New budget system

EmAr

Hi! I'll be getting a new machine later in this month. I would like to keep it for around 2 years. Playing games at high settings is not very important. However, I want to make sure this system is good enough for practice as I'm going for the less expensive stuff.

I want to be able to play around with tessellated meshes in small scenes in UDK. Some youtube videos like the one below make me think this is possible with the parts listed below. I want this mostly for personal curiosity so, it's not extremely important.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4V8EkaLavQ"]Heaven ATI AMD HD 6870 from ASUS (HD 720p) Tesselation and Wireframe on&off - YouTube[/ame]

I won't be ordering from newegg but here are the specs:

AMD FX-6100 Zambezi 3.3GHz Socket AM3+ 95W Six-Core (8 core versions have been out of stock for weeks here)

SAPPHIRE 100314-3L Radeon HD 6870 1GB

ASUS M5A78L-M LX AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX

CORSAIR 8GB (2*4GB) XMS3 1333MHz CL9 Dual Kit Ram

I have a 4 year old FSP Bluestorm PSU but I'll probably get a new 500w PSU too.

For the case and hard drives, I'll use what I have at home from older systems.

Thanks for looking/any suggestions

Bigjohn

Should do the trick. I would get a PSU of more than 500w though, maybe 650 or 700. Just in case you ever want to get another 6870 and run it in crossfire.

EmAr

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll consider it if I can find some more money in two weeks for the more expensive mobo and PSU. I could install more ram that way too.

EarthQuake

Bigjohn wrote: »

Should do the trick. I would get a PSU of more than 500w though, maybe 650 or 700. Just in case you ever want to get another 6870 and run it in crossfire.

"Might do sli/xfire later" - generally a bad idea. Lets assume someone actually does this, in 1-2 years when they want to buy a matching card, they'll be able to a buy a current card 2x as fast for the same price. If you don't end up doing it, you're just wasting money + adding more heat to your system. Don't buy hardware for what you "might" do, buy it for what you actually will do.

Plus sli/xfire isn't going to give you any benefits for game dev, buying a new, better card when the time is right will though. Not to mention potential compatibility issues with 3d apps.

Stick with a 500w psu, but make sure its 80+ efficient.Make sure you get a quality name brand with good reviews and low noise - all of which are more important that buying one with a large wattage number. I like to look at PSUs with free shipping, you can generally save $10-20 that way. Even a 430w or 450w would likely be adequate.

Running that system through a PSU calculator at 90% load(which you will be far below the majority of the time) gives 367w.

EmAr

Thanks for writing those EQ. Totally forgot about the compatibility stuff. I'll go with this setup and hope it remains good enough for two years then.

Bigjohn

Does a single current card outperform an SLI setup with cards from ~1.5 years ago though?

EarthQuake

Bigjohn wrote: »

Does a single current card outperform an SLI setup with cards from ~1.5 years ago though?

Depends on the card?

You're sort of missing the point here though, SLI has a lot of drawbacks, and basically no benefits for game dev. If all he wants to do is play games its a different story perhaps.

In addition to that, the card he's buying is quite fast, and will likely last 3-4 years away. Its not like he's using a Geforce 5200 or something. By the time he actually needs to upgrade, he'll be able to buy a current card that performs better than finding that old, matching card required to run sli, for the same price. We can bicker over whether that is in 1 or 3 years, but there isn't much point.

Generally speaking, buying a current mid-range $150 GPU every 3 years or so will suffice for most people.

PaulP

Which OS are you using? If you are using Windows 7 64bit I'd reccomend getting a full 16GB of RAM as its not too expensive compared to the other parts, and I personally find it makes a big difference. But you can always upgrade the RAM later without any bother (just make sure its the same specs and make as your current RAM to avoid hardware conflicts! My brother found this out the hard way).

Also have you considered getting an SSD? I don't know anyone who has tried them yet, but they sound really useful. If you get one with your new system, it means if you want to upgrade your system's drive HD down the line you won't have to reinstall everything. Massive time and pain saver.

EmAr

I think 8 gb will be enough for me. My previous computer had 8 gb and I was comfortable with that(The mobo and the graphics card failed and I sold the other parts to pay my debts.) I don't need to bake maps very fast or run lots of applications simultaneously.

I love SSDs as they don't make any sound at all in addition to the speed. They are a little too expensive for me though. My old drive is 320 gb. It will have to be enough

EmAr

Hey guys! I bought the system. However, I had to make some last minute changes. The 6870 cards are no longer in stock so I bought an XFX 6850 instead. I also bought a more expensive mobo which supports 1600mhz ram without overclock. I got the appropriate ram too Also, I decided to try my old FSP Bluestorm 500w PSU, there's been no problem so far.

I immediately installed the parts and ran the Unigine Heaven Benchmark. It works very well with normal tessellation and without anti aliasing. I get 30-40 FPS while flying around. My screen resolution is 1280*1024.

I didn't install any DCC software yet. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.