New Computer Build, advice requested

[Stewie]

Wow, that price is awesome. How long ago did you get that? My memory cost me $124 cdn
If I went with the i7 and tri channel memory generic ocz memory would have cost around $180 for the 6gb

here is the memory I got

[Sky]

Wow, that price is awesome. How long ago did you get that?

I paid $47 ($67-$20 MIR) for 4 GB in March.

My RAM is ddr2 800, but I use crucial memory.

[AutomaticZen]

Wow, that price is awesome. How long ago did you get that? My memory cost me $124 cdn
If I went with the i7 and tri channel memory generic ocz memory would have cost around $180 for the 6gb

here is the memory I got

I went with the same brand, but the 1333 set, per the link I posted before saying that premium memory isn't quite worth it over latency.

[Sheepherder]

(Oblivion is the one that comes to mind).

705 Kbps, 44 kHz sample, mono channel PCM.

And people wonder why their computer fucking explodes when a horse gallops by.

[Murgos]

You actually think writing ~88KB over an entire second to a sound card buffer should have any noticeable effect on a modern computer?

[Sheepherder]

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation why disabling footfalls yields a 16 fps increase when fighting wolves and rats that doesn't involve me being right.

EDIT: This also happens to be the reason I always recommend a real sound card.

[Murgos]

I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation why disabling footfalls yields a 16 fps increase when fighting wolves and rats that doesn't involve me being right.

EDIT: This also happens to be the reason I always recommend a real sound card.

No, there is an issue with how they handle sound files (possibly - bugs are hardly ever that straight forward) the size of the file you mentioned though, or it's sampling rate or any other detail about it, really has nothing to do with it.

[Tarami]

On the topic of sound cards and computer building, I feel I want to promote this card a bit, if you're fine with stereo sound:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496.html

Hands down the cleanest, highest quality stereo sound you can get for under $150, hell, under $300 for that matter. I absolutely love mine and will never buy another bloated, shitty Creative card.

[Sheepherder]

No, there is an issue with how they handle sound files (possibly - bugs are hardly ever that straight forward) the size of the file you mentioned though, or it's sampling rate or any other detail about it, really has nothing to do with it.

So, effectively your argument is that one variable in a compound problem is more important than the others by dint of my being wrong, predicated on that assumption.  For future reference: it's trivially easy to downsample audio with a batch converter, whereas patching a game engine is not.

[Murgos]

So, effectively your argument is that one variable in a compound problem is more important than the others by dint of my being wrong, predicated on that assumption.  For future reference: it's trivially easy to downsample audio with a batch converter, whereas patching a game engine is not.

No my argument is the things you quoted didn't have the effect you say they did.  My evidence is that of the millions and millions of people who played Oblivion very, very few ran into a problem with audio playback causing frame rate drop (Which everyone would have had if that had actually been the issue).  This is also supported by the fact that I know a modern computer bus can handle several orders of magnitude more data transfer than 705kbps across the Northbridge to the Southbridge and out to an Audio Device regardless of if that audio device is located on the motherboard or on a separate daughter card.

I'm glad that you know how to resample audio through a batch file, I am sure it will make your life much more wonderful.

[Engels]

On the topic of sound cards and computer building, I feel I want to promote this card a bit, if you're fine with stereo sound:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496.html

Hands down the cleanest, highest quality stereo sound you can get for under $150, hell, under $300 for that matter. I absolutely love mine and will never buy another bloated, shitty Creative card.

So to get to your speakers, do you have this going through a mixer or a tuner or directly to speakers that can take that type of connection?

[Trippy]

If you mean computer speakers this is what you want:

http://www.amazon.com/3-5mm-Mini-Plug-Computer-Stereo/dp/B000FEHO0U

[Engels]

Thanks Trippy. That was pretty much my question. I'm also wondering if using ye-olde 'comes with a Dell' computer speakers would pretty much waste that sound card's potential. I can tell the difference between on-board sound and my creative PCI card even on my cheapo harman/kardon speaker set, but I wonder if I would really note an improvement with a more sophisticated sound card like the one above.

[Tarami]

It could be considered a waste if you're already relatively happy with your current soundcard, but it's worth considering if you're planning an upgrade, as it's not more expensive than your typical Creative card. To be realistic, no, I don't think there'll be a considerable difference to your current card, especially as Creative's cards are usually quite biased to fit well with systems lacking midrange (such as satellites + subwoofer.) However, if you're the kind of person who has headphones worth more than $150 or using the home audio system from the computer, I would recommend looking into it, because it gives a much more "honest" sound than most gaming soundcards do.

[Sheepherder]

Murgos:

Yes, I alone found and corrected this.

Will that suffice?  Or should I hit up the modding and community sites too?  Will you also need a search for Realtek audio?

Bethesda's sound engine is bad.  The sound files are all excessively high quality.  And onboard audio unloads large quantities of floating-point math on your processor proportional to the size and number of sound effects.  Point one and two should not have ever occurred, because point three is inevitable in consumer computers.  Sky's problem with the Auzentech is probably Codec or driver related, which doesn't surprise me coming from a game that can be interfered with by an HP printer.  I was more pointing out that Oblivion is a reasonable benchmark like this is an argument that a pair of sane individuals would have.  Don't make me throw a cat at you.

[Engels]

stuff

Thanks Tarami. That describes my situation well. Maybe once I upgrade my system entirely I will reconsider what card to buy.

[Hoax]

On the topic of sound cards and computer building, I feel I want to promote this card a bit, if you're fine with stereo sound:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496.html

Hands down the cleanest, highest quality stereo sound you can get for under $150, hell, under $300 for that matter. I absolutely love mine and will never buy another bloated, shitty Creative card.

I own one of these, mostly because I hate Creative's shitty shit cards with a passion.  I haven't had the money to actually get some speakers to use it yet but I plan to, possibly xmas (sigh).

[Kageh]

I own one of these, mostly because I hate Creative's shitty shit cards with a passion.  I haven't had the money to actually get some speakers to use it yet but I plan to, possibly xmas (sigh).

I think the hardware is quite okay. Sadly, the drivers and policies concerning them are a totally different story 

[Mosesandstick]

Fark. I've got problems.

I can get the computer to boot. For half a second. When I only have the mobo, PSU and one stick of ram connected. And then it'll refuse to start again unless I start taking stuff out and putting it back in.

Ok, managed to get the CPU to boot permanently. Connected the GPU. Turns off after half a second again. I have to connect the 24 pin connector and reconnect it everytime to get it to re-boot.

I'm leaning towards it being a wonky PSU (and the first time I've bought a branded PSU... heh). Any advice?

[Kageh]

Not sure, doesn't sound like the usual PSU troubles I know.

If you clear CMOS after a failed boot, does that help like disconnecting the 24-pin connector?

[Mosesandstick]

That did something. I think I might be able to get it work.  Thanks.

I tried the magic method of taking everything out, reconnecting everything and putting it back in. Seems to be working so far.

[Murgos]

Murgos:

Yes, I alone found and corrected this.

Will that suffice?  Or should I hit up the modding and community sites too?  Will you also need a search for Realtek audio?

Bethesda's sound engine is bad.  The sound files are all excessively high quality.  And onboard audio unloads large quantities of floating-point math on your processor proportional to the size and number of sound effects.  Point one and two should not have ever occurred, because point three is inevitable in consumer computers.  Sky's problem with the Auzentech is probably Codec or driver related, which doesn't surprise me coming from a game that can be interfered with by an HP printer.  I was more pointing out that Oblivion is a reasonable benchmark like this is an argument that a pair of sane individuals would have.  Don't make me throw a cat at you.

Point 1, is the point I made.  If point 1 didn't happen points 2 and 3 are inconsequential.

I played Oblivion with Real-Tek onboard sound without the issues linked, I've only ever used on-baord sound since it became standard.  Again, because a few people had problems that could be partially addressed with lower quality sound/turning off sound effects doesn't mean that the sound files were the actual problem.  Chances are their problems were actually tied to some other third party software installed in their system at the time.

16 bit, 44kHz samples are not the issue.

Edit:  To be absolutely clear.  The AC'97 specification from Intel requires that parts can move 12 channels @ 960 kbps of raw PCM data.

[Mosesandstick]

Ok I'm pretty sure that my something between my mobo and PSU is shorting - I have really no clue what though. Any advice?

[Nebu]

Ok I'm pretty sure that my something between my mobo and PSU is shorting - I have really no clue what though. Any advice?

Check out the comments on THIS THREAD.

Some good advice there.

[Kageh]

Ok I'm pretty sure that my something between my mobo and PSU is shorting - I have really no clue what though. Any advice?

If you leave the rather obvious stuff aside (screws/solder pins making contact with the motherboard or the metal tray or something like this, where the manufacturing has to have really fucked up), it should be one of the components you have connected. CPU pins, a ram bank, the PCI-E connector, somewhere like that.

And my favorite, which, I kid you not, happened to me on my $300 i7 board: The CMOS battery was put in the wrong way. By ASUS. From the manufacturer. I accidentally noticed that in a googled picture, or otherwise I would have despaired.

[Mosesandstick]

I *think* it was one of the screws mounting the mobo to the case. Not kidding. There's a pretty good chance it was something else, but now that it's finally working I'm not going to try and replicate it. I'm sure it'll crop up the next time I accidently kick the computer.

[Murgos]

I *think* it was one of the screws mounting the mobo to the case. Not kidding. There's a pretty good chance it was something else, but now that it's finally working I'm not going to try and replicate it. I'm sure it'll crop up the next time I accidently kick the computer.

This is actually pretty common.  If one shifts a little bit it can cause a short to ground (the case is ground, so the edge of a screw that touches a lead and touches the case bridges the gap) for which, if you are lucky, the system will just refuse to start up.  If you're unlucky the magic blue smoke gets out.

[Hoax]

I had that happen once, fully my fault I had a spacer in the wrong place.  Thank god it wasn't a cheapo mobo that would have shit itself and caught fire but that is a mistake I will not ever let happen again.

[Sheepherder]

Chances are their problems were actually tied to some other third party software installed in their system at the time.

16 bit, 44kHz samples are not the issue.

Edit:  To be absolutely clear.  The AC'97 specification from Intel requires that parts can move 12 channels @ 960 kbps of raw PCM data.

Going from a Sigmatel AC'97 variant to an Audigy 2 cleared my problems completely with no other hardware or software changes except that which is entailed by such an upgrade.  Either the common vendors of onboard audio are putting out unusually shitty drivers even for audio devices, or something else is going on.  I'd imagine that something else is writing sound operations to the SIMD registers which also happen to be doing physics operations at the same moment, which neatly sidesteps your bandwidth objection, because it has nothing to do with bandwidth and everything to do with processing speed and intrinsically slow calculations.  But that's an uneducated guess.

[Sky]

If nvidia was still making boards with soundstorm, I'd still be using onboard sound. DD5.1 optical hardware on the board? Hell yeah.

[Sheepherder]

Germans Taiwanese always make nice things.

[Sky]

Germans Taiwanese always make nice things.

Am I missing the DD5.1 hardware? I was under the impression that onboard sound does DD5.1 through software codecs. The soundstorm had a licensed DD5.1 chip onboard to do real time hardware encoding, thanks to nvidia's deal with dolby for the xbox.

And auzentech was the only other provider I know of that did hardware DD encoding and had an HDCP digital path.

[Sheepherder]

Am I missing the DD5.1 hardware? I was under the impression that onboard sound does DD5.1 through software codecs. The soundstorm had a licensed DD5.1 chip onboard to do real time hardware encoding, thanks to nvidia's deal with dolby for the xbox.

Okay, assuming both I and you know what we are saying, that's *significantly* different.  Almost to the point of not being a real onboard sound device at all.

[Tebonas]

Fuckers!

I got my whole rig ready to be set up, and there are no Radeon 5850 available for at least 3 weeks, average wait time 1 to 3 months.

WTF? Do these cards cure cancer???

[Cyrrex]

Fuckers!

I got my whole rig ready to be set up, and there are no Radeon 5850 available for at least 3 weeks, average wait time 1 to 3 months.

WTF? Do these cards cure cancer???

No, but they are so powerful that they may be causing cancer.  They need FDA approval.