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Average Joe

Average Joe

Average Joe

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17 Jan 2010
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37
Hi all, after some advice here, sorry though you must get sick of these kinds of posts!

Anyhoo, Im a photographer/Retoucher by trade and so usually use macs. My current PC and Mac are both due for replacement and I just can't justify the £2k + of a new Mac pro. Of course I play games as well as wanting to use it for work.
ARMA 2 was the game that showed me my current PC is out dated!

I like the looks of both the £1000 and £1500 builds in the components guide
( http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18060182 ) but I already have a HIS Radeon 4670. SO my first question is rather than spending £300+ on a new 1gb card, how much worse would it be if I got another 4670 for £60 and crossfired it?

Im sure if I get answers they'll be more questions, I've been out of the PC game for a looong time!
 
Go for the iMac, not as much as the MacPro but probably just as powerful; ask a similar question in the Apple hardware forum and see what sort of replies you get before you dump the macs
 
One £300+ graphics card will beat your two 4670's. Of course, you'll get more performance out of your pc for less money, but you'll still have to upgrade again in the not too distant future.

Let us know the rest of your PC spec (all separate components, as well as what speed they run at) and we can better see what kind of boost you'd get from certain components.
 
I think I'd consider an Imac but I already quite an expensive screen.. also Im not convinced by the hardware calibration on Imacs, or any apple monitors for that matter...
 
If I was to say its a nearly 6 year old Dell would you stop talking to me?!
It was a strange find on the Dell outlet site.. stupidly high spec for £600 oh and it had someone elses family photos on it!!, Of course the Gcard is Newer but only as it came from a friend.

It was dual(?) 3.2 P4
4Gig Ram
1tb Hard drive, (2x500GB raid 0)
Creative labs sound card
Original GCard was 256mb.. not sure what it was though!

So no real chance of upgrade.

But would a £1000 machine be needing an upgrade much sooner than the £1500 one?
 
Is the general consensus then that Macs are still better for graphics work? I assumed as they're both now using intel chips, the I7 (maybe I5?) system would be a match for the Mac?
 
There's no reason at all to buy a Mac for graphics work unless you want to. PCs run Adobe CS4 just as well. In fact, you can build a system as fast as the basic Mac Pro for under half the price.
 
Average Joe said:
ARMA 2 was the game that showed me my current PC is out dated!
Click to expand...

its not your PC, ArmA II is just coded like carp. But your GFX is quite weak to be running ArmA 2 to be honest. If you want a PC than will run ArmA II on very high settings your gonna have to build a epic PC :cool:
 
To run ArmA II really nicely I'd suggest a 5850 crossfire setup or a 5870 (it has a huge ATI bias). Have a look on hardware.fr somewhere, multi-gpu scaling kicks in at 1920x1200 rendering at 2560x1600 nicely. It's also heavily CPU dependant, so I'd say i5 750 overclocked would be a good place to start looking - it doesn't like hyperthreading at all, you have to manually set it to only use 4 cores if you've got an i7.

I'll spec up a rig now.
 
Infam0us said:
its not your PC, ArmA II is just coded like carp. But your GFX is quite weak to be running ArmA 2 to be honest. If you want a PC than will run ArmA II on very high settings your gonna have to build a epic PC :cool:
Click to expand...

That did occur to me.. But my computer is now hitting the minimum specs for most games, and I wouldn't even want to attempt CS3 let alone CS4 on it!

Its because Macs are so expensive Im looking into the PC route.. I could build a PC for under £1500 that I think would last a long time, and be easier to upgrade than any mac!

Thanks guys.. Looks like Ill be bastardising the £1000 and £1500 build suggestions.

One more thing... Cases confuse me. I dont really want anything bigger than a mac pro, but do they need to be massive to fit al the high end cards etc in these days?
 
This is pretty much what I'd get - I've included a small SSD for boot/Arma - Arma doesn't cache much in RAM - reading 9GB of textures from an SSD rather than a traditional HDD can help a lot with performance. The other method is to use a RAM-drive, but that would likely cost more than this SSD.

screenshot20100118at155.png
 
Infam0us said:
Sauce?
Click to expand...

Have a look at the graphs on this page, particularly the second one:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/777-7/dossier-amd-radeon-hd-5970.html

Edit - forgot it's in french. The text says they've got everything except view distance maxed out (VD @ 3500m), and then says that you can render at a different resolution to outputted image, but they've got the fillrate at 100% (i.e. 1:1). The AA options in-game are different if you have Nvidia or ATI, 3rd paragraph clarifies how they kept it fair.
 
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Of course it is because ATI have the most powerful card out at the moment, does'nt mean it prefers ATI to Nvidia. I've got friends who can max out ArmA 2 with ATi and Nvidia its not specific to GFX design its specific to raw power ;)
 
Bit unusual for a 4870x2 to double GTX285 numbers? Or here (see second again) a 4890 beats a GTX285, and if you're selective, a GTX295 at 2560x1600 4xAA.

Bit of a moot point anyway, ATI is clearly the best choice if you're building a rig for Arma 2 at this moment in time.
 
Josh Pencheon said:
Bit unusual for a 4870x2 to double GTX285 numbers? Or here (see second again) a 4890 beats a GTX285, and if you're selective, a GTX295 at 2560x1600 4xAA.

Bit of a moot point anyway, ATI is clearly the best choice if you're building a rig for Arma 2 at this moment in time.
Click to expand...

One set of benchys proves nothing :) If the card has the raw power it will run ArmA 2. It does'nt matter what brand it is ;)
 
Josh Pencheon said:
This is pretty much what I'd get - I've included a small SSD for boot/Arma - Arma doesn't cache much in RAM - reading 9GB of textures from an SSD rather than a traditional HDD can help a lot with performance. The other method is to use a RAM-drive, but that would likely cost more than this SSD.

screenshot20100118at155.png
Click to expand...

Excellent thanks! got some good ideas now..

couple of quetions.. because Im new to this, how come you've added the cpu cooling and extra fan + cables? Is this for overclocking purposes only? On the sticky thread of builds, none of them have extra cooling.. Don't the case some with some fans inside already?

Also the SSD, would you install the OS (and games) on this drive, and use the other for everything else? simply for speed of boot and games?

Sorry for the Noob questions! Ill get there in the end!
 
CPU cooling - I added an OEM CPU because it's £10, but doesn't come with the fan (which is pants anyway). If you're going to be overclocking (highly recommended for Arma), you'll need a better cooling solution. The case comes with fans, both the Apaches I've spec'd are for the Megahalems. The splitter cable allows them to be both powered by the special CPU_FAN socket on the motherboard, which means that they'll automatically be speed-controlled depending on load. This isn't a unique feature of these fans (what you need is PWM), but I'd recommend them. If you don't like the colour, you can now get all-black versions for a quid more.

The SSD will have room for OS / Pagefile / a couple of games. Most games won't see a dramatic benefit from being on an SSD (shorter loading times only, basically), but Arma places a lot of stress on the HDD, and massively benefits from an SSD. It's by no means essential, but it's still nicely within your budget, and is probably a better use of £100 than getting an i7 860 instead, for example. It will speed up boot as well. :)

Edit: The case I spec'd is a placeholder - it's down to personal preference entirely. For big cases, maybe consider the CoolerMaster Cosmos, Silverstone Fortress 2 or the Corsair Obsidian. Quiet cases would be the Antec P183 or Fractal Define R2, whilst high airflow would be something like Antec 902/1200. All would be fine, just down to taste. :)
 
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Cases?

Ok so far Ive chosen these bits... but the cases are causing me trouble..

Looks like Ill be hitting £1500 but Im gonna hold off on the GCard atm.


The case I have here is a full case but really Id like a smaller one if pos? the most important thing is quiet running though, so any quiet cases for less money?

picture1jwo.png


 
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