So I want to play the new Eve Online with the highest graphics. What is the best way to build a gaming PC for this purpose? I’d like to stay at around $ 1000 if I can. Is that possible these days? I haven’t built a PC in four or five years, but I have built literally hundreds of them in my life.
What are the considerations I need? What are the RAM specs I need, the video card I need. What motherboards are hot?
If you want a good gaming rig, there are a couple schools of thought each with their own drawbacks:
**1. **Buy the best video card you can (one of the 2-GPU models, or a couple of high-end single GPUs to put into SLI or Crossfire), then build a fairly modest system around that - maybe a low-end Intel dual core, or an AMD Phenom. You won’t push as many clock cycles, but you’ll push a lot of pixels. Your CPU may be a bottleneck for certain games, however, and Eve probably falls into this category.
The problem with this route is that the upgrade path is fairly involved and expensive - if the only upgrade options are your motherboard/CPU, you need to usually reinstall your OS, and basically rebuild the whole system.
**2. **Build a near top-line system around the new Intel Corei7 platform. This platform is very spendy, so you won’t have a lot left over to spend on video.
However, you will not need to upgrade your motherboard anytime soon, and upgrading a video card, while spendy, is much less labor intensive. No OS reinstall required. Personally, this is the option I would take if I had the scratch.
I don’t have time to price it all out exactly right now, so these prices are from memory (but I’m constantly shopping around for new stuff). I think this should fit within a $1k budget:
Low-end Core i7 920 (around $275-300)
Low-to-midrange X58 motherboard (around $175-225) make sure it supports up to DDR3 2000 RAM
DDR2 2000 RAM at least 3GB ($125-200)
Your hard drive of choice (up to around $100, more if you go with a RAID system)
This leaves, conservatively, around $200 to get your video card, and a sound card if you need it. I wouldn’t worry about sound, as onboard is pretty good these days. For the video card, there are some great options in the $100 to $200 range.
I myself just got an ATI Radeon HD 4830 for $90 on sale (normally around $110) that is fast enough for now. The NVidia GTS 250 was just released at around $150 or so for the 1GB model - it’s a repackaged version of their last-gen top line 9800 GTX, but is pretty quick.
ETA: I forgot you’ll need to add $100 or so for an OS if you’re not migrating your current OS license.
First off, eve isn’t exactly Crysis. You won’t need an SLI gaming rig to run that game even at very high resolutions.
To best stretch your budget you have to tell us what other things outside of the actual rig do you also need to purchase? Do you need a monitor? A keyboard/mouse? Are you upgrading, or building from scratch? What about an OS, do you have one, do you need to purchase one?
What resolution is your monitor (or the one you want to purchase)? 19" are usuall 1440x900, 20-22" are 1680x1050, 24-26" are 1980x1200. Larger than that and you will definitely need to go SLI.
I just built myself an i7 based gaming rig and I’m very happy, but a system based on the last gen of intel processors (core 2 duo/quad) will be a bit cheaper and nearly as good.
I found a deal at microcenter when I went shopping for a CPU/mobo/6 gigs of RAM combo for a total of $500. Pretty sweet, though a core 2 duo combo would have been about $100 cheaper.
Building from scratch, need an OS. I’ll be buying a Monitor but that’s the easy part. I’m looking at 1980x1200 for the Monitors. There’s a nice 28" that I may splurge on. When you say larger do you mean larger in size or larger in resolution? There’s not really any reason a larger monitor at the same resolution would need a more powerful video card is there?
What are the advantages disadvantages between the Core 2 systems and the i7? My price point is flexible, but I’d rather not blow too much on it as I’ll be borrowing the money. I NEED a new PC to run Adobe CS, so I can’t justify the loan when most of the expense revolves around gaming.
No, resolution is what matters. I’m guessing you are going to use an HDTV and not a PC monitor. PC monitors go up from 1980x1200 in resolution after 26". Make sure the HDTV looks good close up at that rez. you don’t want to see pixels at 2-4 feet away. And be aware that some model will have problems switching to non-native resolutions and/or non TV resolutions (anything not 480p, 720p and 1080p). this isn’t much of a problem for most modenr games, but casual and or older games might cause problems.
The core i7 processors use less energy and do more work per clock cycle. But the difference in performance (specially at entry levels) is not that large. Also the Core 2 Duo platform has had more time to mature. It’ll really come down to what kind of deal you can get and how it affects your overall budget.
The GTX 260 and GTX 285 are the cards to get right now on the Nvidia side of things (I got a GTX 285 and it plays all my games at 1980x1200 at the best settings). I havent’g gotten an ATI card in a while though so someone else will have to make a recommendation there.
I got a recommendation for the ATI Radeon 4850 over on the Eve forums.
I am not married to the 28inch and I’ll save $ 100 by going with the 25in. The 24inch IMacs are plenty large, but hey if it’s only a few bucks more might as well get bang for your buck. I DO NOT want an HDTV for a monitor because as you say I can see the pixels up close, I hate that.
While barebones/bundle deals like Kinthalis mentions are certainly worth looking at, the most affordable ones often use lower-end mobos which don’t support the fastest RAM/frontside bus speeds. The current gold standard for reasonably priced i7 motherboards is the X58 chipset, but not all X58s are created alike - some support 2 or 3 PCIe slots, some support DDR3 2000, and some don’t. Right now the difference between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 2000 is academic because of the latency increase at the faster speeds, but latency (and price) will decrease over the next year or so as DDR3 matures.
You may want to checkthis out then - the article itself revolved more around CS vs. GIMP, but they compare performance of various PC configurations, which might give some guidance. Looks like Core i7 systems are super-quick in CS.
Given that CS can definitely justify getting maximum bang-for-the-buck on the CPU/motherboard/RAM side of things, and given that Eve isn’t an enormous graphics hog, I’d say load up on the platform, and get a low-mid range card for less than $150 - I’d highly recommend the 4850 - it’s like the 4830 I have with more GPU pipelines turned on.
Core 2 systems are still a good deal, and hands-down will be the price/performance ratio leader for standard apps, but if were building a platform to provide solid photo-editing capability, and upgradeability for several more years, I’d go with a Core i7/mid-range X58 as a base. Photoshop won’t get any leaner in the coming years, and you’ll probably appreciate the room for growth.
I just luckd into an LG w2600h, and I love it. Tends to be a bit on the red side until I toned it down a bit, but it is phenomenal for work [i can see the whole fucking spreadsheet now, squeeeeee] and eve looks killer on it … the short time I have been able to actually sit up and play without my head wanting to asplode [migraines, i kan haz good drugz nao plzkthxbye]
Oddly enough, my gaming computer is a 2 year old HO dv9000 … ok, stop laughing now… and as ms can attest, i dont get locked up, i simply have issues with my cat turning off the router by walking on the rocker switch on my power strip sigh:smack:
If this system is primarily going to be for games, stick with Core2. i7 is much more expensive for the CPU, motherboard, and RAM you’re going to need, and doesn’t really offer any gaming improvement from what I recall. Don’t blow your budget on the CPU/mobo (as **Crown Prince **seems to suggest), as your graphics card is probably the most critical element.
here’s a decent guide from November 2008. Video card prices have dropped since then, so you might want to look at a 4870 512MB (or 1GB version) instead of the 4850 recommended.
Here’s a more recent guide from January 2009.
I’m actually not concerned about the performance for Adobe CS, I know that any machine I get will run it adequately for my purposes. I am just trying to stuff some good gaming options in while I’m buying a new machine.
I’m not working in DTP anymore, so it’s not that big a deal if I have to pause for render times, I’m a massage therapist now and I just need it to make my promo materials. 
massage? DO you take ISKies?
/me looks hopeful …
we still have to get together for a peter luger-fest…
Sure I’ll take isk. 
That monitor looks nice but it might be too expensive for me.
You let me know and we’ll go get a steak.
On preview, I see mswas clarified that CS preformance won’t be a concern. In that case, it will depend on whether you want to run other games, or just Eve.
Honestly, Eve should run fine with a sub-$200 single-GPU solution - it’s a pretty CPU-bound game. Case in point - here’s the most recent graphics benchmark I can find for Eve Online. While it’s several years old (pre-DirectX 10) it does show less than 10% variance between all test scenarios - high-and uber-high settings, and mid-range to high-end video cards. The reviewer states this is likely due to CPU limitations.
Which leads me to believe that the difference between a super-high-end GTX 290 and a Radeon 4850/70 or GTS 250 would be minimal, while the performance impact of ugrading the CPU would likely be larger. This makes sense, given Eve’s age and thus older graphics engine, compared with the scope of the game from a sheer computational perspective.
If you’re looking to play Crysis, or CoD, or World in Conflict or (pick your eye candy), then it’s a different story.
I recommend the Core i7 platform because it is the most current, and will be more upgradeable for a much longer period than the Core 2 platform - if Intel hadn’t changed the damn socket form factor, I’d say go with a Core 2 and upgrade the CPU later. And hey, if CS performance isn’t critical, you certainly can’t go wrong with a decent Core 2 quad, but you may be upgrading the entire kit and kaboodle a few years earlier than you’d like to, if you find performance lacking down the road.
Lest anyone think I’m a hardware snob - my current rig (a few months old) is a modest AMD 5600+ with a Radeon 4830 - it runs Call of Duty just fine, and would likely handle Eve ok, but then again, I’m not running CS either. If I were, I’d be doing a lot of sitting and waiting :).
I’ve been stuck in the upgrade loop before, however - I got a Socket 939 right as the AM2 platform (and the mainstream Core 2s) came out, and waited too long to be able to get a dual-core CPU upgrade. So I had to bag the whole thing and build from scratch - backup, reformat, install the motherboard (and deal with the case panel headers which I HATE), reinstall, etc. I stuck with AM2 because my budget was $500 rather than $1000 - if I had more, I would’ve waited a few weeks and gone with a Corei7.
I should say I was remiss in not factoring in the case, power supply and optical drives. I’m always guilty of this - since I’m always tinkering, I rarely buy every single part at once, so I’m always leaving out some key bits when I spec out systems for friends and family. Sorry.
You lost me there. A Core2 CPU like an E8500 isn’t exactly a slouch. If Eve’s engine is old enough that there isn’t going to be a difference between a low-end and a mid-range GPU, then the performance difference between Core2 and i7 is going to be moot as well (I’m talking about actual visually-perceived performance, not in artificial bench tests run at 800x600 resolution where you get a 10 frame margin over the “loser”'s 150FPS). If that’s the case, might as well go with the cheaper videocard and CPU/mobo. I dunno what the recent DX10 overhall of EVE’s engine did to requirements, but I seriously doubt the CPU side of things was affected more than GPU.
I think “upgradeability” is largely overrated, especially when you’re shelling out an additional ~$200 for it (for no real performance advantages). In a couple of years, if you find the speed is inadequate, there’s a good chance intel might have changed their socket again anyway. At which point, an extra $200 will go a long way towards buying a completely new x98 mobo+ i8 CPU (or whatever the latest hotness is).
First off, the performance difference between Corei7 and Core 2 Duos is huge - here’s a gaming comparison - granted, these are all newer games, but the low-end i7 920 (around $300) comes very close to (and sometimes beats) the highest end Core 2 Extreme (around $1k) in most games, and for the most part beats its closest priced Core 2 counterpart in most apps according to the other charts.
In my experience, with CPU bound games (especially MMOs), the age of the graphical engine is nearly irrelevant when discussing CPU-related performance gains. While I can’t speak for Eve, I do play World of Warcraft, and have seen this in action. This isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison of course - for one, since Eve is a single-shard game with everyone on the same server, the PC is typically rendering and positioning many more dynamic objects compared to a multi-shard game like WoW. As such I’d venture that Eve is even more CPU-affected than WoW is, and thus would likely benefit from CPU-related improvements.
For what it’s worth: I’ve seen only modest increases in FPS performance in WoW when upgrading video cards - typically no more than a 10% increase in FPS performance each of the 3 times I’ve upgraded since I started playing (from an X850 to an X1950XT to an HD 4830) - this is because the graphics engine simply doesn’t require any further pixel-processing than each previous card was capable of.
But moving from a single core Athlon64 4000+ to a dual core Athlon64 4800+ netted me about a 30% increase in frame rates (from an average of around 50 in Shat with V-Sync turned off to around 65 - likely the move to DDR2 RAM also factored) and when I upgraded from an X2 4800+ to an X2 5600+, it increased around another 20%.
As you can probably tell, I’m an inveterate upgrader. But having seen the benefits of upgrading first-hand in many different apps, and having been through the hassle of a complete mobo swap several times, IMO it’s better to go with the more current platform to squeeze every last bit of usability out of it.
Again, this is just my opinion - one couldn’t go wrong with a mid-range Core 2 Quad on the old platform and a solid video card, if you don’t want to touch your computer again. But for a bit more, you could have a system that nearly matches top-line Core 2 systems, and has room for growth.
As for how soon Intel might change its socket - they hung onto the LGA 775 socket forever - I think it’s 5 years old or so. So I wouldn’t bank on them changing the 1366 anytime soon.
Ok, if you get an i7 with a motherboard to match, you’re going to go well over $1000, especially if you’re looking for a monitor as well. How much do you want to spend?
Check out the Ars Technica System guides.. Unfortunately the latest one they have is September 2008, and there’s been a LOT of developments lately. Graphics cards are still coming out fast and furious, and the new intel i7 cpu’s are out and looking good. But it’ll give you some ideas on what to look for, particularily if you don’t need an absolute top of the line system (you could probably do most of the “hot rod” build for your $1000 for instance).
Tom’s hardware is another great site for information.
Basically, you’re not going to need a super high end system if the most intense game you’re playing is EVE online. You could probably go with an ASUS P5Q Pro motherboard($120), a Radeon 4870 video card ($180-220), 4gb RAM (about $45-50), Windows XP Pro ($130), intel e8500 CPU ($180), Corsair 750tx Power supply ($130), Pioneer 216-D DVD drive ($24), and a hard drive of your choice (price will depend on how much storage you need), and come in around $900 without the monitor. This is with the newegg instant savings and mail in rebates. A very nice system that will run Eve and new, high end games with no troubles. If you want to lower the price, you could get a cheaper motherboard, Radeon 4850 or even 4830 video card, and an e7200 CPU and still run Eve and Adobe CS.
Uhm why are you going to pay extra for windows XP? Pay $90 for an OEM version of vista and you will get to play with DX 10 graphics options on Eve and any other game that supports them.
This system looks like a good deal.
Any thoughts?
If you’re looking not to bother with building the system, it’s ok.
What I don’t like:
Pricing this system on new egg (with a better motherboard and PSU) would be $200 cheaper.
No overclocking options. I’d much rather go even cheaper with a Core 2 quad setup that I could overclock and tweak.
The video card only has 512 MB of VRAM. At 1980x1200 you want a 1 GB card in order to fit all the the filters (AA & AF), textures and shader options in the buffer.
You do get tech support though, so it might be worth the extra price.
Here is the thread on the Eve Online forums. Someone went through the effort of looking up prices for me of an Eve machine.
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1022578