The mother of all pc's

FrankJH · 29 Jun 2006 at 06:57

pretty dreadful speakers for a "mother" - imho you should use a seperate hifi / multichannel amp to feed decent speakers ( there are even mini ones which would give you a better sound than those Creative ones)

Also Apple Display is outperformed and doesnt look as nice as the Dell 30" as well as being more expensive

Whats the point of 3 raptors apart from for w.waving? No one has seen any added benefit from raiding these so you might as well just have one ( or possibly two in a raid 1 config)

Just a few pointers

lay-z-boy · 29 Jun 2006 at 13:40

FrankJH said:
pretty dreadful speakers for a "mother" - imho you should use a seperate hifi / multichannel amp to feed decent speakers ( there are even mini ones which would give you a better sound than those Creative ones)

Also Apple Display is outperformed and doesnt look as nice as the Dell 30" as well as being more expensive

Whats the point of 3 raptors apart from for w.waving? No one has seen any added benefit from raiding these so you might as well just have one ( or possibly two in a raid 1 config)

Just a few pointers

i dont think you have heard them and they are anything but dreadful.
He is after a games machine not a hifi thats going to cost more than a house, hifi speakers arnt for games and if you have a 7.1 soundcard why not get a 7.1 setup?

You cant order the dell, suprisingly i would have got it if i could :rolleyes:

but its not like the apple is bad is it?, would you turn it down?

This comp is for w.waving, 3 raptors in raid 0 are going to be faster than 1, please show me some decent results where 3 drives are not as fast as 1.

Mattw · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:00

you could do with putting a price for people to work to really

Darkwave · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:45

Shocky-FM said:
Above setup looks fine except for X1900XTX, HDR+AA is great but that only works with one game and even thats because ATI have to force it with special drivers..

Whereas the 7950GX2 will make games playable at high resolutions 1920*1200 etc and benefit almost all games instead of just one.

Plus they overclock very well where the X1900XTX really doesnt overclock at all.

Firstly, HDR+AA is not only in one game. The X1*00 series can render FP32 HDR and antialiasing happily in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Far Cry, and Splinter Cell, not to forget that developers will no doubt be jumping at the chance to take advantage of this feature in their upcoming games.

Secondly; You're seriously over-rating the 7950GX2 here, it's a fantastic card without a doubt, and I would buy one if I could afford it but it's definitely not the greatest out there. If you want the mother of all gaming systems, as the thread requests, you're going to have to go quad-SLi with those, but since Conroe boards don't support SLi yet then your best bet is 2x X1900XT-X in Crossfire.

Thirdly; If you think that the X1900XT-X doesn't overclock well, you have obviously never used one or done your homework on them. The X1900 series not only overclock well, but the XT-X has 1.1ns RAM which means it can overclock even farther than the XT can.

Anyway, back on topic... I would like to suggest the following system if you want the "mother of all gaming systems": -

DFI Infinity 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-020-DF)
Price: £129.95

Intel Core 2 DUO Extreme Edition X6800 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.93GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-130-IN)
Price: £659.95

G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5300 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA) (MY-012-GS)
Price: £99.95

(2x) Western Digital Raptor 150GB WD1500ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-069-WD) = £315.00
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
Price: £49.95

ATI Radeon X1900 ***Crossfire Edition*** 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-045-CO)
Price: £259.95

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
Price: £221.95

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - Retail (SC-034-CL)
Price: £66.50

Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey (MO-009-DE)
Price: £649.95

Creative GigaWorks 7.1 S750 THX® Speakers - Retail (SP-027-CL)
Price: £224.95

SpeedLink Medusa SL-8793 5.1 ProGamer Edition (SP-026-SL)
Price: £36.10

Saitek PZ30AU Eclipse Illuminated Keyboard - Red (KB-018-SK)
Price: £24.95

Logitech G5 Gaming-Grade Laser Mouse (KB-069-LG)
Price: £33.95

Subtotal: £2,773.10
Shipping (City Link Next Day): £24.95
VAT: £489.66
Total: £3,287.71

Sizzle! :eek:

Not actually a bad price at all. I didn't add a case though, don't know much about them, but I would suggest a Lian Li V2000 or something.

Calum · 29 Jun 2006 at 14:59

Lol. Read his sig he has a x1900xtx, probably just a bad clocking one

Yewen · 29 Jun 2006 at 15:06

Úlfhednar said:
Sizzle! I didn't add a case though, don't know much about them, but I would suggest a Lian Li V2000 or something.

Seen as this is no holds barred, then a Mountain Mods UFO case, v2000 is very low end if your going for the mother of all PC's.

A Windy flagship model may also be of interest.

http://www3.soldam.co.jp/case/spirits_of_japan/alcadia_xr/index.html

Can't get them in Europe as they do not have the safety certificate, but the Lian Li S80 is almost a copy of the case I have linked.

Stelly · 29 Jun 2006 at 15:09

shocking. 7k is that all? no water cooling??

Stelly

Darkwave · 29 Jun 2006 at 15:16

Calum said:
Lol. Read his sig he has a x1900xtx, probably just a bad clocking one

Didn't notice it.

Definitely a bad clocker then.

BTW isn't the X1800XT in your sig below stock clocks? :confused:

It's 625/750 in 3D Mode, no?

Psycho Sonny · 29 Jun 2006 at 17:40

Úlfhednar said:
Didn't notice it. Definitely a bad clocker then.

BTW isn't the X1800XT in your sig below stock clocks? It's 625/750 in 3D Mode, no?

its meant to be 625/750 but CCC puts it at those speeds, you can up those speeds in ati overdrive to real stock or overclock further

StevenG · 29 Jun 2006 at 17:42

Stelly said:
shocking. 7k is that all? no water cooling??

Stelly

why dont you go phase and stick another £500 on there?

Energize · 29 Jun 2006 at 17:48

Just wondering whats so good about the gskill ram? I know cas isnt a major factor but 4 when you can get cas2! Or is it just that ddr2 ram has sucky timings?

no_1_dave · 29 Jun 2006 at 17:55

7900 GTX SLI > X1900 XT Crossfire

But conroe doesnt support SLI yet

Cant wait to see Intel Nforce 5 boards

Darkwave · 29 Jun 2006 at 17:56

Energize said:
Just wondering whats so good about the gskill ram? I know cas isnt a major factor but 4 when you can get cas2! Or is it just that ddr2 ram has sucky timings?

DDR2 has sucky timings because it has much higher clock frequencies IIRC.

no_1_dave said:
7900 GTX SLI > X1900 XT Crossfire.

O RLY? Unfortunately, Oblivion is the the only benchmark I could find in the five seconds I could be bothered looking, but the key here is minimum FPS.

I think you'll see results like this in most games now.

Not to mention that an X1900 Crossfire system is cheaper, £560 vs. £635 ish.

I think you should turn that chevron around.

Let's also not forget that Intel has something against SLi at the moment, but that's the Inq. so take it with a few kilos of salt.

FrankJH · 29 Jun 2006 at 18:27

lay-z-boy said:
i dont think you have heard them and they are anything but dreadful.
He is after a games machine not a hifi thats going to cost more than a house, hifi speakers arnt for games and if you have a 7.1 soundcard why not get a 7.1 setup?

You cant order the dell, suprisingly i would have got it if i could but its not like the apple is bad is it?, would you turn it down?

This comp is for w.waving, 3 raptors in raid 0 are going to be faster than 1, please show me some decent results where 3 drives are not as fast as 1.

Compared to a decent set of speakers, yes they are dreadful!!!

Have you tried a proper 5.1 / 7.1 setup - if you had I very much doubt you would be saying home cinema speakers are not for games - I never said not go for 7.1 all I said was not to go for pc speakers (for that price anyway)

Yes I would turn the Apple down if another product was better - even if I had to wait a while to get it

Enough people have tested the different variety's of raptors on here in raid and not in raid and come to the same conclusion - but by all means try it and find out for yourself.

squiffy · 29 Jun 2006 at 18:32

lay-z-boy said:
i dont think you have heard them and they are anything but dreadful.
He is after a games machine not a hifi thats going to cost more than a house, hifi speakers arnt for games and if you have a 7.1 soundcard why not get a 7.1 setup?

Wrong. Hi-Fi/Home Theatre system is more than capable than ANY PC speakers, I should know

games through a good audio system blows PC speakers out of the water.

If the OP is willing to go OTT on a PC system, then it kinda defeats the point when using PC speakers (I say the same about people with £5000 Plasma screens and £200 HTIB)

Psycho Sonny · 29 Jun 2006 at 21:36

theres no point making all these specs for the guy when he only has a fiver to spend, has anybody even realised he never quoted a budget, i doubt he has more than 2000 to spend or even 1500

Darkwave · 29 Jun 2006 at 21:47

Psycho Sonny said:
theres no point making all these specs for the guy when he only has a fiver to spend, has anybody even realised he never quoted a budget, i doubt he has more than 2000 to spend or even 1500

He did ask for "the mother of all PC's," I'm sure we don't need to insult his intelligence by assuming he doesn't know it'll cost a bomb to get a PC of that description. Maybe he's just lucky and cost is not an issue unlike it is for me.