I'm buying a new computer (help).

[Swede]

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

[Bunk]

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 or 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

[Der Helm]

I almost got banned for speedhacking before i realised what was wrong..P

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 ?

[Trippy]

I almost got banned for speedhacking before i realised what was wrong..P

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.

[Der Helm]

One lives and learns, thank you.

[Alkiera]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

[Strazos]

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.

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).

[Der Helm]

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. 

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.

[Swede]

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.

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.:)

[Hanzii]

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...)

[Hoax]

/\/\
Roflcakes!@!!

[Trippy]

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.

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

[Strazos]

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...)

Yeah, there's definately a problem here.

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

[squirrel]

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!

[squirrel]

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.

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.

[dusematic]

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!

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.

[schild]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.