help with new gaming system

Justin Meisse

lolzers, I posted this in P&P yesterday by mistake!

I want to build a new system and here's the guide I'll be following. I've always used the Ars guides as a starting point but my past systems always turned out just OK not awesome so I'm looking to the hardware gurus for some help. I'm comfortable spending between $1,500 and $2,000 and I'm open to some light overclocking (never done it before).

One more thing, I'm tossing around some case mode ideas as well, maybe something Warhammer inspired.

Mongrelman

This is a great forum for info on components and overclocking, pretty much where I learned what I know and great for helping decide what to get http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/index.php

Quad cores dropped in price recently, so would be good to check out info on them.

Tiax

i'll buy a new system this week too. i checked that link justin , looks nice but cant agree with some parts.
-8800 gts is kinda overkill. actually it's a really bad time to buy a new vga , dx9 cards will be useless in a few months , dx10 cards are too expensive (8800 series) or has bad performance compared to last years dx9 cards (2600xt&8600gt series). its said that dx10.1 will require different hardware (new cards , new series etc) , there wont be much difference between dx10 & 10.1 but still when u pay 300+ buck , you'll want to get best posibble eh? i choose 8600gt , its around 140 dollar here. hopefully it'll be fine till crysis&ut3 and around cristmas , i may get a new one. till then there'll be lots of new series & 8800 series will be lot cheaper etc.
-20' Acer monitor? hmm its new to me. but how can it be soo cheap? i can never be so sure about such a thing , 20' for 199 i mean. i'll go for samsung 932B. i dont know much about monitors tho , 20' acer sounds tempting..

rest looks good , althought there is better mainboards (asus p5k etc) , mainboard wont make big difference with games etc

notman

I would take Gigabyte over Asus these days... Gigabyte is a great brand.
The monitor should be fine also. Acer has been doing a good job getting into the computer market lately. But for a monitor and case, I typically recommend visiting a local store for that, since the shipping can be expensive on things like that.

I would agree on Tiax's assessment on video cards though... right now, Dx is sort of in limbo.

Jesse Moody

yeah check out the prices of the quad cores on newegg. You can get one for around 300 now i think.

Just shop around. You can get some crazy deals here and there. I can't recommend the xfi sound card enough. My wife got me the fatality one a few years back and man the difference is amazing. The crystalizer is a huge bonus.

A case mod would be dope. I'm working on one for my next system and trying to finalize the theme. UT3 or Gears of War. It's a liquid cooled case so I can have some pretty crazy stuff going on and with being able to sculpt parts and cast plastic pieces it could turn out to be quite a project.

A warhammer case would rock too. That could be all kinds of gnar.

IronHawk

Just don't get your quad core from newegg. Find somewhere that guarantees GO stepping. I got everything for my new rig at newegg except the CPU.

Went with a gigabyte board too. Reviews said it was a great board for OC'ing. For gfx card I just got the 8600 for now and will pick up something better later on. It was $114.00

I got my cpu from the place below.

clubIT

Toomas

I tought about upgradeing too but its pointless atm cause of the videocard market, the fastest card is almost one year old allready and it still costs lots of moneys.
There are some speculation about nVidia releasing new lineup in November this year so if you can you should wait for few months.

Mongrelman

If you decide to overclock, make sure you do the research first to pick the best components. The "main thing" a few months ago for people moving to dual cores was to get the cheapest one, a decent mobo for it (a few main recommended ones from that forum) and easily run it faster than the fastest dual core (at stock speed), saving over $1000 on the processor alone (and being faster too). Also be sure to look into ram too, if the speed isn't high enough, it can hold back your overclock, as can the mobo if you don't pick a good one. Even if you pick the best parts eventually it comes down the quality of the actual bit you got, which is why you see people listing the serial codes on their processors, as batches from some weeks perform better than others. But that is more if you are after the top overclock you can get, not really something to pick over.

Also look to future-proofing if you can. Like if you decided to go for a dual core now, try to pick a mobo that can also take a quad core so you can upgrade to one of them in the future if you want, instead of having to buy a new mobo too.

Justin Meisse

argh, you guys have led me down the path of confusion I was trying to avoid! I'm going to be up all night for months fretting over what to buy, oh wellz, I guess it's unavoidable.

I'm currently gaming on a Mobility Radeon x600 so even a year old card would be an improvement

Mongrelman

Might be good to go with a cheap dx10 card (8600 GT or something like that) now, and upgrade to a better dx10 card in several months when the next batch come out (or dx10.1). They're about half the price of the 8800 GTX and not much more than a top range dx9 card.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ is a great site for reading up on compenents and comparing things like graphics cards.

notman

I'm thinking a good Dx9 card to be honest... then a good dx10 card when you buy a game that needs it. If there is a dx10 game that you want right now, THEN go with a cheap dx10, but is there a dx10 only game out there right now?

Tiax

the thing is , i know i wont buy a new vga the day i buy crysis or ut3. i'll prob go lazy , act slow , search lots (cuz there'll be lots of dx10 card till then) , so a dx10 card will be nice those days. but ofc last years 256bit dx9 cards will havee higher fps then 8600gt's etc. i think both are fine atm , fast dx9 or cheap dx10. man i'm using fx5200 for months ( my 9800pro burned down , i bought this for 1-2 days till i decide what to buy.... it has been 5-6 months i think) every vga is superb for me atm

Toomas

There are no dx10 only games i know of out yet and the cheap dx10 cards can just barely match the dx10 spec and cant really run any dx10 games anyways.

Mongrelman

I think one of the main things affecting what card you go for now is if you want to play Crysis when it's out, and if so if you want to play it at it's higher settings. I've heard that crysis multiplayer servers will be divided into dx9 and dx10 servers (dx10 will have more physics stuff going and things), so keep that in mind if it's a game your twitching for and want to see running at it's best(ish).

Not aware of other games soon that either require dx10 to play at all or for all features. Got an ATI x1950XT myself in December which I'm very pleased with and has been working great. Only reason I'm looking to upgrade in the not too distant future is dx10 (or 10.1 hehe).

To give an idea, a dx9 ATI 1950 type card is about £105 at the moment, the Geforce 8800 GTS is about twice the price at £211 whereas the higher end 8800 cards go from £330ish to about £445.

Some info from tomshardware that might help
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphics-video-budget,review-29616-4.html