Ultimate gaming pc.

[The Pastor]

Im in the market for a new pc.

Im wanting a mint gaming rig.

My budget is going to be around $3000 (without monitor etc)

I am wanting a rig simerlar to what this guy has

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2101614 <-- too tricky to paste on to kb.

are there any improvements you guys could spot(cpu / vid card)? I'd put an extra 2gb of ram on etc.

Should I buy it in stages or wait till i have the coin?

Should I get it before or after my next bike hehe

Would it be wise to use 2nd hand parts if they are available (thinking cpu and vid card as they cost quite a bit)

[kro]

You can build a sweet gaming rig for well under that including a good LCD monitor.
When I get home, I could post up what I would put together. I don't know that you need to go Quad, that's a bit excessive for a gaming rig imo.

[WRT]

Being a poor uni student and what to go on the ride tomorrow.

I have no money so anyone want to chip in and donate a little,


I only need $50 bucks for gas so if a few people chip in $2 it would help heaps.


Thanks


Rm

And yet you have $3,000 to spend on gaming?

[The Pastor]

And yet you have $3,000 to spend on gaming?


IVE GOT A JOB NOW, EVEN PAYS ME TOGO UNI. UNI SUX!

[Albino]

Have a poke at www.playtech.co.nz i've heard some good reviews on them from some geeks at work.

Buying the ultimate in anything usually means paying a lot more coin....

Another site of interest www.kiwisaver.govt.nz ;)

[Sanx]

Most games aren't sufficiently optimised to be multithreaded so for many games, a fast single core or hyperthreaded CPU is better than a slightly slower multi-core CPU. Don't bother with absolute top-notch graphics cards; it usually takes a few months before games come out that can even take advantage of the extra capabilities of the cards, and quite frankly, the returns offered by the absolute best are becoming increasingly small.

You can never have too much RAM. You should also make sure your motherboard's making the best use of your RAM possible. If you've bought a dual-channel m/board, use both channels. Ensure your motherboard's correctly identifying the speed of the memory and manually adjust the settings if needed.

Get two high-speed hard drives and a motherboard that supports RAID natively. Then run the drives as RAID 0 (Striped) and install the OS and any games on it. Then buy two more drives, run them as RAID 1 (Mirrored) and use it to store the data you regard as valuable, and use it for the page file as well. Alternatively, keep backups of the important stuff on a USB hard drive.

Assuming you're gona be running Windows, there's a lot you can do to tune the OS to your particular requirements. Turn off unused or unwanted systems and services. Cut down on the shit you have installed in your system tray. Don't run Norton anti-virus. Make sure your pagefile is a fixed size and suitable for the amount of RAM you have installed. If you want to get more complicated, you can start playing with the registry to further optimise things; keep the kernel memory resident (http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?index=56) for a better UI response but higher memory usage, tune the network settings (http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?index=118) to match the packet sizes that your internet connection uses, turn off date-last-modified file stamping (http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?index=22)and 8.3 filename creation (http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?index=21) to give your file system a bit of a boost, boost the amount of cpu time the OS allocates to foreground processes (http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?index=172), increase the file system cache (http://www.sanx.org/tipShow.asp?index=72) (if you have lots of RAM).

Lastly, but possibly most importantly, ensure that you load the latest manufacturer-supported drivers for whatever hardware devices you have. For NVidia graphics cards, ignore the manufacturer but go straight to NVidia. make sure your machine is regularly patched; OS patches aren't just there to address some security hole, they often improve performance (by eliminating performance-sapping bugs).

[jrandom]

Im wanting a mint gaming rig...

Seriously, man, why don't you stick with a $500 appliance-level PC and just buy a whole lot of good books?

You'll still have most of them on the shelf in thirty years time, and forcing yourself away from an LCD/CRT and onto the couch with a coffee or some booze and just reading for a few hours might turn you into the kind of person you should be, rather than the sad abortion you seem to be striving to become.

[BuFfY]

Hun, have a talk to cam, I would try to help but I would just suggest getting a pretty one haha, but cam does it a bit, knows a lot about it etc.
Good luck! :D

[Gremlin]

Most games aren't sufficiently optimised to be multithreaded so for many games, a fast single core or hyperthreaded CPU is better than a slightly slower multi-core CPU.
Sanx said a lot of handy info, but this is a very good point, and often overlooked. Multi-core CPU's are for multi-tasking (like 20+ apps :) ).

You also won't notice much of a difference between 2 and 4gb of ram, especially if you run standard configs of hard drives... your pc will only be as fast as the slowest point. Windows is also limited to assigning 2gb of ram to any application.

That pc is out of date too. If you want to throw money around, you probably want to look at the E6750 CPU, or something like that. The Exx50 is the latest, speed has been given a boost, much lower price point. Also needs latest mobo, 1333 FSB. Thats if you want to do a C2D machine... I like my AMD... Ram will need to be 800 at the least (not sure want current top of the line is) - may even be useful to wait for DDR3. Number of graphics cards... it depends what screen you will have. SLI is only useful when you get into high res's, beyond the capability of say, a normal 17 inch LCD.

Then comes the over-clocking question... will you? Sometimes, you want to get different CPU's, etc, as they actually overclock beyond the o/c of better CPUs. Re second hand parts... depends what you buy, do you get a warranty etc, you don't know how it has been treated. Buying latest gfx cards will also cost you a shitload.

btw... be prepared to cry, or enter a never-ending race. Quad core is on the way (8 and 16 are rumoured to be reasonably close behind), quad sli, ddr3 ram, be careful not to get sucked into that trap, because it never ends. This is particularly relevant to gaming, as coding is lagging behind, and as Sanx said, most current games don't make the best use of multiple cores (Believe me, while not a qualified coder, fuck programming in multiple threads, let alone cores, the co-ordination required etc).

[SARGE]

Seriously, man, why don't you stick with a $500 appliance-level PC and just buy a whole lot of good books?

You'll still have most of them on the shelf in thirty years time, and forcing yourself away from an LCD/CRT and onto the couch with a coffee or some booze and just reading for a few hours might turn you into the kind of person you should be, rather than the sad abortion you seem to be striving to become.

a bullet only costs .99.. im pretty sure i can get the loan of a pistol if i explain what its for

think of all the air we'd save ..:rockon:

[Sniper]

Seriously, man, why don't you stick with a $500 appliance-level PC and just buy a whole lot of good books?

You'll still have most of them on the shelf in thirty years time, and forcing yourself away from an LCD/CRT and onto the couch with a coffee or some booze and just reading for a few hours might turn you into the kind of person you should be, rather than the sad abortion you seem to be striving to become.

First wise words I have heard in a while. Well said Mr jrandom.

RM, do you even know about Riki Tiki Tavi, Dirk Pitt, How the elephant got his trunk and how to cook roadkill ect. No one ever gained skills from sitting behind a gaming screen.

My 2c

[Monorail]

First wise words I have heard in a while. Well said Mr jrandom.

RM, do you even know about Riki Tiki Tavi, Dirk Pitt, How the elephant got his trunk and how to cook roadkill ect. No one ever gained skills from sitting behind a gaming screen.

My 2c

I know dirk pitt and I didn't even have to google it. And I knew about him before the movie came out. Pretty good for a 16 year old huh.

[Sniper]

I know dirk pitt and I didn't even have to google it. And I knew about him before the movie came out. Pretty good for a 16 year old huh.

Clive Cussler should be standard reading for anyone from the age of 5

[RantyDave]

m wanting a mint gaming rig.

My budget is going to be around $3000 (without monitor etc)

I know this is going to fall on deaf ears, but I'll give it a go anyway. It's 2007, things have changed.

* A gaming PC is called an XBox360
* A futureproof gaming PC is called a Playstation 3. Yes it is, stop moaning.
* A computer, that you use for other things, is called a MacBook.
* A PC is a thing you are chained to at work.

Save yourself a couple of grand. Buy some tyres with it.

Dave

[The Pastor]

yeah, ive been talking to a few geeks and i'll wait untill i have all the money in one go, as if i buy in stages i might not be taking advantage of the latest tecs etc.


but to re ask the question, whats top shit atm? maybe post up your dream builds?

[jrandom]

whats top shit atm? maybe post up your dream builds?

Sigh (http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200706.ars). You haven't been around on the innuhneh very long, have you?

Have you considered using Google and/or checking what the relevant reviewers are saying about the state of the art in computer equipment?

No?

Didn't cross your mind?

Funny, that.

[The Pastor]

ive been looking at peoples builds on the net, but you can't ask them questions about them.

[Sanx]

If I post up today's top spec (which I'm not going to, as I simply can't be arsed to research it), it'd be out of date and obsolete by tomorrow.

Before spending hideous amounts of money on a gaming PC, resign yourself to the fact that whatever you buy will be cheaper and out of date within a month. It doesn't matter how long you wait, there will always be something better and faster released the following week.

This is what I've got at home (please bear in mind the only game I play is Freecell):

700W PSU in a Silverstone case
ASUS socket 775 motherboard - can't remember the model number, but it's got dual channel memory, onboard 7.1 sound, dual on-board gigabit NICs, no onboard video, shed-loads of USB ports and 8 SATA ports; four on Northbridge-connected Intel Matrix RAID and four on some other shitty SATA controller.
3.4GHz Pentium D (dual-core 64-bit compatible) overclocked to 3.55GHz. Running a sodding-great CoolerMaster heatpipe heatsink with a 12cm fan, and two more 12cm fans in the case; one intake, one extractor.
4GB GEIL DDR2 (can't remember what speed) RAM
4x Seagate 250GB drives arranged as RAID 1+0 (mirrored stripe-set)
Some random brand PCI-E NVidia 7900 card with 256 MB onboard VRAM.
A 23" widescreen and a 19" 'square' monitor; both Philips LCDs.
Microsoft Wireless Desktop 6000 keyboard and mouseMost of the rig's about a year old. It'll run virtually any game on the market acceptably well and although down on power compared to today's best gaming rigs, with my enhancements and tweaks to the OS (Vista Enterprise x64) it wfeels faster, mainly 'cos I don't load 35 random bits of shit in the system tray every time I boot the thing up.

[Kickaha]

Clive Cussler should be standard reading for anyone from the age of 5

His earlier books were good, Vixen 03 would be my favourite, although Iceberg, Raise the Titanic and Night probe are all up there

His later books are pretty average and some of the story lines pretty ridiculous

The movies they made of Raise the Titanic and Sahara sucked big time

[imdying]

yeah, ive been talking to a few geeks and i'll wait untill i have all the money in one go, as if i buy in stages i might not be taking advantage of the latest tecs etc.Smart move. When you've got your money in your hand, come back to us then. Assuming you don't want a screen, then you'll want about $1800 to get a kick ass system. An xbox360 would be fine if you were interested soley in driving or arcade games, but isn't a patch on a PC for FPS or RTS games, obviously.

As an aside, the new 50 series C2Ds came available on Monday. Last night we had a 6850 up to 4ghz, which gave a superpi of 12.5 seconds, on a stock cooler. Under a phase change rig (probably this weekend) we're hoping for closer to 10 seconds, and under dry ice (hopefully the weekend after) we're looking for under 10 seconds, although we have sourced some LN2 which might be necessary for that sort of overclock. Bottom line, the 'ultimate' isn't obtainable off the shelf, but I could source you a high performance phase change cooler for about $1200 (it's not worth the hassle in reality).

[Sniper]

His earlier books were good, Vixen 03 would be my favourite, although Iceberg, Raise the Titanic and Night probe are all up there

His later books are pretty average and some of the story lines pretty ridiculous

The movies they made of Raise the Titanic and Sahara sucked big time

I agree with you there. I think its normal though, I have never found a book series or seen a movie/tv series that has got better with age.

I havent seen Raise the titanic but I have seen Sahara and wasnt too impressed. I'll take your word for it and not hire it out.

[Dargor]

Dont listen to these chaps telling you your machine will be "obsolete by tomorrow" you can play plenty of new games on a 3 year old machine, say a 3ghz single core with a nvidia 6600gt and a gig of ram.
You CAN have too much ram, its too when you have idle ram not being used, however windows does do some strange missleading things with the ram & swap. 2gig will do you fine, for now, when its time to upgrade it'll be better and cost you half the price.
Buy hard drives when you need them, sure get a raid 0 setup but dont get to excited about mirroring.
Consoles, are shit, if you want real gaming you want a pc.

I suggest you get something modern, decent but not the very expensive top of the line stuff.

[Scouse]

Im in the market for a new pc.

Im wanting a mint gaming rig.

My budget is going to be around $3000 (without monitor etc)

I am wanting a rig simerlar to what this guy has

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2101614 <-- too tricky to paste on to kb.

are there any improvements you guys could spot(cpu / vid card)? I'd put an extra 2gb of ram on etc.

Should I buy it in stages or wait till i have the coin?

Should I get it before or after my next bike hehe

Would it be wise to use 2nd hand parts if they are available (thinking cpu and vid card as they cost quite a bit)your core 2 quad cpu is going to cost you $1800 for a start then theres that Nvidia 8800 ultra vidieo card try $1300 Oooh lookey you have already busted your $3,000 buget.

[Gremlin]

My rig:
- 550W Acbel PSU
- Icute s901 Case (9x 5.25 bays only, nice and flexible)
- Gigabyte M59SLI-S5 Mobo
- AMD 4600x2 AM2 CPU (the 6000 now costs less than my 4600 when I bought... ouch)
- 4GB Transcend 667Mhz Ram (had 2, upgraded to 4, and windows stole half a gig :angry:) - was dual channel, still is, all slots are full now
- ASUS EN7950GT gfx card
- 3x 320GB drives, normal arrangement, primary drive has 2 partitions. I will be buying another 3 drives soon enough, and having a RAID1 with 2, and a RAID5 with 4. Using over 600gb of the current space :(
- Couple of Pioneer DVD writers, and a couple of Philips 17" B6 LCD screens

No o/c, no aftermarket cooling... its tempting, but temps are down very nicely, usually sits between 30-50 degrees, doesn't go higher...

[0arbreaka]

whats sort of games do you want to play? If you want to play something like red alert dont bother, but if you want to play something like wow of bf2 then your gunna want to cough up for it.

[Dargor]

wow min specs
# Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon 800 MHz
# 512 MB or more of RAM
# 32 MB 3D video card with Hardware T&L or better

yea coughing up that whole $2.50

[imdying]

- you can play plenty of new games on a 3 year old machine, say a 3ghz single core with a nvidia 6600gt and a gig of ram.
- 2gig will do you fine, for now, when its time to upgrade it'll be better and cost you half the price.
- Buy hard drives when you need them, sure get a raid 0 setup but dont get to excited about mirroring.
- Consoles, are shit, if you want real gaming you want a pc.
- I suggest you get something modern, decent but not the very expensive top of the line stuff.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes:

- your core 2 quad cpu is going to cost you $1800 for a start then theres
- that Nvidia 8800 ultra vidieo card try $1300 Oooh lookey you have already busted your $3,000 buget.No, no :no: :no: The Q6400 is just around the corner (weeks), quad core for about $300, and the $450 Q6600 is due 22/07/07, 8800GTS is < $600, not much to be gained from going ultra :no:

[The Pastor]

whats sort of games do you want to play? If you want to play something like red alert dont bother, but if you want to play something like wow of bf2 then your gunna want to cough up for it.


wow min specs
# Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon 800 MHz
# 512 MB or more of RAM
# 32 MB 3D video card with Hardware T&L or better

yea coughing up that whole $2.50


wow takes up the resources bad. I'm not sure if I should start playing that again :innocent::shit::love::nono:

[0arbreaka]

The original red alert was the shit, I loved that game.

[imdying]

If you like RTS games, you don't want to miss this! (http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2007/07/14/world_in_conflict_beta_impressions/1) :yes:

Coop multiplater, nukes, what more does an RTS need?

[Lias]

Intel's new CPU lineup comes out next week.. So give it a month for the new cpus and pricedrops to filter down to NZ. With things as it stands though I'd got for a E6850, decent motherboard (Asus Commando?) and a couple of SLI'd 8800's. Hubba Hubba


If you like RTS games, you don't want to miss this! (http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2007/07/14/world_in_conflict_beta_impressions/1) :yes:

Coop multiplater, nukes, what more does an RTS need?

I was just listening to someone rave about that yesterday hehe.

[Dargor]

I'm not sure if I should start playing that again :innocent::shit::love::nono:
You shouldnt. Play good games.

[Reckless]

Concerning Grafix cards what do you guys reckon.

If the budget was a grand or so what would you do!! 8800GTX or 2 x 8800GTS n sli??

I don't reckon in practice you'd notice alot of differnce between the 8800 gts and the 8800gtx. In fact I'd probably go for 2 x 8800gts in sli for 1200 bucks odd rather than 1x gtx for a grand or 2 for 2 grand.
As I'm probably building a new 3d CAD computer soon.
Trouble with modern CAD you need grahics grunt for rendering and cpu grunt for Raytrace (povray). SLI might be better to run 3 monitors off as well??

opinions please! GTX or GTS

[imdying]

I wouldn't buy either of those for CAD without checking Nvidia's range of cards designed for CAD, probably best to seek out some related benchmarks for hte programs you're using. It's not really the graphics output of the cards you'll need, more the floating point power. If this is a work from home machine though, and you're looking to play high end games on a big (1920x1200+) monitor, then paying the extra for two 640mb cards could pay dividends, especially if you're potentially buying a higher res (something like a 30" 2560x1600) inside a year.

It's worth looking at some benchmarks though, and weighing up the difference between the GTS and GTX. Ultimately the difference is pretty small, especially in a years time... the bleeding edge is for suckers.

[Reckless]

Alot of the guys are using gaming cards instead of specialist cad cards as the speed difference is not that great if any. One guy on our user group says his gaming rig is faster in 3d design. Its mainly the more stable gauranteed drivers the bigger businesses go for with the secialist Fire GL and Quatro etc.
But in NZ the cad based cards are so bloody expensve they are out of the question, like $2-3,000-00 each. So I've alway used gaming cards, they still support open gl at the moment.
It is a cost versus time thing. eg do you spend the extra grand to save .5 a second in a 3d or not. And if you do is that .5 of a second gonna make you that extra over the life of the computer. Its always a lottery.

My computers are by default usually good gaming machines. Usually buy one notch down from top of the range rip off stuff and upgrade every 2-3 years. Hence the question on the GTX vs GTS. But line up the FSB, ram and motherboard speeds etc as fast as I can. When I'm designing the 3d is constantly generating on my second monitor.
Nividia are thay only way to go at the moment as the ATI drivers just aren't up to par for us.
Using 22" widescreen at the moment. 30" are widely used by the guys in the states but price is still way above their level due to our captive market. Probably go for 22" widscreen (plan screen) with a 19" either side for libaries and 3d. On my new set up.
CYA

[The Pastor]

what are the benifits for gaming to run two vid cards? how does that work?

[imdying]

It is a cost versus time thing. eg do you spend the extra grand to save .5 a second in a 3d or not. And if you do is that .5 of a second gonna make you that extra over the life of the computer. Its always a lottery.That's about the size of it, much like the difference between the $500 and $1000 cards, it's pretty small.


what are the benifits for gaming to run two vid cards? how does that work?You don't need to use two cards unless you're running quite a high resolution monitor.

[Dargor]

I suggest you get a 8800 gts 320mb or even the 8600 and save the $500, then in a few years upgrade to the not quite best vid card.
video card ram is only for textures, and i dont think you need 640mb + of textures. your not going to be any leeter with a insane texture res.

sli, the dual gfx card thing, works simmilar to having two cpu's except less important, they try to share the load. Some game engines use one of the gfx cards to do some physics stuff, but with dual core cpu's i think thats pointless.

[Slicksta]

Even tho the 8600gt is direct x 10 its cheaper to get a 7900gs (http://pcpacific.net/product_info.php?products_id=2571) that is the best atm for price/performance