Dell XPS 430 or overclockers deal for gaming? (Champions Online)

ThorpedoUK

ThorpedoUK

ThorpedoUK

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Hi all

First I'm new here so go easy on me, thanks!

I was hoping to get an honest opinion from you pros out there on what budget gaming system will run Crysis (high/1280x1024), Age Of Conan (max) and Champions Online (Max)

I am looking at the following (I have a max of about £400 I know not a huge amount but money is tight)

Primo Oren (£289)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-187-OK&tool=5

along with:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-205-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=939

>>OR<<

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-180-OK

>>OR a Dell system buy it now pay later<<

DELL XPS 430 with Q9550 Intel Core 2 Quad 2.83Ghz and ATI Radeon 4850 512MB.

The Q9550 is awesome for overclocking (but I believe you cant overclock the XPS 430, is that correct??) but this system is about twice the cost of the others!

I'm really hoping for around £400 (or cost of the first system and gfx card max).

Thanks all
 
cmndr_andi said:
The performance of the graphics card will be marginally better and it will be cooler and quieter. However, I don't think its £64 better than the one I chose.

However, the rest of the system will be a bit worse due to the inferior motherboard. If you really want the graphics card you specified then get it but use the rest of my specification (its only £10 more when shipping and gpu are removed). However, you should consider waiting till the end of the month as a new generation of ATI graphics cards will be released then - they will be very fast and bring the prices of current cards down.
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Wise advice mate, thanks for your info!

Ok I'm gonna hold off until the end of the month its only a couple of weeks, give me chance to get some more cash together, for £190 is that card the best for that price or would you recommend something else?

Also will that motherboard you have chosen take quad core (AM3 is tri core right? so no quad core? but it would take something like this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-238-AM) if I choose to upgrade later and overclock well with an additional cooler?

Thanks again
 
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cmndr_andi said:
My pleasure, m8.

The card you picked is probably the best for £190 or less, but if you stretch an extra tenner then this one is a good chunk better. But to be honest, its a moot point as a much faster card (the 5850) is going to occupy that price point in a few weeks, so it's not really worth it.

The motherboard I chose is AM3 785 chipset, so will take any of the current AMD quad cores without any trouble.
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Thanks fella - I'll wait and see how much the 5850 comes in at then :D
 
cmndr_andi said:
If you build it yourself then you could get something like this:

419x2.png


Its a touch over budget, but will be rather rapid.
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Hi mate - the above was really useful to me but I didnt realise OCUK offer a buy now pay in 12 months option, so I'm going to use this and then just pay off the balance later in full.

So with this in mind I could probably go to between £500-£750, is there any chance you could re-spec me a system with the 4890 2GB Sapphire card (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-212-SP) as a base with best CPU I can afford, motherboard (fairly futureproof and Crossfire Capable), memory (4gb), adequate cooling/case/HDD (320gb-500gb can always upgrade later) and PSU (I guess I'm looking at 600w+ for that card with 4x75w 6pin PCI-Express - might run 2 of these cards long term)

See: http://activextream.com.my/2009/07/29/sapphire-vaporx-hd-4890-2gb-gddr5-pcie-oc/

If I could spend less than 750 more in the 600 range that would be better, but if you think for example between 650-750 is a massive jump in performance then cool if its marginal then I'd prefer to stay in the 5-650 range.

Is that ok mate? I'd really appreciate it if you didnt mind and would owe you several beers!
 
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Brilliant guys thanks v much for your help!

Two good options there as I was going to ask for an Intel equivalent! cheers

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, is it a definate official release date for the 5850? I'm going to dig around for any specs regarding PSU requirement.

I think I'm definately going to be heading for your AMD spec Cmndr_Andi, its just a case of which one - is there a great deal of performance/future proofing between the two? I do want to overclock at some point, so I'd probably gun for the more expensive offering, what kind of long term cooling would you recommend?

Thanks both, really appreciate your help!
 
Assuming the 5850 ends up being like £100 more ontop of the 4890, whats going to give greater performance?

The £616.42 offering with a 5850 or the £72x.xx with the 4890? I'm assuming the 5850?
 
StevenRaith said:
The 4890 and 285 trade punches, with one being better than the other at various tasks, but they are within the same performance range.

If the 5850 kicks the 285s backside as much as the link provided by Andi suggests, then the 5850 should also knock the spots off the 4890 also.
Click to expand...

and judging by the drivers in that link things can only get significantly better, so what your saying is a 5850 with AMD Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 BE 2.80GHz is still going to outstrip a 4890 2GB Vapor with AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 BE 3.20GHz??

What do you think?
 
That makes sense but to run DX11 in the way that it is intended I think your going to need to go Crossfire - it will be interesting to see how a maxed out DX10 game looks compared to a 65-75% maxed DX11 - i.e Crysis 2, I can imagine either of those cards struggling with that as is true to form with Crytek and blue sky gaming!

I think theres too many what ifs right now, the smart money is on waiting I suppose but if your pricing is right I will prob go for the Tri-Core and a 5870, afterall it will be cheaper to upgrade the CPU than the gfx card right?
 
Eight cores, can you imagine what games are going to be like when they become standard and hard disks are solid state with GPU's running multi cores and 5-10GB of RAM.

I installed a RamSAN in a Dell 2950 at work (Quad Quad Core Xeon 32GB RAM and 7TB RAID5 (10K SAS drives)) you should check them out, that card cost this company £22k and you know what? it had 450GB of SLC flash storage space, it was installed to run SQL Servers tempdb on and the difference between running the database (massive R+W/IOs) on flash and SAS was enormous, we are talking days difference to run the same process, it was ridiculous.

For a laugh we put the Win 2003 Server paging file on it, set it to 32GB and logging in was like changing channel on your tv.

but seriously, £22k for 450GB!!!!! oh and it was a PCIe card, check it out if your bored:

http://www.ramsan.com/products/ramsan-20.htm

pretty cool tech - interesting life span though (6 or 12 Years (25% writes) lol
 
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Ok fellas, first off Cmndr_Andi good suggestion waiting you were bang on the money with the pricing of the 5850!

Decision time now (last question then I'll shut up!)

For maximum gaming, I have the following options based on Andi's build:

£616.42 option = AMD PHENOM II X3 TRI CORE 720 BLACK ED 2.80GHz
£752.27 option = AMD PHENOM II X4 QUAD CORE 955 BLACK ED 3.20GHz

1. £616.42 OPTION with 2x5850's running crossfire
2. £616.42 OPTION with 1x5870
3. £616.42 OPTION with 2x4870's running crossfire
4. £752.27 OPTION With 1x5850

What do we think?

Thanks v much for your help!
 
Nice - that's what I was actually thinking, that should be a decent little unit.

Thanks again for all your help mate really appreciated, I'm going to order that today. :cool:
 
Thats fine mate, anytime next week is good - this weekend I'm busy doing social stuff with the gf so its no big deal, weekend after would be nice though as I'd be hoping to throw Crysis and Aion (which it should eat - Aion) at it since I get paid then!

Prob pick up Rome Total War aswell, used to love that game (I know, not particularly graphically challenging lol)
 
Just wanted to thank everyone who helped me in this thread, I got my PC last friday and its fully built and sitting in my living room, fantastic piece of kit I'm really happy with it - does everything I was hoping it would do very well.

I work with servers, but first time I've actually built my own PC - gotta love the first time you switch it on, that is un-forgettable moment especially when you realise you forgot to plug the hard disk into the motherboard (it had power) doh!!! not bad "only mistake" though for first time!

Thanks again guys, much appreciated
 
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