Rate my $2k Extreme Gaming Build

[corvetteguy]

Don't get an extrememusic card. Get the auzentech x-polsion if you want the best experience from your z-5500's. They are digital and so is that card unlike the creative.

 

[DaveUK]

As far as I know, XP Pro is better at handline multiple CPU cores than home edition?

Anyway, the graphics card (while great, I have one) will definitely be a weak link in a system designed for high resolutions with HDR/AA/AF.

You need some serious (read, crossfire) grunt to demolish Oblivion in this way.

Single card solution? 7950GX2, or wait X1950XTX.

The price is high, but It's certainly the kind of card I would put in that system.

 

[DaveUK]

Scalable processor support – up to two-way multi-processor support.

XP Home NO

XP Pro YES

In short, anyone that uses dual CPU/multi-core CPU with XP Home is a true dumbass.

 

[Kholonar]

Wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG DaveUK! Windows xp home supports dual core processors, what it doesn't support is multiple sockets. You only have to look at task manager to see the load being distributed over the two cores. Please don't insult people if you aren't sure of the facts.

Also, every frame per second counts for smoothness in games. The human eye sees 10 frames per second (or something round about that). If you move your head fast from side to side (disclaimer:don't do it too much) you will see everything as blurred. This is the exposure time of your eye - as the light changes over a tenth of a second you get a mix of colour and a resulting mix. Despite only updating one tenth of a second, the eye can still see the jump when an image changes fast during gameplay. The smaller the jump (less activity) and more frequent the jump (more frames per second) will make this effect less noticable.

Movies look smooth because the film (and digital receptors) have an exposure time upon capture. This is why fast actions scenes in film have motion blur, even if you look at it frame by frame. It just so happens that at 24fps the movie keeps the blur down. However, camera people are still advised not to make fast camera movements as you get the smeared painting effect that makes people feel sick.

I personally find that over 40 frames per second is fine for first person shooters and over 10 frames per second is fine for strategy games. Everyone can notice the difference between 60 frames per second and 75 frames per second. If you have a CRT just look at the different refresh rates with the side of your eye. You'll see a flickering with both but much more with 60Hz refresh.

Incidentally, LCDs don't have this flickering as the image isn't redrawn each refresh, pixels are only updated that need changing. This is the cause of the ghosting effect that looks a bit like motion blur. I find ghosting makes it really difficult to recognise friend from foe when they are just a blur, it looks a bit more realistic though.

 

[Thorax]

Don't get an extrememusic card. Get the auzentech x-polsion if you want the best experience from your z-5500's. They are digital and so is that card unlike the creative. Wink

That is also wrong. The Creative XFi extreme music has a digital output, so you can wire up the z5500s via SPDIF.

 

[paybax]

Hey Towley,
Just a suggestion, but why put ALLLL your stuff on one drive? By doing that you are chancing yourself to be ROYALLY SCREWED if you ever have an O/S failure or whatever. I would have 2 drives, one for o/s and the other for back up.

For instance, and you will probably get a MILLION different ways to do this....I have 3 drives
1. a 74 gig Raptor SATA 10K 16mb cache for my apps n o/s
2. a Maxtor SATA II 250 gig 7200 rpm for Mp3s, games, movies.
3. Maxtor SATA II 250 gig 7200 rpm for "MY DOCUMENTS" back ups only. And THIS DRIVE I leave "unplugged". The reason being is that if my machine is ever hacked or trojaned, or virused, I just wipe out my main drive, reformat, and RE - INSTALL my docs from the "UNPLUGGED" drive and I;m back in bizz BABy

Now you may not need 3 drives but you can CERTAINLY benefit from having 2............Just a thought.

RIG specs
Antec P180 PerformanceSeries Mid-Tower Case
SeaSonic S12 600 watt power supply
Asus A8N32 SLI mobo AMD N-Force 4 SLIX16 (bios 1103 V02.58)
RealTek 97 onboard digital 5.1 Surround
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Toledo Core, 2 X 1mb L2 cache (AMD driver 1.3.1.0 w/MS hotfix & AMD Dual Core Optimizer)
2 gigs of Corsair TwinX3500LL Pro @ 437Mhz 2-3-2-6-1T
2- BFG 7900 GT OC 256mb in SLI (nvidia driver 91.31)
Western Digital RAPTOR 74.3 gig 10-K rpm HDD for XP & Apps
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for gaming, movies, MP3's
Maxtor SATA II 250 G HDD for document backup (unplugged)
Sony CDrom 52X
Plextor 708-A DVD/CD rom
Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 THX 500watts

 

[towely]

Hey thanks for all the help guys. I'm thinking I'll wait and see how the 1950 stacks up against the 7950 so I can run my LCD in all its native rez glory. With Oblivion, every frame counts. I'll probably have to wait a few weeks anyway because 6600s are damn hard to find in Canada atm.

I already have a 36 gig raptor in my current pc that I was thinking of popping in the new one. Also I plan to add more drives in the future. I just cant afford to right now. I might also get an external one for portability/backups.

 

[corvetteguy]

Don't get an extrememusic card. Get the auzentech x-polsion if you want the best experience from your z-5500's. They are digital and so is that card unlike the creative. Wink

That is also wrong. The Creative XFi extreme music has a digital output, so you can wire up the z5500s via SPDIF.

The card may be called digital but it is an analog source. The auzentech encodes the signal into digital and is the best card for those specific speakers. Trust me we already had a couple threads devoted to this. For someone who really knows ask Choirbass. He knows a lot about audio.

 

[paybax]

Hey Corvette,
So if the Auzentech's are analogue source, are the creative X-Fi cards "TRUE" digital sound cards? I never considered this before. Right now I am using my onboard sound but if I do decide to get a TRUE digital card I want to get a good one for my Z-5500's as well.
Thanks in advance

EDIT: How would one KNOW if a card is a TRUE digital card or not? :?

 

[Thorax]

The creative card will still use the z5500s to their full potential. It has a digital IO that gives a true dolby digital/DTS bitstream out. The XFi also outputs stereo MP3s and PCM stereo over the digital interface. This is all that's important for the z5500s.

The only thing the auzentechs do that the creative can't is encode a source which isn't DD/DTS, into one that is. This in my opinion is a bit of a gimmick, and won't benefit stereo signals like mp3s or audio cds. Both the creative and the auzentech card are "TRUE" digital cards.

 

[paybax]

Thanks for the info thorax, I appreciate it.

 

[clue69less]

1 x Thermaltake Armor VA8003SWA Silver ATX 11X5.25 6X3.5INT No PS W/ Window And 25CM Fan

This is an excellent case - I have a steel Armor without the 25cm fan and it is a beauty. But your rig has one HD and one optical. The Armor is HUGE! If you don't plan to add a bunch of other stuff, you would be better served by something like the Armor Jr. or Lian Li 60B Plus 2. Both offer excellent airflow and loads of capacity for a gameing rig.

 

[siggsy]

It's quite funny how people say that anything above 60fps is waste.........what a load of rubbish! It depends on the game in question. For example Oblivion is a real pc buster and you'd have trouble getting decent fps anyway but playing games like first person shooters, high fps makes a huge difference.

I currently play a lot of Call of Duty 2 and normally get a return of close to 200fps with my pc (ranges between 180 and 210) but in a scene with lots of smoke, the fps drops down to 80-90 fps sometimes and this really can lag. You feel and see the difference in gameplay instantly.

Back to the original post though, the rig you've priced up sounds like a good deal. I'd stick with what you've priced up and then look at changing the card next year if your budget won't stretch higher at the moment but for smooth gameplay I feel you should aim a bit higher than the current card now if the cash is available.

I know that people are saying wait until dx10 (lots of threads about that)but the situation is that you are playing a game now where you could do with that extra power and by the time you wait for dx10, you never know you might have got bored with Oblivion and are playing something new. What I'm trying to say is, don't miss the chance to have great fun and enjoyment now rather than regret it later that you never experienced Oblivion to the full.

Goodluck with the build and I hope it works out for you.

 

[TheTallGuy]

Also, I don't drink 😛

I'm sorry :tongue:

 

[towely]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I agree the armor is excessive for my current config, but I want to be able to add more hdds, optical drives and cooling in the future. Plus, that 250mm side fan is sweet

To continue beating the dead horse - anything above 60fps MINIMUM is a waste. Hell, anything above 30fps MINIMUM is a waste. Your eye cant percieve the difference. This has been scientifically proven time and time again, and if you disagree you are simply ignoring basic physics.

Moreover, if youre using an LCD, chances are it has a refresh rate of 60hz, so you wont be able to get framerates over 60 anyways unless you disable v-sync which results in ugly frame tearing. But go on and think that 200fps makes your COD experience better, if it helps you sleep at night.

I'm thinking about going for the 7950 to ensure smoothness in Oblivion until the DX10 monsters come out.

Now the question is, to RAID 0 a couple seagates or stick with 1? I hear the performance increase isnt worth it really.

 

[microgiant]

The human eye sees at something like 16hz, that translates to like 16 fps. This is why people say high frame rates are moot. Anything above 60 is silly. But if you can tell the difference Im not going to waste time arguing with you.

 

[towely]

The human eye sees at something like 16hz, that translates to like 16 fps. This is why people say high frame rates are moot. Anything above 60 is silly. But if you can tell the difference Im not going to waste time arguing with you.

Thank you.

 

[siggsy]

The human eye sees at something like 16hz, that translates to like 16 fps. This is why people say high frame rates are moot. Anything above 60 is silly. But if you can tell the difference Im not going to waste time arguing with you.

Thank you.

Maybe - but if you guys have the game CoD2, give me a mail address and I'll send you a demo of me playing if you like and you will be able to see the effects. The effects have absolutely nothing to do with connection, it's pure fps lag.

Maybe in other games this won't matter but in CoD2 it has a massive effect.

Oh and by the way, why do a lot of benchmarks quote fps rates for different cards and games if this doesn't make a difference.......................are they trying to blind us by thinking more is better? No, they are telling the truth.

If there is no difference in gameplay after 60fps, then we might aswell all stay on gf4 ti series or something. I know visual quality has an effect on what card we buy but fps is also a big issue.

 

[randomizer]

I currently play a lot of Call of Duty 2 and normally get a return of close to 200fps with my pc (ranges between 180 and 210) but in a scene with lots of smoke, the fps drops down to 80-90 fps sometimes and this really can lag. You feel and see the difference in gameplay instantly.

Of course its going to seem to lag thats a 100fps drop, but if you were constantly playing at 80-90fps it wouldnt seem like there was any lag at all. Btw thats a pretty nice framerate there for COD2, what are ur specs?

 

[siggsy]

I currently play a lot of Call of Duty 2 and normally get a return of close to 200fps with my pc (ranges between 180 and 210) but in a scene with lots of smoke, the fps drops down to 80-90 fps sometimes and this really can lag. You feel and see the difference in gameplay instantly.

Of course its going to seem to lag thats a 100fps drop, but if you were constantly playing at 80-90fps it wouldnt seem like there was any lag at all. Btw thats a pretty nice framerate there for COD2, what are ur specs?

I suppose you are right but what the others are trying to say is that there is no difference where 100% there is a massive difference in gameplay.

PC Specs are in the signature btw but to add that I have tweaked and tuned the system to get it's full potential plus chose the option in CoD2 to play in dx7 mode rather than dx9 (massive increase in speed but not as nice to look at)

 

[Thorax]

After reading an article on www.100fps.com , it's a bit easier to understand how the human eye percieves motion. The whole "you don't need anything above 20fps" debate will still go on, but it appears that the human eye is capable of capturing very quick changes (about 1/500th second), and that video hardware is designed to convey information less frequently, but giving the illusion of smooth motion. This is what interlaced video is all about, and the method used to make a relatively slow frame rate (25fps for PAL) look smooth.

The downside of modern PC monitors, is that they convey video in a progressive format, which although looks much better quality, will look stuttery if the frame rate drops below 50fps. I'm not sure where microgiant got the 16fps figure about the human eye; whether it's right or wrong, playing a game at 16fps will look stuttery, a glorified slideshow as THG would put it. This obviously does not matter if you're playing slow strategy games with little movement, but for shooters and racing games, the frame rate has a huge effect on how smooth the play is and whether you win or lose in some cases.
The optimum frame rate will be the refresh rate of your monitor.

 

[towely]

Oh and by the way, why do a lot of benchmarks quote fps rates for different cards and games if this doesn't make a difference.......................are they trying to blind us by thinking more is better? No, they are telling the truth.

If there is no difference in gameplay after 60fps, then we might aswell all stay on gf4 ti series or something. I know visual quality has an effect on what card we buy but fps is also a big issue.

Not quite right, I'm afraid.

As I said before, benchmarks show you what your hardware is CAPABLE of. Just because you can get 200 fps in Quake 4 doesnt mean you'll benefit from more than 30. It just shows that you might have a chance at playable framerates when Quake 5 comes out.

Oh, and good luck playing Oblivion/COD/HL2 on a geforce 4....moron.

 

[acole]

I currently play a lot of Call of Duty 2 and normally get a return of close to 200fps with my pc (ranges between 180 and 210) but in a scene with lots of smoke, the fps drops down to 80-90 fps sometimes and this really can lag. You feel and see the difference in gameplay instantly.

You do NOT get anywhere close to 200fps. You can now stop stroking your e-wang. We know you are a bold faced liar.

Please, anyone who believes the load of rubbish this guy it dishing out - you need your head examined.

 

[randomizer]

chose the option in CoD2 to play in dx7 mode rather than dx9 (massive increase in speed but not as nice to look at)

I did that on my 9800 pro system and I can run full graphics and still get around 40fps. As soon as i hit dx9 rendering, that was it. No amount of graphics/resolution dropping could get me above 25fps standing still 🙁 . And yea it does look pretty bad on dx7 but im more of a performance rather than quality person.

 

[siggsy]

I currently play a lot of Call of Duty 2 and normally get a return of close to 200fps with my pc (ranges between 180 and 210) but in a scene with lots of smoke, the fps drops down to 80-90 fps sometimes and this really can lag. You feel and see the difference in gameplay instantly.

You do NOT get anywhere close to 200fps. You can now stop stroking your e-wang. We know you are a bold faced liar.

Please, anyone who believes the load of rubbish this guy it dishing out - you need your head examined.

Really buddy well, do you want some screenshots???

Before spouting of your comments like a little kid maybe you should have read my post a bit clearer. CoD2 can be run in 2 different modes with the majority of clan players like myself opting to play the game in dx7 which makes the game run faster and makes you more competitive. Making my fps about 200 average.

So go home and grab your teddies pal because it looks like you'll be throwing them out of ya cot pretty soon!!

Oh, just seen that you're in tech support..........well you guys often get things wrong and then have to rely on people in my job as an IT systems manager to sort ya shite out.