Next build

[Euroranger]

Okay sports fans...of late I have experienced many technical hurdles to my continuing gaming pwnage of the Great Unwashed Masses. My connection during 2142 drops and then comes back and, even worse, I get random lockups where the entire rig simply seizes up and I have to do a hard boot.

Well, the seizing has lately become more frequent and I am finally pissed enough to begin considering building a new rig. I spent a few days last week figuring out what I wanted in a new spec and the list is nearly complete. I enclose it below looking for commentary and ideas. However, first, a few provisos:


The rig is intended to be used for gaming and movie viewing
I am striving to balance the price and capabilities/expandability
I am trying very hard to keep the price under $1500 inclusive of taxes and shipping
It needs to last me at least 3 years
I prefer the ATI cards over the NVidia because they do better with movie viewing


Anyway, the list I have put together can be found here:

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Comments, suggestions, thoughts are all welcome.

PS: There are 2 procs listed as I started out with the 6750 and then Shades suggested the quad core...and it's only around $80 more. My first configuration had the dual core and 4 Mb of memory...but I would truly prefer to avoid Vista for as long as possible and 4Mb is wasted on XP...so I backed it down to 2 Mb.

[TotalCarnage]

XP64 Edition :) 64 bit goodness

[Euroranger]

Right...but will the games play on that OS?

[EviL McGyver]

4MB is usable in XP I run 3MB and it seems to be a sweet spot for XP.

64 bit O/S will run most 32 bit apps in emulation, some issues with .NET2.0 and others but not anything major that I have seen yet.

I can save you the O/S cost. Send me an address and XP Sp2 will be on the way. ;)

Working on getting Vista setup the same way but the Microsuck license trolls are impeding my software-fu skills...and besides Vista is @$$

In another month or so there will be some breaks on the CPU prices but I deny all knowledge ;)

EM

[Euroranger]

3Mb...how do you get get 3Mb when you have to pair the memory? Or is that an old issue that no longer applies? Two 1GB sticks and two 512K?

Emulation mode while gaming...does that work? Does anyone here use the 64 bit OS on their gaming rig? I decided on XP because I know it will run everything I have and Vista brings absolutely nothing to the table that I want (my mom's new laptop has Vista Home and it redefines "asstastic"). The card I have quoted is a DX10 card so, once Vista gets up to speed (say by about SP2) I'll be able to switch over. Either that or when the game makers start issuing new releases that run only on Vista.

And what is this news on the CPU prices? :D Evil, tell me true, the quad core, is it worth the dollars? Doesn't the app itself have to be written to take advantage of 4 cores? I mean, for a difference of $80 I'm futureproofing my machine to some extent...but do you really see a big difference as compared to a Core 2 Duo when running normal apps?

PS: I'll shoot you my addy on PM but I'm still prolly around 60 days away from ordering this rig.

[EviL McGyver]

Youre spot on for the 3MB, 2 1GB and 2 512k, I usually dont run mixed sizes but they were lying around and not doing nothing so what the heck...I had 4GB in at one point and it ran fine, but the kids rig needed those (2) 1GB sticks to run BF2 and I was left out in the wind...

Emulation in 64 bit is done in the kernel and with some handy dandy dll files. The 32 bit application usually does not even know it is running on a 64 bit O/S. However, you better make sure your BIOS and motherboard will support the 64 bit O/S. On most of my servers I had to ensure the Hardware Virtualization in BIOS was setup right to load the x64 O/S.

For home use on a gaming rig I would not bother, now TC may disagree as I think he is enjoying his l33t x64 gaming rig. I run x64 on servers so he may offer some better advice for running it on a home PC, I am used to Quad Xeon 16 way servers with 32GB of RAM, etc. etc.

Now as to Quad vs Duo, in most applications and games you will not notice any difference if you are doing one thing at a time. Now if you are burning a DVD, listening to WinAmp, surfing web (read midget pr0n), and other things... there are huge improvements.

Will you be doing this while gaming? And some games such as BF2 actually run better when you set the affinity to a single CPU. In the future some of the new games will take advantage big time, just will take some time to catch up. For me I would buy a motherboard that will support Quad later, pop a nice Duo in for now and go. By the time you really need the Quad and/or a game comes out that could really use it the prices will be lower and you can just pop one in.

Just another 2 cents...

EM

[Euroranger]

Hm. Most interesting. I have two procs listed out above because I wasn't sure which I wanted. The Core 2 Duo was my first choice along with 4Gb ram...but then I was reminded that XP won't use more than 3Gb of that...and my XP right that runs with 2GB now runs great...

So perhaps my new build will be the Core 2 Duo with 2GB and the XP SP2 OR the Core 2 Duo with the 4Gb and the 64 bit OS...

...seeing as how I'm trying to keep this within a budget, perhaps the first option works best.

[TotalCarnage]

Yes, I have a difference of opinion on that. I run x64 Windows XP. It does have a few limitations but overall the performance is the same or better. You may have driver limitations on certain devices like printers. The only thing I forgot to check was my printer and its a few years old so there is no driver.

x64 edition XP is based on the Windows 2003 Server kernel. As a result it is a bit different than normal XP. The 3 gig limit with x32 windows has to do with memory address limitations in the design of x32. Just like the memory addressing limits with 16 bit apps back in the day.

Generally if you can find a x64 2003 server driver it will work with the xp. Mine is XP2c.

Be sure you don't get ia64 XP since that is for Itanium processors and completely different. Honestly, 4 Gig is overkill. But the ram was cheap and its an epeen thing. This thing is super stable and has never crashed. It runs wow at 1600x1050 at stupid framerates with all my shit maxed out. I love it. I did notice a performance gain in 3dmark after upgrading to x64. It multitasks better and I never have any issues with vent and the game doing wierd shit.

I run an ASUS 975X chipset motherboard 4GB of crucial DDR2-800 memory and a E6600 EMT64 proc. its smooth as silk.

[TotalCarnage]

btw, dont' jump on the DX10 bandwagon yet. DX10.1 is on its way and it ain't the same :)

Vista is the suck.

[Euroranger]

Yeah, I specc'd the DX10 card but not the OS cause I've heard DX10 isn't all it's being made out to be...now. The vid card is a nice beefy card, pricey but it will probably last me a long while.

While I like the x64 OS for the 4Gb ram, I think yer right...it's more an e-peen thing than necessity. I have 2Gb now and an older AMD and I don't get left behind at all yet. My biggest thing is that the current box seizes once and again and it's old and the storage is starting to get maxed out and it runs hot and it's loud...and I want a new one. :)

I'm thinking of going with the Core 2 Duo with 2GB ram for now. Save the $$ on the CPU and the memory as the board (a nice Asus Shades suggested) is more than capable of taking a quad core and up to 8Mb of memory...so upgrade path is clear. Even set up for SLI...in case I ever get crazy.

[TotalCarnage]

Craig,

When have you ever seen me use anything but an ASUS motherboard in my computer. One thing to consider. I am running a XFX 7900GS video card. I paid $169. It runs everything I have. Don't be misled into thinking that 8xxx car is faster, because alot of them are not, they just support DX10 which most games are backward compatible to DX9.

Most of the Intel boards support Crossfire which means you need ATI cards.
SLI is Nvidia's dealio. You'll need a nforce chipset to do that. Personally, I always stick with Intel chipset mobos for Intel processors. The other thing is that I don't see spending the bucks to run SLI/Crossfire since you need a small power plant to run all that shit. If you plan to double up you better stick about a 1Kw PS in there. My rig uses a 550W PS.

Do go SATA on the HD's. I'm a fan of the RE16 series from Western Digital since they have enterprise operation hours listed for them.

[Euroranger]

Well, I have had motherboards from MSI and Gigabyte but this would be my first Asus. I know about SLI being NVidia and Crossfire being ATI...if I were to go with paired vid cards though, they say SLI is better than Crossfire these days. The vid card I have specc'd is a fine card. It will scream through DX9 stuff and will play movies better my current 7600GT.

I'm actually counting on backwards compatible DX10 games to be the norm for another 12-18 months. DX10 just isn't panning out to the be the earth-shattering shift in graphics it was hyped to be...so I'm hedging my bets a bit with the card. It's DX10 but with the 1Gb of onboard video memory...it should shred DX9...and that suits me fine. I'm also with ya on the PSU. I kept looking at the specs for 2 card machines and they were going with at least 800 watt PSUs. With the one card, the 650 watts will be plenty. I don't tend to run a lot of USB stuff so the load is probably a tad lower than normal anyway.

I went with the Samsung drive as I have had 2 of them before and have had zero trouble with them. Had a Seagate a few years back that crashed and I lost everything on that...and that's when I picked up Samsung. Nice little drive, decent storage space, very affordable.