Introducing myself

Scougar

Scougar

Scougar

Soldato
Joined
30 Jan 2007
Posts
15,512
Location
PA, USA (Orig UK)
Hi :)

Ok to cut the waffle I wrote here's a summary:
Java Software Developer for Government, just married, lack of money to spend willy-nilly so spent little and got Asrock 4CoreDual and C2D 2160. Wanted the 4400 but couldn't justify the cost. Will remedy that later on and buy a quad. Needed to reuse my bits to keep costs down, hence why I went for this board. I don't expect much, but I'm sure it will out perform my old barton 2500+@2250mhz, and will help out my aging agp 6800LE@375/880 1.4v. Lastly.. i did want to get x1950pro agp but it didn't seem sensible investment so bought the C2D in hope that it will help get the best out of the 6800LE, until I can upgrade the card. Will wait till 2nd raft of DX10 cards comes out to do that. Mental Note: Must try and get a fatality sound card to quit the 'stalls' in BF2/2142 when it loads clips. Hmm.. can I overclock a souncard?

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WAFFLE and expansion on the ebove summary :rolleyes:

(Forgive me, this kind of goes on.. and is in no particular order)

I'm a software developer for the government and always been into hardware, only took the role as Java Programmer to gain some more skills. Interesting but would prefer using my degree etc for the things I really love. Anyway, i'm 29 and just got married, so "kinda" broke. We have money but using it to mainly pay of debts we have (overdraft, car loan etc), so upgrading my pc isn't the highest priority, and since I also want an xbox360 it would be kinda crappy to ask my wife to let me do a full upgrade on my system. Hence I have gone for the stuff listed below as it has to be better than my barton 2500@2250, and may help my games out a bit till I can afford a better gfx, or just give in and spend the money anyway lol.

Just bought a 2160 and Asrock 4coredual to tide me over for something better. I will reuse my 1gb of DDR 3200, and 6800LE@375/880 1.4v. I could have bought an agp x1950pro card but that seems like a backwards step and I wouldn't get the best out of it with the barton, plus I think I would like XP/vista to be more responsive.

Whilst I have little money (as American wife can't work and is waiting for a visa :() This setup will do. Its not what I really wanted but sometimes you have to make sacrifices. I don't want my wife to kill me basically, so minimised costs (which is strange cos we just bought a huge 42" Plasma, but the wife wanted that ! lol). Will sell my old kit to make up the diff a bit. The other reason I resisted upgrading was that I bought a dolby digital receiver for the PC and if I got rid of my NF2 motherboard I wouldn't have been able to use it properly. Now that's down stairs with the plama and upscaler... I guess I don't need to hang onto the motherboard for the DD encoding since I mainly use headphones or just an old hifi I have, so seems ok to sell the stuff now.

I only currently have crucial 3200ddr so I doubt I will be able to clock it very far at all. Will prob buy some cheap geil ddr2 if I get too bored though as the m-board won't be able to take that much of an overclock (it seems). I was about to press "BUY" on the 4400 but felt guilty at the cost so plumped for the 2160.

So will quit rambling for now :D

Matthew
Notes: I have always overclocked PC's even since o/cing an LG 12mhz 286. This isn't what I would like to start with a first post but hey can't always have the things you want when your married. Will try and get a ds3r and a cheap quad later on.
 
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Live in Devon in a little village with my wife (when she gets back from the states in *hopefully* a month, but did also llive in Birmingham for 4 years.

As for sound cards... why not? Surely it has an internal clock. I didn't say it would be easy :D Sometimes it seems to get quality sound it steals a lot of the resources of the PC. Would be interesting seeing a soundcard with a water block ;)

The write up.. it is big, but waffling. I feel gutted that I felt I had to 'settle' for the 2160, as it really ain't my usual style. I go for what I can make work the best for what I can afford. This time I went for something I know will underperform, just because of costs. I really wanted the 4400, but if i do that I may as well have bought a ds3r and a gfx card plus some geil ddr2.

Matthew
 
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lol.. don't see what I have lost my marbles. If it can process more faster (without increasing the speed at which the sound is played back!) then why not. I mean after all, Creative claim even on the xtreme gamer card a 15% increase in speed blah blah (Although that is to do with the software having a thread written for it so a bogus claim really). But couldn't that 15% be improved on?

Next I'll be suggesting making your hard disks spin faster ;) :D

Matthew
p.s. I realise that buying a fatality card is not the best performance per pound, but I am kinda fed up of the lag caused by air strike/artillary in bf2 due to the sounds. I don't give two hoots about the fatality brand, I just would like the X-RAM to stop all the HDD access for sounds.
 
You don't clock a CPU to gain additional 'quality' either.You clock it so it can do more things in shorter space of time. Why can't the same be said for a sound card? I.e. You can clock it faster allowing you to not take such a performance hit when using higher settings on the sound.

Matthew
 
True. Can't argue with that Stickroad (Due to the way the brain interprets sound).

My only concern is that some sound cards (on board notably) can reduce frame rates.

Matthew
 
I think what I was referring to here really should be called sound bottlenecking (S[ound]PU/[Audio]PU Bottlenecking) :)

I saw it mentioned on here that they had no more stuttering during bf2 artillery once they used the x-fi fatality card, hence my thought about overclocking a sound card.

I also wonder if anyone has done a frame rate comparison between an xtreme gamer, xtreme music and the fatality card.

Anyway... thankyou for the welcome guys :)

Matthew
p.s. Here is the quote found in the reviews of the fatality for bf2142 > Battlefield 2142, is an outstanding experience now, you can feel every shot and this will help you improve your scores, as you can hear every minute details and hear where your enemies are now.It also runs so much faster, no more dips in frame rates when the air strikes occur.
 
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I couldn't take it....

... I gave in and changed my order... bought the e4300 instead of the e2160 simply because it has a higher multiplier (and 2mb cache). I didn't think it was worth spending an extra £20 ish though to get 10x on the e4400 (although it has been mentioned the 4400 is likely to clock better).

Matthew
 
I can't run maxed out at 1024*768 let alone my desired res of 1280*1024 :( And that's with Athlon Barton @2160 at the mo and 6800LE (12/5) @ 375/860.

I defo think a new gfx card is in order... but doubt I can afford it :(

Matthew
 
Might be that the LE is only 128 mb... :( The GS has 16/6 as well? (more like the GT? Perhaps its the 2gb lol. Anyway.. I normally play on 64 player servers so it might be down to that and in game lag.. but it seems slow 'turning' etc and unresponsive on higher settings.

Matthew
 
Oh I go to plenty of pointless meetings... :rolleyes: Java's fun, its not the language that hard now.. it the amazing amount of configuration you have to learn and different technologies.

MarkLP> Near Tavistock, Devon.

Matthew
 
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