Hot gaming machine

The Game Room
21

Because I hate Vista and can’t honestly recommend it to anyone. Yes I know it’s much better now than when it first came out. But it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I’d never use it. I do run my OS minimized (all the fancy stuff turned off), and Vista contains a ton of “fluff” (fancy desktop crap that hogs your system resources). The only real advantage of Vista is the extra security features, which are annoying as hell, and the extra memory capacity (in 64 bit Vista). Everyone will tell you to get 64 bit vista so you can get extra memory, but none of your applications are likely to take advantage of 64 bit. Are you going to notice the difference with more memory? Well I have 4gb in my XP Pro machine and everything I do is blazing fast. XP Pro is smooth, fast, and stable. But if you think you need Vista, go for it.

Just curious where you got the motherboard info, I can’t find it on the Dell site. I agree that you’d want a 1gb card if you’re running a monitor at that high of a res.

I checked the customer reviews and came across this:
"All I have to say about this is check how they designed this system.

The 4850 graphics card the include requires a minimum of a 450w power supply and they only install a 360w. Contacted Dell about problem and they agreed that this would cause problems and said they would contact their design team about it.

The RAM installed is DDR3 which is tri-channel and should be installed in sets of 3 and they installed 4 1 gig chips. Again contacted Dell and they admit this is a bad design and they would contact their design team.

Fan on CPU is loudest on the marked - especially when it starts up."

A ton of people are complaining about the power supply and noise from the fans. It’s probably an ok system, but, as Kinthalis said you can build a similar system on newegg and correct the underpowered bits. The case is a cheapo, the PSU is cheapo, and this system looks nice but is badly designed. Which is why I recommended what I did, all the components are stable, reliable, and quality stuff, and can be upgraded later if you want. BTW I forgot to put a case in my recommendations, I’d get an Antec nine hundred, which is one of the best I’ve seen.

A lot of the recommendations on that board are real similar to the ones I posted… I priced everything at newegg and came in a little over $900

22

The bolded part is almost never a good idea - the price/performance ratio on SLI/crossfire configurations is terrible. The technology is flawed and you only see generally a 10-30% boost in speed over just using one card, and it comes with some troubleshooting headaches. The only time it’s a good idea to use SLI/crossfire is when you’re spending ridiculous amounts of money on a benchmark machine to try to show off.

This strikes me as mostly non-sense. What does it matter if an MMO is broken up into one or multiple shards? Your computer isn’t processing the entire state of everyone in the game - the server just sends you information about stuff in close proximity to you.

I find this very hard to believe - except in unusual circumstances it’s far more common for a GPU to be the limiting factor than the CPU. How would an upgrade from a 4800+ to a 5600+, which isn’t even a 20% upgrade in CPU clock/performance, boost your game performance by that much?

I7 would be overkill for you - core 2 chips have excellent performance and are very cheap. The 45nm chips will overclock easily - my e8400 will go from stock 3ghz to 3.8 with only a tiny push, and 4.2+ with some tweaking. You can get most Q6600 chips from 2.6 to 3.2 pretty easily. But even running them at stock should be more than adequate for your needs.

A quad core would better serve your needs for video editing - a dual core will give you better gaming performance and better overall performance for the same price range. A q6600 ($200) would be a good bet for a quad. An e8400 ($165) for a dual or even the cheaper e7400 ($120 would probably be adequate.

I’m out of date on motherboards - but any p35 board would be fine. They’re solid and stable.

Looks like a great time to buy video cards with GT260s and 4870s under $200. Either would be more than adequate.

The Dell you linked would probably be fine, but you could get it cheaper and with better parts if you built it yourself. They’re vague on the specifics - you’re getting a crappy motherboard, powersupply, etc. But your requirements aren’t that demanding, so it’d probably be alright.

If you want more specifics, psu, heatsink/fan, whatever, I can link you stuff on newegg. My knowledge is a few months out of date but you could build a system similar to mine (more than adequate for anything I’ve thrown at it) for cheap.

23

Apocalypso Thanks for the recommendations.

SenorBeef I’ve gotten a few good recommendations here of Newegg stuff. I’ll probably go for a dual core.

My needs for Adobe CS are really just making flyers and a website for my business. I’ve done that on much inferior computers to whatever I’ll buy so it doesn’t matter to me. Even the worst computer for those purposes will be better than what I used to use.

I’m looking at the core-duo at this point. Eve online is setup to run on a very minimal setup, but it can be graphics intensive if that’s what you want. I kind of DO want. :wink: I’d also like the option to buy other hot games if I can, but Eve is the primary thing that I’m looking at. I don’t think I’m going for the Dell based on what people have said here. I still need to read a builder’s guide just so I understand how the parts y’all are recommending fit together.

I’m really leaning toward the machine that the guy on the Eve forum recommended but I might try and get a better video card than what he recommends. On the Eve forum people seem split on the Radeons. As it is though, the video card is the easiest thing to upgrade in the future.

24

I havn’t built a system in a while, but I wondered if anyone can answer a question, because I can’t seem to find a straight answer anywhere.

Triple channel memory seems to be a better deal these days
ie.

Will triple channel memory work in a dual channel 775 motherboard? Or will it be slow or something?

WOuld it work in this type of motherboard?

Thanks,

25

I just wanted to reply so I could subscribe to the thread. I’ve found this very helpful, as I have my tax refund burning a hole in my pocket, and really want to see how good I can make EVE look for around $800.

26

Wolfman That RAM will work on that particular 775 motherboard since it supports DDR 3. But you won’t be running it in 3 channel mode as only dual channel is supported. In that case it would be best to buy 4 1 GIG sticks of DDR 3 instead of 3.

How is eve online? I’m downloading the demo form steam as we speak.

27

Rather than hijack, here’s a link to one of the last couple threads we had about EVE Online. EVE online questions - The Game Room - Straight Dope Message Board

Look me up in game (Name: Jock Rockstrong) and I’ll get you going.
Now back to the hardware discussion,

28

No one is suggesting that the OP gets one of those Quad Core 2 extremes. Those are mostly a waste of money. But considering benchmarks like this, a dual core E8500 runs within 5% (135FPS vs. 141 FPS) of your i7 920, and costs ~$100 less, just for the CPU. That $100 can buy a helluva better GPU - the difference between an HD 4830 and 4870 is something like ~40%. So we lose 5% from our “inferior” CPU, but gain 40% by getting a better videocard. And we still have another >$150 to play with by switching to a P45 motherboard & DDR2-1066 instead of the x58 mobo & DDR3

29

You have a point. However, I wasn’t suggesting the OP get a $1k processor. I was just trying to point out that the Core i7 platform has a lot to offer on top of just a being bleeding-edge system - relative future-proofing, while maintaining better performance than comparably-priced Core 2 systems.

As I’ve said, Core 2 is not a bad choice at all. But in my opinion, if I were spending $1k on a system, I would focus on the most current platform, not necessarily the most powerful CPU. But it’s just my opinion - there’s no right answer.

30

I wasn’t suggesting that - I was just saying that is one of the schools of thought when building a reasonably priced gaming machine. In fact, I recommended a mid-range single-gpu solution.

It makes perfect sense given the scale of the shards we’re talking about. If you are in a WoW shard with rarely more than 10,000 players on simultaneously, as opposed to Eve, which often has 30,000 players on at once from what I’ve read, chances are many more players are in proximity to you at any given moment in Eve than in WoW, especially if you’re in a dense, frequently played area. I’m just going on logic here - I haven’t really been able to find any specifics on the issue, given that no-one is benchmarking such old games.

Well, in terms of clock speed, I went from 2.4 Ghz (on a Windsor core) to 2.9 Ghz (on a Brisbane core), which is exactly 20%. While I was surprised to see such a linear performance increase, it may have been due to the more efficient core.

If Eve is at all like WoW, the GPU is not the limiting factor at all beyond a certain point - top-line GPUs four or five generations old (like the X850 I had) are already doing as much as they can from a graphical processing standpoint. The remaining performance overhead is all on the CPU. However, since Eve is on a DirectX 10 engine now, this may be different.

That said, I’m gonna drop out of this thread and end what turned into an inadvertent hijack - I only tried to offer what I feel is an informed opinion based on personal experience, having performed several upgrades, and being a constant PC component researcher. Frankly, I don’t get the active resistance to my point of view - I’m not calling any particular option “inferior”, and I’m certainly not calling anyone’s comments nonsense. I’ve got a pretty thick skin, but it’s got me scratching my head.

31

Addressing this first piece out of order…

You’re right, it was inappropriate for me to express my disbelief that way. Sorry.

It just runs contrary to everything I’ve experienced or read about.

I just wanted to make it clear that SLI/crossfire was a bad idea for his purposes.

It’s just a matter of how the game is designed. If if one game it’s possible or common to be in close proximity to 1000 people at once and the other only gets up to 400, the former will probably be more resource intensive. But that’s more an issue of layout and design. In any case, you’re unlikely to be processing data for more than a small fraction of 1 percent of the people logged onto the server - that’s why I said overall server size probably doesn’t matter much.

Unless you’re running at a very low resolution like 800x600 or 640x480 this runs contrary to popular understanding and my own experience. The only game in recent memory I’m aware of that is typically CPU-limited under normal circumstances and configurations is Supreme Commander. Pretty much everything else tends to be GPU-limited unless you run at extremely low resolutions or you’ve got a CPU that’s much slower than your video card - say, pairing a 2.4 ghz p4 with a GT260.

There’s just less and less for a CPU to do and more than GPUs can do as they become more advanced, so the burden and the bottlenecks shift to the GPU.

32

It is possible to be in proximity to about 900 other players in one particular system. Sometimes massive fleet battles occur where it’s hundreds of people on both sides. There are also NPC ships, asteroids, stars, planets, moons, stations, stargates, player owned stations, missiles, drones etc… The limiting factor is being in a ‘system’. You jump between jump gates between solar systems, and the systems with lots of players will be laggy while a sparsely populated neighboring system won’t be. There is also the market which is constantly propagating though this probably only matters on your machine if you are actively querying it.

I believe the max resolution for Eve is 1440x900.

Likely the GPU will be the limiter because you can streamline your experience for performance, and therefore you are dealing with the same number of sprites. This can run on a much pared down system. So at a certain point any extra performance is purely about graphics.

33

I tried the Demo and I ran it at 1920x1200. i don’t think it has an upper limite on resolution and it will be based on your hardware.

34

Gotcha thanks.

35

How good of a resource is Can You Run It? I ask because the main questioned game is Eve, and running that on my couple-year-old machine comes back all roses. I know I can play Fallout3 with the video settings maxed out (to a Dell 24” LCD) without any hiccups that I know of, and it too passes Can You Run It?’s benchmark test.

If it’s fairly accurate, and my two or three year old machine reads as fine, then wouldn’t it be easy to stay within the suggested budget and not sweat the C2/i7 and similar questions?



CPU (5\6 bars)
Recommended: Pentium 4/Athlon XP or better
You Have: 2 processors running - AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+  PASS   

CPU Speed (6\6 bars)
Recommended: 2 GHz
You Have: 2.51 GHz Performance Rated at 7.20 GHz  PASS   

System RAM (6\6 bars)
Recommended: 1 GB
You Have: 2.0 GB  PASS   

Video Card (5\6 bars)
Recommended: 128 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting & Pixel Shaders such as NVIDIA® GeForce™ 3 class card or above
You Have: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series (ATI display adapter (0x9442))  PASS   

Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card  Video RAM: Required - 128 MB , You have - 512 MB 
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes 
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes 
Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 1.1 , You have - 3.0 
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 1.1 , You have - 3.0
36

To be fair though, your videocard is certainly not 2-3 years old (the HD 4800 series was introduced in June 2008)

37

Well what he was saying was don’t sweat the processor/mobo, not don’t sweat the video card.

Eve recently became more resource intensive, which is why am contemplating this upgrade. The only reason I can see to get an i7 is because otherwise I’ll be right back where I am in 3-4 years with a machine that’s not worth upgrading.

38

True, although keep in mind the money you’re probably going to save by going with another system than the i7. If you put it in the bank for 3-4 years, it could easily pay for a new 2012 motherboard at that point in time, maybe with money left over. You’re still going to have to buy a new 2012 CPU&RAM, but you were going to do that anyway even if you went with an i7 system today.

So why would you want to be stuck with a 2009 i7 mobo in 2012, when you could have a 2012 mobo for the same total cost (or maybe even cheaper)?

39

This is probably going to happen to you anyway - motherboard architectures, socket types, etc. don’t last for that long. The last time I dropped a new CPU into an existing system was a pentium (original) 166 mhz. I’ve found it better to just wait until you want to upgrade and then do the whole core at once, keeping stuff like hard drives, case, etc. CPU upgradability is a plus but I wouldn’t make it a deciding factor.

There’s another (unfortunate) factor that hasn’t been an issue before too - as most games are developed for both consoles and PCs at the same time, they don’t mostly don’t properly take advantage of everything a PC has to offer. They’ll be better - better resolution, fsaa, etc. - but since the basic game was developed for some mid-range 2004 hardware (current console gen) it won’t be stressing your 2009 parts for a good while.

40

So I purchased my components. I am certain I will find out I didn’t get all the right cables or fans. If any of these things are certain to be needed please let me know.

I went with basically what that guy outlined in the Eve forum thread except I got a GTX 285, and this monitor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005109

I went with the Zalman case of the two that he suggested.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1022578&page=1#9

Thanks for your help everyone.

It came in under my budget of $ 1500, though I need to get a speaker system for it.