt? Read my section on PSU's again before saying something stupid.

[Teralitha]

Easily, on 18 June 2012 - 11:45 PM, said:

If you're ' using the full 16gb ' you have a 64 bit OS. Simply because a 32 bit OS can't address that much memory.
Also, what for heavens sake are you using 16gb ram for? Even if you set up a RAMDisk, load your OS into it and then start up 3 games I doubt you'd be fully utilizing your entire set of RAM.

Thats the way I like it. Freedom baby.

Edited by Teralitha, 19 June 2012 - 12:44 AM.

[Jadel Blade]

Teralitha, on 19 June 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

I guess you didnt read the whole section on power supplies. Read it again before trying to 'call me out' on something. If a newbie to computers, followed my advice in this post to the letter, they would get a nice gaming computer with no chance of making an error. If they followed your advice on power supplies... they could easily screw up and fry their motherboard. Yes they can fry a motherboard, if they are bad PSU's. Its happened. Tell me sir... how hot does your PC run with a 1200 watt PSU? And how many heat sinks or fans did you have to add to make sure your board didnt melt? Read my section on PSU's again before saying something stupid.

Lol .. no

Look its nice that you spent time writing up a guide .. of sorts. I guess. But its really not very good and has some terrrible information in it and you keep making it worse. You cant fry your motherboard by getting a larger PSU.

[Fynn]

If you buy a cheap, unbranded PSU, you run a chance of it going pop, no matter what size it is (300watt or 600 watt ect, ect), thats why its advisable to always buy a good, well known branded PSU, like corsair or Zalman for example.
As for the heat Issue, at the end of the day thats all doen to how well the air flows in your case, a cheap case will have bad airflow and cause possible heat issues, a good gameing case, like a coolermaster staker, for example, with have good airflow, plently of fans already mounted (with the option to add more), and a cable management system, so any cables can be kept out of the way of the airflow to maximise cooling. and unless you have a board that can mount 2 CPU's, you only have one heat sink (not counting the fan and heap sink on any GPU's) mounted on the motherboard.

[Teralitha]

Jadel Blade, on 19 June 2012 - 12:46 AM, said:

Lol .. no

Look its nice that you spent time writing up a guide .. of sorts. I guess. But its really not very good and has some terrrible information in it and you keep making it worse. You cant fry your motherboard by getting a larger PSU.

Yes you can, ive seen it happen. Unless youve seen it happen, you wont think its possible. but I know.... It was a case of an older motherboard and that couldnt handle it. Motherboards nowadays can probably handle anything but they still get hot, and wont last as long without proper cooling.

Edited by Teralitha, 19 June 2012 - 01:07 AM.