[fjf]

Lots of info here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/
Highly recommended.

 

[jesusfr3ak4evr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by XFxGeforced i actually disagree. todays games def. need 2 gigs or youll be bottlenecking your whole system. i was wrong though, if you are not overclocking, then you dont necessarily need good ram. just get some nice value 2gig kit and youll be fine. when i went from 512 to 1gb in bf2, then 1 to 2gigs it was a huge diff *m2 is going to be a big let down imho. theyre going to support ddr2, while intels next gen will be using ddr3 already, which is really stupid. And the specs dont look alll that impressive. if you are going to wait at all, wait till around november this year and get a dx10 video card (shader model 4!!!) *as for performance to cost ratio, i think i did rather well. the ultra-d can be modded to an sli-d if you decide to get two cards and go sli down the road. The 165 has 2x 512k l2 cache, which beats out the x2 3800+ at the same price range, and the opterons are made for server environments so theyre better quality all around and great overclockers (just make sure you get a socket 939). The 7900gt is by far the best bang video card for the buck, considering it beats out the last gen 7800gtx for near half the price. And antec psu's are mediocre? maybe you're thinking about the smart powers or something becuase the true power II's rival the powerstreams imo

Battlefield 2 is the only exception I can think of, and that's because of poor game design. Actually, I believe some patches have alleviated the memory problem. If you ask most gamers, they will tell you that they notice no difference going from 1GB to 2GB total memory. There have been some pretty good deals on 2x1GB Corsair XMS going for around $140. If I were you I'd go to some for sale/trade forums, like the [H]ard OCP For Sale / Trade forums, and pick up 2x512MB of Corsair XMS for $60-70 shipped. Having tight memory latencies do offer somewhat increased performance (not a whole lot though), plus they have some room for overclocking if you ever venture that far. In fact, I never buy anything new anymore. I'd just purchase all the parts used on a for sale / trade forum and build a sweet rig for a couple hundred less

 

[XFxGeforced]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jesusfr3ak4evr Battlefield 2 is the only exception I can think of, and that's because of poor game design. Actually, I believe some patches have alleviated the memory problem. If you ask most gamers, they will tell you that they notice no difference going from 1GB to 2GB total memory. There have been some pretty good deals on 2x1GB Corsair XMS going for around $140. If I were you I'd go to some for sale/trade forums, like the [H]ard OCP For Sale / Trade forums, and pick up 2x512MB of Corsair XMS for $60-70 shipped. Having tight memory latencies do offer somewhat increased performance (not a whole lot though), plus they have some room for overclocking if you ever venture that far. In fact, I never buy anything new anymore. I'd just purchase all the parts used on a for sale / trade forum and build a sweet rig for a couple hundred less

well im currently playing oblivion, and future games will def demand this much

 

[skudmunky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by XFxGeforced 500 isnt much for a new computer to be spending alot of it on a pcp&c psu. i did build my sempron 3300+ rig for under 400 though and its got the current record overclock on cpu-z

Well, that was 500 for everything but the video card, so it ended up being a fairly midrange computer. All I need now is a new heatsink tower to get an additional 500-800 mhz on my CPU.

 

[jesusfr3ak4evr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by XFxGeforced well im currently playing oblivion, and future games will def demand this much

I'm playing Oblivion as well with 2x512MB of Corsair ValueSelect OCed at 213.8MHz CAS 2.5-3-3-7 1T. Oblivion uses less than 512MB of memory. Do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete to windows while playing the game and take a look at how much memory it's using. When I looked it was 190MB. Just because a game is more graphic intensive does not mean it's that memory intensive, even with Oblivion's huge world, you realize they make you load every minute or two of exploring.

 

[skudmunky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jesusfr3ak4evr I'm playing Oblivion as well with 2x512MB of Corsair ValueSelect OCed at 213.8MHz CAS 2.5-3-3-7 1T. Oblivion uses less than 512MB of memory. Do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete to windows while playing the game and take a look at how much memory it's using. When I looked it was 190MB. Just because a game is more graphic intensive does not mean it's that memory intensive, even with Oblivion's huge world, you realize they make you load every minute or two of exploring.

Yeah - even Doom 3 on Ultra settings at 1600x1200 only used 512 megs of ram. Battlefield 2 is just a poorly optimized ram hog, that's all.

 

[CookieFactory]

You're not hardcore until you replace your GPU's firmware so it can handle ALU operations (aka another CPU).

 

[skudmunky]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CookieFactory You're not hardcore until you replace your GPU's firmware so it can handle ALU operations (aka another CPU).

Hehehehe yeah. And then boot linux on it!

 

[Alu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CookieFactory You're not hardcore until you replace your GPU's firmware so it can handle ALU operations (aka another CPU).

Hmm...

 

[chesebert]

Quote:

Originally Posted by XFxGeforced there you go

wait for Conroe! Smoke the hell out of Dual Operon. you buy now you will be sorry few month down the road

 

[seanohue]

Quote:

Originally Posted by XFxGeforced *as for performance to cost ratio, i think i did rather well. the ultra-d can be modded to an sli-d if you decide to get two cards and go sli down the road. The 165 has 2x 512k l2 cache, which beats out the x2 3800+ at the same price range, and the opterons are made for server environments so theyre better quality all around and great overclockers (just make sure you get a socket 939).

the 165 has 2x1mb, its twice the size of the X2 3800 which has 2x512kb. Though the cache sizes have not seemed to make that much of a difference in benchmarks, it's nice to know it there

The 165 potential is much greater than that of the X2; X2 OC's average to around 2300mhz which 165's are around 2600 on air, I have mine at 2808 on water cooling.

The reason the 165 is better than the X2 starts from the factory. The difference between the Athlon, FX, and Opteron series is the way they are binned. The silicon used to make the chips actually decide to what platform they go to. The absolute cream of the crop are sent to the FX series and have their multipliers unlocked, which is why they are so rediculously expensive. The Opterons are the next step down, they are marketed towards servers and must be extremely durable to withstand the harshness of the server environment. Although the Opterons are speed binned to a 9x (165), 10x (170) and 11x (175), they're ability to handle voltage, temperature and high FSB speeds makes them excellent overclockers for the price (and really only beatable by an FX on phase change cooling). The Athlon's use the lowest grade of silicon but are marketed towards consumers. So basically, the consumers get the shaft at the AMD plant. Your multipliers are locked, your temperatures may be higher (bad IHS contact, rough IHS, etc.), or your chip just doesnt want to handle the speed.

So bottom line, price vs performance, the Opteron>Athlon.

 

[XFxGeforced]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jesusfr3ak4evr I'm playing Oblivion as well with 2x512MB of Corsair ValueSelect OCed at 213.8MHz CAS 2.5-3-3-7 1T. Oblivion uses less than 512MB of memory. Do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete to windows while playing the game and take a look at how much memory it's using. When I looked it was 190MB. Just because a game is more graphic intensive does not mean it's that memory intensive, even with Oblivion's huge world, you realize they make you load every minute or two of exploring.

you cannot deny the future need for more ram though.
Quote:

Originally Posted by seanohue the 165 has 2x1mb, its twice the size of the X2 3800 which has 2x512kb. Though the cache sizes have not seemed to make that much of a difference in benchmarks, it's nice to know it there The 165 potential is much greater than that of the X2; X2 OC's average to around 2300mhz which 165's are around 2600 on air, I have mine at 2808 on water cooling. The reason the 165 is better than the X2 starts from the factory. The difference between the Athlon, FX, and Opteron series is the way they are binned. The silicon used to make the chips actually decide to what platform they go to. The absolute cream of the crop are sent to the FX series and have their multipliers unlocked, which is why they are so rediculously expensive. The Opterons are the next step down, they are marketed towards servers and must be extremely durable to withstand the harshness of the server environment. Although the Opterons are speed binned to a 9x (165), 10x (170) and 11x (175), they're ability to handle voltage, temperature and high FSB speeds makes them excellent overclockers for the price (and really only beatable by an FX on phase change cooling). The Athlon's use the lowest grade of silicon but are marketed towards consumers. So basically, the consumers get the shaft at the AMD plant. Your multipliers are locked, your temperatures may be higher (bad IHS contact, rough IHS, etc.), or your chip just doesnt want to handle the speed. So bottom line, price vs performance, the Opteron>Athlon.

thats what i meant (2x1mb) i jsut slip up sometimes. and as far as the fx series, a decent overclocking opty 144 that can get to fx57 speeds equals the performance and is about 800 bucks less.

-and why are we even talking about the fx series when he wants something cost effective. and lets not argue, this is supposed to be fun

*and for the heatsink skudmunky...cant ever go wrong with a syche ninja or xp-90c

 

[afireinside]

My recommendation without going totaly overboard:

DFI ultra-d (or an asus board if you don't want to play with 20ish mem settings)
gskill 2gbhz (2 gigs of mem or bust!)
3800+ x2 or opteron 165/170 (depends on budget)
2*74gb WD raptor HDDs in RAID 0 (or one, or a regular 7200 rpm drive if you can't afford 2 raptors)
x1900xt (or 7900gt on a budget)
X-Fi
NEC DL DVD burner
Enermax liberty 500 watt PSU (PC P&C isn't worth the money)
case of your choice, I run a super lanboy

thermaltake big tyhpoon HSF

My setup is:
ultra-d, 2gbzx @ 255mhz 3-3-3-5, opty 165 @ 2.8ghz, 7800gt vmodded 545/1320, X-Fi xtreme music, 2*74gb raptor RAID0, NEC DL DVD burner, 80gb sata drive, liberty 500 watt, super lanboy, custom water cooling

Kicks some ass! Quake 4 runs 60 fps steady in MP at 1024*768 4aa 8af high details. CoD2 I can run 1280*1024 max settings DX7 at 200 fps steady in MP. Even with SLI I couldn't get 125 fps steady in DX9 mode and I'm at a huge disadvantege under 125 fps when playing competitivly.

 

[XFxGeforced]

is your vmodd a hard or soft mod? i did the bios vmodd for mine and gained a good bit or stability

 

[afireinside]

Hard modded

vdd @ 2.3v vgpu @ 1.6v. It over heats pretty bad on this zalman, need water cooling.