Another "help me buy a new PC" thread!

[DaLagga]

I know you guys love these.  So here's the deal.  My comp has been faithful for 3 years, but even with some upgrades it's showing its age.  But to be honest, I haven't spent much time since I built my last one keeping up on all the latest goodies.  I've done a fair bit of research the past few days, and have some components in mind and want to know what you all think.  Most importantly, I want to know if the parts I'm considering will cause any compatibility issues.  So here goes.

Processor:
I'm not sure whether to go for this Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor ($280) or this Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor (also $280).  From what I've heard quad cores still aren't optimized very well and generally will be outperformed by a dual core in the same price range.  But I don't know...

Memory:
G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory ($110) It isn't the best memory out there, but it's cheap and it's alot of it.  I have my doubts, but since there are alot of reviews and 80% gave it a perfect 5, that's good enough for me. 

Motherboard:
MSI P6N SLI-FI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard  ($105) Now this I'm not sure about.  From what I've read it seems like it should do the job nicely, and it's cheap. 

Video Card:
Well, I was hoping to get a 8800GT.  They start at only $250, but unfortunately seem to be sold out everywhere.  Either I will wait until they are in stock, or I may just go with something else...perhaps bite the bullet and just get a GTX for a little over $500. 

Fan:
ZALMAN CNPS 9700 NT 110mm 2 Ball Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler  ($60) Well...it's a fan.  Supposed to be good I guess... 

The other components I am just going to scavenge from my old system including the case, harddrive, disc drives, sound card, and power supply (700watt).  If I manage to find an 8800GT for around $250 anytime soon (unlikely) this system should run me a little over $800.  I'm also going to stick with windows XP as DX10 is gimmicky and XP performs better anyway and is more stable than Vista. My goal was to keep it under $1,000 so if you all find a more expensive component or something I am missing entirely, I can maybe fit it in.  Thanks for any help you all can offer!

 

[Archonsod]

From what I've heard quad cores still aren't optimized very well and generally will be outperformed by a dual core in the same price range.  But I don't know...

Dunno where you heard that, but it's bollocks. On a single core benchmark, then dual cores will outperform solely because a 3 Ghz Dual costs the same as a Quad. On multithreaded benchmarks, the Quad is always going to win, around 70% faster at that level.

 

[italiano]

Feels like you get a lot more bang for your buck for $1k these days than 2 years ago.

 

[DaLagga]

Well, benchmark programs are meaningless as I learned years ago as they tend to rate things that don't matter in most games or give false impressions because they poorly weight different hardware capabilities.  I tend to skip sites that list 3Dmark ratings and such and look at what matters: FPS in actual games at various settings.  I've been looking over several sites that compare the C2D performance with the quad in actual games and in virtually every single test the C2D is outperforming it by what seems to be about 10-20%.  What most of these sites have said also is that perhaps in the future when the software is optimized the quad will exceed the C2D in performance, but that it will likely take well over a year for this to happen.  In the meantime however, all games that are already out or that will be out before these optimizations occur will perform better on a C2D system.  I don't know.  From what I've been reading it seems like the technology hasn't even truly utilized 2 cores, much less a quad.  Combine that with the fact that a C2D will produce much less heat and take less power and I think I'm going to skip the quad.  

 

[Archonsod]

I can run Crysis with everything on very high thanks to having a Quad, a Dual  struggles with it (most notably the physics option).  It's pretty much a question of whether you'd prefer to optimise for existing or forthcoming games. Even then, the difference between a 3Ghz CPU and a 2Ghz CPU is pretty much minimal

To go out on a limb, I suspect the next big resource drain for the next two years or so is going to be physics. With a dual core you might need to upgrade to a next gen graphics card with the onboard physics processors by the end of next year. Or a dedicated physics card. Assuming of course that the current trend towards more detailed physics simulations continue, which will likely depend on the console market.

 

[DaLagga]

Well, I've been over to the Crysis boards a bit, and apparently noone can run at max and get a very playable fps.  There were even a couple of people with $5000 systems (quad cores, 8 gigs of memory, 2 8800gtx's in sli, etc.) complaining about it. Supposedly Crysis, like most games, doesn't even properly utilize dual cores, much less quad.  At least that's what I'm understanding from reading all the complaints on the forums.  And I think it's still going to be a while before games get too physics intensive.  Look at those games that have come out to market PhysX's PPU like Cell Factor.  They've kinda bombed, as while physics are fun to play with for a minute or two, when the gameplay itself sucks nobody cares to continue.  So it's probably going to be at least a couple of years before there's a point to having additional physics processing power.  At which point it would be easy enough to just buy a cheap PPU and go with that. 

 

[Archonsod]

Well, I've been over to the Crysis boards a bit, and apparently noone can run at max and get a very playable fps.

That's just the general idiots who throw money at a PC and expect it to work. As I said earlier, I'm getting 40 - 50 FPS with everything on Very High. If I turn off two cores, I can get the same performance by switching down the physics, however the two deactivated cores are still going to be used for Vista background stuff so actual mileage may vary.

Supposedly Crysis, like most games, doesn't even properly utilize dual cores, much less quad.

Erm, you can't differentiate. If an application is multithreaded then it will be spread out across all available cores regardless of how many there are. You can't specify whether it's going to run across dual, quad, octal or even a 30 CPU server box, that's done by the OS.

  Look at those games that have come out to market PhysX's PPU like Cell Factor.  They've kinda bombed, as while physics are fun to play with for a minute or two, when the gameplay itself sucks nobody cares to continue. 

Nvidia has already announced they'll be including physics coprocessors on their next generation of cards (Given they've signed a deal with Havok, you can guess whose engine they'll support). Besides, what planet are you living on where developers actually pay attention to what and why their game is/isn't selling?

 

[Morbo]

Nvidia has already announced they'll be including physics coprocessors on their next generation of cards (Given they've signed a deal with Havok, you can guess whose engine they'll support).

Is that actually still going to happen, what with Intel having bought Havok and Havok FX getting canned?

Anyway, as for a CPU, I'd go for a Q6600 myself, as you can apparently easily overclock those suckers to at least 3 GHz.

 

[Archonsod]

Is that actually still going to happen, what with Intel having bought Havok and Havok FX getting canned?

Probably. Note that Intel are incredibly keen to work closely with Nvidia since AMD bought out ATI. Havok is probably favourite just for being the most popular physics engine, however I'd guess that whatever either Nvidia or ATI (or if we're lucky, both) plump for would become the standard shortly after anyway.

Anyway, as for a CPU, I'd go for a Q6600 myself, as you can apparently easily overclock those suckers to at least 3 GHz.

Yup. And if you buy a decent Mobo like me you even get one click overclocking via the Bios 

 

[DaLagga]

What are the rest of your specs Archonsod?  The thing is, I did see a few performance tests and when you waaaay overclock the quad (in the tests that have overclocked it by 50% to a 3.6ghz) it did outperform the C2D by about 10%.  At stock speeds the C2D seems to outperform the quad by about 15%.  The problem is that a 50% overclock is rather extreme by any measure (and while a 25% overclock may be more stable as you suggested, I doubt that will be enough for it to outperform a C2D anyway).  It would greatly increase cpu temp requiring additional cooling, greatly increase the probability of stability issues, and ultimately decrease the lifespan of your processor.  To me, it just isn't worth the risk.  I have no doubt that quads will become dominant in the next 2 or 3 years.  But as of right now I'm thinking the C2D is the better buy since surperclocking the quad to get similar or slightly better performance isn't worth the additional risks.  So long as the processor will allow me to run anything under the sun for the next 3 years at a decent fps on at least medium settings, I'm happy.  My aging single core AMD 3000+ has allowed me to do just that(I'm even running Crysis at medium and averaging 25fps), and it was over a year old when I bought it.  So I have little doubt the E6850 will meet my expectations. 

But what about the other components?  I was thinking about getting a better motherboard instead of the one listed above, but am not sure what to go with.  I did manage to find an 8800GT for sale for $299, so I'll go with that and maybe soon get a second and put it in SLI. 

 

[DaLagga]

Alright, I'm going to go ahead and order it in the next couple of days.  I've decided to get 2 8800GT's and put them in sli. According to several performance comparisons two 8800gt's leave a single 8800GTX in the dust, and in some games there is as much as a 50% boost in FPS.  Heck, even a single 8800GT seems to get about 90-95% as good a framerate as the GTX.  Considering that 2 8800GT's go for $600 and a single GTX still sells for around $550, you can't beat it for the price. Thanks for the advice guys!  I appreciate it. 

 

[Archonsod]

What are the rest of your specs Archonsod?

Q6700  2.66GHz
Asus P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI  Mainboard
2GB (Corsair XMS2 Xtreme Memory)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB

At stock speeds the C2D seems to outperform the quad by about 15%. 

That's because there's still no decent multi-core benchmarking tests. The 15% you're seeing is down to the 3.0Ghz single core clock versus a 2.3 Ghz single core clock.

  So long as the processor will allow me to run anything under the sun for the next 3 years at a decent fps on at least medium settings, I'm happy. 

Like I said, it's a question of whether you want decent performance for three or six years Core speeds are already becoming pretty much a non-issue, we're moving into number of cores rather than speed, although in three years I expect eight core chips to be on the market. Since it's unlikely that processors will get much faster, most games over the next few years are likely to look at cores before core speeds. The main benefit at the moment is still in the number of things it can do at once (though like I said, Crysis, Supreme Commander and UTIII are designed for multiple cores from the ground up. Oblivion has been retroactively patched to take advantage of multiple cores too, and you'll always have the benefit of being able to run the OS on one core and having the other cores free for whatever else you want to do).

  I was thinking about getting a better motherboard instead of the one listed above, but am not sure what to go with. 

The 680i is probably the best on the market at the minute. Most important thing to look for if you want to run a SLI setup is that both PCIe slots have the same speed in SLI mode. Both slots on the 680i will run at the full 16x when SLI is used, some motherboards will drop the speed (as low as 1x) on both channels if you switch to SLI.

According to several performance comparisons two 8800gt's leave a single 8800GTX in the dust, and in some games there is as much as a 50% boost in FPS.

Careful. SLI mode requires either specific coding in the game or the driver needs to be specially configured, which means you might need to wait for Nvidia to update their driver before you'll see any benefit. Some games also run worse in SLI mode (NWN 2 for example). The GT is a decent workhorse as a standalone card as is. Crysis suffered similar problems of worse performance in SLI until Nvidia updated their driver. Also, don't trust benchmark numbers here. Both Nvidia and ATI optimise drivers on the high end cards specifically to give good benchmark tests, though actual performance may be lower.

Also, with the Nvidia 9 series due out in a couple of months, you might be better off getting a cheaper card and then upgrading once the 9 series is out. For a start you'll get full DX10.1 compatibility, and I'd expect two mid-range series 9 cards should give even better performance (they might have even ironed out the bugs in SLI by then )

 

[DaLagga]

Like I said, it's a question of whether you want decent performance for three or six years  Core speeds are already becoming pretty much a non-issue, we're moving into number of cores rather than speed, although in three years I expect eight core chips to be on the market. Since it's unlikely that processors will get much faster, most games over the next few years are likely to look at cores before core speeds. The main benefit at the moment is still in the number of things it can do at once (though like I said, Crysis, Supreme Commander and UTIII are designed for multiple cores from the ground up. Oblivion has been retroactively patched to take advantage of multiple cores too, and you'll always have the benefit of being able to run the OS on one core and having the other cores free for whatever else you want to do).

Well, the only game I've seen that was truly optimized for quads was Supreme Commander, and the framerates were only 3-5% better over the quad than the dual.  Still with Crysis and all other games, the reverse is true, and to a greater extreme.  Again, I'm sure quads will take over in a couple of years, but here and now, and for the next year or two duals seem to be the better buy.  It's kinda like Vista.  I'm sure in a couple of years it will be the better OS once they work the bugs out, improve performance, and PC hardware improves so the performance hit isn't as noticeable, but as it stands XP is better so long as you don't absolutely have to have DX10. 

The 680i is probably the best on the market at the minute. Most important thing to look for if you want to run a SLI setup is that both PCIe slots have the same speed in SLI mode. Both slots on the 680i will run at the full 16x when SLI is used, some motherboards will drop the speed (as low as 1x) on both channels if you switch to SLI.

Yeah, I was looking at one of those yesterday, I'm going to go with it.  I don't understand why the prices vary so much.  You can spend as much as $400+ on one, yet I found one for only $150.  Naturally I'd be a bit skeptical as to why it's so much cheaper, but according to user reviews it's great.  I even saw one comparing framerates with it and one of the high dollar cards and they were identical.  Pretty much all of the specs seem the same as well...  And yes, it runs SLI with both cards at 16x. 

Careful. SLI mode requires either specific coding in the game or the driver needs to be specially configured, which means you might need to wait for Nvidia to update their driver before you'll see any benefit. Some games also run worse in SLI mode (NWN 2 for example). The GT is a decent workhorse as a standalone card as is. Crysis suffered similar problems of worse performance in SLI until Nvidia updated their driver. Also, don't trust benchmark numbers here. Both Nvidia and ATI optimise drivers on the high end cards specifically to give good benchmark tests, though actual performance may be lower.

Oh no. Any time I see actual benchmark programs used (3DMark for instance) I skip that and read on.  Benchmark programs mean nothing at all and IMO are just used by computer nuts to brag about who can achieve the highest (yet meaningless) score.  What I look at are actual framerate comparisons in games.  The 50% increase I mentioned before was ingame.  And many of these games were years old like F.E.A.R.  It seems like pretty much all new graphically intensive games are going to take full advantage of SLI, and somewhat older ones that don't like NWN will still run at instanely high framerates from a single GT. 

 

[Instag0]

I'd just get the C2D. In two years when you upgrade again, quads will probably be doing better. For now just get the dual core.

 

[Archonsod]

Well, the only game I've seen that was truly optimized for quads was Supreme Commander,

It wasn't, you needed an unofficial patch to do that

Yeah, I was looking at one of those yesterday, I'm going to go with it.  I don't understand why the prices vary so much.

Check the feature set. There's a bunch of 680 and 650 boards, either are pretty good but the number of slots, quality of the onboard hardware and the like changes. While you can probably ignore the onboard sound and the like, the actual number of PCIe slots, presence of an AGP slot and the like might be worth paying attention to. Also there's the whole one click overclocking and similar in the BIOS.

From your perspective the number of SLI slots and speed is likely the big issue, the rest can be safely ignored.

  What I look at are actual framerate comparisons in games.

That's what I was talking about. Nvidia and ATI have a habit of slipping in optimised profiles for big name games, designed purely to give good benchmarking results. Obviously this is a good thing if you're playing said games, but it can be misleading regarding the performance you'll see in non-optimised games.
Interestingly enough, Nvidia have a profile for Spore in there latest driver ....
Crysis also suffered worse performance in SLI until Nvidia updated their drivers, so I don't think we're out of the woods yet. I'm not sure if the OS might have something to do with it here though, SLI wasn't even a pipe dream when XP was designed.

 

[DaLagga]

Check the feature set. There's a bunch of 680 and 650 boards, either are pretty good but the number of slots, quality of the onboard hardware and the like changes. While you can probably ignore the onboard sound and the like, the actual number of PCIe slots, presence of an AGP slot and the like might be worth paying attention to. Also there's the whole one click overclocking and similar in the BIOS.

Yeah, I checked those specs, and they all seemed the same as the higher dollar boards.  I just ordered the parts, and can't wait for them to arrive so I can throw it together.  Of course, this will only be the second PC I have built, and I have no experience with the newer components (SLI in particular), so it will probably take me 8-10 hours like it did last time as I'm going to have to learn alot so as not to fry something.

  I'm actually quite excited about having two 8800 GT's.  They're simply the absolute best video cards on the market for the price.  I was blown away by performance comparisons.  For instance, here's a short list of comparisons from gamespot.  In Bioshock on max settings and 2048x1536 res 8800GT's in SLI averaged 79fps while the 8800GTX only got 47fps.  In Company of Heroes at similarly ultra high settings the SLI 8800 GT's averaged 139fps and the GTX only 85.  In any case, I compare the SLI 8800 GT's to the GTX since 2 GT's cost roughly the same as 1 GTX and absolutely devastate it(and the GTX is still an awesome card by any standard).  Here's another site with very similar results.  Bottom line is, based off of all the results I've seen repeated on many sites if you're getting a new system and are looking for a high end graphics card, skip the GTX and even the Ultra and just get 2 GT's.  Unless of course you've got a fortune to spend and really want 2 GTX's or Ultras.  I'll post again after I've had a chance to try them out myself. 

 

[Archonsod]

Unless of course you've got a fortune to spend and really want 2 GTX's or Ultras.

See, that's what I was thinking I figure once the 9000 series is out the 8800 should plummet in price, so I'll probably pick up a second one for SLI, unless the 9000's are incredibly good anyway.

 

[Tuckles]

Hey guys, I have a help me upgrade my PC problem, and I decided to post it here.

I was thinking of buying an Inno3D GeForce 8800 GT 512mb, worth 12740 and upgrading my RAM with 2 Kingston 1 GB 800s, worth 1610 each.

12740 + (1610 x 2) = 15940 = around 350 USD.

It's kind of a hefty price, and I don't think my dad would agree to such a thing You think I can somehow shift the stuff to get something cheaper, but with about the same performance? I'm just asking for Crysis in Med~High Res.

 

[DaLagga]

Well, for the price you will not find better performance than an 8800GT.  That's what is so great about them right now.  You can of course run Crysis just find on medium to high settings on a lower end card however.  You may even wish to consider something from the previous series like a radeon x19xx or GeForce 79xx.  From what I've seen, those cards will outperform the 8600's, even if you can't use the gimmicky DX10.  I purchased a x1950 pro 512MB about 4 months ago as a temporary replacement for my old card that burned out and it only ran me $180.  They're probably cheaper now.  And with that I can run crysis on medium just fine, and that's with a crappy single core processor.  Just go to newegg.com and look around a bit.  For the time being I'd stick to Nvidia until ATI gets their act together though, especially if you're going with the newer series.  Just my opinion though, and that's coming from an old ATI fan. 

As for the RAM you're suggesting, is that 2 sticks each with 512mb or 1 gb each?  I couldn't tell which you meant.  If its the latter, you've found some good RAM at a decent price so I doubt you'll be able to save more than a few dollars by shopping around further. 

As a side note, I ordered most of my parts from newegg and the rest from tigerdirect.  What is interesting is that I ordered from newegg a full 36 hours AFTER ordering from tigerdirect.  Well, guess whose parts got here first?  Newegg.  Also, consider this.  All I ordered from tigerdirect was the video cards and MB.  The rest was from newegg including a big bulky case.  Total delivery charge from Newegg came to $8.  Tigerdirect charged me almost $30 and they were shipping me fewer and smaller parts!!!  Bottom line is nobody beats newegg for shipping.  Nobody. 

 

[Tuckles]

I meant 2 sticks of 1 GB RAM each, totalling 2 gigs of RAM.

Well, thanks for the advice. I may just get those stuff. Oh, and one thing does beat Newegg when it comes to shipping, and that's buying them directly for a Computer Store. PCX for me.

I remember now though that my dad has a supplier of PC Parts (I think it's a Vendor's price discount), so I can hopefully get them cheaper, but if I do get those stuff, I won't be able to get an iPod. 

Hmm, I've got a crappy single core processor, with those specs (the 2 gig ram and 8800 GT), as well as a 3.00 Ghz Pentium IV processor, you think I'll be able to run Crysis on high? Or is Crysis more processor than ram/vga heavy?