Gamer PC Design Advice

[forgo]

The price of technology is only worth it if it is used. Get what you need to accomplish the task, the best..isnt necessarily a difference that you could notice, or utilize.

The comp I built 4 years ago for $1500 (amd 2800ish, been awhile, no need has come to check it yet) has outlasted many others, and still has no signs of being weak, in fact the comp im typing on has many more issues and was top of the line, with all pieces of hardware much more "advanced" than mine cost $4000 last year (compaq-pentium 4). And still, the performance is like watching reel-to-reel projection on this "must have, best technology" built comp, compared to hi-def on the other....that has hardware that is "outdated" but assembled by piece, with only the software I wanted or needed.

(Im very serious btw...this comp always completely freezes at some point, causes reboot, when running a choppy, laggy, instance of EU everytime. The older comp is seamless, on other more intensive, nameless mmo's, without the lame letter w twice, since well...never tried , I could/can run dual client and teamspeak with little problem, the new one...I cant stand EU alone as it is.)

IMO, buying the parts seperate is essential, since as a manufacturer of built machines, the profit lies in the how disposable they can be, as well, manufacturers install some proprietary software with each built machine.

Manufactures who specialize in specific components have much better quality, since they rely on that product alone, to succeed, and wont survive with a cheap product for long.

With technology today, sure it sounds neat to have as example dual processor, but....the hardware is run by the software. And the hardware has grown expodentialy in the past few years where as the software has not. (I tend to think that the software for EU can run on an atari.)

IMO, you should be safe piecing a great machine on a low budget, since "outdated", yet still more powerful than is needed parts, are very cheap.

The goal of the industry is to create a starry eyed "wow I need the best and newest" idea. The differences noticed running benchmarks on a very detailed, and precise computer analysis, are, at that scale, shown. However, the performance gain or loss isnt going to be distiguishable while they are used without that miniscule scale. And that is due to the fact that in general, a personal use pc is not going to run anything that will exceed the current software technology.

In the exception that your non-technical friend is a developer or running a server or database or other truly intensive setup, you will not need to be in the top 15% ish range of components, and even then...you can still utilize "outdated" equipment to handle those intensive setups very well.

EU is the perfect example of my point....the hardware specs havnt changed much at all in the last 3 years, and likely wont for hardware...since the software is what influences the performance most. We did have a direct x upgrade that was needed recently, but that is software, the hardware stays the same, the software still has plenty of room to catch up. Im sure everyone can agree from a wide difference in computer hardware, that most issues with EU..lag, bugs, graphics ect are from EU software itself. OTher issues,, the options are conflicts in software or hardware (includes the hardware's software) and not the hardware in itself. If it finally comes down to hardware....poor manufacturing, or severely outdated are the reasons.

Interesting fact...a big name, easily recognizable, worldwide company I worked for, builds massive and very expensive data routers and thier boards on mass scale (among other things)...the return rate for bad boards due to cheap mass production was 40%. As I was part of the team that maintained the company headquarters and "showroom" (5000 employees on that network in that building, using 65 routers at 16 boards each), we had to have at least 200 boards on hand for when they went bad, and constantly made orders to keep it at 200.

The only things that you could justify and needs updating on a semi-regular basis (1-4 yrs), for quality gaming pcs, are the vid card, motherboard (mainly cause they are cheap anyhow), and the memory. Latest processors cost too much for no visible gain in the performance you need.

Holy post.. .you get the point. hopefully this can help you, and any others that are looking, to avoid unecessary costs, and see the truth to the hype we see everywhere we go, everyday.

 

[Doer]

The waiting game...

is always a winner. You can always wait for the Next Best Thing, and it will always come. But at some point you need to have the new machine.

I ran a small business building custom PCs while in college, and have always enjoyed following tech news and seeing the imaginative ways that competitors use to get ahead (or make the customers think they are, anyway). I have since stopped following the market so closely, but a few general bits of advice for you:

-1 graphics card. It's never worth doubling them up because you spend twice as much and have TWO cards going obsolete. Advances in GPU mean that saving half the cash for the next model is almost always better performance for less price than buying two now. My bias is toward nVidia because i've had much better experience with nVidia cards. They also have a more "honest" design paradigm seem to be more competent than ATI generally.

-2 cores/CPUs Most new systems this year will have two cores, and game designers will begin to count on having that parallel power. You don't pay much price premium for an extra core these days, and the smoothness when using the computer in any task is worth it IMO. I bought a used dual pentium III 1.26 GHz system four years ago for a very reasonable price and it STILL handles every game i want to play (ok i don't play all the most intensive games, but UT2004 and Atlantis in n00b season are both pretty hard on the CPU). The smoothness on it compared to my single core laptop makes it the preferred system even with the older processor tech

-LOTS of RAM EU is a perfect example of a game that can be run on hardware half a decade old as long as you have plenty of RAM. This is the area most often sacrificed in commercially built systems.

-Fast HD HD speed is the second most ignored statistic in a system. A fast hard disk will speed up load times and reduce swap times. An older Raptor drive may be too expensive for a complete budget box, but is still a likely candidate for anything better.

-Power consumption This may not be the most elegant or exciting aspect of a new system, but i never have and never would recommend a pentium 4 system to anyone because of the ridiculous energy consumption. That not only increases your energy bill (and destroys the global ecology etc etc) but it increases the weight, complexity, and likelihood of failure of your whole system.

If your friend can wait a few weeks/months i recommend looking into getting one of the lowest Core Duo 2 CPUs because they are a revolutionary step in processors that hasn't been seen for a few years, and will be more obsolescence-proof than most of the other options. You would do perhaps equally well to get one of the two-core AMD CPUs that are not so near the bleeding edge. If you need a review of the Core Duo 2 to see what i'm talking about, i recommend the one on techreport.com. Check out ars technica and their budget, hot rod, and god box articles which are periodically updated with thoughtful systems for different budgets.

Also consider a CRT instead of an LCD panel. Games with vibrant colors and fast action still look immensely better on a 10-year-old CRT than any LCD i've seen. They're also cheap and there's a big used market.

I hope that was helpful.

 

[Mac]

Thanks everyone for some really good input.

I'll summerize, and sorry if this is repeating what you already said, I'm just trying to get the specifics so I can start price comparison.

CPU: Although I understand that a single cpu is better performance wise in some bench marks then some dual core, I am tending towards the dual core for many of the reasons mentioned, and leaning toward amd for that. I am not sure of model yet. I'm personally running a AMD 64 3500+ (2.2 ghz) 512k Cache (socket 939) and it is runnning fine. Seems like AMD X2 4xxx seem to be performing well. Anyone want to nail that one down for me? They are supposed to be coming down in price in response to C2D. Also i'm questioning AM2 vs 939, AM2 seems to be the way to go, but maybe mem prices might be higher ? not sure if it makes that big of a diff in reports I read.

In any case, I'm thinking this will be such a performance boost from her old pc, she won't see any difference between the performance of single vs dual core, it will just be a hell of a lot faster then what she has, so why not go dual, and be ready in case game company's start offering titles that will take advantage of it.

However, I followed the link that Uhh gave which showed some people having trouble running PEU with amd dual core, and they had to disable one of the core's to get it to run ( and I didn't understand the step by step process there), but it is a concern. I am wondering if anyone else running amd dual core is having that problem still, and if so, answer the question, if you were putting a pc together today knowing this, would you still do it. Also, if its still a problem and you would still do it, whats the step by step workaround.

As for Intels new C2D, is there anyone running this yet ? If so, can you provide info here ?

Motherboard: I don't know much about them. I have Asus A8N-E nVidia nForce 4 Ultra. Asus seems to have the good name and be available, but models ? i don't have a good idea there yet for this application.

Ram: I'm running 2 gig ram based on input from a while back and its running fine, , I think that's what I'll reccomend.

HD: Love the sound of getting x2 sata 2 10k , is anyone running them, do you see that much noticable performance over the 7.2k ? Can anyone reccomend a brand/model number for those and why ?

Cooling: is anyone running liquid cooled system , is it worth it, does it require maintanance or is it closed system ?

OS: Somthing nobody reccomended was OS ( might have missed it ), but if I get a amd 64, does the os need to be 64 ? or will any of them do ? If any, got a preference ? I'm running XP Pro SP2.

GPU: I'm running an Nvidia e-GeForce 7800 GT. It seems to be fine, I think anything in that range or better will be fine.

PSU: I have 500w , will she need any more then that ?

I think thats all the questions I can think of atm, am I forgetting anything ?

Thanks for all your help everyone! Now I'm thinking of building a new box

 

[Doer]

Thanks everyone for some really good input.

I'll summerize, and sorry if this is repeating what you already said, I'm just trying to get the specifics so I can start price comparison.

CPU: Seems like AMD X2 4xxx seem to be performing well. Anyone want to nail that one down for me? They are supposed to be coming down in price in response to C2D.

Yes, larget price cuts were officially announced.

Also i'm questioning AM2 vs 939, AM2 seems to be the way to go, but maybe mem prices might be higher ? not sure if it makes that big of a diff in reports I read.

Here is one of many sites that will give you a feel for the prices. I'm not up to speed on the different mem techs atm.

In any case, I'm thinking this will be such a performance boost from her old pc, she won't see any difference between the performance of single vs dual core, it will just be a hell of a lot faster then what she has, so why not go dual, and be ready in case game company's start offering titles that will take advantage of it.

Yup, i think that's really the overall theme. However, she will notice the smoothness of a multiple core. It doesn't lock up when one process runs away, it doesn't pause during many of the windows functions that typically do on a single core system. In fact, the multiple core system will make inadequate memory much more obvious because the only time you get sluggish performance is when a program has to page to disk or otherwise runs out of memory (this happens a lot with PE ).

As for Intels new C2D, is there anyone running this yet ? If so, can you provide info here ?

I think reviews are your best bet here, as i don't think it's hit retail channels yet. If she needs the computer now, this isn't the processor you're waiting for. All i can say is that it blows away AMD's latest and greatest by every metric, which is quite an accomplishment.

Motherboard: I don't know much about them. I have Asus A8N-E nVidia nForce 4 Ultra.

ASUS is generally a very safe bet. Can't give specific suggestions though.

Ram: I'm running 2 gig ram based on input from a while back and its running fine, , I think that's what I'll reccomend.

Yes that should be adequate for anything around right now. I would just add that if possible the RAM should be added such that there are free memory slots (this probably means putting in a pair of 1 GB modules, depending on the memory tech and motherboard). Leaving a clear and easy upgrade path for RAM that doesn't require ditching some modules is a good idea.

HD: Love the sound of getting x2 sata 2 10k , is anyone running them, do you see that much noticable performance over the 7.2k ? Can anyone reccomend a brand/model number for those and why ?

Storagereview has a review of the latest gen Raptors and the previous generations. The latest review actually compares it to the earlier iterations. You won't find any other 10k RPM IDE hard drives, and i really can't recommend SCSI for this application. Basically the latest Raptor gives the fastest SCSI drives (15k ones, yes) a run for their money for single-user usage scenarios. Like most high-speed drives, the capacity is on the low side; So, depending on budget i'd recommend one 10k Raptor of either the older models (still very,very fast) or the newest for OS and programs, and a second large 7200 RPM drive for media and data. Don't bother with the "gamer" edition of the newest model, as you just pay a premium for a clear plastic case. Be prepared for sticker shock on the latest generation. Also make sure you put the drive in a relatively well-ventilated case. It's not as hot as SCSI, but does like a bit of airflow.

Cooling: is anyone running liquid cooled system , is it worth it, does it require maintanance or is it closed system ?

You can buy a few commercial fully-built water cooling systems, but unless your friend intends to pimp her system and tweak the hell out of it, there's not really any point. Just get a case with a sensible design and preferrably 92 or 120cm ventilation fans, and good CPU heatsinks. With the latest gen of processors actually running cooler than predecessors, it shouldn't be too hard to get a quiet system using mainstream cooling tech.

OS: Somthing nobody reccomended was OS ( might have missed it ), but if I get a amd 64, does the os need to be 64 ? or will any of them do ? If any, got a preference ? I'm running XP Pro SP2.

I can't comment on 64-bit windows, but i'd say for compatibility you might want to just stick with 32 bits, because i know some drivers aren't as well supported on 64 bits yet.

GPU: I'm running an Nvidia e-GeForce 7800 GT. It seems to be fine, I think anything in that range or better will be fine.

Yes that sounds like a good choice, again depending on budget.

PSU: I have 500w , will she need any more then that ?

Less, please. A quality 400W will handle a 3-spindle, 1-GPU box easily, with less "overkill" (a 500W PSU will actually waste more energy and run hotter when idling with low power draw than a 400W one). If you have any questions or want to see testing along these lines, please check out the SilentPC site. Don't buy into the "bigger is better" hype on power supplies.

Don't forget that a nice mouse and keyboard make a huge difference on user experience. Throw in a decent DVD burner while you're at it. Oh yeah, the friend may or may not like having a tuner card in it to use it as DVR. It can be nice.

I gotta stop talking about this now or i'm gonna want to build another (unnecessary) box, myself.

Have fun!