Need new computer advice

In My Humble Opinion
21

I guess it depends on what we’re talking about. The OP mentioned gaming. Is Tom’s Hardware a good enough cite?

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/17/parallel_processing/page6.html#3d_game_benchmarks

Now, can you give me a cite where it shows gaming speed increases?

Granted, squeegee is correct that I’m behind the times on my information depending on your focus. The current on board RAID do show nice gains with drive intensive operations. Going back in time, the first on board RAID controllers really didn’t give much except a loss in MTBF and the ability to span drives. I really don’t want to go on a rant about RAID, so let me just say that it has its time and place. For someone who wants a gaming system and doesn’t feel good about building their own, it’s neither the time or the place.

I also agree with squeegee about investing in a very good flat panel display. I also recommend a nice set of surround speakers. They can really enhance your gaming experience.

The bottom line to me right now is that it’s a great time to buy a mid to high end system, but it’s a terrible time to buy an extreme, bleeding edge system. Nvidia (the current leading video chipset producer) is in the process of making their high end video cards obsolete. ATI (the other major video chipset producer) can’t compete on the high end. You will see better, faster cards from Nvidia in the next month or two. As a bridge, they have just released the 8800GT chipset which has incredible value compared to what was available for the previous year. It’s only slightly slower than the current bleeding edge cards at less than half the price.

Processors are in a similar situation. AMD is lagging behind Intel on the high end. Their new high end processor (Phenom) is underwhelming in its current state. I expect it will improve in time. Intel is in the process of releasing a new series of processors based on a 45nm core (Penryn). Most of the new Penryn processors will be hitting the market in Q1 of 2008. This is leading to some good values if you’re slightly behind the bleeding edge. One of the current favorites is a Q6600, which is one quarter the price of a bleeding edge processor.

RAM is another example. DDR3 is coming, but at extreme prices with no current real world performance gain. Let someone else buy it. DDR2 is very cheap at the moment. That price will go up as manufacturing is switched to DDR3. If you are buying a new rig now and spending the money the OP is talking about, there is no good reason not to go with 4G, just stick with DDR2.

Since we’re now in IMHO, to the OP I would recommend either waiting a few months if you want a bleeding edge system or buying something mid to high end now and investing some of the rest in a sweet monitor and sound system. YMMV.

22

That 30" monitor costs about $1200. I think a better approach would be to buy two smaller monitors (perhaps 20-24" displays). It will cost less and I think you’ll get more screen space.

23

Agreed, RAID is not essential for gaming.

Wow, I respect Tom’s stuff quite a bit, but that’s the silliest benchmark I’ve ever seen – testing 3DMark against 1, 2, 4 drives? pssst, Tom: that benchmark doesn’t use the disk drives! (ok, it may load some textures, big whoop.) Clarification: I’m not slamming you, RogueRacer, you’re quite right about how important, or not, disk performance would be for gaming:

Yep.

Yes! Absolutely! Or better yet, get a Home Theater Receiver (HTR), and plug your computer, your XBOX, DVD and everything else into it, and watch it all on that big monitor while the HTR does the audio/video switching. I’m using a setup like this, plus two passive studio monitors, a cheap center and rear speakers, and its awesome for game or movie time.

24

Well, sure, be a wet blanket. :slight_smile: Actually, for the price of that monitor, you can almost get four 22" monitors, and really have fun (if you can find a way to drive them all).

25

That was pretty much my point. :slight_smile:

26

If you’re going to be taking the box to games meets and the like, I recommend one of the Shuttle boxes.

Currently the price / performance sweet spot seems to be the 8800GT or the new 512 MB 8800 GTS. Both, per Fudzilla, are in short supply.

Whatever you do, don’t stint on the monitor. Full 1080p should be your aiming point.

27

The argument that buying bleeding edge “right now” is not good because hardware developers will soon deliver new hardware is silly.

This is ALWAYS the case.

Now, I don’t buy bleeding edge for that very reason, but then again I don’t have a $4,000 budget :slight_smile: or perhaps :frowning:

Another thing to consider when purchasing your LCD:

The bigger the LCD the larger the native resolution. Anything lower than native resolution will NOT look as good as the same image at native res. And of course, the higher the resolution the more GPU and CPU you’ll need in order to maintain playable frame rates. If you do go with a lrage flat panel consider a very high end card, or even SLI.

I also would not recommend two monitors for gaming, unless you try it first. I find the split in the screen annoying and not very immersive at all. Also, not all games play nice with two screens.
As for RAID 0, you will see better read and write performance. This usually doesn’t translate, in games at least, to more than shorter loading times and less or no hiccupps when loading textures/geometry/scripts.

I certainly never said it was necessary. I only said it would be part of my dream machine. Soemthing you certainly have a budget for.

28

Even though computer builds are one of my passionate hobbies, I didn’t want to get caught up in the salvo of suggestions for the hardware that goes in the box … I merely wanted to offer a bit of advice on the previous suggestion of Dell’s 30" 3007WFP display.

Don’t do it. Not so much because it’s a bad display or because I’m trying to encourage going the multi-display route, but mostly because Dell is releasing the 3007’s replacement (the 3008) in the coming weeks, and I don’t know anyone who likes buying “the old model” of something right on the heels of “the new model” being released. The biggest achievement of the 3008 is that it addresses the 3007’s abysmal lack of inputs (of which there was only one: a Dual-Link DVI input … the 3008 has not one, but two Dual-Link DVI inputs, HDMI, component, S-vid, VGA, composite, and even DisplayPort) and it is also likely to have some variety of internal scaler, allowing you to upscale lower resolutions to the display’s native resolution without losing clarity and turning the image into a fuzzy mess. Whether it rivals the quality of the professional-grade Realta HQV scaler in Gateway’s new XHD3000 display is yet to be determined, though. The next gen of 30" displays are all going to need quality internal scalers to be competitive, but I think Dell knows that.

29

Please, this is not always the case. I explained why it would be better to wait a month or two for a bleeding edge system and why it is a great time to buy a system a half step down. Both the fastest video GPUs and the fastest processors are going to be replaced very shortly. It’s a matter of days for the GPUs.

Let me give you an example. Say you bought a high end Pentium D or Athlon 64 in early July of 2006. When the Intel Conroes (Core 2) hit the market the following week, you wouldn’t have been feeling very smart. They offered more performance for less money and less power consumption. Check some comparisons and benchmarks from last year if you don’t believe me. These Conroe processors are still at the top of the heap a year and a half later (with slight refreshes). In early July of 2006, waiting that extra week for a Conroe should have been a no brainer.

Another example is the Nvidia 8800 series GPU which was released in early November of 2006 (iirc). The week before these were released, bleeding edge would have been two ATI X1950XTX based cards in a Crossfire configuration. This would have set you back a cool $1000+, not to mention the beefy PSU and Crossfire motherboard required. The 8800GTX came in with a price tag between $600-700. This single card would outperform the Crossfired X1950XTXs. It would do so for much less money while using much less power. It was also the first card on the market offering DX10 support. Like the Conroes, these GPUs are still at the top of the heap a year later. Clearly waiting that extra week or two was not only worth it, it would have been silly not to wait.

Both of these examples were revolutionary upgrades. It doesn’t look like the upgrades coming in the next weeks are going to be as good. However, with both the CPUs and GPUs seeing evolutionary upgrades very shortly, this is a bad time to buy bleeding edge hardware.

30

This thread, combined with the thread in the WWIIOnline forums, is extremely helpful. I have gone through all posts and found where there was agreement and where there was differences (to research). I have much more confidence in this task that when I started.

I am at work right now but will have some questions later.

31

“The argument that buying bleeding edge “right now” is not good because hardware developers will soon deliver new hardware is silly.”

Its silly if you are paying 40% more for a 10% real world gain you wont even see with the naked eye that will be gone in a matter of months compared to a middle of the range card coming out then.

Its one thing to say new stuff is always coming out and another to buy it simply to have bragging rights for no real practical gain.

Otara

32

But surely the SLI as described would perform better than the single card more than 50% of the time, no?

Therefore, the buyer would get better performance more than 50% of the time for less cost, right? It still sounds like the smart thing to do, to me.

33

Possibly. Here’s a page with some SLI benchmarks comparing a standard Nvidia 8800GTX (the current high end top dog*), a Nvidia 8800GT (the new offering that made most of Nvidia’s product line obsolete), and two 8800GTs in SLI:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140&p=12

These benchmarks look about as good as any I’ve seen in support of multi-GPU solutions. However, the first and next to last sentences in the page should be observed:

In spite of my disagreements with Kinthalis in this thread, I do agree about going with a single card solution.

This might have been true a week or two ago comparing the 8800GTX to two 8800GTs in SLI. Prices have edged up over MSRP on the GTs while prices are falling on the GTXs as inventory is being moved in anticipation of the new cards. Right now cost of a 8800GT SLI solution is probably comparable to a 8800GTX by the time you figure in the extra expense of the power supply and the SLI motherboard. Cost is more than double for the SLI solution if you are comparing it to a single 8800GT (obviously). Also as mentioned, the 8800GTX will likely be dethroned as the performance king in a matter of days or weeks. Another new card (with a confusing number/name, since that name was already in use with a current product), the 8800GTS, has been leaked for benchmarks. It should be on the shelves in a week or so. The new 8800GTS beats the 8800GT, but it’s still not the new high end card. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the new high end card matches the 8800GT SLI solution.
*The actual top dog is a 8800 Ultra, which I believe is just a GTX derivative.

34

This is exactly what I was going to post upon reading the OP and first few posts following it. Just because you have $3000 to spend doesn’t mean that buying a $3000 computer is a good idea. Especially since you’ve been playing games on a six year old computer – a nice mid-range gaming computer is going to be a massive improvement over what you’re used to. Why pay three times the price to squeeze a few more frames/sec you won’t even notice? Keep the money and use it for the next upgrade, or use it for related stuff like huge monitor(s), fancy printers, vibrating computer chairs, etc.

The system I’d shoot for if I were in your shoes would be:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (or similar)
Nvidia Geforce 8800 GT (or whatever the ATI equivalent is these days)
2 gigs of RAM
500 gig hard drive
DVD burner, keyboard, mouse, etc.
Nice big monitor – I really love my Dell 2407WFP 24" widescreen flat panel.

I’m guessing this will run you like $1000, not counting the monitor. Start with some of the better games of the last year of so (Oblivion is a good one) and by the time you’re seeing poor performance on newer games, you’ll be able to leapfrog past today’s bleeding edge performance for a fraction of the price.

35

That’s why my initial recommendation was the $1,600 Hot Rod setup from Ars Technica. If you expect to have this machine for a while, you can pick up the best CPU that comes out for it at about 25% of its initial price (that’s about where they stagnate before disappearing off the market), and pick that up using the $1,400 you saved.