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Bit out of touch [PC specs]

For random rambling. Please keep your posts tasteful and respectful.

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User avatar Frieza
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 00:53

All depends on what you ahve in it in the end. My own PC was custom built yet still set me back about €2800,- in the end (mind you that does include fancy keyboard and mouse set, some excellent speakers, a big monitor and other fancy options like Fan-controllers, some of the best custom air cooling for my CPU and Graphics Card, 4GB of RAM and an expensive audio card. All sorts of things basically that normally don't find their way into a prebuilt config, unless you're buying Alienware or Dell XPS or something)

User avatar Mister_Prophet
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 01:15

Get one that has a window on it with a cool neon blue light that's inside cus that would look mad tight and all the girlies you bring over can see you be totally pimp and totally want to sex with your face!

User avatar zYnthetic
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 02:56

Is there a particular reason you need Vista? Sure there are people that will hold fast to their convictions and fight tooth-nail for it but in the history of WinOS, Vista is doing worse than WinME in terms of voluntary acceptance.
If you can get it for free then I understand but I believe there are much better things at half the retail cost (or nothing at all) worth the money. Stick with XP if you can.
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User avatar Semfry
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 04:00

If you are going to make it yourself then this has been my bible for picking parts for my own: http://shsc.info/PCPartsPickingGuide . Actually, I just got done making my second self-built one today (a lower-spec "backup" one). Derdak's system is surprisingly similar to it, except it has a Radeon 1900XT and a slower RAM and CPU.

As another reference, just recently the developers of Crysis (BY FAR the most graphically advanced PC game out there) put together a $900 (so ~£450) PC that could run it decently on high, the specs were:

CPU Intel Core2Duo E6750
GPU GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Motherboard NVIDIA nForce 650i Socket 775
PSU 600W ATX12V
RAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
HDD SATA 250GB 7200RPM
DVD 20x DVD±R Burner
Case ATX Midi Tower Computer Case
OS Microsoft Windows XP Home with SP2

What you need depends on what you want to play though, since if you only really want it for UT3 then you don't need to go all-out on it. If you're buying parts online then http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ have been the most reliable uk-delivering site for me (as well as having everything I needed).

Intel+Nvidia are the current winners in the hardware market.

Both those pre-built systems look okay, although I'm not sure on the graphics card of the cheaper one (it's SLI, but it sounds like some weak budget card that needs SLI to be the slightest bit worthwhile in the first place and would still be crippled in some ways).

wael
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 08:49

Mister_Prophet wrote:Get one that has a window on it with a cool neon blue light that's inside cus that would look mad tight and all the girlies you bring over can see you be totally pimp and totally want to sex with your face!

Why didn't anyone tell me about that before.
Shit, now i have to buy a new PC.

User avatar Derdak2rot
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 09:36

XP is still performing great imo , and there is no big perfomance hit with the newcomer Directx10 , all of this is again marketing issues :(
i can assure you you get much better framerate using directx9 and XP than vista/directx10 , and XP is still more pleasing to use due to its relative compability and simple interface :tup:
Vista will need also more than 2Gb of RAM to work efficiently ;)

and forget graphic cards lower than the 8800 series , they are not for gaming at all , unless you play on a 15inch screen and dont use filters :P

be careful with motherboard chipset too ,those that supports processor with FSB rating of 1333mhz is the way to go , thats what the majority of new processor will use , like the newcomings intel processor ( E8400 ect .. )
a quad core is compatible with the gigabyte i quoted earlier :)

as for PCI-express stuff , its retro-compatible between 1.1 and 2.0 , so no problem .. the 2.0 is only available in the latest X38 intel chipset and nforce 780i ... but again , there no major hit in perfomance with it ..
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XepptizZ
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 17:05

All this talk is way out of my league :P, but I second the 2 1gb-ddr2 for ram to speed it up.

And most importantly, stay away from packard bell :O, I have really bad experiences with it. Before my upgrade I was on a Packard Bell which was about seven years old already :P, but anyways, then it was bundled with all kinds of useless programs, all advertisement. I couldn't get internet unless I signed up for the providers they offered (they did something hacky to explorer) and those programs were enough to fill my start menu on first start-up, so many freaking rediculous stuff. Recently I had the pleasure of working on someone else's Packard Bell laptop. It wouldn't find network places unless you activly let it search for the network place which name you had to fully enter correctly in the query. Aside from that numerous other things were wrong with it.

Atleast, that's my experience with Packard bell's.
Right now I'm confortably working on a pc which a friend built for me for a total of around 1000 euro's. Meh specs are, dare I say it....yes

Ati Radeon Sapphire x1950 with 512 mb cache.
It runs UT3 perfectly and thus far only Crysis can't be played at full specs, than again, Crysis is meant for NASA hand-me-downs.
2 1GB-DDR2 sticks, coz for the graphical stuff 1GB don't cut it.
And a 2.4 GHz Dualcore from intell

O yeah, and as you were saying how you've been out of touch with this stuff, be afraid, very afraid. Videocards have become the sice of bricks, nicely smoothened and shiney bricks, with fans, or shredders is more like it.
Mine has devoured two mice and their litter by now.

User avatar Turboman
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 18:18

about the video card coolant, thats true, my cousin had just bought a 8800 with dual fan that makes tremendous noise, even funnier i think that card had two molex and requires a 700w psu? :lol:

but yeah i'm really out of touch aswell, last year my old pc unexpectedly died which lead to disaster, i needed a new one in less then three days (i was doing heavy autocad stuff for uni and work FYI). so i decided to build my own, and i put together a system (without keyboard/mice or monitor mind you :p ), for 900 euros. core2 2.2ghz, 2gb ram, 320gb sata2, dual dvd burners, and a x1600 and 7600gt vid card (which i alternate thru)

and my pc can't run crysis at its highest either :P

infact i might aswell add that, aslong as you're not aiming at playing crysis you don't need that nitrogen cooled, fusion psu, alien tech based, uberexpensive pc.

User avatar Hellscrag
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 19:41

Thank you for the continued advice, guys. You are all being very helpful.

I had assumed that Vista would become "necessary" for new games / applications in the near future. However, if that's not the case, then I might well be tempted by a new WinXP license instead.

I want 64-bit capability, though.
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User avatar Hellscrag
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 19:49

This OS issue is giving me a headache. I'm reading reviews and XP does seem to be the better option. However, I can only find the 64-bit version available as an OEM release... which I understand to mean 1 activation only (no scope for reinstalls at a later date).
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User avatar Derdak2rot
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 20:01

Hellscrag wrote:This OS issue is giving me a headache. I'm reading reviews and XP does seem to be the better option. However, I can only find the 64-bit version available as an OEM release... which I understand to mean 1 activation only (no scope for reinstalls at a later date).


you can reinstall it without problems , there no limitations on that , its just that you cant have 2 computers with the same windows key , or one will be considered as invalid :P .. the windows activation can be made once , and everytime you reinstall , you dont have to do it anymore ..
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User avatar Hellscrag
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 20:13

Derdak2rot wrote:
Hellscrag wrote:This OS issue is giving me a headache. I'm reading reviews and XP does seem to be the better option. However, I can only find the 64-bit version available as an OEM release... which I understand to mean 1 activation only (no scope for reinstalls at a later date).


you can reinstall it without problems , there no limitations on that , its just that you cant have 2 computers with the same windows key , or one will be considered as invalid :P .. the windows activation can be made once , and everytime you reinstall , you dont have to do it anymore ..


My experience has been that each reinstall of Windows or very significant hardware change requires Windows to be re-activated. OEM versions of the OS only allow you one activation (that's right, isn't it?)

None the less, I'm sensing that WinXP 64-bit has driver problems. My sound card is supported, but I think my printer may not be, for example.

Apart from a limit of 3GB RAM, would buying the 32-bit version of Windows XP cause me a significant problem at this stage with the gear mentioned above (quad-core CPU, GeForce 8800GT etc.)?


EDIT:

Perhaps I could prevail upon you all for one, final question.

Do you use widescreen monitors or 4:3 monitors? Those of you who use widescreen monitors, how do games like UT or UT3 react to them? Does having a widescreen monitor distort the image, or do the games operate at a 16:9 ratio?

I ask because I've seen an older game, GLQuake, running on a 16:9 laptop and the image is stretched horizontally.
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User avatar Frieza
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 20:28

I use a widescreen monitor. I really like the 16:10 format as opposed to the 4:3 format (apparently humans react more favoarbly to a screen that is wider than it is high, as opposed to the old 4:3 format which is almost as big vertically as it was horizontally). Anyway, most if not all new games support the 16:10 1680x1050 resolution, and a lot of the older games can be adepted to fit that resolution as well, but certainly not all games will work with that resolution so that will leave you with some black borders. If you don't like that 4:3 is still the way to go, but I'd strongly recommoned looking into 16:9 or 16:10 as it is a lot more pleasing to the eyes, imo.

User avatar Hellscrag
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 20:32

Thanks Frieza. If the graphics card / monitor can be set up to provide black borders rather than stretch the images generated by older games, then I'll probably go for a widescreen monitor.
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User avatar Frieza
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Post Posted: 18 Jan 2008, 20:34

Well for one I know all newer NVidia cards will support black borders to fill up the screen as opposed to stretching it out. Don't know how Ati solves it as I have no experience with em.

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