Nucleus Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 Hi all, Basically, I want to get a new gaming PC for my birthday but I’m having a lot of trouble deciding on components as I have never attempted to build a high-end system before. I am going to be getting the components and then putting the PC together myself, that way I can save money that I would have had to spend on a pre-built system and put it towards an ultimately more powerful computer. I already have 2 IDE hard drives, a DVD drive and 1gb of ram (I’ll be buying another gig for this PC). The rest of the components are going to my brother. First of all is the processor and motherboard. Before I can select the MB, I need to select a CPU, but I’m having a hard time choosing. I’m pretty sure I want to go AMD but I’m not sure whether to go single or dual core (keeping in mind that I want to stay underneath the £200 mark for a CPU). I was hoping you guys could help me decide. I know that at the moment it would be better to go single core for gaming, but I know that upcoming games are going to use a lot of multithreading e.g. “As I've mentioned before, we're still deep into PC-specific optimization on both the CPU and GPU sides, so I can't give anyone specific recommendations yet. But I can say that investing in a multi-core (either dual- or quad-core when available) will be money well-spent. Bioshock is heavily multithreaded.†-Chris Kline, Lead Programmer, Bioshock For graphics, I’m thinking about either a GeForce 7950 GX2 or a Radeon X1950 XTX. For sound, I’m pretty sure I’ll buy a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Pro. As for cooling and a case, I haven’t decided yet. I’ll choose a PSU last. So that’s about it, any comments would be appreciated. My main problem is deciding on a processor (bearing in mind that I will want to upgrade to DX10 eventually), I also have absolutely no idea what to look for in a mobo. Sorry if anything I’ve said sounds ignorant, I’m sure I’ve made a few mistakes.
Guest Jordan Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 DX9 is dead, seriously. Come summer, you will decent a DX10 graphics card to play anything new.
gaggle64 Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 Uhhhhh, I'm loathe to recommend anyone getting a DX10 card right now, as the only one on the market is the 8800, which while making mincemeat of DX9 games for all we know might take one look at Crysis and cave in on itself. Either of the above cards you mentioned will still be top-flight card for a good couple of years, are quite inexpensive and will be more then adequate until DX10 games and hardware are more widely available. For you sir, the only way to go today is Intel's Core Duo. With even the cheapest model and a half-assed cooling system, you can easily overclock the living bejesus out of it so that it emabaresses almost anything AMD has to offer.
Shino Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 DX9 is dead, seriously. Come summer, you will decent a DX10 graphics card to play anything new. Bullshit, It's taking an incredibly long time to see that, I say late 2007. And even then, most games will get some very decent graphics on DX9.
gaggle64 Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 Indeed. Most people are still only scooting around Half-Life 2 on 6600s, DX9 is not going to die for quite a long time yet.
Guest Jordan Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 Bullshit, It's taking an incredibly long time to see that, I say late 2007. And even then, most games will get some very decent graphics on DX9. Do you remember what happend between DX8.1 and 9? Within 3 months of the first crop of games, games designed for DX8.1 had all but gone. Sure, support was still there just like Crysis supports DX9 but at the end of the day don't you want your games to look and play as best as possible?
Shino Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 Do you remember what happend between DX8.1 and 9? Within 3 months of the first crop of games, games designed for DX8.1 had all but gone. Sure, support was still there just like Crysis supports DX9 but at the end of the day don't you want your games to look and play as best as possible? But there still isn't a DX10 game, and lets face devs won't risk on it just yet,all we have is a super GPU with half implemented DX10, and Vista either trying to push it forward or keep it back (I still haven't figured that out).
Guest Jordan Posted February 10, 2007 Posted February 10, 2007 But there still isn't a DX10 game, and lets face devs won't risk on it just yet,all we have is a super GPU with half implemented DX10, and Vista either trying to push it forward or keep it back (I still haven't figured that out). Okay, i agree. Crysis has run on a 8800GTX though... just with some problems. I mean, i'm planning to build a new machine, now i'm just not sure whether to get an 8800 or stick with a 7900...
Nucleus Posted February 11, 2007 Author Posted February 11, 2007 For you sir, the only way to go today is Intel's Core Duo. With even the cheapest model and a half-assed cooling system, you can easily overclock the living bejesus out of it so that it emabaresses almost anything AMD has to offer. I've been thinking about cooling a lot. Would you say that it would be a wise decision to go water cooled? That is to say if I do overclock the CPU... I have looked around and decided that if overclocking is the way to go, I'll need a damn good case and, looking at a back-issue of Custom PC, one of the coolest cases is the Cooler Master Stacker 830: http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2006/02/22/CMStacker_830/1.html I've also found what looks like a decent water cooling kit, the Thermaltake Bigwater SE: http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/waterse/ So, do you guys suggest water cooling, and if so are these good pieces of kit? : peace:
Bogbas Posted February 11, 2007 Posted February 11, 2007 For you sir, the only way to go today is Intel's Core Duo. With even the cheapest model and a half-assed cooling system, you can easily overclock the living bejesus out of it so that it emabaresses almost anything AMD has to offer. This man is right. Although get core 2 duo as core duo is something that was before c2d The E6300 and E6400 can get nice overclocks with just air cooling. But those models are soon to be upgraded to versions with 2Mb more cache. Which might not overclock as well as the original ones. And a motherboard with nvidia 680i chipset would be good. If you're serious about overclocking, you might want to look at the cheap E4300 which is a budget processor. At stock speed this chip doesn't do much, but it can be overclocked to compete with stock x6800. I haven't had any experience with water cooling though. And I wouldn't compare dx9 -> dx10 with dx8.1-> dx9 because back then that was just an update to directx and that worked with winxp and win98. Now microsoft is trying to shove vista down every pc gamers throat (or at least that's the feeling I get from them...)
Nucleus Posted February 12, 2007 Author Posted February 12, 2007 Can I just check, how well will a current motherboard fare with future DX10 cards (eg. 1/2 years from now)? Will there be any chance of bottlenecking? Also, if I do happen to come into a large amount of money in the future, will said motherboard be able to support DX10 Crossfire/SLI?
Bogbas Posted February 12, 2007 Posted February 12, 2007 SLI/Crossfire is the decision that you have to make. The card's won't be an issue as AGP did last for a pretty long time. Just make sure that there's PCIexpress x16. The support for SLI or Crossfire support depends on the motherboard. Currently CPU's bottleneck the 8800GTX so I wouldn't be so worried about motherboards. And dx10 has most to do with the graphics card. It doesn't affect the rest of the hardware as much.
gaggle64 Posted February 14, 2007 Posted February 14, 2007 You can go for water cooling if you want, but there isn't a need for it, as a well ventilated case and decent CPU fan/heat sink (you can get a decent one for 10-20 quid tops) will keep things adequately cool. Once you get into water cooling you're into top-tier performance and speed running. You won't need something quite as fancy as the case you specified above either. This particular case (as just one example) will do the job just fine for about £70.
Guest Jordan Posted February 14, 2007 Posted February 14, 2007 I can't highly recommend Antec cases enough, they're so nice to build with !
Caris Posted February 14, 2007 Posted February 14, 2007 I can't highly recommend Antec cases enough, they're so nice to build with ! I'll second that, allways have lots of room to work with inside.
Bogbas Posted February 14, 2007 Posted February 14, 2007 I'll second that, allways have lots of room to work with inside. But their power supplies tend to be bad. I think some of them used to blow up. Even when the power supply was off. But I have to agree that the cases are nice.
Guest Jordan Posted February 14, 2007 Posted February 14, 2007 But their power supplies tend to be bad. I think some of them used to blow up. Even when the power supply was off. But I have to agree that the cases are nice. Hense 90% are PSU-less these days Yeah, Antec PSU's never were very good...
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