1329 replies to this topic

[NWHHarrier]

Love these reviews, it's given me a new outlook on the CH products especially. I used to think they were cheap, antiquated sticks from the early 1990's and had no idea as to their quality. They desperately look like they need to be paired with a seperate throttle or a lefty stick though! Are there any CH users that can describe their setup? Do you guys mind using that tiny disc wheel as a throttle?

[Viper69]

I have the CH Fighterstick, CH Pro Throttle and Pro Pedals. The stick has a very light touch but it is extremely accurate. I was playing Mech 4 Mercs and I can pretty much call shots to blacked out areas on mechs. You could use the throttle on the stick but I have not attempted it.

The Rudder Pedals are very fluid but they do have a large detent in the center. That is fine for me because I get lazy leg in flight sims and without a detent your plane flies all weird.

The Throttle I thought would take some getting used to since its a slide type but it too is very accurate and has loads of buttons. I miss the dials on the throttle like my old X45 had.

Edited by Viper69, 11 July 2012 - 06:11 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Catamount, on 10 July 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

Again, I'm not denying that the 7870 is a great card. It's powerful and frugal on power, and I would kill to have one over my two 5770s (crossfire was a fun one-time experiment, but seriously, multi-GPU solutions blow). I'm just saying that it's not worth stepping down from a more powerful GPU to one in order to get a more powerful CPU, because one will begin encountering large numbers of games a 7870 won't be able to play long before one bottlenecks on a less powerful CPU.

So what we are saying is we know better than every other tech site out there to the point we recommend CPU's no other site does even in their low end suggestions?
A number of people have recommended the 7870 to alot of people on these boards, it wasn't a concern then when it was recommended so why now? Is it because we're again back to trying to push AMD chips? Like before people we're pushing the 7 series radeon GPU's mocking Nvidia's up coming kepler chips as never going to happen, they can't be that good.

If your going to offer people advice you need to remain objectionable and without bias, sadly both seem to be missing here lately, unless your an AMD/ASrock fan.

Edited by DV McKenna, 11 July 2012 - 08:03 AM.

[Catamount]

DV McKenna, on 11 July 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

So what we are saying is we know better than every other tech site out there to the point we recommend CPU's no other site does even in their low end suggestions?

Oh come now; you know the majority of the published tech community outside of a tiny handful of sights are more or less idiots, but that's not the issue here.

Would I prefer a $200 Intel CPU to anything lower end? Sure. Is someone going to meaningfully bottleneck an FX6200 before a 7870 in the vast majority of games? While it's impossible to answer that with 100% certainty, the fact that new APIs have been reducing CPU overhead since the DX9 days, that games are always GPU heavy and have trended towards blowing past GPU capabilities faster than CPU capabilities, and the fact that even if games do increase in CPU intensiveness, it'll be through increased multithreading anyways would lead me to conclude the answer is almost certainly no.

Even an FX4170, while not a spectacular CPU (spectacular hardware isn't in $600 builds anyways) should he more than competent for games for quite awhile to come. Sure, it's not a step up from Deneb clock for clock, and it's even a slight step down, but it's also clocked absurdly high.


For a budget build, that's okay in my book, which I guess is what it comes down to, since neither of us can predict the future of hardware specs.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Catamount, on 11 July 2012 - 08:07 AM, said:

Oh come now; you know the majority of the published tech community outside of a tiny handful of sights are more or less idiots, but that's not the issue here.

Would I prefer a $200 Intel CPU to anything lower end? Sure. Is someone going to meaningfully bottleneck an FX6200 before a 7870 in the vast majority of games? While it's impossible to answer that with 100% certainty, the fact that new APIs have been reducing CPU overhead since the DX9 days, that games are always GPU heavy and have trended towards blowing past GPU capabilities faster than CPU capabilities, and the fact that even if games do increase in CPU intensiveness, it'll be through increased multithreading anyways would lead me to conclude the answer is almost certainly no.

Even an FX4170, while not a spectacular CPU (spectacular hardware isn't in $600 builds anyways) should he more than competent for games for quite awhile to come. Sure, it's not a step up from Deneb clock for clock, and it's even a slight step down, but it's also clocked absurdly high.


For a budget build, that's okay in my book, which I guess is what it comes down to, since neither of us can predict the future of hardware specs.

Not all of them are idiots, lets remember these people are paid and test the individual equipment at hand, something none of us do for a living, we go their benchmarks and just link the bits that prove our point.

Even a $900 build is budget, so premium hardware wouldn't even be in there so trying to place a 670 in it is fruitless. You shouldn't sacrifice on the CPU for the sake of the GPU so heavily.
It's quite telling that the 4170 is the best FX chip on the market for gaming so lets at least be honest that the FX series was largely not good enough.

Im going to link this and i fully expect Vulp to come back with But oh noes they are biased towards Intel but this particular page talks sense.
http://www.tomshardw...ark,3136-9.html

Quote

[color=#3C3B3B]The good news is that AMD fans can still enjoy games on a capable machine without spending a ton of cash. With that established, though, getting in the door with an LGA 1155-based platform costs about the same and yields a more consistently-good experience. We've seen enthusiasts throw blame all over the place: review sites aren't picking the right benchmarks, developers aren't spending enough time optimizing for AMD's architecture, and Intel is squelching innovation. But it comes down to this: when a new game you’ve been waiting for gets installed on your machine, finger-pointing won't help you enjoy it any more if it behaves like Metro 2033, demonstrating between 27% and 33% higher minimum frame rates on the Core i3-2100. Even a $200 FX-8120 won’t solve your problem; our tests show that chip acts just like the FX-4100 in gaming environments.[/color]

Now with that said, some games out there do prefer quad core to dual core chips not many at the moment but more so in the future.
But again we talk about the AM3+ upgradability, well truth be told it's still there with Intel you can pick up a G630 SB chip for about £50 so roughly $90-$100 slightly cheaper than the 4100 (and from the gaming benchmarks i can find which is not many) it performs similar to the FX 4100 at stock.
This still leaves you room later when you move your budget build forward to pick up either I5 Sandy/Ivybridge on the same socket.

[Vulpesveritas]

DV McKenna, on 11 July 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

Not all of them are idiots, lets remember these people are paid and test the individual equipment at hand, something none of us do for a living, we go their benchmarks and just link the bits that prove our point.

Even a $900 build is budget, so premium hardware wouldn't even be in there so trying to place a 670 in it is fruitless. You shouldn't sacrifice on the CPU for the sake of the GPU so heavily.
It's quite telling that the 4170 is the best FX chip on the market for gaming so lets at least be honest that the FX series was largely not good enough.

Im going to link this and i fully expect Vulp to come back with But oh noes they are biased towards Intel but this particular page talks sense.
http://www.tomshardw...ark,3136-9.html



Now with that said, some games out there do prefer quad core to dual core chips not many at the moment but more so in the future.
But again we talk about the AM3+ upgradability, well truth be told it's still there with Intel you can pick up a G630 SB chip for about £50 so roughly $90-$100 slightly cheaper than the 4100 (and from the gaming benchmarks i can find which is not many) it performs similar to the FX 4100 at stock.
This still leaves you room later when you move your budget build forward to pick up either I5 Sandy/Ivybridge on the same socket.

yet that G630 will fail compared to the FX quad core in modern multithreaded titles. One of the reasons that Intel looks so good on review paper is the domination of older titles, with one or two modern titles with low thread counts (Skyrim, Metro, or/ and DA2), sometimes the one modern truly CPU intensive game I can think of (Civ 5), and then a good number of older titles (I still see the original Far Cry in a number of reviews) Then when you look at modern games with proper thread utilization (Crysis 2, BF3, etc.) the FX chip pulls ahead or performs on par.

And why shouldn't you sacrifice the CPU to get yourself a GPU which will get you a greater net gain of frames per second in a game? When from between a Radeon HD 7870 and a Geforce GTX 670 there is a 10-25 frame per second difference (averages around 15 or so), and if you aren't playing poorly threaded titles, you won't see much difference. And let's face it, even with the frame per second difference, if you're pushing 200 frames per second + in an old title, you won't see a difference period.

And while sure, that brings you up to an Ivy at best with an upgrade, with AM3+, you have the possibility of Steamroller and beyond on board, and at very least Piledriver.
Which while you say, wait for the results, we already know the minimum it will perform like;
http://www.tomshardw...y-apu,3241.html

While the AMD chips still fall horribly behind in floating point math, with most games and day to day applications pulling on the integer cores, even these low clocked AMD chips have a strong showing. Also, it shows that AMD's floating point units have made a huge improvement over past iterations.

And 7zip shows an overall improvement again.

and in low threaded Skyrim, we see that the CPU improvements allow a dual core Piledriver with a much lower end GPU to match the quad core A8-3850 at lower resolutions, even if it is behind in all games that utilize more cores.

So we know that Piledriver is a huge step up for AMD, and if prices remain as they are, or similar to what they are for Piledriver equivalents of BD, then it should put it well ahead of IB in price/performance, far moreso than AMD chips currently compete, Because without L3 cache, minor architecture tweaks (please reduce latency AMD?... maybe you can?...), and the removal of the iGP, then there should be some very good upgrade options here.

[Chimp]

For the UK player base I found Bit-Tech a good starting point when building a new gaming rig.

http://www.bit-tech....uide-may-2012/1

I hope it helps.

[Vulpesveritas]

Updated with new builds a day early due to my work schedule the next couple of days.

[Kalenn]

Posted this on another thread, but still have my Microsoft SideWinder Precision Pro. Works like a charm on Windows 7, and as someone noted there is a commercially available control-mapping software in the event you don't have the original MSoft package. I'm really hoping they make MWO compatible, including shift-button support, which wasn't consistently implemented in every game - some just picked it up as button 9, rather than a modifying function on the other keys.

[Aidan1004]

I hope this one will work with the game..... It is a few years older and it isn't produced anymore but it is a good Joystick. Another question is, will there be Force Feedback effects in the game? If the picture isn't working, it is a Saitek Cybord 3D Force Feedback.

Edited by Aidan1004, 11 July 2012 - 01:19 PM.

[C u j o]

Blood Crow, on 10 July 2012 - 01:08 AM, said:

Looks like you prefer AMD processors over Intel. I'm more or less illiterate when it comes to computer hardware so would you be willing to provide me with an explanation as to the pros and cons of each? I'm looking at building something in the ~$900 price range and I've been at odds over which brand of processor to choose.

Check out this links at Tom's Hardware about AMD or Intel cpu's for gaming
http://www.tomshardw...clock,3106.html

Good article comparing AMD's to Intel specifically in gaming
http://www.tomshardw...hmark,3120.html

Here is a link about the video card's
http://www.tomshardw...eview,3107.html

Edited by C u j o, 11 July 2012 - 04:51 PM.

[Vulpesveritas]

C u j o, on 11 July 2012 - 04:20 PM, said:

Check out this links at Tom's Hardware about AMD or Intel cpu's for gaming
http://www.tomshardw...clock,3106.html

Good article comparing AMD's to Intel specifically in gaming
http://www.tomshardw...hmark,3120.html

Here is a link about the video card's
http://www.tomshardw...eview,3107.html

I see you like Tomshardware. Sadly for their opinions, MWO as well as most future titles of various games favor more cores to single thread performance. And while the i3 is good, an overclocked Phenom II or FX-6200 is a better choice.
Compared to an i5 without an unlocked multiplier, an AMD processor can be faster if overclocked. Sandy only has a 20% higher clock - to - clock, core - to -core performance advantage. A phenom II clocked 25% higher would have an advantage. It's not until the i5-2500k is there an undisputed match there on the CPU end.

Though, that will likely not be the case in the long run, with the AMD octocores having more processing power overall, and games becoming more and more multithreaded, as other applications. Also, I don't know any person who uses their computer only for gaming, and in non-gaming tasks those extra cores will help. Plus, there are applications that run in the background which can take advantage of your extra cores on a hexacore or octacore.

And as time passes with DX11 taking over, less and less load will go on the CPU, and instead move to the GPU, as DX11 allows for GPU computing to take a prominent role in games, physics being a predominant use.

[Vulpesveritas]

In other curiosities, I wonder why Garth has't pinned my other guides... I remember him saying he would... That GPU guide especially should be pinned IMO, moreso than the motherboard guide.

[Procyon Alpha]

I fully agree with most everything posted. I do note that over the years that I have been building gaming PCs, I have to say I never stray very far from PSUs from PC Power and Cooling. You may ask why, I would have to say their customer service and over all performance has never failed me. I have never had one burn up a board or ever under preform.

You may say but they have lower wattage out puts then others of the same price point. My response to this is that almost all PSU power outputs are tested and labeled by a 5 second peak wattage. PCPC is rated at a constant peak wattage, which is,a better overall rating.

I actually started buying PCPC PSUs back in 2005 after several failed PSUs when building SLI 8800GTX PCs. Back then you had to water cool the 8800GTX because they would run so hot,as to start to melt the plastic fans. After about the 5th 1200w PSU went out on one of my customers I made several phone calls. BTW I don't remember which PSU brand I was using at the time. I called FrozenCPU wher I get a lot of my water cooled parts and they steered me over to PCPC. I have yet to ever look back.

Now finding PCPC PSUs are not always the easiest to find. For example my PSU right now is an OCZ 850w Gold label, but it was made by PCPC. You do need to do,your research when buying a PSU, it will save you a lot of money and headaches over the years. Personally a PSU is the most important single item when building a PC, please do you home work before buying one.

I can not stress enough, DO NOT GO CHEAP on the PSU!

I hope this helps

[Pollux114]

I just purchased a CH Pro Throttle and Fighterstick based on the info in this thread. Thanks to all who posted. Cheers!

[Vulpesveritas]

Updated, Asus Sabertooth 990FX has replaced the AsRock Fatal1ty Professional 990FX in the $200 segment for AM3+.
Thank you DV for the heads up and sources.

[Catamount]

Let's take a step back here for a second and remember what our goal is: get our games to 60fps, or as close as possible.

I can't deny that TH's tests show that there are isolated cases where, say, an i3 2100 does a much better job at that than any of the Bulldozer chips, but more significant is the fact that games remain GPU-bound for the most part, and so most games show no difference of any sort, and while TH likes to harp on how such entry level processors will only be good for entry level GPUs, the simple fact is that in gaming, the majority of increased graphical intensity affects the GPU far more than the CPU, which means scaling up graphics from those games they tested as we look to future titles, titles that don't run perfectly on either TH's test CPUs or GPUs, will gobble up the power from more powerful GPUs faster than CPUs.


It should also be noted that there are going to be cases where the Bulldozer chips will be faster. Crysis 2 loves having four cores, and hates being restricted to two, for instance. We don't see that difference because DX11 is so damned CPU-efficient.



So McKenna does have some reasoning here, on both the $600 and $900 builds, but again, given our goal here, what are we more likely to see:

1.) a favoring of CPU-heavy systems (especially Intel) that is characterized by:

-poorly threaded games
-games that increase in CPU requirements faster than GPU requirements
-new APIs that focus on the CPU side of graphics more than the GPU side


2.) a favoring of GPU-heavy systems that is characterized by:

-games that are better threaded and take advantage of 4/6/8 core CPUs
-graphics that rely more on the GPU, your fancy shader-heavy stuff, that demand more of that than of the CPU
-new APIs that dump more and more to the GPU and increasingly emphasize GPGPU and porting of C languages over to GPU processing (AMD's current goal)


Right now, you're not going to meaningfully bottleneck on either of the discussed CPUs or GPUs, not enough to complain, because the simple fact is that $900 is still a budget build, to say nothing for $600. Nothing will run perfectly, but games will run competently. But some day that will change, and one of those two parts will become obsolete before the other. Since, out of the above two possibilities, #2 is far more in line with all trends thus far, getting the more powerful GPU and sticking with the cheap, threaded CPU would seem to be the vastly superior option. I simply cannot see the point in building a system tailor made to run games that we're moving further and further from (poorly-threaded and CPU heavy games). It'll do one no favors now (since, again, either setup will work), and it's extremely unlikely to pay off down the road.

Edited by Catamount, 12 July 2012 - 09:11 AM.

[Thehunterslayer]

well having no money means ill have to break out the saitek ST290 pro that I have from a flight sim i play from time to time
IF it works with mechwarrior online

Edited by Thehunterslayer, 12 July 2012 - 06:28 PM.

[Dreager96]

Thanks for the info very informative, I am looking at the x52 pro now, will see if I buy one

[RCJunior]

My two cents:

Leaving aside the quality issues that some mention, I think that the Logitech G940 is the real deal, because the controls distribution of the joystick are just simple amazing for a mechwarrior, the 2 stages trigger and the 4 buttons on the top are ideal for configure a better way the group fire.

BTW: exellent guide.