46 replies to this topic

[Catamount]

Shepard, on 04 May 2012 - 08:17 AM, said:

What Vulpesveritas says about power supply is true. You don't normally need a very highly rated power supply, you really just need a good one.

Meaning you need a PSU capable of actually delivering what it claims

But yes, Vulpes is right, of course; you don't need more than 500W of power to power a system that wouldn't draw more than 300W even in an artificial stress test.

[Barbaric Soul]

Alex MSQ, on 04 May 2012 - 05:51 AM, said:

At first - forget overclocking if you are not familiar to IT tech.

So just because he/she is unfimilar with OC'ing, they should forget it all together? Would if he/she decides they want to OC in the future.?

Alex MSQ, on 04 May 2012 - 05:51 AM, said:

At second - the only games use 2 cores are ARMA, Crysis, TES4 Oblivion. So for cheap systems i3 is enough, but ideal way - 4 cores like Intel i5 or 3 cores like AMD. CryENGINE 3 uses 2 cores.
There are no games use more than 2 cores.

Dude, you completely lost me there. You obviously are not up to date with your knowledge of games today. BTW, here's COD MW3 using 4 cores-

[Alex MSQ]

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Note the 12v rail, which powers the CPU and GPU. Watts are amperage x voltage. With the 12v rail being as stated, 12v, and 44 amps on the rail, this comes to 528w. Given it's 80+ Bronze certification, it should never be less than 70% power efficient, ever. Which comes to 370w. Even at the minimum of power efficiency, that is giving a clear 100w above the maximum power consumption of CPU+GPU with an i5+Radeon HD 7870. Unless you are claiming that the motherboard, RAM, HDD / SDD, ODD, fans, and interface devices are going to use that much wattage. On the 12v rail no less, when some of the components take advantage of the remaining wattage on the 3v and 5v rails. (Unless he's using delta fans or a fan-case.)

I ask again: Have you ever got 192V/48Hz in your outlet? Or have you ever peak current in a fan dusted to a crap? And if you have 3 such fans? I'm working with faults like that once/month. It's better to have margin of safety. Or you will change PSU once/1,5 year. Have ever terrorists blow up capacitors in your PSU or MB?

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Right, however a phenom II X2 and an X4 have the same FSB frequency, and the X4 performs nearly twice as well. Which clearly shows those extra threads are being used.

Phenom X2 and Athlon X4 has different architecture. Referring to the other results it can be explained anyway without using number of cores. Specially with results of Athlon II X2/Phenom II X2/Athlon II X3 19/24/28. It can be explained only by architecture specially for X2 procs.

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And I'm 19, have been building computers since I was 6, spend much of my time looking at benchmarks and giving tech support online, and am working towards a career in GPU design.

You build computers, but i build architecture and motherboards for 6 years

Edited by Alex MSQ, 04 May 2012 - 12:26 PM.

[Alex MSQ]

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Dude, you completely lost me there. You obviously are not up to date with your knowledge of games today. BTW, here's COD MW3 using 4 cores-

Where is the CoD at your graphs? I see IE, messenger, steam process, maybe FRAPS, every of it can use separate core process. Also core could be loaded by SWAP process, or uncoding game archives...

What should i see on your graph?

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Right, however a phenom II X2 and an X4 have the same FSB frequency, and the X4 performs nearly twice as well. Which clearly shows those extra threads are being used.

If you want to test procs, launch some unrar processes numbered by cores-1 and then test num of operations. Maybe it should be time of unrar in sec. This way you will get perfomance of a games in your system totally, not only proc.

Edited by Alex MSQ, 04 May 2012 - 12:28 PM.

[Mezzanine]

Hi Scanlon,

If it's not too late to weigh in on this topic, I just built mine last fall and there are some great guides at ArsTechnica, like this one from December of last year. It's a bit dated now, but they give a good amount of background information and talk about where the decisions are coming from, which can really help if you're trying to sort through the fluff and figure out your own box.

[Vulpesveritas]

Alex MSQ, on 04 May 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

I ask again: Have you ever got 192V/48Hz in your outlet? Or have you ever peak current in a fan dusted to a crap? And if you have 3 such fans? I'm working with faults like that once/month. It's better to have margin of safety. Or you will change PSU once/1,5 year

With a good PSU, that isn't such an issue. Also, power is fairly stable in the USA.

Alex MSQ, on 04 May 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

Phenom X2 and Athlon X4 has different architecture. Referring to the other results it can be explained anyway without using number of cores. Specially with results of Athlon II X2/Phenom II X2/Athlon II X3 19/24/28. It can be explained only by architecture specially for X2 procs.

no, but a Phenom II X4 and a Phenom Ii X2 have the same architecture and show the results I was talking about.

Alex MSQ, on 04 May 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

You build computers, but i build architecture and motherboards for 6 years

You do such, but I'm constantly learning and updating my knowledge, and am starting to learn architecture. I also know what makes a good computer component on a spec sheet. I also read reviews and benchmarks on new products and compare to what's out there, and know what parts are capable of at extremes for a system. We each have our own bases of knowledge, however I would say I know a good amount of what's available to consumers.

[Barbaric Soul]

Alex MSQ, on 04 May 2012 - 12:23 PM, said:

Where is the CoD at your graphs? I see IE, messenger, steam process, maybe FRAPS, every of it can use separate core process. Also core could be loaded by SWAP process, or uncoding game archives...

What should i see on your graph?

If you can't see it for yourself, I'll explain alittle. Here's a pic of my task manager performance tab when I haven't been playing COD MW3.



and here is a pic of task manager performance tab after just finished playing COD MW3



There have been no other programs started or halted except for COD MW3. I was not running FRAPS or TS3 or any other program like that. Now if you can't see that COD MW3 will use 4 cores(granted, COD MW3 is not going to max out my 2600k OC'ed to 4.5ghz), your just refusing to see the truth.