Hello, i am building my first gaming pc and need some ram advice.

Mpyra · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:32

Hello, i am building my first gaming pc... (Question Solved)

Question was answer for me elsewhere, thanks.

cmndr_andi · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:45

Wow, 3 275s and 3 280, that's a really interesting set of cards. I would suggest you sell the 3 280s and 1 of the 275s. I say this because the 275 uses newer 55nm process and thus is cooler and more efficient. It has all 240 stream processors activated, but a slightly smaller memeror bus and total memory amount.
As for selling one of the 275s, tri SLI doesn't scale very well at all (unlike dual card SLI). The money reclaimed can be used on something cool like an SSD, or my personal favourite - going into the bank.

As for RAM, I would suggest this stuff at the minute.

Yes you really want 64 bit windows 7, video memory is indeed included in the 32bit limit of 4GB. As X58 supports triple channel memory, then the best confuiguration for gaming uses is 6GB (3x2GB). Therefore system RAM + video RAM is over 7GB - so if you go for a 32 bit OS you loose a lot for no gain.

Mpyra · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:59

cmndr_andi said:
Wow, 3 275s and 3 280, that's a really interesting set of cards. I would suggest you sell the 3 280s and 1 of the 275s. I say this because the 275 uses newer 55nm process and thus is cooler and more efficient. It has all 240 stream processors activated, but a slightly smaller memeror bus and total memory amount.
As for selling one of the 275s, tri SLI doesn't scale very well at all (unlike dual card SLI). The money reclaimed can be used on something cool like an SSD, or my personal favourite - going into the bank.

As for RAM, I would suggest this stuff at the minute.

yes you really want 64 bit windows 7, video memory is indeed included in the 32bit limit of 4gb. as x58 supports triple channel memory, then the best confuiguration for gaming uses is 6gb (3x2gb). therefore system ram + video ram is over 7gb - so if you go for a 32 bit os you loose a lot for no gain.

darn i erased the original post as i didn't want to waste anybody's time before you posted.

still i would just respond by saying in crysis warhead the 285's scale awesomely in trisli and i am hoping the same is true of the 275's and 285's.

i'm new to pc gaming and am just making a rig to play crysis warhead on for the new few month's.

you might find these benchmarks interesting:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264-3.html

6 GB and 64 bit system seems to offer no performance benefit over 32- bit 3 GB, in other benchmarks I've actually seen 64- bit 3 GB do work than 32 - Bit 3 GB and then 6 GB being needed to pull equal on 64-bit.

cmndr_andi · 13 Mar 2010 at 21:13

Aye, some games do scale pretty well with tri-SLI. It isn't as cost effective as dual SLI, but if you want ultimate perfomance (and buy a good enough PSU) then there are certainly benefits to see.

As for RAM, I agree that most games are not limited by RAM past 3GB (hence my recommendation not to get 12GB), however I would suggest buying a 64 bit OS. These days 64 bit is becoming the norm and costs no more than 32 bit - so there is no benefit in going with 32 bit unless you have already paid for it.

As for buying 3GB ram instead, in those benchmarks there is certainly no benefit going for 6GB over 3GB, but the benchmarks do not represent all current (and future) games, so I would advise going for 6GB instead of 3GB if only for future usage and non-gaming applications/multitasking. Also, per GB a 6GB kit is cheaper than a 3GB kit and if you ever want to upgrade the 3GB system to 6GB you will have to either replace the RAM or populate all RAM slots - which isn't ideal.

Mpyra · 13 Mar 2010 at 21:32

cmndr_andi said:
Aye, some games do scale pretty well with tri-SLI. It isn't as cost effective as dual SLI, but if you want ultimate perfomance (and buy a good enough PSU) then there are certainly benefits to see.

As for RAM, I agree that most games are not limited by RAM past 3GB (hence my recommendation not to get 12GB), however I would suggest buying a 64 bit OS. These days 64 bit is becoming the norm and costs no more than 32 bit - so there is no benefit in going with 32 bit unless you have already paid for it.

As for buying 3GB ram instead, in those benchmarks there is certainly no benefit going for 6GB over 3GB, but the benchmarks do not represent all current (and future) games, so I would advise going for 6GB instead of 3GB if only for future usage and non-gaming applications/multitasking. Also, per GB a 6GB kit is cheaper than a 3GB kit and if you ever want to upgrade the 3GB system you will have to either replace the RAM or populate all RAM slots - which isn't ideal.

In this long review, GPU scaling between single dual and triple gtx 285's and ati 5870's:

http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/HD 5870 TriFire/P19.html

The scaling of tri sli if adequate to justify utilizing it imo.

The main reason for my enthusiasm for tri slied gtx cards however is mostly focused on Crysis Warhead performance, while overall tri sli 285's are only on par with 2 x 5870's in CW the gtx' are 40% faster:

http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/HD 5870 TriFire/P3.html

They are also 30% faster than 3x 5870's.

Seeing as that's the only pc game i am interested in right now, the gtx cards are the only option that make sense.

I could always upgrade my RAM in the future if i run into any difficulty running another game i find like.

Do you knowing anything in regard to timings and latencies?

This is something I've been trying to get my head around for some time...

Thanks.

cmndr_andi · 13 Mar 2010 at 21:44

Sorry, I was just having a hard time wrapping my head round the concept, £1000 worth of PC just to play 1 game. I mean, sure, Crysis warhead is a good game, but is it really that good?

Obviously, its your money and you can spend it how you like, but I would urge you to try out some other recent games as well. Some examples that immediately jump to mind are Mass Effect (1&2), Fallout 3, Mount & Blade, Saints Row 2 and Bad Company 2.

As for speed of RAM, technically the i7 900 series is only rated at 1066MHz, tri channel, but we all know that it is perfectly happy at 1600MHz with 3 DIMMs occupied. As for gaming performance difference between 1066MHz and 1600MHz, it is pretty tiny - mainly because the triple channel memory offers such massive bandwidth. As for latency, there are small but definite benefits for going with low latency RAM in Memory intensive apps and benchmarks, in gaming however the difference is very small.

It doesn't sound like you are being constrained by a very tight budget, if this is the case I would suggest just going for a 64bit OS and 6GB RAM. It will cost a little bit more for the RAM, but it will mean you get better performance in non-gaming scenarios and means you don't have to upgrade RAM till much later.

Mpyra · 13 Mar 2010 at 22:15

cmndr_andi said:
Sorry, I was just having a hard time wrapping my head round the concept, £1000 worth of PC just to play 1 game. I mean, sure, Crysis warhead is a good game, but is it really that good?

Obviously, its your money and you can spend it how you like, but I would urge you to try out some other recent games as well. Some examples that immediately jump to mind are Mass Effect (1&2), Fallout 3, Mount & Blade, Saints Row 2 and Bad Company 2.

As for speed of RAM, technically the i7 900 series is only rated at 1066MHz, tri channel, but we all know that it is perfectly happy at 1600MHz with 3 DIMMs occupied. As for gaming performance difference between 1066MHz and 1600MHz, it is pretty tiny - mainly because the triple channel memory offers such massive bandwidth. As for latency, there are small but definite benefits for going with low latency RAM in Memory intensive apps and benchmarks, in gaming however the difference is very small.

It doesn't sound like you are being constrained by a very tight budget, if this is the case I would suggest just going for a 64bit OS and 6GB RAM. It will cost a little bit more for the RAM, but it will mean you get better performance in non-gaming scenarios and means you don't have to upgrade RAM till much later.

Well, to me having a gaming PC is just like having an Xbox 360 Elite and i only bought that so i could play MW2 and i got the Elite version because it was black and would match my TV (lol), MW2 is literally the only game i have for it.

I bought Bad Company 2 for my Xbox, graphics sucked way worse than MW2 probably due to the maps being larger or something like that. They'd probably be better on the PC, but I'm not really that interested in FPS on PC, that said FPS's are the only games i am interested in, something about Crysis just appeals to me, it clicks with me in the same way MW2 did, but the graphics are way better so i want to be able to appreciate them.

Thanks for the RAM advice, I'm not really on a tight budget, but i see no point in wasting money, it's actually sort of stimulating for me to see how much money i can save while preserving performance relative to my needs.

Thanks again.