1329 replies to this topic

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Vulpesveritas, on 26 September 2012 - 02:39 PM, said:

Well, something I would suggest CPU wise, is if you're able to wait another month on the CPU, do so, as Piledriver core Vishera FX-8350s are on their way and are rumored for next month currently, which by the current benchmarks of the trinity piledriver cores, should be 10-20% faster clock-for-clock, and you're getting ~10% higher stock clock speeds at the same power consumption vs Zambezi. As such that would be my primary recommendation. For lasting without changing out CPUs, that will be your best bet. Otherwise, an FX-8120 overclocked will be your best price / performance bit so long as you're not trying extreme OCs. (which you won't be on that cooler)

Oh, very excellent point! I have a monthly budget that is very, very limited, and MWO will be my October purchase - so computer parts won't be bought until November at the soonest. I will plan for the Piledriver Vishera then, thanks!

Vulpesveritas, on 26 September 2012 - 02:39 PM, said:

Motherboard wise, while the AsRock Extreme4 is good by all accounts, you may want to consider the Asrock Fatal1ty professional and Asus Sabertooth 990fx if you have the budget. As you'll get a few more features on the Fatal1ty and a better warranty on the sabertooth. They also both have lower heatsinks on them, which won't hinder aftermarket heatsinks as much should you choose to go with a larger one such as a Coolermaster TPC 812 or Phanteks PH-TC14PE. (the Phanteks also matches the orange theme if you're going for it, as well as among the top air coolers on the market)

I will see what I can do, but GPU is a higher priority for me, well, usually. Do you recomend I "cheap out" on GPU to get a better Mobo for the mark one build, then upgrade the GPU later? I wouldn't mind either the Sabertooth or Fatal1ty, as I agree that both are superior to the Extreme4.

[Vulpesveritas]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 26 September 2012 - 02:47 PM, said:

I will see what I can do, but GPU is a higher priority for me, well, usually. Do you recomend I "cheap out" on GPU to get a better Mobo for the mark one build, then upgrade the GPU later? I wouldn't mind either the Sabertooth or Fatal1ty, as I agree that both are superior to the Extreme4.

I would say go for the better GPU you can get, but if you say have the $30 wiggle room after getting the step down GPU, it would be an idea to go for. Another decent option for the price is the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3, which while it has a smaller feature set, is just as reliable, is $20 cheaper ($30 cheaper after rebates), has lower profile heatsinks, and (IMO) would go better with your orange theme. There is also the UD5 for about the same price (after $10 rebate) as the Extreme4 with a few more features than the UD3.

Though so long as you're not going with one of the larger heatsinks on the market, the Extreme4 is a great mid-range board with a good feature set. And as stated before, the GPU should be your primary point of interest for your budget.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Ok, cool, thanks for everything so far, Vulpes', I appreciate it!

[Hythos]

SJ SCP Wolf, on 17 June 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

Most of my office, what do I win?

Groovy!
I worked in a control center for a number of years; this one's double ours, but I had my weight bench +400lbs right next to my desk

[mekabuser]

cpu is the killer for this game.
@ microcenter they have i52500k for 159usd.
thats what ill be getting.

[Yenome]

Vulpesveritas, on 19 September 2012 - 10:29 PM, said:

2. Newegg for most users has better deals on parts most of the time in my experience.

3. If you bothered to look at all, $35 buys you an 8GB kit of RAM.

4. HDDs are still price-inflated after the flooding. Also, SSDs will net faster day-to-day felt speeds than a faster CPU for most users.

5. Never cheap out on a PSU.

I only shop at newegg. plus 35 dollar 8gb wont be as good as the 80 dollars for the gaming ram. unless you just want to be real cheap with it. I never said cheap out on a PSU i said as most people are misinformed on whats really important with them and just go for over all wattage which is not always the best thing to look at. you want the most amps on the 12v rail as you can get. I did check the first post you had, I was just giving my view on cheap builds as i been focusing on cheap builds. Also was just commenting on the lil system I use to decide on a budget.

[Vulpesveritas]

Yenome, on 29 September 2012 - 05:25 AM, said:

I only shop at newegg. plus 35 dollar 8gb wont be as good as the 80 dollars for the gaming ram. unless you just want to be real cheap with it. I never said cheap out on a PSU i said as most people are misinformed on whats really important with them and just go for over all wattage which is not always the best thing to look at. you want the most amps on the 12v rail as you can get. I did check the first post you had, I was just giving my view on cheap builds as i been focusing on cheap builds. Also was just commenting on the lil system I use to decide on a budget.

Reason for getting a cheap ~$35 kit of 8GB RAM from a good company;

Outside of benchmarks, you won't see the difference in RAM. There is less than a frame per second difference in games between DDR3-1600mhz CAS9 and DDR3-2133mhz CAS9 on a sandy bridge or ivy bridge rig.

AMD CPUs tend to favor lower CAS settings even further once you hit DDR3-1333mhz but once again you won't see more than a frame per second difference between CAS9 and CAS7, although their APUs will eat up as much Bandwidth as you can throw at it.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 29 September 2012 - 08:15 AM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Updated for 9/29/2012

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Ok, so, I decided rather than wait until I could afford a whole new computer, I would do that but get a used one first for cheap, that way I could bridge the gap. So after some looking I seem to have an arrangement for a rig that's at or above minimum specs for MW:O.

Heres a few details:
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme X6800
GPU - GeForce GTX 260
RAM - 4 Gb, unspecifed as to DDR

Also apparently uses a seperate dedicated PSU for the GeForce. So, a couple questions. One, can the CPU be swapped out for a quad core if I find one cheap enough? And two, are dedicated GPU power supplies semi universal? (This one is a thermaltake 250w).

Thanks in advance.
~Sir Roland

[Youngblood]

You're going to need to check the motherboard yourself as to whether it's DDR2 or 3, just to be sure. As for the CPU, you're in luck--Intel managed quad-cores for Socket LGA 775 (which is what your X6800 is in).

How much is that setup going to cost you, by the way?

EDIT: Your Thermaltake supplementary PSU should have 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. They'll be able to power any (single) card up to an AMD HD 7950 or nVidia GTX 680 (assuming reference PCBs).

Edited by Youngblood, 30 September 2012 - 08:23 AM.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Youngblood, on 30 September 2012 - 06:53 AM, said:

You're going to need to check the motherboard yourself as to whether it's DDR2 or 3, just to be sure. As for the CPU, you're in luck--Intel managed quad-cores for Socket LGA 775 (which is what your X6800 is in).

Well, I'm well aware there's quad cores available in LGA 775, sir. <grin>

What I want to know is, if I decide to upgrade to one, how easy / difficult is it to replace the chip. I've never done that before but I want to learn, since I'll be assembling my next fully modern rig myself from scratch.

Youngblood, on 30 September 2012 - 06:53 AM, said:

How much is that setup going to cost you, by the way?

About three hundred plus shipping.

Youngblood, on 30 September 2012 - 06:53 AM, said:

EDIT: Your Thermaltake supplementary PSU should have 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. They'll be able to power any (single) card up to an AMD HD 7950 or nVidia GTX 680 (assuming reference PCBs).

That's good to know. In that case I'll be happy to let the dedicated video PSU inform my GPU choice for the rig I build myself.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 30 September 2012 - 09:21 AM, said:

Well, I'm well aware there's quad cores available in LGA 775, sir. <grin>

What I want to know is, if I decide to upgrade to one, how easy / difficult is it to replace the chip. I've never done that before but I want to learn, since I'll be assembling my next fully modern rig myself from scratch.

Assuming standard Intel cooler, as simple as removal of some push pins clean the coolers thermal plate, flip a bracket retaining leaver, take CPU out, put new one in, re latch the retaining leaver, apply thermal paste (properly a dab in the center of the chip is fine) re do the push pins on the cooler.

This chap here is not the best at doing it, but it demonstrates it well enough



However, give you already have a PC, that gives you a barebones starting point. You have a HDD,Case,Optical drive. I personally feel that is $300 wasted.
For $222 you can get yourself

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103727

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813157280

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820231311

If your reusing the PSU you have as you say, your only real major upgrade left for immediate action would be GPU.

You have $80 left out of the 300 you were going to pay on the second hand machine, so you would only need a small amount more, so if you were able to find say an extra $100 you could grab a Radeon 7850 slightly better performance as the 6950 you were looking at, and has higher overclocking head room.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814202004

So in total $403

Edited by DV McKenna, 01 October 2012 - 02:49 AM.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

I have little doubt 300 is too much. Then again, if all goes well for me I plan to have the build I was talking about on the previous page ready to go by 2013. This used rig I'm getting is merely an interim so I don't have to wait to play MW:O, which I am waaay too excited about to wait patiently. Besides, one of my two HDDs has a bearing that's been slowly withering for a couple years. I don't want to push it any further than I have to, and just getting a new computer core, IE CPU Mobo RAM and GPU, would mean I would still be leaning an a 50/50 chance my main drive could die on me.

God does not play dice with the universe, I prefer not to as well.
~Sir Roland

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 01 October 2012 - 10:16 AM.

[TIRTL]

sigh... Cant wait to get home to my desktop so I can really enjoy this! My laptop does not quite cut it.

[Az0r]

I just wanted to weigh into the cpu vs gpu debate. Your benchmarks you linked are very biased towards GPU with 3/4 games being very GPU intensive FPS titles. Note the one non FPS title shows a markable (almost 50%!!) difference in performance. It really is a game by game deal. A game like Starcraft 2 is MASSIVELY cpu capped. It is just as capable of Ultra settings with a gtx460 as with a gtx 690.

As for MWO, I am running a 7970ghz edition and I notice a fairly decent (~8%) gain in fps when I go from 3.4ghz > 4.8ghz on my i5-3570k, so there is a fairly heavy CPU component to the cry engine.

[Catamount]

Az0r, on 03 October 2012 - 03:00 AM, said:

I just wanted to weigh into the cpu vs gpu debate. Your benchmarks you linked are very biased towards GPU with 3/4 games being very GPU intensive FPS titles. Note the one non FPS title shows a markable (almost 50%!!) difference in performance. It really is a game by game deal. A game like Starcraft 2 is MASSIVELY cpu capped. It is just as capable of Ultra settings with a gtx460 as with a gtx 690.

As for MWO, I am running a 7970ghz edition and I notice a fairly decent (~8%) gain in fps when I go from 3.4ghz > 4.8ghz on my i5-3570k, so there is a fairly heavy CPU component to the cry engine.

Two points:

First off, meaningfully CPU-bound titles are the exception, not the rule. In the past several years, very few titles have come out that, when played at remotely high resolutions and settings, bottleneck on any reasonable CPU before even relatively high end GPUs. It's a miniscule minority of games.

Secondly, those games are that are CPU intensive are almost always, if not always, obsolete DX9 titles. Take both of your examples, for instance. Starcraft is a purely DX9.0c RTS, while MWO only has a Directx 9 mode working at the moment and as has been discussed many, many times on this forum, Cryengine3 is very CPU-intensive in DX9, but quickly becomes GPU bound using almost any CPU once one switches to DX11.

Here's Crysis 2 in DX9:



Here's Crysis 2 in DX11:



The biggest CPU difference goes from being 119% in DX9, to 7% in DX11.



CPU-intensive titles have been the exception for something like a decade now, and purely DX9 titles are even more the exception among newly released games. So Vulpes' "bias" is essentially towards the reality of modern games. You say 3/4 of his games are GPU-intensive? If anything, that's a bias towards CPU-intensive titles, because the fraction of actual AAA titles being newly released that are CPU-bound is a hell of a lot higher than that, and has been for anumber of years..

[Aym]

I like all the tech-y purple eagle's flying around in here. I'll have to bring some friends by the FWLM TS3 channel to talk to you guys about pc parts for MWO!

[Taiji]

This is a pretty cool guide, I really like the efforts I see in the OP, but I have 2 points to pick up on.

--

Point 1: Not a useful guide for 120hz LCD/85hz CRT users

If you shelled out for a 120hz monitor then the minimum framerate you want is ~80+, because going above that will not make a discernable difference.

It's a common misconception that 60 fps is as good a framerate as average human eyes can benefit from - It stems from a misunderstanding of the biology of the eye. In fact people, most of them, will be able to tell the difference between 60 and 85.

So this guide could be improved to accommodate 120hz users who also have the money to make good use of their monitor, by listing the minimum FPS's above 60, which would mean that they too can be helped in deciding which card to go for.

--

Point 2: The benchies used in the OP are probably averages.

But averages aren't important - Gamers don't care about averages - It has nothing to do with the quality of gaming.

If the game runs at 20fps for 10 seconds and 80 fps for 50 seconds, then there were 4200 frames rendered in that minute, which gives an average of 70 fps but 10 seconds of nearly unplayable crap.

So the rule is never use averages without showing the essential minimums while comparing the relative merits of different cards.

--

By the way I think it's fine to leave the guide pretty much as it is - You can just make some mention about people using high performance screens, and about the benchies being unreliable. And that way you won't be risking misleading someone into buying the wrong ****.

Again, well done for making such a good guide, Vulpes. I can see you are a good community minded sort. I hope my criticism helps your future purchases make the difference you wanted

Edited by Taiji, 03 October 2012 - 05:06 AM.

[Hakkukakt]

Delscorcho, on 30 July 2012 - 12:52 PM, said:

Thanks for your opinion on the G940. I have read alot of similar detailed findings that have steered me away from this setup.

I have read way too much negative about the G940.

Enough to leave me at the steps of Thursmaster with the wallet open to pull the trigger on the Warthog.

Actually I think I am going to be going with these 3 pcs of hardware: (planning to make the purchase on Fri 3 Aug)

Thrustmaster Hotas Warthog Joystick
Saitek PRO Flight Combat Rudder Pedals
TrackIr 5 Premium Head Tracking for Gaming



Thats nearly $750 on sale.. So its a huge jump from my current X52 setup.. Please anyone with this setup let me know any reason not to jump in this direction.

I really want to enjoy MCO with a Joystick and I think this setup would be awesome!!

I am starting to really get into Flight Sims and the X52 is creaky and not very smooth. Love the throttle but not the Joystick. (too loose, creaky, and lacks smooth sensitivity)

Take Care...

Ach, that is exactely what the setup i want i' m just not yet very skilled to aim the target with the joystick .... so go training

[Az0r]

It's actually not purely Dx9 titles. WoW now supports DX11 and is still CPU bottlenecked. Like most situations when buying/building a PC, doing your own research on the titles you play will give you the best performance for your dollar.