T4molie

Guys,

I've decided that it may be time for me to upgrade my pc at home again to something with hopefully a lot more juice

I used to play most of my games on consoles but have found myself using the pc more and more lately as I find the controls easier (keyboard and mouse combo). Just can't seem to be fast enough on the PS2 with COD and BF2 ...... must be an age thing

I'm currently running a P4 2.6, 1Gb RAM, ATi 9600 Gfx Card, 2 x NEC DVD-RW's and a 80Gb IDE HDD.

Was wondering what others were running for their games?

Anyone using the AMD 64 D's with Twin SLi Gfx Cards?

Cheers

Andy

Iain Young

Yes

I've recently upgraded from a P4 2.5ghz, and am now running an Amd X2 4800+ dual core processor, 2gb of ram, xi-fi sound, 5.1 speakers, 1tb of sata2 disc space, and 2 nvidia 512mb 7800 gtx cards running in sli.

It does seem to run everything quite nicely. Even in F.E.A.R. (a game famed for bringing pcs to their knees), I can run it in 1600x1200 with every detail setting at maximum, and still get around 90fps

Runs BF2 very smoothly as well

Did cost a few pennies though

T4molie

Jesus Ian, 1tb of disk space!!!!

Would you mind giving me an approx of how much that lot cost you? PM if you prefer

Have you noticed much improvement in overall performance of the machine?

Iain Young

Cost around £3000 in total

Speed increase is monumental.

When using my 3d rendering stuff (Lightwave 8.5), scenes that were taking 20 minutes per frame to render are now going through in about 30 seconds!!! Also, when doing video editing (using premiere pro), transitions etc are now being shown in real time and the final dvd encoding process is only taking around 30 minutes to encode a disc, whereas on my old machine it took several hours.

Obviously those improvements are mainly down to the dual core processor, something that games generally do not take advantage of). Having said that, to run F.E.A.R on my old pc (2.5ghz with 1gb ram, and a 256mb ati x800) I had to run at 1024x768 and reduce the detail levels significantly to get it running smoothly.

So overall, yes it is a LOT faster

T4molie

LMAO

OK so you may be using your machine for a lot more than I'm thinking of

Would anyone like to suggest a spec for a games machine that would fly.... but isn't gonna cost 3k

Would I be better off just upgrading my graphics card to a X850XT or something like that or will I see improvements by changing the motherboard to incorporate SATA HDD's?

Cheers

Andy

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

AMD X2 4800
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 (Sli for future proofing)
2Gb Ram
70 WD Raptor H/D (or 150Gb)
XFX 256Mb 7800GTX (512Mb if you need the fastest)
Nice looking case etc

Should be able to get that for around £1k

Iain Young

That's almost the same spec as mine minus the disc space, sound card, and dual 512 cards, (that's what added the extra cost to mine). Should be able to run stuff quite nicely with that rig...

MJW

If you don't want to shell out loads of money just upgrade the graphics card and the RAM. As you say an X850XT along with 2Gb of decent RAM will run stuff like BF2 at 1280x1024 (on an LCD) without any problems.

User 1421

You know , i could have just sworn he typed in £3k ! :P

T4molie

You know I think he DID just say 3k

DrEvil

IMHO, best bang per buck at the moment:

AMD64 X2 4400 circa £350
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium circa £120
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 circa £130
XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme LED Edition 256MB circa £240
X-fi Xtreme Music circa £80 (X-fi in BF2 is awesome)
Enermax Noisetaker 535W or 600W PSU circa £70 or £90 respectively

Dunno what case you have, but Antec P180, Akasa Eclipse 62 or Gigabyte Aurora are all good and use 120mm fans (quieter).

DVD drive/floppy can be reused

IDE HD can be reused, but if you want quick, get a 74GB or 150GB WD Raptor (SATA 10Krpm).

If you have more £££s to spend than the above, take a look at a ATI Crossfire motherboard and X1800XT 512Mb master card or if you can find one the 7800GTX 512MB XXX from XFX.

If you're using a 19" or below TFT with 1280x1024 max res, don't bother with SLI or Crossfire - complete overkill at present, would be better off banking the money and getting the next uber generation gfx card when it comes out, imho.

Or course if you've got(or getting) something like the Dell 24" TFT - go SLI or Crossfire for the win.

Have fun

T4molie

Thanks for the replies guys I think I'll be working out a few sums this weekend