PC Gaming Discussion

[Cube]

Sounds like a shitty Samsung.

 

My last two have been awesome, especially for the price.

[McPhee]

Just bought one of these;

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3842/asus-vg236h-review-our-first-look-at-120hz/1

 

Got fed up with my old 19" monitor, it's got a crack in the screen, the colours are wank and the black level is far too grey. Figured my recent upgrades are kinda pointless if my monitor sucks.

 

Not looking forward to seeing my frame rate plunge through the floor though. I can max out every game on the market at the moment, even get 40fps on Metro. Going from 1440x900 to 1920x1080 3D will put and end to that (and make me want a new GPU...).

Edited January 25, 2011 by McPhee
Posted twice, automerged

[Sméagol]

I'm available for a game tonight if there's anyone else who wants to game (Team Fortress, CoD6, L4D).

[McPhee]

Same here. Need to give this monitor a run through it's paces. 24" is HUUUUGE (obligatory "that's what she said" before someone else does).

[Dyson]

Sounds like a shitty Samsung.

 

Sorry, I obviously should have bought one from the Lord and Master Sony. And paid a 4x premium for the Bravia brand.

[Choze]

Sorry, I obviously should have bought one from the Lord and Master Sony. And paid a 4x premium for the Bravia brand.

 

Buy Panasonic. Pay less for the best.

 

My last two have been awesome, especially for the price.

 

Yeah so awesome you essentially paid extra for the badge when its just a cheap supermarket knock off quality wise.

[Daft]

I like Panasonic. My 40"(?) TV is one and am very please.

[McPhee]

Hasn't this been done to death already?

[Cube]

Yeah so awesome you essentially paid extra for the badge when its just a cheap supermarket knock off quality wise.

 

Just like if I paid even more for the same Sony TV that came from the same factory?

[Sméagol]

I'm on (was playing something else for a moment (Demigod if you want to know).

Who's up for a game? What game? TF?

(I'll try the steam chat thingy as well)

[Sméagol]

Not exactly a succes again .

 

But I'll try again next week.

[Daft]

I'd have joined you but...still waiting for my computer...

[Daft]

So this Intel jizz up means I'm going to have to wait about 8 weeks.

 

Woe.

 

Aaaarg.

[McPhee]

Lame. I'd cancel the order or switch to the old school i7 chips tbh, prices are likely to change over 8 weeks.

 

Last time I buy Intel TBH, got to send my motherboard back come April when the fixed ones are in circulation. Right pain in the ass (though not quite so bad as your delayed order).

[Daft]

Hmm, what would I have to change to switch to the old chip? Just the chip and the motherboard? What difference is that going to make?

 

What do you mean the prices are going to change? For the old chip or the new SB one?

[McPhee]

General prices. Graphics card and hard drive prices are falling all the time, memory prices are all over the place and there's always new stuff coming out, driving prices down. An nVidia/ATi price war seems to be kicking in to gear at the moment and if AMD's new CPUs can compete with Sandy Bridge then there could be similar stuff going on with CPUs and motherboards. Personally I'd be asking PC Specialist what reason I have to leave my order in place, it doesn't seem that there's much (if any) advantage to doing so.

 

You could ask them to switch you over to the i7 950, an X58 motherboard and 6GB (or 12GB) of RAM (the older i7s use tripple channel memory, you need 3 or 6 sticks of RAM). That should get your system to you faster. It's also possible that they might be able to swap your motherboard for one unaffected by the problems, but you'd need to wait a few days for more details on the problem to trickle through.

Edited February 1, 2011 by McPhee

[Daft]

So the issue is with the SB compatible motherboards?

 

From the sound of it Intel were just doing a blanket recall.

[McPhee]

It's the chipset on the motherboards that are faulty, see here;

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall

 

They're going to recall all motherboards. The plan from there seems undecided yet, but personally I'm expecting a straight swap. I wouldn't be happy with waiting a week or two for them to repair the board and ship it back to me.

Edited February 1, 2011 by McPhee

[Daft]

I guess I'll leave it a couple days until the dust settles and then consider either cancelling it and re-ordering at a later date when everything is fine or seeing if I can roll back to an i7 950.

[Daft]

So I've been given some options with regard to my PC order,

 

A) We can put your order on hold for when the new motherboards are

delivered to us, and assemble/re-assemble your computer then. Current

estimations of delivery dates for the new stock are towards the end of

March/start of April.

 

B) You can cancel your order and receive a full refund, or

alternatively order a different computer, for example an i7-950 based

system or an AMD based system.

 

C) We will dispatch your order to you at your request. Your computer

will still have full warranty cover but you will forfeit the right to

have the motherboard replaced because of this issue. Any other

problems will of course be covered under warranty.

 

D) We can install (free of charge) a 2 port SATA 3GB/s PCI/PCI-E card

which you can use to connect your optical drives and/or hard drives

to. The only downside to this is the loss of a free PCI/PCI-E slot.

 

 

D is looking pretty juicy since I'm an impatient fop (although asking to wait about 3 months is slightly beyond the realm of impatient). BUT...it doesn't

sound like that bad a compromise so I'm wondering why this solution

isn't being offered more...i.e. Is there a downside that I'm not

understanding?

 

Edit: Also, forgot to mention, in the email,

 

"The issue affects up to 4 of the SATA 3GB/s ports on your motherboard

(SATA 6GB/s ports are not affected), and may cause the ports to

degrade or even stop working after several months (possibly years) of

use. Your SATA ports are listed as 0 - 5 and this issue only effects

ports 2, 3, 4 and 5.

 

Because the total number of SATA 3GB/s hard drives and CD/DVD/Blu-ray

drives you have ordered is 2, your order is not directly affected by

this issue and therefore your computer will operate perfectly normal.

However the issue will still remain on your motherboard and if you

were to add additional hard drives or CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives in the

future, your motherboard may not recognise these drives or they may

operate slower than expected."

 

 

So my current set up would be fine. But if there are issues adding

stuff might be a problem. Not sure I would add anything, though.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Daft

[Shorty]

An American retailer was offering identical options and Kotaku ran an article on it. I didn't bother linking it because I didn't imagine you could force/suggest PC Specialist to consider the same options. Obviously someone did though

[Daft]

Yeah, saw that.Are they pretty much same options (in a different order)? The only difference is that instead of 'SATA II Multi-port PCI card' PCSpecialist is offering a 'SATA 3GB/s PCI/PCI-E'. I think the latter is better, but I might be wrong.

 

But I am a layman so I don't even know what this means. So, like I need uber help.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Daft

[Shorty]

3GB/s is pretty standard but if they're offering a PCI-e card that does make it slightly better since it extends your options/potentially won't use up a slot.

 

On a non-sandy-bridge related PC Gaming note, I just bought one of these:

 

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/designer-s-xbox-360-wireless-controller-gaming-receiver-for-pc-white-grey-47380

 

Allows you to use your wireless 360 pads on your PC. They're currently at a decent price (comes to about £7.50 with shipping) and are supposedly as good as the official ones

[Daft]

It should be on the PCI-E because the PCI slot is taken up by the wireless card.

 

Edit: Sorted. Went for option D. With a 10% failure rate (so pretty good odds) and no foreseeable need for an additional HDD I think it's the right choice.

Edited February 2, 2011 by Daft

[Daft]

My PC has been built and is QA. Might be here before the end of the week. Colour me excited!