Ultimate 'Gaming' PC?

[bremen1874]

It’s obvious that the mere inclusion of ‘gaming’ into a product name must somehow make the product better in some way.

So presumably the ultimate gaming PC would only include components that have the magic ‘gaming’ factor?

Your bank holiday challenge, should you choose to accept it, it to spec a such a PC.

The eventual result would obviously be slightly limited by the lack of a special gaming edition of Windows, but I’m sure they’ll get around to it.

I will now go and wait under my bridge.

 

[xtremepc]

Well I beleive that the gaming products offer as much as any other product but you get better aesthetics and name. I personally want to avoid that kind of products because they are needless and very difficult to re-sell.

For instance, The Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z costs £299 while the ASUS P8Z68 costs £199. That is a 100 pounds difference.Difference?Some overclock features that are needless to most people because sandybridge is easily overclocked to 4 Ghz by any motherboard and aesthetic.For me it does not justify the 100 pound difference...

 

[SeraphX]

Stulid will probably beat this by miles, but hands down, it will play any game on the market for at least the next 1-2 years fully maxed out with little to no issues lol

 

[Jony27]

^^ is that just picking the most expensive components?
and 2 power supplies?

 

[Reaper 392]

^^ is that just picking the most expensive components?
and 2 power supplies?

i was kinda confused by that. was also confused by someone wanting to go quad-fire, especially with that card, because you'll get massive micro stuttering

OP: are you actually looking for recommendations for something to buy, or are you just looking for a stupidly good gaming PC with massively expensive parts?


stupidly overpriced gaming PC thats a bit better than the one below
1 x OCZ RevoDrive3 X2 960GB PCI-E SSD - (RVD3X2-FHPX4-960G) ** PRE-ORDER ** £2649.98
2 x MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme Edition 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £499.99 (£999.98)
1 x Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £247.99
1 x Silverstone Fortress 2 FT02B-W Windowed Gaming Case - Black £219.98
2 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-16000C9 2000MHz Dual Channel Kit £173.60 (£347.20)
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £169.98
1 x OCZ ZX Series 1250W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £149.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD2002FAEX) £114.98
1 x Asus Xonar D2 7.1 PCI Sound Card £84.98
1 x LG BH10LS30 10x BluRay-RW / 16 x DVD±RW Drive - Black (Retail) £78.98
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £50.99
Total : £5 135.27 (includes shipping : £16.85).

however, if you want a sensible gaming pc then just go for one of these instead. it is what i;d recommend for someone looking for a £1500 gaming PC

still incredibly good gaming PC but with sensibly priced components
2 x MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £259.99 (£519.98)
1 x Silverstone Fortress 2 FT02B-W Windowed Gaming Case - Black £219.98
1 x Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £169.98
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £159.98
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £139.99
1 x OCZ Z-Series 850W '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £99.98
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £57.59
1 x Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA775/AM2/AM3) £50.99
1 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £44.99
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £1,500.68 (includes shipping : £16.85).

 

[stulid]

i was kinda confused by that. was also confused by someone wanting to go quad-fire, especially with that card, because you'll get massive micro stuttering

with a pair of 6990 cards the frame rate average will be so high that micro stuttering will be massively reduced over something that averages 30fps all the time.

 

[Reaper 392]

?

Do you know what micro stuttering is?

with a pair of 6990 cards the frame rate average will be so high that micro stuttering will be massively reduced.

yes i do, its when the framerate varies a lot from its average in a short space of time (crap explanation but i know what i mean)
for instance it might go:
frame......frame..frame.frame..........frame.. frame.........frame

for now you make a good point, but in the future when games inevitably get more and more graphically demanding it'll become very noticeable.

i was also under the impression that adding a 3rd and 4th card in crossfire didnt get you a major boost in performance (not close to the the 50% and 33% increase you would expect from it anyway)

*edit*
bit of a pointless argument though because anyone who gets two 6990's has far more money than sense

 

[stulid]

yes i do, its when the framerate varies a lot from its average in a short space of time (crap explanation but i know what i mean)
for instance it might go:
frame......frame..frame.frame..........frame..frame.........frame

for now you make a good point, but in the future when games inevitably get more and more graphically demanding it'll become very noticeable.

i was also under the impression that adding a 3rd and 4th card in crossfire didnt get you a major boost in performance (not close to the the 50% and 33% increase you would expect from it anyway)

Well tomshardware have tested scaling and microstuttering and the conclusion is that all dual cards suffer from it when they are not at a certain power level

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,review-32256-15.html

Currently, it seems like cards less powerful than the Radeon HD 6950 are not well-suited for dual-card CrossFire. Even if the frame rates look decent, the slower the GPU, the more pronounced you'll see micro-stuttering during gameplay.

The performance of three- and four-way CrossFire setups not only surprised us, but also managed to utterly convince us that micro-stuttering doesn't have to affect your multi-GPU configuration. For some reason, the third GPU almost always eliminates micro stuttering and has a less-pronounced effect on performance. At least in the games we ran, the fourth GPU is more eye candy than anything, and its contribution is minimal.

 

[Reaper 392]

so going by what they said (at least what youve quoted) a single 6990 wont have much microstuttering (its about the same as two 6950s because of the lower clocks) and adding the second 6990 will give minimal performance upgrades (adding the 3rd didnt get much of an upgrade in performance, and adding a 4th got almost none)

 

[stulid]

so going by what they said (at least what youve quoted) a single 6990 wont have much microstuttering (its about the same as two 6950s because of the lower clocks) and adding the second 6990 will give minimal performance upgrades (adding the 3rd didnt get much of an upgrade in performance, and adding a 4th got almost none)

Only at the resolution they tested if you look at seraphs spec then he has three screens.

 

[Reaper 392]

Only at the resolution they tested if you look at seraphs spec then he has three screens.

looking at their review they are saying for triple screen you'd want 3 2GB cards and that the 2GB per two cards just didnt cut it, so the 6990 is completely out of the picture.

i'm very tempted to post a trollface and say go with the Asus mars II
*edit*
ignore that, just seen the 590 benchmark. thats pretty poor

 

[Krony]

4x 580's if better than 2x 6990's.

 

[arc@css]

Get three video cards.

 

[fowler002]

on the question of how much extra perfomance 3 cards give over 2, I've recently ordered 2 6950s and in the future if I was to add a 3rd how much extra performance would it give @2560x1440(u2711)?

currently have q6600@3ghz but wanting to upgrade to i2500k with asrock extreme 7 if its not too much more over the extreme4 gen3(£220 seems to be the going rate going by google, ocuk are ment to be doing a pre-order special price so lets see)

 

[stulid]

on the question of how much extra perfomance 3 cards give over 2, I've recently ordered 2 6950s and in the future if I was to add a 3rd how much extra performance would it give @2560x1440(u2711)?

currently have q6600@3ghz but wanting to upgrade to i2500k with asrock extreme 7 if its not too much more over the extreme4 gen3(£220 seems to be the going rate going by google, ocuk are ment to be doing a pre-order special price so lets see)

Good stuff - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865-12.html

They tested at 2560X1600 and you can see the third card does a good job. Only one game didnt benefit they said (alien vs predator) but this test is back months ago and driver support could have fixed that and improved the other results by now.

 

[fowler002]

Good stuff - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865-12.html

They tested at 2560X1600 and you can see the third card does a good job. Only one game didnt benefit they said (alien vs predator) but this test is back months ago and driver support could have fixed that and improved the other results by now.

thanks for that, btw will a 850w(coolermaser realpower) be enough for 3x 6950 or will I need a 1kw?

 

[stulid]

thanks for that, btw will a 850w(coolermaser realpower) be enough for 3x 6950 or will I need a 1kw?

That should be enough.

650W is ok for a [air including the rest of a system (CPU/Drives/motherboard etc) so another 200w will do it.

 

[fowler002]

That should be enough.

650W is ok for a [air including the rest of a system (CPU/Drives/motherboard etc) so another 200w will do it.

what if I go watercooling dual loops(1 for cpu, 1 for gpu)?

the psu has 2x 8pin pci-e and 4x 6pin pcie, would have to go for 'standard' 6950(i.e. 2x6pin) as the sapphire toxic one needs 6pin & 8pin(will molex -> pci-e work? and do you get 8pin or just 6pin?)

 

[stulid]

Sorry that should read "pair" not "air" guess I didn't look as typed.

Are you saying you are using the 8pin pci-e's?

 

[fowler002]

Sorry that should read "pair" not "air" guess I didn't look as typed.

Are you saying you are using the 8pin pci-e's?

not using at the moment no as not recieved the cards yet, but according to the specs(and pics in reviews) the toxic version needs 1 6pin and 1 8pin power connection. the psu has 2 8pin and 4 6pin, so once I get the cards and connected will have 2 6pin spare(1 8pin in 1 card and the other 8 pin in the other card, plus 1 6pin each in both cards as well).

so in the future if I was to get a 6950 toxic or a 6970(think all need 1 6pin and 1 8pin unless there are version/s which use 2x 8pin) the psu wouldn't be able to handle it unless there s a molex->8pin pci-e adapter(even then is it recommend to use such an adapter?).

so i2500k@4ghz+, 3x 6950, dvd-rw, 750gb/1tb(currently have 750 gb but thinking of changing to 1tb) plus maybe a ssd and dual loop wc will be ok on 850w psu?