Need help with a spec

_Simon_ · 30 Mar 2006 at 15:01

Hi, sorry to be yet another noob asking for a spec, but basically that's what I am. I want a good gaming rig. My budget is not incredibly fixed, probably looking to spend £1,000 - £1,500.

Most of my gaming time is spent in WoW, and my four year old Dell is struggling severely.

I have a dell 24" widescreen monitor, so don't need that, but need everything else.

Any thoughts?

Havana_UK · 30 Mar 2006 at 15:09

Welcome to the forums.

Will you be transferring anything other than your monitor to the new rig?

Let me know, and I'll get straight onto a spec for you - should be able to get a sweet machine for £1.5K, considering you don't need the monitor.

Hav

Havana_UK · 30 Mar 2006 at 15:54

CP-148-AM AMD Opteron UP 170 Dual Core San Diego 2.0GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-148-AM)
£274.95 £274.95
MB-018-DF DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-018-DF)
£124.95 £124.95
CA-039-AN Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Silver) (CA-039-AN)
£69.95 £69.95
CA-025-EN Enermax Liberty 500W ELT500AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-025-EN)
£61.95 £61.95
GX-072-XF XFX GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (PVT71F-YDLR) (GX-072-XF)
£324.95 £324.95
HD-046-WD Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
£55.95 £55.95
CD-030-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE)
£24.95 £24.95
HS-023-TR ThermalRight SI-120 (Socket 754/939/478) Heatsink (HS-023-TR)
£26.95 £26.95
FG-024-AK Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK)
£8.95 £26.85
SC-034-CL Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - Retail (SC-034-CL)
£69.95 £69.95
KB-066-LG Logitech Media Keyboard Elite - Retail (KB-066-LG)
£16.95 £16.95
KB-020-RA Razer Copperhead SK Edition 2000dpi High Precision Gaming Mouse - Retail (KB-020-RA)
£39.95 £39.95
GS-001-IC Icemat - Black 2nd Edition (GS-001-IC)
£16.50 £16.50
MY-079-CS Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS)
£119.95 £119.95
Subtotal £1,254.75
VAT £219.45
Total £1,474.20

You've even got change from £1500!

That includes a keyboard, gaming mouse and mouse mat too. Mouse & mouse mat are my personal preferences, so you could chop & change for others if you wanted.

Hav

_Simon_ · 30 Mar 2006 at 18:04

Havana_UK said:
Welcome to the forums.

Will you be transferring anything other than your monitor to the new rig?

Let me know, and I'll get straight onto a spec for you - should be able to get a sweet machine for £1.5K, considering you don't need the monitor.

Hav

Nah, only moving the monitor over.

Thanks for coming up with a spec so quickly!

_Simon_ · 7 Apr 2006 at 08:39

So the graphics card is out of stock, and no idea when it will be in. I am keen to get this asap, and OcUK have suggested the X1900 XT-X as a replacement. Any issues with this or should I go for it?

Only thing I can think of is that the MoBo is a SLI one, and the X1900 XT-X would be XFire rather than SLI, if I decided to go that route. Not even sure that this is an issue though.

Help!

Havana_UK · 7 Apr 2006 at 08:46

You could go for the OcUK model instead - that's on 1-3 days.

There's nothing wrong with putting an ATI card in the nVidia SLi motherboard, however if you wanted to go dual card later and chose ATI you'd need an ATI motherboard to do so.

Hav

Monstermunch · 7 Apr 2006 at 09:27

How about this, better CPU, better GPU, Much Much Better RAM, and all for less:

CP-153-AM AMD Opteron UP 175 Dual Core San Diego 2.2GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-153-AM)
£319.95 £319.95
HS-007-TT Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe (Socket 939/754/775/478) CPU Cooler (CL-P0114) (HS-007-TT)
£24.95 £24.95
MB-014-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£79.95 £79.95
MY-058-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC4000 Dual Channel Platinum Series EB-DDR CAS3 (OCZ5002048EBPE-K) (MY-058-OC)
£199.95 £199.95
GX-113-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-113-SP)
£319.95 £319.95
HD-002-HI Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£56.50 £56.50
CD-026-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£25.95 £25.95
CA-012-TT Thermaltake VA3000BNA Tsunami Dream SuperMidi Aluminium Tower - Black (CA-012-TT)
£59.95 £59.95
CA-008-TG Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-008-TG)
£69.95 £69.95
KB-066-LG Logitech Media Keyboard Elite - Retail (KB-066-LG)
£16.95 £16.95
KB-069-LG Logitech G5 Gaming-Grade Laser Mouse (KB-069-LG)
£31.95 £31.95
Subtotal £1,206.00
VAT £211.05
Total £1,417.05

Monstermunch · 7 Apr 2006 at 09:57

Or even this for £1500:

CD-026-NE NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£25.95 £25.95
CA-012-TT Thermaltake VA3000BNA Tsunami Dream SuperMidi Aluminium Tower - Black (CA-012-TT)
£59.95 £59.95
CA-008-TG Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-008-TG)
£69.95 £69.95
KB-066-LG Logitech Media Keyboard Elite - Retail (KB-066-LG)
£16.95 £16.95
KB-069-LG Logitech G5 Gaming-Grade Laser Mouse (KB-069-LG)
£31.95 £31.95
CP-154-AM AMD Opteron UP 180 Dual Core San Diego 2.4GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-154-AM)
£449.95 £449.95
HS-007-TT Thermaltake Big Typhoon 4 in 1 Heatpipe (Socket 939/754/775/478) CPU Cooler (CL-P0114) (HS-007-TT)
£24.95 £24.95
MB-014-DF DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£79.95 £79.95
MY-057-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£139.95 £139.95
GX-047-HT HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-047-HT)
£314.95 £314.95
HD-011-HI Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 250GB ATA-133 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31611) (HD-011-HI)
£59.95 £59.95
Subtotal £1,274.45
VAT £223.03
Total £1,497.48

Jack Bauer · 7 Apr 2006 at 12:50

Seems to me unless hes OCing he dont need to pay that much for the memory, might as well put the money in to a crossfire/SLI board.

Monstermunch · 7 Apr 2006 at 16:28

Jack Bauer said:
Seems to me unless hes OCing he dont need to pay that much for the memory, might as well put the money in to a crossfire/SLI board.

Why!!!!!!!!!!!

You don't need one if not going dual gfx cards!

Plus buying good ram has nothing really to do with overclocking, it's much faster than std ram. The one I quoted for will do 2-3-2-5 latencies, whereas a cheaper ram will be something like 3-4-4-8 minimum, which is a lot slower!

Jack Bauer · 7 Apr 2006 at 18:22

Yer, which makes very little differnce to games. In fact if I remember right the only game that gave an improvement was HL2 ( out of a collection of games from this year ) So hes spending £40 on a bit more HL2 performace. For that he could have the option of SLI, after all you have given him a SLI capable power supply. If hes OCing then fair enought otherwise its a waste of money.

Nikolic · 7 Apr 2006 at 19:20

Jack Bauer said:
Yer, which makes very little differnce to games. In fact if I remember right the only game that gave an improvement was HL2 ( out of a collection of games from this year ) So hes spending £40 on a bit more HL2 performace. For that he could have the option of SLI, after all you have given him a SLI capable power supply. If hes OCing then fair enought otherwise its a waste of money.

But he wouldn't be going SLI with a x1900 would he?

Jack Bauer · 7 Apr 2006 at 20:47

so a crossfire board then, my point is expensive ram has little impact on games. So he might as well put the money in to something else

It is a gaming rig after all.

Jack Bauer · 7 Apr 2006 at 20:48

Jack Bauer said:
Seems to me unless hes OCing he dont need to pay that much for the memory, might as well put the money in to a crossfire/SLI board.

and if you had read the whole thing I did say crossfire/SLI depending on the card he picked

Monstermunch · 7 Apr 2006 at 21:06

Jack Bauer said:
so a crossfire board then, my point is expensive ram has little impact on games. So he might as well put the money in to something else

It is a gaming rig after all.

Sorry but I would have to disagree, graphics cards are a short lived boost to games. Now they update gfx cards every 6-9 months to continue the boost he would have to shell out another £600ish in about a year to keep up with current spec.

The ram on the other hand will stay with the machine and will last and give continuos all round improvement including games. The Ram latency speed is much more imprtant than you might think.

Games still need to load massive amounts of info into the ram, faster ram which make more difference IMO than an extra gfx card.

Do you honestly think that anyone could tell the difference while gaming between a single x1900 or 2 of them. Benchmarking maybe but not ingame

Jack Bauer · 7 Apr 2006 at 21:10

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2004/01/19/ups_and_downs/page13.html

and a better one, the one i was orginally taling about how ever it seems to be a dead link now

www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48634

google did give a quot from it tho

How memory timings on A64's affect performance - The truth. ... $50 extra for 1 FPS under normal gaming conditions is not something most people would spring

and no i dont think he would tell the differnce now however having the option later might be an advantage compared to something that he does not need. Also ram latency has next to no effect on games at all with the exception of HL2

Monstermunch · 7 Apr 2006 at 22:11

Jack Bauer said:
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2004/01/19/ups_and_downs/page13.html

and a better one, the one i was orginally taling about how ever it seems to be a dead link now

www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48634

google did give a quot from it tho

How memory timings on A64's affect performance - The truth. ... $50 extra for 1 FPS under normal gaming conditions is not something most people would spring

and no i dont think he would tell the differnce now however having the option later might be an advantage compared to something that he does not need. Also ram latency has next to no effect on games at all with the exception of HL2

Man, there's way more than 1fps difference in that review. But i'd also like to point out that the review is completely out of date as well. They looking at via chipsets and nF2 & nF3. The hypertransport was much less and half the chips don't have the on board memory controller.

There is a later benchmark on the overclocking forum which I think is in one of the sticky's. If you read that it'll show you for example what the difference is. In that benchy they showed that 400mhz ram @ 2-3-2-5 was much faster than 500mhz ram @ 3-4-4-8.

You could only summerize from that benchmark that if that's the case then 400mhz @ 2-3-2-5 would completely demolish 400mhz @ 3-4-4-8

Jack Bauer · 8 Apr 2006 at 00:31

http://techreport.com/etc/2005q4/mem-latency/index.x?pg=1

another one then

Jack Bauer · 8 Apr 2006 at 00:32

and im not saying the ram aint faster, that was never my point. Im just saying it makes very little differnce in games and the money might be better spent else where

Monstermunch · 8 Apr 2006 at 01:02

Jack Bauer said:
and im not saying the ram aint faster, that was never my point. Im just saying it makes very little differnce in games and the money might be better spent else where

That's an interesting read, what I would deduce from that though is that the tighter timings do make things a lot quicker in terms of gaming, however the difference is minimised when running in the highest detail/res and with aa & af. All I can think of is that the system was being bottlenecked elsewhere, because if you look at the 800x600 benches with no aa or af this difference is quite large.