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Official 2008 "I Need A New PC" Thread
- Thread starter Kosma
- Start date
brain_stew
Member
GHG said:
Wow thats a hell of a deal, you could Ebay the monitor and end up with a very decent rig for £150. Sure it won't max out AA and AF in the latest games but it'll run anything just fine at med - high settings.
Should have no problem with 64 bit vista, and you might as well add a couple of sticks of RAM to up it to 4GB considering how cheap its going nowadays.
Where did you get it from?
GHG
Gold Member
brain_stew said:
Exactly my thinking. I'll use that money to buy a better GPU as well. Interestingly enough, I got it from ebay. You can find some pretty amazing deals on there if you look hard enough and are careful about who you buy from. Fingers crossed it doesn't break down on me though :/ .
Doesn't vista 64 have some compatability issues etc though? Or has all that been sorted now?
brain_stew
Member
GHG said:
What little compatability problems there were have mostly been sorted out from what I have read, you should be fine. The 8600GTS is fetching £70 or so on Ebay, all told you shouldn't be much more than £40-£50out of pocket after an upgrade to an 8800gt. Still I wouldn't chuck it straight away especially if you're playing a t lower resolutions its still a decent card. Mind linking me to the seller so I can keep an eye on his builds?
GHG
Gold Member
brain_stew said:
I could end up less out of pocket than that even. If what I've got serves me well for a few weeks I'll throw my shitty Packard Bell on ebay. Thats if anyone wants it :lol . But seriously, I could get ~£100 for it.
Yeh, I don't have Crysis yet and thats the only game that will require a higher spec card at the moment. This card should do me fine for a while methinks.
Spiderjericho
Member
WhatRuOn said:
Yeah. I tried to build the computer last night. I think the power supply (A PC and Cooling 750 Watt) may have been a bit too big for the 690 (or just any mid tower case). Also, the NIC was DOA on the motherboard. I'm trying to get it RMA'd with Gigabyte right now, but they're taking their sweet time.
Can I please get some bang-for-the-buck build suggestions for a PC that'll run the latest games well, specifically Age of Conan?
Needs:
1) MB/CPU combo - ATX, SATA + IDE (or just SATA), PCI-E 2.0, stable, Abit Softmenu-like feature would be nice
2) GPU
3) Power supply
4) RAM - 2GB enough?
I have the rest.
Needs:
1) MB/CPU combo - ATX, SATA + IDE (or just SATA), PCI-E 2.0, stable, Abit Softmenu-like feature would be nice
2) GPU
3) Power supply
4) RAM - 2GB enough?
I have the rest.
Grifter said:
1) Q6600 or E8400 with a P35 motherboard.
2) 9600GT or 8800GT, GTS if you want to step up a little more
3) Not sure, any brand with respectable rep works here
4) 2GB is "enough", but with Ram dirt cheap nowadays, might as well get 4Gb
GHG said:
Just about every modern game at decent detail and resolution is going to require much, much more than a 8600GT/S.
brain_stew
Member
So GAF I'm thinking of putting a budget rig together, what do you think of this?:
Chose the E2180 as it apparently is a great overclocker and I'd be happy with ~ 2.8ghz which seems more than acheivable. Can anyone make any improvements on that for the money? Its really impressive what you can get for the money these days. This setup should stomp all over a PS3 yet it costs less than £40 more.
Chose the E2180 as it apparently is a great overclocker and I'd be happy with ~ 2.8ghz which seems more than acheivable. Can anyone make any improvements on that for the money? Its really impressive what you can get for the money these days. This setup should stomp all over a PS3 yet it costs less than £40 more.
Cyan said:Dude, 110 pounds is like $220.
Anyway, glad I stumbled on this thread. One of the links in the OP has a Dell coupon deal for $350 off. Yeah, I know, pre-builts are teh lame, etc.But I've been looking to get a Dell or similar, so this is great for me!
Many European prices are straight conversions. Didn't we already go through this in the Crysis build thread and this thread already?
GHG
Gold Member
Its 5am here. I can't believe I've spent the whole of 7-8 hours faffing about iwth Vista attempting to get things to work. Fuck Vista. I'm going back to XP, doing the install of that now.
The issue with drivers and Vista is a farce. Why Microsoft didn't just make the XP drivers compatible only god knows.
The issue with drivers and Vista is a farce. Why Microsoft didn't just make the XP drivers compatible only god knows.
GHG
Gold Member
SRG01 said:
My wireless newtroking card wasn't working with Vista 64. Nothing on the net in terms ofd drivers for it, looked everywhere. It was fine with Vista 32 though.
Exactly the same with my printer.
Then Vista 32 decided that it wanted to fuck around with my audio drivers so sound wouldn't come out of my sub and right speaker.
Had enough to be honest, going back to use soemthing I'm comfortable with. That was my 1st experience with Vista and its left a sour taste. Wasn't digging the interface either TBH. Its so OTTand its such a hassle to do anything...
Are you sure you want to install this?
....
Are you really really sure???
....
Are you certain....?
YES DAMN IT MOTHERFUCKER INSTALL MY GAME.
Everything you do there's a confirmation window popping up as if to say I don't know what I'm doing. Just move the fuck out of my way and let me get on with my life. Even getting to the control panel is a hassle. Its just not how to make an OS.
The only bit I liked about it was the little gadgets sidebar, its pretty nifty. But again, its something I can easliy live without.
Hey guys, I think I'm ready to stop buying Dells and build my next computer. I don't really game on my computer, but I run a lot of computationally intensive experiments/simulations so I was leaning towards a quad core and a CUDA enabled Nvidia GPU, but I'm open to suggestions. I have or can get most of the simple stuff like RAM and HD, but I'm having trouble with the PSU, the case, and the motherboard as I have no experience in picking out these sorts of things. I'm trying to keep the cost under $750, but I'm willing to go up to $1000 if I have to. So does anyone have any advice on building a good number crunching computer? Thanks.
Open Source
Banned
Any important cpu/gpu stuff coming out between now and June 17 (when I get back to the states and will be buying new hardware)?
Also, I'd like to buy a new case - my old one is loud and rickety. I'm looking for something roomy and that allows for good airflow, and quietness is a bonus. I don't care about being able to see through the case, having cool lighting effects, or front panel temperature displays and such. Any recommendations around $75-$150?
Also, I'd like to buy a new case - my old one is loud and rickety. I'm looking for something roomy and that allows for good airflow, and quietness is a bonus. I don't care about being able to see through the case, having cool lighting effects, or front panel temperature displays and such. Any recommendations around $75-$150?
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
If you want to make your interface even prettier, look up Dreamscenes. You'll never use a regular background ever again.aeolist said:
Just ordered these components:
- processor: Intel E8400 boxed
- cpu fan: Noctua NH-U12P
- case: Antec P182
- psu: be quiet! Dark Power Pro P7 550W
- case fans (x3): Scythe S-FLEX 800
- mainboard: MSI P35 Neo2-FIR
- ram: 8GB G.Skill DIMM Kit PC1000 (4 x 2GB)
- hdd: Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB
- soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
- graphics card: Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX AMP! Edition
- DVD drive: LG Electronics GH20NS SATA
Still looking for a suitable 24'' tft ...
- processor: Intel E8400 boxed
- cpu fan: Noctua NH-U12P
- case: Antec P182
- psu: be quiet! Dark Power Pro P7 550W
- case fans (x3): Scythe S-FLEX 800
- mainboard: MSI P35 Neo2-FIR
- ram: 8GB G.Skill DIMM Kit PC1000 (4 x 2GB)
- hdd: Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB
- soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
- graphics card: Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX AMP! Edition
- DVD drive: LG Electronics GH20NS SATA
Still looking for a suitable 24'' tft ...
IronicallyTwisted
Banned
aeolist said:
Vista feels very corporate. Everything is cold and the OS itself is far too conservative. Windows obviously designed the OS to capture the Business market, but made no attempt to improve the interface on a personal level. It amazes me that Windows still has:
- A registry system that tangles itself and slows everything down after a few months
- A GUI so inferior to OSX its almost funny
- Inbuilt half assed security measures that only get in your way without offering any real protection
- An inconvenient, confusing startup configuration tool to stop all sorts of shit from loading on startup, and absolutely no protection against spyware or other programs working their way into the boot
- The inevitable need to reinstall after 4-6 months because of horrible performance
Needless to say I use Ubuntu/Sabayon Linux for all my general computing. Much safer, and much much prettier with Compiz-Fusion: to which Vista still has absolutely no answer. I dual boot with Vista which has a rock solid firewall and all my games installed. I do absolutely nothing on the Vista install other than play games, as thats the only way I can keep the OS from becoming cluttered and unusable.
IronicallyTwisted
Banned
itxaka said:
Absolutely, and without a program like CCleaner expect heaps of dead, useless shit in there.
IronicallyTwisted said:
Yup, that is vista alrite. I currently install our XP image on machines here in work whenever I can get my hands on them.
Why would anyone use Vista for anything else. Unbutu is a smooth experience and unless you have a compatibility reason (rare enough) games is really all you need it for. If it wasnt for some networked games I'd disbale my network card in windows.
IronicallyTwisted
Banned
Minsc said:
The XP line of operating systems came out in 2001. They had all the time in the world the develop a new, fresh operating system and we wound up with XP 1.5 with all sorts of performance and compatibility problems. You see how far Apples OS and Linux have come since 2001 and you can only laugh.
GHG
Gold Member
godhandiscen said:
And hog up more RAM than vista already does?
With Vista I was using 550mb of RAM without even having installed any programs. I'm now sitting here with XP on my new computer with antivirus installed, no driver fuckups, everything working smoothly using just 220mb of RAM. Go figure. And people wonder why gaming performence in XP still outpaces vista by a margin of 20fps in most cases? Microsoft you've got a long way to go.
GHG said:
You can strip everything out of Vista and get it as close to the raw kernel as humanely possible, and XP will still outperform it. It's not so much that Vista is bloated (it is), it's more that the drivers for it still aren't up to speed and that developers are still coding for the XP architecture.
It'll get better in about five years or so.
GHG
Gold Member
WhatRuOn said:
No
. Well at least not now anyway. Once I see benchmarks showing me Vista has pulled ahead of XP in performence then I'll set up a dual boot and see how it goes. Until then I'm not touching that OS with a bargepole.
You can strip everything out of Vista and get it as close to the raw kernel as humanely possible, and XP will still outperform it. It's not so much that Vista is bloated (it is), it's more that the drivers for it still aren't up to speed and that developers are still coding for the XP architecture.
It'll get better in about five years or so.
Yep. Thats so typically windows though. The new OS will be out by the time Vista becomes decent.
VictimOfGrief
Banned
Make no mistake---- I've said since Day 1 of Vista that it is ME 2nd Edition.Minsc said:
Vista is a "half full" OS that ultimately will be "Fixed" with Windows 7.
Microsoft got scared about running XP for another 4 years without a "filler" OS in the meantime.
Also the migration that some users are going to Mac simply based on it's interface and "ease of use"; Vista tried to do to many things too soon, too fast.
Right now I have Vista x64 on my work PC and Vista x64 on my home PC. For a Corp. environment, it's blissful as far as daily use and ability to use 4GB-8GB of RAM.
The registry is still rubbish though as far as "old" crap hanging around. Luckily I have a VMware x64 box I test all software on before installing it on my production machine.
People who are wanting to build a new PC and are scared of Vista---- I wouldn't be. Driver support in 2008 is lightyears beyond what it was when it launched in winter '06 and games run smooth as silk on my rig at home. Sure the hardware requirements are more than XP, but it happens as technology evolves.
Not really...urk said:You can strip everything out of Vista and get it as close to the raw kernel as humanely possible, and XP will still outperform it. It's not so much that Vista is bloated (it is), it's more that the drivers for it still aren't up to speed and that developers are still coding for the XP architecture.
It'll get better in about five years or so.
XP is bad at managing the single most important resource for Windows PCs, RAM. XP's RAM management is abysmal. Vista was a huge step forward in that regard.
I need a massive facepalm.gif here, because there are clearly a lot of misrepresentations on how Vista works.
One of the fundamental differences is that, because of the monopoly and anti-trust laws around the world, Vista had to decouple many core .dlls from each program, meaning that they can't link to a central core. However, Vista gets around this by creating a shared dll list; it maintains a list -- a huge list -- which keeps tabs on which dll is the most recent. If a program requests it, Vista will check the list for the right one.
Another one of the main differences between Vista and XP is the way it handles ethernet and the IP stack. It natively supports IPv6, amongst other things.
Vista is also better than XP at 3d applications and memory. Hell, the only real thing that XP beats Vista on in performance is 2d-drawing. Vista also has better performance with 64-bit applications. There was a recent report done on this and the results were very shocking.
Drivers under Vista are also more stringent under 64-bit mode, unlike XP which had the worst driver model in recent history. That's, of course, not counting the fact that XP's driver model failed if you were in 32-bit mode and above the 3.5GB limit.
Does Vista use more memory? Undeniably so. But that's because it preloads more and has more functionality over XP. And remember: XP and 2K had vast memory requirement differences too. The only thing that most people can legitimately knock Vista on is over their GUI design, which appears to be a step back since their 2K days. If enough people complain, then I expect some massive changes in SP2, which is around the same time when XP got an overhaul as well.
edit: Oh I have to mention too: Vista manages the registry and uninstallations far better than any OS that I've seen so far, including Linux.
One of the fundamental differences is that, because of the monopoly and anti-trust laws around the world, Vista had to decouple many core .dlls from each program, meaning that they can't link to a central core. However, Vista gets around this by creating a shared dll list; it maintains a list -- a huge list -- which keeps tabs on which dll is the most recent. If a program requests it, Vista will check the list for the right one.
Another one of the main differences between Vista and XP is the way it handles ethernet and the IP stack. It natively supports IPv6, amongst other things.
Vista is also better than XP at 3d applications and memory. Hell, the only real thing that XP beats Vista on in performance is 2d-drawing. Vista also has better performance with 64-bit applications. There was a recent report done on this and the results were very shocking.
Drivers under Vista are also more stringent under 64-bit mode, unlike XP which had the worst driver model in recent history. That's, of course, not counting the fact that XP's driver model failed if you were in 32-bit mode and above the 3.5GB limit.
Does Vista use more memory? Undeniably so. But that's because it preloads more and has more functionality over XP. And remember: XP and 2K had vast memory requirement differences too. The only thing that most people can legitimately knock Vista on is over their GUI design, which appears to be a step back since their 2K days. If enough people complain, then I expect some massive changes in SP2, which is around the same time when XP got an overhaul as well.
edit: Oh I have to mention too: Vista manages the registry and uninstallations far better than any OS that I've seen so far, including Linux.
Great choice. I would've gotten one of those if I had a larger budget. Please tell some impressions once you start to use it.dejan said:
I'm sorry, but from this (and the rest of your post) I have to conclude that you're either deliberately spreading FUD or simply incompetent. Vista is actually easier to keep clean than XP, and my XP install worked perfectly (and fast) for 3 years without a reinstall, including daily game, entertainment, internet, work and development use. Also, I personally love the GUI improvements in vista. Not only is it a great technical achievement (I would go into details here but since it's close to my specialty I'd get carried away), but the new program launching and explorer paradigm are simply indispensible to me now.IronicallyTwisted said:
I'm not saying Vista is perfect, far from it! The default explorer settings are even more horrible than XP's and UAC (while not a bad idea in theory) is far too annoying in its current incarnation, especially combined with legacy applications. But I still prefer it to XP and any flavour of Linux (yes, I'm a competent Linux user and have been for a few years).
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
I have 8GB. My computer eats 1.5GB on idle, nothing loaded but the OS. Seriously, even with 4GB, Dreamscenes is worth it.GHG said:
Wow. the hate for Vista is so strong here. I don't know what are all these problems that people have. I use Vista Ultimate 64 and its the most beautiful thing ever. Vista just by itself is amazing, 64 bit processing and better memory management, is just icing on the cake. The memory management of Vista 64 is so darn good, that as soon as I installed an extra 4GB I was able to gain 10fps in Crysis (not even a second videocard could give me that). Now I am even able to run Crysis with programs running on the background. The Media Center is just icing on the cake.