1500 dollar PC

[Strazos]

I still gets hotter under load, but at least now it doesn't spike to 90c before the mobo emergency circuit kicks in and shuts the whole thing off.

Unfortunately, Guild wars still gets a hair up its ass about my CPU temp, and likes to jump in every now and then and tell me so.

[Engels]

I still gets hotter under load, but at least now it doesn't spike to 90c before the mobo emergency circuit kicks in and shuts the whole thing off.

Unfortunately, Guild wars still gets a hair up its ass about my CPU temp, and likes to jump in every now and then and tell me so.

Guildwars tells you about your cpu temp? Or running guildwars overheats your cpu and your system tells you so?

[WayAbvPar]

The lesson, as always, is that Guild Wars sucks balls.

[Strazos]

I still gets hotter under load, but at least now it doesn't spike to 90c before the mobo emergency circuit kicks in and shuts the whole thing off.

Unfortunately, Guild wars still gets a hair up its ass about my CPU temp, and likes to jump in every now and then and tell me so.

Guildwars tells you about your cpu temp? Or running guildwars overheats your cpu and your system tells you so?

Nope, Guild Wars closes itself down, brings up a dialog box AND a website telling me I have a problem. Pretty annoying.

[Sky]

Dumb and Obvious question, but did you patch Oblivion?

Woops. Problem wasn't patched, though. Still completely unplayable.

BF2 seems to be having issues that seem like they are IRQ-related. Problem is, the PCI slots on my mobo are either 11 or 5, and 11 is the onboard networking, 5 is the AGP. Winders reallocates them to place nicely (nothing is shared), but I can't seperate them in the BIOS (that I could see, it's been a while since I dicked with IRQs).

I'm not sure if it's a driver issue, or if I'm missing something. I did a proper install (remove drivers, disable onboard sound in BIOS, install hardware, install drivers from web). Not being able to play Oblivion or BF2 has me seriously considering an RMA. Fuck.

[Engels]

That is very odd, in this day and age. Have you tried resetting the Bios to factory defaults? If that doesn't work, try doing a 'repair' on your OS. Not the one that asks you for floppy disks. Its the second step, once you have told the install disk that you want to install, it will detect the OS, and ask if you want to try to repair it. Do that. It essentially whipes the entire driver base and reinstalls it all, without erasing existing installed programs. It doesn't always work, but I've reinstalled images from one computer onto another computer with entirely different hardware using this method.

[Sky]

I got BF2 running a bit better by dialing back the sound to Medium ingame. I'm not happy about that, but at least it's playable. Oblivion is a lost cause as of now. I don't really want to do a reinstall/repair, it always seems to be a hassle with my old XP key and I don't feel like shelling out another hundred+ for another key. OSX ftw, fucking activation motherfucking MS. Oops, I ranted.

Anyway, I don't really have any other option that I can see with my current setup. I'd have to go buy a new receiver with analog inputs to use Creative's stuff, and that's not really going to happen imo. Hopefully whatever the incompatibility/issue is will be solved when I build a new pc next year, since I haven't really found these problems listed on the web and people have been using the card with BF2 and Oblivion.

[Strazos]

Can I borrow your copy of Oblivion then?

[Sky]

An Corp!

Bored this morning, I jotted down my initial idea for a new pc. It'll change before I build it next Februaryish, but I'll throw it out here anyway:

Core 2 Duo E6600 cpu
Zalman CNPS9500 hs/fan
ASUS P5WDH Deluxe mobo
2GB OCZ 2P10002GK DDR2 1000 ram
eVGA 7950GX2 gpu
Antec P180 case
FSP Group FX700-SCN 700W psu
WD Raptor 150GB OEM hd
Creative X-Fi + DTS-610 sound
XP MCE os

About $2300. I wish RAM prices would depress a bit.

[Strazos]

OCZ is garbage, use something else.

[Sky]

I was going to just use crucial like I always do, but they are only listing their Ballistix (or whatever it is) at $550 vs $375 for the OCZ stuff. RAM is ridiculous right now, and will probably be one of the things changing before I buy. Thanks for the input, I was wondering about that. I got the idea for the OCZ stuff from anadtech.

[Yegolev]

You get what you pay for.  Especially from Taiwan.

[Sky]

Good point. I had hoped to build it for $2000, now it's looking like $2500. It will be a pretty nice rig, though. We'll see what happens with kentsfield and dx10 parts, but right now I don't think I'll be doing Vista for a while. I really wanted to slap 4GB RAM in, but not with current prices. I also want a fat data drive or a striped array, but again, trying to keep costs down. I can't believe how expensive RAM is right now.

Looking at that price, I thought about getting a pre-built machine. A similar Dell would run me $3100 and I'd be getting slower RAM and HD, and still have to buy the Creative DTS-610 home theater hookup.

[Trippy]

FSP Group FX700-SCN 700W psu

Make sure that thing has long enough cables.

[Sky]

That's my concern with the p180. Slick looking case, but odd layout. I might swap in another case choice, too. I was looking at a nice htpc case but it's over $100 more.

[Trippy]

That's my concern with the p180. Slick looking case, but odd layout.

It's an ATX version of the Intel BTX layout which Intel developed to try and combat the high temperatures the Prescott CPUs were generating.

[Engels]

I have the p-180, and an antec PSU and the cables are long enough. The only cable that presents a problem is the 4 socket power cable that has to extend from the bottom of your case to the very top of your case; its impossible to tuck it in anywhere, since it just isn't long enough to do that; it just sort of drapes over the top of your video card and over your cpu. It doesn't cause an air flow issue, just doesn't look great. But who cares, since the case isn't transparent.

I personally love the case because it has the ability to fit in five 12 cm fans, six if you're insane. It makes for a loud machine, but my GPU, a 7950 like your own, stays very cool on account of two in-line 12 cm fans blowing on it. This confituration is noisy, I must add, despite the machine having good sound insulation.

A nice thing I have found that I do like about the p-180 is that it has filters for the front two fan slots. This really has kept my interior cleaner than ever before.

[Morfiend]

Core 2 Duo E6600 cpu
Zalman CNPS9500 hs/fan
ASUS P5WDH Deluxe mobo
2GB OCZ 2P10002GK DDR2 1000 ram
eVGA 7950GX2 gpu
Antec P180 case
FSP Group FX700-SCN 700W psu
WD Raptor 150GB OEM hd
Creative X-Fi + DTS-610 sound
XP MCE os

About $2300. I wish RAM prices would depress a bit.

I am looking at getting a very simaler system. You could cut your price down a tad by going to a different hard drive. You could get a 74 raptor, and then get a large second drive for storage.

[Bunk]

I tried OCZ on my latest build which was a new Asus MB - whatever the latest socket type is for AMD. Would not work at all. Kept getting bad RAM warning beeps. After some swapping and playing around with the techs at the store, turns out the OCZ wouldn't read on that MB at all.

Gave up and paid the extra $80 for some Mushkin.

[dusematic]

This thread shall be my legacy that endures long after I am gone.

[Sky]

When you put it like that, I'll start a new thread.

[Tale]

I was planning to build a Conroe/PCI-E/DDR2 system to replace my P4/AGP/DDR machine. But I found this crazy Conroe mobo that has AGP and PCI-E slots, DDR and DDR2 slots, etc. So I've just rebuilt my existing PC on that and now it's a Conroe with DDR333 RAM and an AGP 6800GS :) Sounds wrong, but it works well.

So far I've only played BF2 and (NDA) on it. Big boost to both and BF2 now runs mostly above 100fps, bottoming out at 70fps in a massive firefight. Obviously it doesn't perform like a totally new Conroe machine, but it's not a dead end like most cheap upgrade paths. I'll wait for a DX10 card and 2Gb of DDR2 at the right price next year to bring the machine up to scratch.

Total cost was A$333 (US$255) for CPU and motherboard. Seems more than enough bang for buck, even if it is Frankenstein's monster:

Core2Duo E6300 (to be overclocked in future)
1Gb DDR 333
6800GS 512Mb AGP 8x
Sound Blaster X-Fi
120Gb SATA master, 160Gb ATA/133 slave, 300Gb ATA/133 slave
DVD-RW drive
420W Antec PSU
Lian Li PC60+ case

[Engels]

Let us know how that mobo goes. If it works well, its a great deal for those peeps that aren't ready to upgrade their GPU to a PCI-E card just yet.

[Sky]

Yeah, that does sound like a good deal, I'm surprised there haven't been a slew of them given the hard upgrade path. I mean, when we had VESA local you could buy a machine with that and PCI. When we had PCI, you could buy a machine with that and AGP. I think this is the first time since I got into modular pcs (486 era) that you couldn't bridge generations (well, until now).

I'm still planning to build a new pc, though. Reading some Valve stuff, I'm really leaning toward kentsfield. Reading some dx10 stuff, I'm leaning toward a dx10 part (though not at vista for a while). Feb/Mar, my original timeline, is looking pretty dern good.

[Engels]

I'm still planning to build a new pc, though. Reading some Valve stuff, I'm really leaning toward kentsfield.

Que es kentsfield?

[Sky]

2xCore 2 Duo cores in a single package = Core 2 Quad (Kentsfield is the codename).

The Valve article:
http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2868

Nvidia's new chipset:
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2869

Nvidia's G80 with some dx10 stuff:
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2870

Yeah, spent some time on anand's site today, heh. Good reads, though.

[Tale]

Re the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard.

Let us know how that mobo goes. If it works well, its a great deal for those peeps that aren't ready to upgrade their GPU to a PCI-E card just yet.

Two days' solid gaming so far, left it on overnight doing torrents. Played FEAR on it yesterday, liquid smooth. A guildie and his housemate both also got this motherboard earlier in the week. All of us are happy and Conroe-ing away with our DDR and AGP.

There's a 28-page thread in the Anandtech forums, also with mostly positive reports. The crazies who install every new BIOS update as soon as it comes out are reporting some bugs with the most recent downloadable BIOS, but if you apply the "ain't broke, don't fix it" rule and don't upgrade the BIOS unless absolutely necessary, that shouldn't bother anyone.

Anandtech also used the board to test DDR vs DDR2 for Conroe and concluded: "the choice of components like the CPU, motherboard, or graphics card is far more important to the overall performance of the system than our memory selection on this platform. While this is not surprising and certainly not unexpected, it just reinforces the fact that at this price point you can certainly extend the life of your existing DDR memory." They also recommended it in an overall Conroe motherboard review as follows: "The ASRock is not the system to grow to top video with, but if screaming value is what you want the ASRock can deliver."

I've always been a fan of stepping up to the low end of a new generation of technology, rather than the high end of the previous generation. Ever since people bought expensive high-clock 486 DX2s instead of low-end Pentiums, then had to buy a new PC for Quake (no floating point). My Pentium 75 pwned them. And I ran a Celeron 300A at 466MHz for three years, which benched higher than a far more expensive 450MHz Pentium II which had double the cache, so I'd rather overclock an E6300 than buy any faster Core2Duo. Due to video cards doing so much of the work, the difference between an E6300 and E6700 will look negligible in six months anyway, even without an overclock.

[Sky]

I've always been about building a relatively high-end machine with the most mature product possible. That puts some flies into the ointment if I want to build early next year since there's a slew of great new, but not mature, tech on the market. I was the guy with the 486 DX2. Then a Pentium 200, a PII 400, etc. My main reasoning for kentsfield is that it looks like Valve is going to push their tech in a really good direction and the multicore console generation means that multicore is it, and Valve's stuff is going to scale to more than two cores. And the dx10-era video cards look to be real beautiful cards.

I've known a lot of people that have done well by tweaking lower end hardware, C300a is obviously the best scenario there's ever been, until e6300, anyway. But I've never done wrong building monster machines, so I'll stick with that. In fact, I remember one guy who was in the C300a camp mocking me for loading up my PII machine with (128MB, iirc) RAM. "You won't need more than 64MB!" I've never been disappointed by loading my pc with more RAM than anyone thinks I'll ever need. If it wasn't so expensive right now, I'd have 4GB specced as minimum.

Downside is, this will be the most expensive pc I've built since I bought my first one (I didn't build my 486), because it's 100% new parts, rather than carrying over the gpu/drives. Damned tech hump.

[Engels]

See, the problem is you have too many cooks in the kitchen. It will probably be a year from now when a chipset for a quadcore is mature. Nvidia is just now making a chipset that will work dynamically with the Core2Duo. Lets assume that its on the shelves by January, it'll take another four months before all the serious BIOS patches are in. Then it'll be mature-ish. Of course, in the mean time, AMD will have pulled another rabbit out of its hat and the race will take a new turn.

A thing to bear in mind, from reading that great Valve article, is that programming to take advantage of 2 CPUs, much less 4, takes an entirely new approach to programming. Valve can do it, I have no doubt, but will that knowledge be proliferated enough amongst other gaming programmers for upcoming games in the next couple of years? My instinct is that it won't be. Valve is head and shoulders above 90% of game companies this way.

[Sky]

I'll concede that it will be a couple years before multicore computing with the Source engine is mainstream. Valve is the new id, imo, they're going to be the ones utilizing and driving hardware like id used to, with a big impact because of engine licensing. But my concession comes from the fact that it'll take a while for those licensed engine games to be developed.

But...we also have both of the new consoles being multicore, and the 360 being rather pc-like. Since there's a lot of cross-platform titles already, I can't help but think that enabling pc multithreading is far away. Of course, balancing that is the fact that pc market penetration is slow.

I dunno, I guess I'll see what the next kentsfield announcement holds, not sure I want to buy the bleeding top edge, anyway. I'm sure a C2D e6600 would be a great cpu, so it's really all-win.

[Tale]

In fact, I remember one guy who was in the C300a camp mocking me for loading up my PII machine with (128MB, iirc) RAM. "You won't need more than 64MB!" I've never been disappointed by loading my pc with more RAM than anyone thinks I'll ever need. If it wasn't so expensive right now, I'd have 4GB specced as minimum.

I agree completely.

[Trippy]

Unreal Engine 3 supports multi-cores/multi-CPUs and they have the most licensees by far compared to the Source and Doom 3 engines and id has supported them (though not very well) since, ah, Quake III Arena? Heck if Cryptic can do it for CoH/CoV (and it does give a huge boost in framerates) I would expect most competent programmers will figure it out. Yes it is a different style of programming but they teach that stuff to undergraduate CS students -- it's not rocket science -- and as Sky said both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are multi-core which means there's a large group of developers that are learning how to do that stuff right now.

[Sky]

The PS3 is more of a RISC, though. Reading up a little on that, some crazy people are taking them apart already :) Once again Sony has made a processor developers will hate, I remember the teeth-gnashing of the Metal Gear guy (not Snake, the lead)....and that was by far teh best looking game on the PS2 at the time.

UT/DOOM use a pretty flawed implementation, though. They split the server and client processes between the two cores, so it doesn't scale at all beyond two cores and is very unoptimized. Better than nothing, though.

[Trippy]

The PS3 is more of a RISC, though. Reading up a little on that, some crazy people are taking them apart already :) Once again Sony has made a processor developers will hate, I remember the teeth-gnashing of the Metal Gear guy (not Snake, the lead)....and that was by far teh best looking game on the PS2 at the time.

The Cell, the Xbox 360's triple-core CPU and the Wii's CPU are all based on the PowerPC architecture.

[Sky]

I thought the 360 was more parallel, though that's a total assumption as I haven't read up on the details. I was suprised by the linearity of the PS3's cores. That's a long damned chain.