f13.net

I know I post somewhat infrequently, but hopefully that won't stop me from begging the ear of someone more knowledgeable than myself.  The new computer I'm about to get is as follows:


-Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 650 w/HT Technology (3.4GHz,800FSB)
-2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz
-256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory
-80 GB 7200 RPM HD
-Dell UltraSharp 2001FP -OR- Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW

I'll mainly play WoW and Civ 4 on this, and want it to be good enough for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. 


So, I'm assuming the graphics card is the weakest link here, but will it be fine for the time being?  Any thoughts would be welcome, I don't have a lot of money to fuck around with.

You could do what I did and buy some cheapo demo model off the shelf with no box for pittance and then buy a big ugly old graphics card (I got the GeForce 7800 GT) and some memory.  It also helps if they put the wrong price label on the card....  Of course, I do nothing but games with this computer.  We have expensive Macs for doing important things like porn and stuff.

Thanks for not answering my question at all!  :nda:  Just joking, but seriously, I don't trust demo shit after working at a Radio Shack.

So you're getting a Dell. Tat graphics card will be fine for now. Is the Pentium IV a dual core? Also, what's the exact model?

Dude, I'm getting a Dell.  It's a Dimension E-510.  It's a good deal with a 20% off coupon and some other holiday offers like free printer and what not.  It's not Dual Core, but from what I hear most game don't take effective advantage of this. 

I hear this card is comparable to the Radeon 9800?  In which case it's fairly decent from what I know and should be able to max out a lot of games (I don't play much FPS).

The graphic card should be fine, but if you are going to go all out (which it looks like you are) then you might as well get the 800. I would recommend going to the 800 if you plan on playing games that will be coming out 1-2 years in the future...

Or plan on upgrading when it comes out, to whatever is the latest and greatest at the time (probably the best bet, now that I think about it).

I would go one up on the card but that's the best card you can get on a Dimension.  I was worried that it sucked, or that my other system specs would bottleneck a top notch graphics card in two years, or maybe the power supply wouldnt support one.  I really don't know what I'm talking about.  I have a niggardly knowledge gleaned from reading other people's opinions on forums coupled with non-technical background.

How much is the computer costing at the end of the day?

Just under 1500 beans including tax, shipping, printer, etc.  From what I can tell, the Dell monitors are all the rage.


My current rig is a P4 1.4/64MB NVIDIA GeForce Ultra/500 MB RDRAM.  Point and laugh.

Thanks for the reassuring pats on the back by the way.  I'm going to pull the trigger. 

Heh, you're getting the exact computer that I use as a workstation in the office. VS7.1 takes great advantage of the hyperthreading stuff, but somehow I doubt you'll be doing any compilation of >1GB of source code. Writing an app that does HT properly is difficult and SIMD assembler is still a black art, even with the advanced optimizers built into compilers these days, so a lot of games really won't utilize the latest OMFGL33T acronym'd features on the processor. That will slowly change, but it's something that will be more relevant in the 2+ year window, not now.

Uh, end digression.

It runs pretty snappily even with all the central-administration garbage IT throws on our machines, so it should be fine for your immediate gaming needs. At worst, you'll need to chuck in a new graphics card ~1-2 years down the line. Unless your definition of gaming includes antialiasing and anisotropic-filtering the graphics at a resolution with the dimensions of Texas, but then you want one of those high-four-figure superoptimized overclocked specialty ePeen gaming machines that use exotic elements as coolant.

Also the 2001FP is a sweet monitor. Again, it's what I use at work. Haven't had issues.

WHOAAAAA WAIT. Seriously. Give it a day or so. The XPS 400 goes on sale with the 20" monitor for $1023 like twice a week. You can upgrade to a dual core and get an ATI 800SE!

Seriously?  Holy shit.  Good save dude.  Good save.  Despite being populated in the main by cycnical misanthropes, you guys have been the most helpful place by far in my quest for computer gaming knowledge.


But how the hell will I know when it goes on sale, and a 500 dollar price drop with better shit sounds too good to be true really.

I would also look at buying the components and assembling the rig yourself. A lot of the price you pay at retail is for tech support, which is for suckers.

Though, this isn't really an option if you cannot put the stuff together. Though, if that's the case, you should be embarassed to call yourself a gamer.

I live in shame everyday.

Seriously Schild, you've piqued the interest of the  greedy Jew that resides deep in the heart of us all.  Do I camp Dell.com for this mystical deal or is there, like, a better way.  Lead me to the promised land of milk, honey, and high frame rates.

You play MMOs. You should know all about camping something.

I still say you should seriously consider assembling a system yourself. $1500 for that system seemed like a major rip. Also, the SE-series ATI cards are short for budget-series, if I remember correctly.

Intel bad, though through Dell you don't have much choice. Athlon 64 offers much better price/performance.

2 GB RAM very good.

X600 SE very very bad. The X600 Pro is equivalent to the 9600 Pro which is nowhere near 9800 Pro performance levels. And while I can't find the specs on the SE version if the X300 SE is anything to go by the X600 SE is a majorly gimped form of the X600.

80 GB HD okay. PC games these days take up a lot of space. You might want to consider something bigger.

Dammit!






I've thought about building a computer using the Ars Technica system guides, and I see that through buying components individually I could get a much better computer for the same price.  I'm unsure that I could do it though, I never have before and the prospect of sitting for hours on the floor amidst various screws and covered in the sweat of frusturation scrubbing my fingers through my hair right before I realize that I forgot to ground myself before touching my motherboard seems like a fairly daunting task.

Honestly, it's all very simply. The components go together naturally, because...well, they're designed to. It's all just screws and clips, really.

The hard part is software usually. Or soundcards. I hate soundcards.

It can seem daunting if you've never done it before. There are so many pieces and cables and stuff it's hard to know where to even start (though there are probably some good howtos on the Web). However, if you take the time to learn how to do it your future hardware options open up tremendously. Even if your subsequent computers are "prebuilt" you'll know how to upgrade or modify those computers as needed (add more RAM, add another hard drive, put in a new video card, etc.).

Something small and hard to find almost always goes wrong though, and then you're fucked. I've built my last 3 computers, plus one for my brother. I'd suggest you look around at the more competitive of small independant computer shops in your area (the ones who sell the abovementioned parts for cheap) and see what they charge to assemble.

PCs should be Plug and Play, but sadly they're still Plug and Pray. Gigantic pieces of random shit that they are..

My next box, I'll get them to put it together for me, for the au$50 it'll cost, with a year's warranty, it's a no-brainer to take it back and let them sort it out when something fucks up.

if you're unsure of how it works, definately pay someone who'll give you support to put it together. It's just worth the headache, especially if you're unsure. Having a new computer, assembled, that should work but does not and needing to get a friend to come over and look at it for you, in a day or three when they can make it, sucks an unbelievable amount of donkey balls.

OTOH, once you've got the new toy and have it running ok, have a poke around the old one. Everyone should learn/know how to add in an extra drive/memory/HDD/cards. Just see how all the shit fits together. Read the manual to your motherboard.

Hey they're selling the XPS 400 for $1069 like you foretold.  Integrated soundcards won't fuck me will they? 

Also what's the deal with dual cores?  Like, a 2.8 Gig Dual Core vs. a 3.4 Gig regular processor.  I mean, If the program doesn't really take advantage of hyperthreading, are we looking at a big leap in power?

Buy a seperate sound card, turn off the integrated one in the bios. Also, post more.

Ok.  I have a sig now.  Does that mean I'm part of the team?

Hyper-threading is not the same thing as having dual CPUs or a dual core CPU. Yes you can set things up so that Windows thinks you have two CPUs but you really don't. In some cases having HT turned on can improve the performance of a multi-threaded program. On the other hand having HT turned on can hurt the performance of some applications. So it's kind of a wash. As for dual CPU or dual core CPU computing you'll see a big benefit if you either run multi-CPU aware multi-threaded applications (Photoshop, 3d rendering programs, video encoders, etc.) or you like to run multiple CPU intensive applications at the same time (e.g. you want to run your game and encode a video at the same time).

Why do you hurt me so?    :|  :cry:

Trippy makes a good point. As he says, the vast majority of the applications you will be running cannot use two CPUs at once, but if you ever wanted to run two applications at the same time (say, WoW and Fraps to record your guilds catassing) then getting two CPUs or dual core CPUs is a good idea. (You'd also probably want to get two hard drives).

That said, I've been running on a single processor for .. well, ever. I rarely run additional apps while playing games, or if I do it's something like Ventrilo or Teamspeak which doesn't take much processing power at all.

I'm not sure how Dual Core works, but if it's a 2.8Ghz does that mean only 1.4Ghz is available to a single threaded app? I would guess you can use the whole 2.8Ghz if there's not other applications running, but you might want make sure.

Dual-Core CPUs are just 2 cpus on the same die.  It's just like a dual-processor rig, only it takes up less space on the motherboard... only one giant heatsink instead of 2, etc.  I'd assume a 2.8 Ghz model means both CPUs run at 2.8 Ghz.  For the most part, it'll run just like a single-CPU at 2.8 Ghz, except some things will be zippier... if you have multiple apps running at once, swapping between them will be faster, etc.  Certain rare apps will be faster, mostly graphics and video encoding related stuff.  You might be able to get away with doing silly things like burning CD/DVDs while playing WoW, since the processes are on seperate CPUs.  (Tho WoW might still cause delays on the I/O subsystem, due to disk accesses, and thus cause issues with the burn).

All in all, if you're a normal 'use PC for one thing at a time' user, you won't see much benefit from a dual-core machine.

Alkiera

This really depends on the mobo's chipset. A good board, like an Asus, will have decent sound support. The main reason for using an independent soundcard is if you are using surround sound or something.

Otherwise, integrated sound (using good chipsets) is a fine choice.

That X-Fi board is super sexy.

These are the best codes since Game Genie.  Where do you get them?

I camp this page:

http://www.techbargains.com/dellcoupons.cfm

I grabbed a dual core amd 3800+, 2gig ram, 500 hd and a 7800 gt for roughly that price yesterday (no monitor tho) - Its way cheaper to hit some online store and have them setup a rig for you - at least over here..)

dual core is abit iffy - its a small prestanda loss over regular single cores in most applications. However, if you are running things which take advantage of em the difference is there. Some games might force you to allocate them to a single core tho, to prevent them from running to fast - i know EQ2 suffers from this - I almost got banned for speedhacking before i realised what was wrong..P

Just to chime in on the thought of buying a PC piece by piece: Many good computer shops will put all the pieces together for you, setup up windows, and test drive the system for about $50 extra.

Basically, you need to find a local supplier that deals in enough volume to keep prices way down. You don't want a mom and pop computer shop, as they just resell what they buy from local importers, and mark things up. To give you an example in my area:
www.atic.ca (http://www.atic.ca) or www.ncix.com (http://www.ncix.com) (these sites are in Cdn $ by the way).

If you do go with the Dell mentioned:
- the video card will get you by, but you'll be upgrading in the near future
- 80 GB harddrives are a total rip-off. Its basically Dell dumping old stock on you. A 7200 RPM 80 GB is worth about $75, but you can get a 200GB for about $30 more.
- the onboard sound will usually get you by
- 2 GB ram is a good thing

Sorry for the derail, but how exactly can the clients processing power influence the movement speed ? Or was that just a funny way of describing the absence of lag ?

Since there are lots of different speed processors out there, games have to use various timing functions to figure out how fast the game is supposed to run relative to the processor. If you are an old timer PC gamer you might remember when games didn't do this and ran at "max" speed all the time which meant that as faster processors came out the games ran too fast. There are "speed hack" programs which take advantage of this by tricking the program into thinking it's running on a processor that's faster or slower than it really is. I'm actually trying to write something about the problem Swede described but there is an issue with the way processor timing works on the Athlon 64 X2 which causes some games not to play properly if they are running on both cores and in some cases it'll act like you are running a speed hack program. PlanetSide is another that will act like this (though it's more a stuttering speed up rather than a smooth consistent movement) and yes they will temp ban you for playing like this even though it is a problem that's fixable in the client code but of course SOE hasn't bothered to do this.

One lives and learns, thank you.

Really, it's due almost entirely on SOE's crappy client design.  They tie everything to framerate... movement, animation speeds, etc, and then test your machine performance when you log in, and use that to set a timing loop for the framerate.  This is why when I re-ran EQ a while back, on my new improved hardware, it ran just as crappily as it did on worse hardware.  The timing loop seems more resources, so it makes the loop longer and slows down performance.

If you have some method of radically altering your system speed, like software than can alter your motherboard settings for FSB or clockrate on the fly, you can set it low, start EQ, then reset it to the normal level, and the game runs amazingly nicely.  I had a friend who did this on raids, because otherwise things went to a crawl when there were lots of people and spell effects around.... he'd log out and back in after having done this, and could run with high visual settings and no lag.

Of course, he could also out-run bardspeed as a warrior with jboots...  but he didn't exploit that.  Much.  Except a few times to make bards mad.

Alkiera

I'd go with a bigger hard drive; they really aren't that expensive. I personally have tried the build your own thing, and if I have the money to, I'd rather pay someone to put one together for me. When it fucks up, I can send it to them. When I build one of my own and it fucks up (AND IT WILL), I'm SOL. I don't like being SOL.

As for the processor thing, we recently bought Poptart a Compaq with an AMD 3500+ and 1.5 GB of RAM. She installed the original Unreal Tournament, and for some reason, any time she tries to play online, the game freaks out. It will run at light speed for a minute, then just lock up the screen which stutters for a few seconds then runs forward again. Is that the processor running too fast for the game server to respond, almost like a speedhack? How do I fix that? It doesn't do that on single-player games on the computer, just online games.

I was proud of myself just for figuring out that if you run and strafe at the same time, you run Slightly faster than mobs and are able to get away (before SOE upped most mob run speeds).

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

They coded the client in a way that made in run like crap on most machines ? ON PURPOSE ?

Someone should get a list of the SOE employees world wide and sterilize them (at least) .

People  like that should not be allowed to pass their "Stupid"-Gene to the next generation.

if its a dual core - ctrl alt delete, rightclick on the application -> go to the process (or rightclick at the process at once if you know whats it called). In swedish you pick "ange processortillhörighet" but i guess in your funny language it would be something like allocate cpu or something like that.. Hit it and unclick one of the allocations so it just runs on one of the cores.:)

And here I learned something usefull.

(having just built a sweet 3500+ dual core machine for the sole purpose of seeing it brought to its kness by fucking Civilization of all games...)

/\/\
Roflcakes!@!!

Is that an Athlon 64 X2 or just a regular Athlon 64?

Yeah, there's definately a problem here.

At least the game is still fun - the animation just gets messed up.

I'll chime in although i suspect you've already pulled the trigger but hey i haven't seen a let's build a rig thread in a while. And i just built one so i naturally have an opinion.

Anyway as someone else said the graphics card is weak, but that won't matter too much as the board has PCI-X. I picked up a 6800GT relatively cheap ($289 canadian) - fast cards will drop in price so upgrade then. Having levelled a character in WoW to 60 on a Mac 1.5 ghz G4 laptop w. 768 MB RAM and a 32 mb ATI mobile video chipset (9600) i can assure you that WoW will run acceptably with some tweaking.

The machine i just built is:

AMD X2 4600+
2 GB RAM
nVidia nForce 4 Asus A8N-E motherboard - big issue i ran into with nForce below
nvidia 6800GT PCI-X
4x Seagate SATA Barracuda 400 Gig drives
Logitech Bluetooth denovo keyboard and mouse i inherited from a friend
a super quiet case with 400 powersupply
a few fans etc.
17" ViewSonic LCD monitor
Cabling (damn DVI cables x2 cost a fortune)

Total cost was around $1800 Canadian from a local cheap shop with lousy service but good prices.

The machine only does 2 things - gaming and driving a home theater system - primarily a digital output machine to a 56" Samsung DLP HDTV, and a panny digital receiver.

Some observations now that it's been running for a few weeks.

First - the nForce 4 is a really decent chipset with a huge amount of 'good enough' on board funcionality. With one major exception. The onboard plain ethernet 100 is fine, works straight outta the box no issues. However, the bloody thing automatically turns on a function called NAM - Nvidia Network Manager. This enables a on board firewall and some other port and protocol protection. This is enabled by default. So the first few days with the system, i couldn't open or launch any thing i downloaded. Every download was corrupt. Even if i moved them to a different machine. Very frustrating when building a new machine as i couldnt get drivers, freeware etc. I was also experiencing massive lagspikes and crashes (app errors not just server disconnects) in WoW. I checked that all the firewall utilities were disabled as i have a hardware firewall - they were. A little research turned up a tonne of information - summarily corrupt downloads and network instability are a KNOWN issue with the Nforce 4 network tools. And yet even new driver updates enable this shit by default. Resolution required a Mboard BIOS update and a reinstall of ALL system drivers. Major headache - do a custom install the first time if you ever use this chipset.

Second, i dodged a bullet on the 6800GT. I did very little research on this card as i was getting a discount. Later, when i was installing TheaterTek and FFdshow for High Definition output i found out that the 6800 line of cards is missing the hardware to take advantage of a bunch of optimizations for filters and descaling/pulldown. Luckily the GT is the only 6800 with this functionality. Nvidia has a feature chart well worth reviewing if your going to do anyone HTPC stuff - http://www.avsforums.com is an invaluable resource.

Overall though am super happy with the machine. The X2 dual core is not the premier gaming processor - certainly i'd look at the FX line if performance is completely required and budget isn't an issue. The X2 does do some very nice things though that i'm starting to take for granted - such as running WoW and another processor intensive app (MPEG4 encode/decode, DVD decoding and output, or even running a second WoW instance) without breaking a sweat. You can alt-tab out of games INSTANTLY with 0 churn or pause. I occasionally drag a friends priest around with my warrior as we're trying to stay within a couple levels of each other so i run 2 clients and do shared quests - the machine doesn't break a sweat - each processor takes one instance and off we go.

Oh, and get more HD space, it's cheap and there's never too much.

Good luck!

Just saw this - yep it's precisely like a speedhack and is somewhat common with older games on the X2's. You have to set the application to ignore the second processor:

Setting Processor Affinity Manually: Launch game, and as soon as the game appears to begin loading, or after it has loaded up, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the Task Manager. Under the Processes tab, find the GAME.exe process, right-click on it, select 'Set Affinity' and in the box which appears, untick 'CPU 1'.


Setting Processor Affinity Automatically: If you want to force the game to only use one of your CPUs automatically each and every time you run the game, google instructions for using the Imagecfg utility, a small Windows NT file you can safely copy into your \Windows\System32 directory and then use to permanently set the affinity for particular programs. Note, you may have to redo this each time you patch the game.


EDIT: Which, um, Swede already posted. Better. Ack.

Thanks dude, I actually haven't bought anything yet, I've been thinking about things I've read here and elsewhere.  At this point I might just wait until January because I won't get the computer until like Christmas Day and I'll be too busy to play over break.

If I catch an amazing deal, I'll post it here.

I don't think the processor on PopTart's computer is an X2, I think it's just a standard Athlon 64 3500+, but I'll check tonight.