Fantasy PC challenge!

[Svartmetall]

OK. Imagine you have ~£1,500 to spend on building your Uber PC Of Pwn (TM). What components would you spend it on? This hypothetical Deep Thought clone, aimed mainly at gaming, will need to have two HDDs and an Nvidia graphics card.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

MSI K9N Diamond
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2x 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 dual channel Cas 4 or less (ocz or geil orso)
2x Seagate 750GB SATA300 (ST3750640AS)
MSI nVidia GeForce 7900GTX
BFG PhysX card
Tagan TG700-U25

think I overshot the budget a tiny bit....

 

[Cemeterygates]

commadore 64 meights!!!!!

 

[confused]

a dream pc with nvidia, more like a nightmare with the present 7900 problems
therefore specced a ati version

REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST REMOVE
CP-126-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-126-IN)
£129.95 £129.95
MB-020-DF DFI Infinity 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-020-DF)
£129.95 £129.95
MY-057-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£124.95 £124.95
GX-045-CO ATI Radeon X1900 ***Crossfire Edition*** 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-045-CO)
£254.95 £254.95
GX-087-AS Asus ATI Radeon EAX-X1900 XT-X 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-087-AS)
£299.95 £299.95
HD-078-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE)
£62.95 £125.90
CD-020-AS Asus DRW-1608P3S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - Retail (CD-020-AS)
£24.50 £24.50
HS-003-SY Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler (Socket 478, 754, 939, 940, LGA755) (HS-003-SY)
£26.95 £26.95
HS-024-ZA Zalman VF900-LED Quiet Copper VGA Cooler (HS-024-ZA)
£22.95 £45.90
CA-018-OC OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply (CA-018-OC)
£74.95 £74.95
CA-027-LL Lian-Li PC V1000 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower (No PSU) (CA-027-LL)
£109.95 £109.95
Subtotal £1,292.90
VAT £226.26
Total £1,519.16

Cpu aparently clocks to 150% on air, and thats on that mobo

though nvidia way

MB-011-IN Intel DP965LT 965 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-011-IN)
£74.95 £74.95
MY-057-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£124.95 £124.95
HD-078-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE)
£62.95 £125.90
CD-020-AS Asus DRW-1608P3S 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - Retail (CD-020-AS)
£24.50 £24.50
HS-003-SY Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler (Socket 478, 754, 939, 940, LGA755) (HS-003-SY)
£26.95 £26.95
HS-024-ZA Zalman VF900-LED Quiet Copper VGA Cooler (HS-024-ZA)
£22.95 £22.95
CA-018-OC OCZ GameXStream 600w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Power Supply (CA-018-OC)
£74.95 £74.95
CA-027-LL Lian-Li PC V1000 PLUS Black Aluminium Midi-Tower (No PSU) (CA-027-LL)
£109.95 £109.95
GX-086-LT Leadtek GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-086-LT)
£344.95 £344.95
CP-129-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6700 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.67GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-129-IN)
£349.95 £349.95
Subtotal £1,280.00
VAT £224.00
Total £1,504.00

 

[Korax]

why buy ati when you can buy nvidia? And buy SLI while you're at it and nothing under AMD x2 4400+.

 

[Ballard]

why buy ati when you can buy nvidia? And buy SLI while you're at it and nothing under AMD x2 4400+.

conroe kicks the shit out of the AMD dual cores.

 

[Darzil]

I'd get three drives. O/S on one, and games installed on the other two set as RAID 0 for performance.

In an ideal world, sticking 8Gb of memory on each of two of those boards that plug into the PCI ports and pretend to be drives, but I'm not sure if it's up to that capacity yet (plus it's pricy). Camelot and O/S loading at memory reading speeds would be interesting!

Make sure the graphics especially is coming from a supplier with a decent reputation, cos some are getting a bit unreliable.

Darzil

 

[confused]

why buy ati when you can buy nvidia? And buy SLI while you're at it and nothing under AMD x2 4400+.

Because ati is better than nvidia maybe? and crossfire....

Also 4400+ 2x < cheapest conroe
From what I can tell the 7950 gpu's have a problem with them, but from the OCuk feedback it's not as common.. could be because of the number being sold though

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

Because ati is better than nvidia maybe? and crossfire....

Also 4400+ 2x < cheapest conroe
From what I can tell the 7950 gpu's have a problem with them, but from the OCuk feedback it's not as common.. could be because of the number being sold though

Depends on what you want really....
For normal gaming I doubt there is a real noticable difference. Perhaps in benchmarks but not by looks, however if you intent to do CAD work or run Linux, stay far, far away from ati.

 

[Svartmetall]

Because ati is better than nvidia maybe?

Sorry, but no, they're not. ATI's drivers are a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and there's no way I'm letting an ATI card soil the interior of my ne-...er..this totally hypothetical new PC.

Not that I'm, y'know, opinionated or anything, of course.

 

[confused]

Sorry, but no, they're not. ATI's drivers are a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and there's no way I'm letting an ATI card soil the interior of my ne-...er..this totally hypothetical new PC.

Not that I'm, y'know, opinionated or anything, of course.

mmm driver issues with ATI, the 9x00 series had them yes. I really can't see why people would rather go for an Nvidia and risk having vast amouts of problems with them... If you have driver cleaner with ati then you're fine

the x1900xtx is faster than the 7900gtx.. end of

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

<snip>I really can't see why people would rather go for an Nvidia<snip>

nVidia supports linux. All the reason I need

the x1900xtx is faster than the 7900gtx.. end of

exactly not the way to win folks over you your side...

 

[confused]

exactly not the way to win folks over you your side...

guess this does then

Edit: about the Linux, personally didn't know about ATi and linux, as i've only ever use it on my nvidia system, will keep that in mind though

 

[confused]

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/07/12/geforce_and_radeon_take_on_linux_uk/page9.html#final_thoughts
Aparently ATi have drivers for Linux, and google finds nothing about ati driver problems with linux within the last few months

 

[Infanity]

I'd get three drives. O/S on one, and games installed on the other two set as RAID 0 for performance.

In an ideal world, sticking 8Gb of memory on each of two of those boards that plug into the PCI ports and pretend to be drives, but I'm not sure if it's up to that capacity yet (plus it's pricy). Camelot and O/S loading at memory reading speeds would be interesting!

Make sure the graphics especially is coming from a supplier with a decent reputation, cos some are getting a bit unreliable.

Darzil

I had a dream about you last night ffs ;e

 

[Korax]

conroe kicks the shit out of the AMD dual cores.

Jesus im outdated. Indeed you are so right. ^^
I need to follow more up on the HW news.

 

[Ctuchik]

mmm driver issues with ATI, the 9x00 series had them yes. I really can't see why people would rather go for an Nvidia and risk having vast amouts of problems with them... If you have driver cleaner with ati then you're fine

the x1900xtx is faster than the 7900gtx.. end of

never ever had as much problem with Nvidia as i had with the few ATI cards i acually dared trying. yes ATI might be slightly faster. but for anyone but a hardware nerd that doesent really matter much if anything at all. Nvidia has always been rock solid for me. never had any of the totally freaked out problems ive had with the ATI cards.

imo Nvidia is so much better then ATI u cant seriously compare the 2 brands.

 

[Pirkel]

I had a dream about you last night ffs ;e

Everybody dreams about Darzil every now and then it's perfectly normal.











Right?










Why is everybody looking funny at me?

 

[confused]

imo Nvidia is so much better then ATI u cant seriously compare the 2 brands.

Yes they're so much better, they let out a whole batch of faulty 7900 cards, but instead of doing a recall they let people find out for them selves... Now thats a great company..
Yes I agree there are dodgey drivers flying about, and yes Nvidia sorted their problem out earlier, but I frequently update drivers on all my machines, using both nvidia and ATI cards, only problems I've had recently have been the nvidia 91.31

 

[Coolan]

to be honest not a great spec pc but one im happy with

Processor: Amd 4000 @ 2.4ghz San Diego Core (939)
Mobo: Asus A8N-Sli Duluxe
Memory: 2x512mb GEIL Pc3200
Graphics: 2xBFG 7800gt
Harddrives: 1 Western Digital Sata2 16mb cache 3200, 2x Seagate 200gb Ide(backups)

Oh and as far as benchmarks go i bet i can find loads that show nivida cards are better than ati, and loads that show ati are better than nvidia, imo benchmarks prove about as much use as a monkey with a toolbox and a pc could do.

 

[cHodAX]

Been a huge AMD fan for the last 5-6 years but I am very tempted to go Conroe myself, the benchmarks are mouthwatering, a massive step up from my current AMD rig. That said though, I might grab a 939 X2 3800+ soon as the price is dropping to around £100 so it will be a dirt cheap upgrade.

 

[Svartmetall]

Problem with going Conroe at the moment is you're paying the 'new technology' price premium...

 

[confused]

Problem with going Conroe at the moment is you're paying the 'new technology' price premium...

The price isn't that terrible, in comparison with A64's when the came out or the new am2's

 

[Korax]

I would call myself an AMD fan as well, but only because they have been the best, atleast since A64, while most users (the n00bs) kept to "the good old" intel. When I buy a new puter in a years time though, I'll compare price vs gaming perfomance and go with the best, regardless.

 

[Svartmetall]

Yeah, I've been an AMD fan for a while now myself, but I'm keeping an open mind this time round.