Making a new PC

[Palom]

Re: Making a new PC

yeah I checked out all the ATX cases @ newegg I just really like that one for some reson but ur right about bigger fans

[neighbortaru]

Re: Making a new PC

some of my comments about your choices

1) why do you need a full tower case? you are not buying many other drives. waste of space (and money). the coolermaster centurion (posted above) is a very nice case and roughly half the price.

2) if you want to shave some money off, don't go the SLI/crossfire route. do you ever plan to use 2 video cards in tandem? If not, just go with a single video card motherboard.

3) radeon x1600 is a relative weak mid range card. a 7600gt would be a much better buy.

4) the amd 64s are dual channel memory chips so when you buy ram, always buy in matched pairs so you don't get incompatibilities in the future. If you want 1GB, then buy one of the 2x512MB kits.

[Palom]

Re: Making a new PC

lol I just like the case,

as far as cards go again I thought that the ATI's were better for XI but It seems everyone is telling me to get Nvidia cards

I do plan on getting real hardcore with the PC gaming and will use dual cards sometime soon, I'm just trying to get a card that would run XI to its fullest with out wasting money with to much overkill

as far as memory goes thanks for ur help with that i'll change it to a pair of 512's

setting that all aside what do u think of the MB should I change it?
do you think it would be a good board for upgrades?

[Mhurron]

Re: Making a new PC

ATI cards will give you less problems in FFXI the nVidia cards. What everyone is pointing out is that the x1600 is not top of the line (but very capable) and nVidia is again at the moment king of the hill for graphics performance, which may be important to you for games other then FFXI.

The x1600 is fine for most games now, but if you are going to be, as you say 'getting real hardcore with the PC gaming,' then you'll probably have to upgrade that card before you do. It all depends on when you want to spend the money, now or later.

[Palom]

Re: Making a new PC

okay I understand now I'll just keep the X1600 for now and It can take a hike later on when I want more power and just change it out with two X1900 XTX
or whatever is the big card by that time


question:

Also with AMD64 for best performance Use only two sticks of memory. Using 4 sticks drops your memory speed down to 333mhz and t2 timings, you can normally get your memory speed back up to 400mhz but with four sticks you can Never run T1 timings. (its a common mistake people make)

so this means if I get a pair of 512's so I can have a GB If later on I need 2GB the best way would be to get a pair of 1GB's and send the 512's on there way to meet there maker?

EDIT: I was just reading up on the dual and single cores would It just be better for me to get a faster/cheaper single core? then dual? XI only uses single core correct?

[Thrasher]

Re: Making a new PC

I would go dual core unless you are planing to do another major upgrade in less then 6 months. If all you plan on doing is gaming then a faster single core will give you a bigger boost, but over all I would go dual core cause programs (hopefully) will be making better use of dual core processors soon (I hope). Quake 4 gets like a 40% boost from dual cores. (note that is after a patch is installed)

The whole memory thing sucks I know, but its better you knew about that before you installed 4 sticks and go WTF 333mhz.

At the max resolution of your monitor running dual cards will give you very little in extra performance. If you have money to burn just buy the fastest video card or better yet buy the fastest sub 400 dollar video card, the current sweet spot for video card prices is $250-350.

As much as ATI and Nvidia want you to beleave there marketing the reality is dual cards do not give you a 50% boost, in a game optimized for dual cards you might get a 20% boost max and normally using dual cards gives you a -5% through 10% boost. (im not kidding about the -5% part)

And the primary reason for (still) building in mid tower case is availability of good motherboards, but ya they are way to big and annoying but they support 120mm fans and huge cpu heat sinks.

Ever seen a full tower they make my mid towers look small.

[Eohmer]

Re: Making a new PC

I have that Centurion one, with a HUGE FAN for my CPU, heh... on picture, I didn't think it would fit either, but it fits perfectly fine, with an extra bit of room.

[Palom]

Re: Making a new PC

At the max resolution of your monitor running dual cards will give you very little in extra performance. As much as ATI and Nvidia want you to beleave there marketing the reality is dual cards do not give you a 50% boost, in a game optimized for dual cards you might get a 20% boost max and normally using dual cards gives you a -5% through 10% boost. (im not kidding about the -5% part)

Geez what a Freaking scam man really...and what a bummer too oh well its better I found out like this and not the hard way ><

thanks so much for all the info and help with making my game box
u guys have saved me some time,money and stress

[Mhurron]

Re: Making a new PC

Geez what a Freaking scam man really

Only if you're too young to remember Voodoo.

[Khaeos]

Re: Making a new PC

nVidia cards screw up with FFXI? That could say something about all the problems I've been having. My computer is one I cobbled together myself. 2Ghz, 1.5GB DDRam, GeForce 6600GT card. But sometimes I often had trouble with my computer restarting suddenly, or FFXI blinking off. It always said "Device Driver conflicting".

Is this the sort of problems Nvidia cards have with it? Or is it something else in my computer. It seems to be focused solely around FFXI.

[neighbortaru]

Re: Making a new PC

ah.. I still have my voodoo 2 in the garage somewhere.

Palom, I would buy a different motherboard since SLI/crossfire is not really that great imho. Look for a good nforce 4 board; DFI, Asus, Gigabyte are some good brands.

[Thrasher]

Re: Making a new PC

nVidia cards screw up with FFXI? That could say something about all the problems I've been having. My computer is one I cobbled together myself. 2Ghz, 1.5GB DDRam, GeForce 6600GT card. But sometimes I often had trouble with my computer restarting suddenly, or FFXI blinking off. It always said "Device Driver conflicting".

Is this the sort of problems Nvidia cards have with it? Or is it something else in my computer. It seems to be focused solely around FFXI.

Accually that sounds more like a bad power supply.

Only if you're too young to remember Voodoo.

But SLI ruled Quake 2, kinda like Doom3 only Quake 2 didn't suck.......as bad. (Till Half-Life came out)

ah.. I still have my voodoo 2 in the garage somewhere.

I found a Commodore 64 in my garage, the disk drive was the size of a VCR

I like these 2 ABIT boards.

Abit KN8 SLI
Abit AN8 SLI
And this ASUS Board but only if you plan on overclocking.

The O N L Y reason those are all Nforce4 SLI boards is they have good passive solutions for the northbridgs, due to ill say this agian the loudest fan in my computer is that stupid Fan ASUS used on my northbridge. I hate small fans.

[Eohmer]

Re: Making a new PC

nVidia cards screw up with FFXI? That could say something about all the problems I've been having. My computer is one I cobbled together myself. 2Ghz, 1.5GB DDRam, GeForce 6600GT card. But sometimes I often had trouble with my computer restarting suddenly, or FFXI blinking off. It always said "Device Driver conflicting".

Is this the sort of problems Nvidia cards have with it? Or is it something else in my computer. It seems to be focused solely around FFXI.

I use 2 nVidia Geforce 6600GT, just like yours, and I've no problems since built mine. Everything runs great.

[kuu]

Re: Making a new PC

As much as ATI and Nvidia want you to beleave there marketing the reality is dual cards do not give you a 50% boost, in a game optimized for dual cards you might get a 20% boost max and normally using dual cards gives you a -5% through 10% boost. (im not kidding about the -5% part)

And the primary reason for (still) building in mid tower case is availability of good motherboards, but ya they are way to big and annoying but they support 120mm fans and huge cpu heat sinks.

Ever seen a full tower they make my mid towers look small.

Well SLI isn't really about speed, but about the VRAM.

Having more VRAM helps trementrouly if a taxed GPU+ higher rez.

The more VRAM you have, the higher more pixels you can shove in there.

Nothing's going to matter if your LCD is only doing 1280, on decent game, but if you're sticking 1600 -> 1920 etc etc.

VRAM is suddenly King. And I think everyone here at least knows what having higher resolution means.

Really SLI while nice for games, should really be ment for hi-end production work.

If you're doing HD-editing, 256 vs 512 can mean a world of difference. RT-editing, litterly drops off like a boulder the moment you run out of vram to shove it in.

[Palom]

Re: Making a new PC

Only if you're too young to remember Voodoo.

yep, my parents would never buy me a computer with a video card
I was just a console gamer back then ^^

Palom, I would buy a different motherboard since SLI/crossfire is not really that great imho. Look for a good nforce 4 board; DFI, Asus, Gigabyte are some good brands.

sounds good after learning about the dual card scam, but I would still like to stick with ATI since my main game I will be playing most of the time will be XI