Computer Biff

[arknor]

3gb of ram is more than enough theres still no single game that uses anywhere near 2gb of ram (i mean just the game not counting windows services)

anyone thinking of upgrading to a high spec pc should wait until late september /early november for when intel releases the nehalem core cpu and tripple channel memory.

btw YOU NEED TO BE ON A 64BIT OS FOR WINDOWS TO BE ABLE TO USE MORE THAN 3.2GB ANYWAY

 

[Aada]

I'm on 32bit vista but it still recognises that i have 4gb ram in my machine whats up with that?

 

[Overdriven]

Arknor, there's also the fact that by Jan/Feb DDR3 should be working as intended. Not great right now, but should be a hell of a lot better by the first QTR of 2009. Hopefully. DDR2 atm is win, will be for a bit.

*Wants 64x Vista Ultimate*

 

[Tallen]

Arknor, there's also the fact that by Jan/Feb DDR3 should be working as intended. Not great right now, but should be a hell of a lot better by the first QTR of 2009. Hopefully. DDR2 atm is win, will be for a bit.

*Wants 64x Vista Ultimate*

Why do people bother with DDR3 when DDR2 is so much cheaper and there isnt a single game in existance which you'd need DDR3 to run?

Christ, you can pick up 8 GIG of top quality DDR2 for under £100...not that you'd need that either

 

[Overdriven]

Tallen, read what I said.. From JAN+ DDR3 will be better than it is now. I said DDR2 is better and will be for a while So.. Don't try and start this game

Also, 8gb RAM would be used when editing seriously huge images and dealing with very high requirement CAD software/web dev/animation/modelling But.. For gaming.. no more than 4gb

 

[Bone_Idle]

I built myself a monster machine to play AoC on. It played that with everything turned up max so i guess it'll handle WAR.

Got the stuff pretty cheap from ebuyer.

 

[Mas]

I built myself a monster machine to play AoC on. It played that with everything turned up max so i guess it'll handle WAR.

Got the stuff pretty cheap from ebuyer.

What do you call pretty cheap and what did you get, im always looking for a nice cheap machine to build.

 

[Overdriven]

Mas: Mixing Ebuyer and OCUK is pretty good. Can get some things better here, some there.

 

[Mas]

Give me prices or estimates, as i currently run a amd 2.7 cpu 1 gig ram and a nVidia geforce 6800, im barley over the minimum and i can feel the jerk already although lotm client runs sweet ;/

 

[Overdriven]

What's your budget and what parts of your comp do you want to keep? Can get something after knowing that ^^

 

[Mas]

Basically, nothing i can keep apart from keyboard mouse and monitor, rest is old tat. Budget really of around £600 or less if possible. Dont need an OS either, still have my XP stuff here.

 

[Overdriven]

Here's one I built with a £500ish budget.. Few bits you can change to go towards £600

Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe AMD 790FX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Antec EarthWatts 500W PSU
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
AMD Phenom X4 Quad Core 9850 2.50GHz Black Edition (Socket AM2)
Gainward ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express)

£508


Of course, it's a AMD build. Intel ones are generally faster, but I have a soft spot for AMD.. People can feel free to improve parts as necessary ^^ (MObo i'm not sure on)

EDIT: Doesn't have a case, as it was a build I was going to use (Was gonna use my previous case, as there are lots of air holes in it.. Would be near £600 with a goodish case.

 

[thergador]

Here's one I built with a £500ish budget.. Few bits you can change to go towards £600

Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe AMD 790FX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Antec EarthWatts 500W PSU
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit
AMD Phenom X4 Quad Core 9850 2.50GHz Black Edition (Socket AM2)
Gainward ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express)

£508


Of course, it's a AMD build. Intel ones are generally faster, but I have a soft spot for AMD.. People can feel free to improve parts as necessary ^^ (MObo i'm not sure on)

EDIT: Doesn't have a case, as it was a build I was going to use (Was gonna use my previous case, as there are lots of air holes in it.. Would be near £600 with a goodish case.

might be and idea to get 2 of the "Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache" and go raid, you will scarp another 5 to 10 fps with out a heavy investment

mobo is nice has some nice ram cooling and is good for a nice oc but if your going to OC you WILL need to get another CPU cooler (infact id get a better one any way )

 

[Mas]

Anyones opinion on this setup from OCUK...

- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 GO 2.40GHz Quad Core CPU Overclocked too a minimum of 3.00GHz and beyond.
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Intel approved cooler
- Arctic Silver 5 Heatsink compound professionally hand installed by our technicians
- MSI P7N Platinum SLi (Socket LGA775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- Award winning GeIL 2GB PC2-6400 CAS4 (2x1GB) Dual Channel Kit (Overclocked at 800MHz+)
- 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 32MB Cache SATA-2 Hard Drive
- 2x NVIDIA 8800 GT 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) DirectX 10 Graphics Card configured in SLI
- Samsung S223D 22x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)
- Corsair TX 650W Next Generation Power Supply

£675 inc vat

 

[Aada]

Anyones opinion on this setup from OCUK...

- Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 GO 2.40GHz Quad Core CPU Overclocked too a minimum of 3.00GHz and beyond.
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Intel approved cooler
- Arctic Silver 5 Heatsink compound professionally hand installed by our technicians
- MSI P7N Platinum SLi (Socket LGA775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- Award winning GeIL 2GB PC2-6400 CAS4 (2x1GB) Dual Channel Kit (Overclocked at 800MHz+)
- 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 32MB Cache SATA-2 Hard Drive
- 2x NVIDIA 8800 GT 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) DirectX 10 Graphics Card configured in SLI
- Samsung S223D 22x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)
- Corsair TX 650W Next Generation Power Supply

£675 inc vat

2x 8800 is a waste of money i think SLI is barely used in any game well enough to warrent 2 cards.

I would just get 1 beefy card like the 4870x2.

Myself i would go with AMD just because you get more bang for your buck in my opinion.

Personally i thought the system Overdriven built you was very nice for the price and i would go with that.

 

[Mellon]

Even though i know that ram increase a lot the performance of a game is there any difference by having 4 Gb instead of 3GB? I have xp pro 32-bit which if i am not mistaken the max amount of memory that manage is 3 GB. The game on the other hand will use the extra 1Gb i have or not ?

I thought of something clever when I read this. A lot of motherboards (all maybe?) uses so called "Dual Channel Memory Technology" See wikipedia wich means they will get faster access speed to rams if they are "paired". That means two identical memory sticks placed in the designated slots on the motherboard. So from this perspective it might be well worth the effort to get 2x 2Gb memorysticks, even while using 32bit windows (that indeed caps memory around 3 Gb).

 

[Tallen]

Tallen, read what I said.. From JAN+ DDR3 will be better than it is now. I said DDR2 is better and will be for a while So.. Don't try and start this game

Also, 8gb RAM would be used when editing seriously huge images and dealing with very high requirement CAD software/web dev/animation/modelling But.. For gaming.. no more than 4gb

Simply stating an opinion which burns me and it was more on the subject of DDR3 than anything you actually said. I'm afraid DDR3 really hits a nerve with me.

DDR3 is imo overpriced and unnecessary for gaming and probably will be for years to come until someone devises a game which makes Crysis look like Pong. It might have wonderful uses in other applications or for overclocking, but certainly not the kind of gaming we are talking about.

I know 4 GIG is all thats needed for gaming (read what I wrote....hmm...), im simply stating you can buy 8 GIG of DDR2 for under £100 (or 4 GIG for £50ish) whereas DDR3 would cost probably anything up to twice that price and it's certainly not twice as good.

It just winds me up when people buy the damn stuff or try and justify it for "future proofing" their gaming rigs when in reality im pretty sure it's a false economy and by the time it is useful or necessary anything purchased now will be hopelessly obsolete as it's based on the current tech and not the tech that will be around in a few years time.

Still, as long as people buy it, it keeps the DDR2 prices down i guess, so knock yourselves out

 

[thergador]

not to mention that if you go for DDR3 your really limiting the Mobo you can go for

theres been loads of test on DDR3 that show its no better low latency DDR2 as it stands

and there no such thing as future proofing when it comes to digital technologies i mean look at moore's law which still stand's true

 

[Overdriven]

not to mention that if you go for ddr3 your really limiting the mobo you can go for

theres been loads of test on ddr3 that show its no better low latency ddr2 as it stands

and there no such thing as future proofing when it comes to digital technologies i mean look at moore's law which still stand's true

qft

 

[Dervish]

I thought of something clever when I read this. A lot of motherboards (all maybe?) uses so called "Dual Channel Memory Technology" See wikipedia wich means they will get faster access speed to rams if they are "paired". That means two identical memory sticks placed in the designated slots on the motherboard. So from this perspective it might be well worth the effort to get 2x 2Gb memorysticks, even while using 32bit windows (that indeed caps memory around 3 Gb).

Err didn't I already say this, last but one post on page 2 of this thread? But you're right you COULD use 2 x 2GB sticks but a lot of motherboards don't like sticks over 1 GB so 4 X 1GB sticks is usually safer and cheaper.

 

[Mellon]

Err didn't I already say this, last but one post on page 2 of this thread? But you're right you COULD use 2 x 2GB sticks but a lot of motherboards don't like sticks over 1 GB so 4 X 1GB sticks is usually safer and cheaper.

Indeed you did... And I actually thought I read through all the posts. I must be turning blind.

Also speaking about DDR2/3/sticks. I bought this Mobo from ASrock a few days ago. It\s got 4xDDR2 and 2xDDR3 slots. Pretty clever idea imho.

 

[thergador]

this Mobo .

i have seen some very bad reviews for that mobo have seen lots of peeps saying "that it crash's under stress" and "its very poor for OCing max of 25% of stock speed"

plus it only supports pci 1.1 not pci 2.0 so its far from future proof but saying that pci2.0 cards will run but at the slows pci1.1 speed

buts its a cheaper mobo so they gotta make some cuts if your getting the DDR3 slots which you cant use at the same time as DDR2 will have to let us know how it goes
edit: forgot the other bad thing
Expansion Slot, 1x Pci-e 16x and 1x AGI Pci-e x16 speed 4x connector, Support to Crossfire but link = 16x + 4x (which mean your x-fire will prob drop your fpsnot increase it ) of course that only bad if your goign to use x-fire

 

[Faeldawn]

not to mention that if you go for DDR3 your really limiting the Mobo you can go for

theres been loads of test on DDR3 that show its no better low latency DDR2 as it stands

and there no such thing as future proofing when it comes to digital technologies i mean look at moore's law which still stand's true

Absolutely.

However, the Asus Rampage Extreme is an awesome DDR3 board (I would honestly say imo it's the best mobo I have ever seen)....unfortunately thanks to the crappy $ value, the prices for this are going up and it's bloody pricey to begin with and the Rampage Formula, the DDR2 equivalent (also an incredible board for overclocking) is now about £80 less

 

[Faeldawn]

Indeed you did... And I actually thought I read through all the posts. I must be turning blind.

Also speaking about DDR2/3/sticks. I bought this Mobo from ASrock a few days ago. It\s got 4xDDR2 and 2xDDR3 slots. Pretty clever idea imho.

I don't see the point of these "hybrid" boards tbh.

You can only have a max 4 GIG DDR3 in that, while 4 GIG is perfect for current gaming, it leaves no room for future increases and RAM is one of those things that makes a massive difference to system performance once the system gets a bit dated.

Personally I'd look at a P45 or X38 instead and stick with DDR2.