New gaming machine needed - recommendations?
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Buy an Xbox 360. Quick & easy, for $350 you have a machine that can run COD5 at a great resolution at 30fps. And probably will be able to nicely run all the games in 2009 and 2010. The only problem is: you'll need to get used to the controller, it's a nice controller, but it's very different from playing with a keyboard and mouse.
I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
I've owned almost every gaming system that's come out from 1990 on. :-) Nothin' beats PC gaming, IMO. Can't beat a keyboard and mouse for FPS.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Thanks, I'm familiar with them. I just checked their desktop gaming systems[^], and it looks like I might be able to afford one. It is tempting to just buy an existing, pre-built machine without the hassle of getting one setup properly yourself.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Yeah, try it. I've been assembling from components for a long time, but at one point I grew tired of it (Blame the job.) Try your luck, it gives you at least someone to shout at if something doesn't work. And in the best case, you find out you actually enjoy not having to put the cooler on the CPU, plug in over a dozen of cables into a not-so-well-labeled MOBO, and look for clues in a babelfished chinese manual.
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64bit windows isn't bad anymore, it actually has decent driver support now and that was the only real downside it used to have. (except for old or rare hardware, such as many pre-USB printers) Vista would cost you a couple of FPS though (not many) and causes a lot of rants here on CP - personally I'd wait and see if maybe Vista SP2 is any better, or maybe Windows 7, and in the meantime use XP x64/Server 2003 x64. For gaming there is no advantage in having Vista, opinions vary if there is for normal work, but I doubt it (it only slows you down with UAC, slow network transfers and sluggishness of the new Explorer)
harold aptroot wrote:
For gaming there is no advantage in having Vista,
This is starting to change. The first major (nonMS/nonDemo) game with significantly better performance/image quality in DX10 vs DX9 is Far Cry 2. Now that Vista and DX10 hardware have gotten to be a large chunk of the higher end gaming market than XP the trend will probably continue since that's what the largest fraction of the player base will be using it's the natural target to concentrate on optimizing best.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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"Behemoth" is a quad core, cross-fire breathing (got 2 SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 512MB cards, they didn't have the 1 gig card at the time, but I plan to switch out one in the future). 2gig ram, and a 250gig HD. Sound is on board but will be update that part in the new year ( pending the creation of my Wife's box of course). Creating a gaming Rig for 1k is very do-able mine when I started a year ago noty even was $1025 (I needed new keybaord). your most expensive part maybe the graphics card proccessor so shop around ( I would not advise places like futureshop, bestbuy, etc unless forced to). Some swear by ati, some by Radeon. Cross-fire ( joinning of two cards) or what ever navidia calls it is optional, depends on personal preference. happy hunting.
///////////////// Thus spake the master programmer: ``A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program is its own hell.''
NightJammer wrote:
"Behemoth" is a quad core, cross-fire breathing (got 2 SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4850 512MB cards, they didn't have the 1 gig card at the time, but I plan to switch out one in the future).
Unless you also move upto the 4870, don't bother. The 4850's not fast enough to benefit from the extra ram. Even the 4870 only did about half the time (the rest something else was the bottle neck).
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Graham Bradshaw wrote:
eg if you are an ATI fan, making sure the motherboard is CrossFire compatible
I used to be a hardware freak, keeping up with all the latest releases on Tom's Hardware and other sites. Now I know almost nothing; I've never heard of crossfire! Given my lack of knowledge of hardware, would you still recommend building my own? And do you think I can get a decent gaming machine for $1000?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
I used to be a hardware freak, keeping up with all the latest releases on Tom's Hardware and other sites. Now I know almost nothing; I've never heard of crossfire!
It'll only take a days browsing to catch up. Things change, but not that much.
Bar fomos edo pariyart gedeem, agreo eo dranem abal edyero eyrem kalm kareore
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harold aptroot wrote:
For gaming there is no advantage in having Vista,
This is starting to change. The first major (nonMS/nonDemo) game with significantly better performance/image quality in DX10 vs DX9 is Far Cry 2. Now that Vista and DX10 hardware have gotten to be a large chunk of the higher end gaming market than XP the trend will probably continue since that's what the largest fraction of the player base will be using it's the natural target to concentrate on optimizing best.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
I just finished FarCry2 on my current machine. Had to turn down every graphics setting to make it runnable. :sigh:
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
xBox 360 / PS3, wont have to upgrade for at least another 5 years.
[Insert Witty Sig Here]
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xBox 360 / PS3, wont have to upgrade for at least another 5 years.
[Insert Witty Sig Here]
Same as my PC. (I've actually had my current gaming rig for more than 5 years, I believe.)
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Graham Bradshaw wrote:
eg if you are an ATI fan, making sure the motherboard is CrossFire compatible
I used to be a hardware freak, keeping up with all the latest releases on Tom's Hardware and other sites. Now I know almost nothing; I've never heard of crossfire! Given my lack of knowledge of hardware, would you still recommend building my own? And do you think I can get a decent gaming machine for $1000?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
Given my lack of knowledge of hardware, would you still recommend building my own?
Assembling hardware's much easier now that in was years ago. Plug and play has finally actually happened inside the case, and aside from setting the clock and boot order you can leave the BIOS entirely at default. :cool: SATA cables are keyed so you can't install them backwards. PCIe cards go in the same way as ISA cards did 20 years ago. DIMMS go in the way they have for years. For the CPU you just set it on the socket with the key matched up, and the socket retention system positions it correctly. The only thing you might need to watch is that the 8 pin ATX 12 power connector (for higher end boards, lower end ones only have a 4 pin model) and 8 pin PCIe power connector (used to power high end cards, mainstream ones use 6 pin connectors) might be able to fit into each others sockets despite having opposite polarities. I'm not sure since my PSU only has PCIe-6 connectors. I do know that you can fit a PCIe-6 connector into an ATX4-socket. :doh: Thankfully PCP&C's overcurrent protection worked as designed and shut the PSU down before smoking anything, it took somewhere between 10 and 60 minutes to reset though which triggered a major bout of panic.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
I just custom-built, parts from NewEgg. Got up to speed on equipment from a few places, including: EggXpert System Builds forum[^] and 2008 PC Builder's Bible[^] My final machine was a bit more, but that's because I'm doing photo work, and wanted redundancy on storage, so went with a 3-disk RAID5. If I could figure out how to publish my wish list on NewEgg, I'd send you a link to let you see what I got :confused: -- it was around $1500, but could be trimmed down quite a bit pretty easily. Specs in short then: ASUS P5Q Deluxe MoBo CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 case (it's huge and heavy, but oh-so-quiet) eVGA GeForce GTX 260 Gamestream 700W power supply Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16GHz CPU XIGMATEK 120mm CPU cooler Corsair 4GB 1066MHz DDR2 RAM - 2 sticks Seagate Barracuda 750GB SATA - 3 disks LG Lightscribe SATA DVD+-R Saitek Eclipse illuminated keyboard The GPU came with FarCry2, and it plays buttery-smooth with all the display settings turned all the way up on a 1280x1024 monitor. I've got MS FlightSim X on the way for Christmas and I can't wait to see how it plays! -matt
Matt Newby President, Matt Newby Enterprises, Inc. matt@mattnewby.com
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
CyberPowerPC has lots of preconfigured gaming machines that are very cost effective [^] - you can also do custom configurations
Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am
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Buy an Xbox 360. Quick & easy, for $350 you have a machine that can run COD5 at a great resolution at 30fps. And probably will be able to nicely run all the games in 2009 and 2010. The only problem is: you'll need to get used to the controller, it's a nice controller, but it's very different from playing with a keyboard and mouse.
I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
The controller isn't too bad (though the digital pad isn't the best). I have an Xbox 360 wired controller for my PC that I use for a few games -- mostly the Grand Theft Auto games. For everything else, I have the PlayStation 3. I do the majority of my gaming there. Almost bought a 360 in 06, but decided to hold out for the PS3 for backward compatibility with my previous PlayStation systems. :) Flynn
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Thanks. I've talked with a co-worker and he's basically said the same thing. I just visited Alienware at the recommendation of another CPian, and I see some interesting stuff: their 4 featured desktop gaming machines are: $3400 $1600 $1040 $999 So $1000 would buy a lower-end gaming machine. Of course, I already have a monitor, hard drive, keyboard, mouse, wireless card. So $1000 for a decent machine may not be out of the question.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Hard drives are better than ever too, check the WD velociraptor. :omg: And let's be serious about your mouse and keyboard too :-) And just like others said, you can jump in on the hardware train, read up, buy stuff, put it together, jump off and wonder why everything has gotten so much cheaper since you bought your new rig.
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
xbox 360? ;P that can handle COD:WAW no problem and will save you a few dollars :-\
---Guy H ;-)---
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
I was in similar situation as you 1 month ago. I spent £500 in UK (I guess you can do the same with $500 in US) and now the machine flies. Motherboard: gigabyte x48 based motherboard GA-X48-DS4 about £150 (go x48 chipset cause supports crossfire in 2x16 speed, good for future expansion when the following GPU becomes dirt cheap in 1-2 years). GPU: 4850 ASUS about £115 CPU: 45nm quad core Q8200 (cheapest quad core of 45nm family - go 45nm for energy efficiency) £100 on ebay new RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2 Dominator about £90 CPU fan: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - S775 Dual/Quad £15 Since you know how to put it together that's your best bet. Keep in mind this MOBO has 1 IDE slot supporting 2 devices. If you have many IDE drives, might be worth getting a new CDROM for £15 which have SATA connectors now, to free up IDE slot.
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Don't know about CoD spec's as compared to something like WoW or Warhammer Online, but I run a Dell Inspirion 530, 1.8Ghz, 2GB RAM and a 512MB GeForce (forget the actual model #)...all together probably spent ~$500 Already had the monitor, keyboard, etc.). Now Warhammer says to have 2Ghz minimum, 1GB Ram, so I'm under processed, but over stored as it were. Running around on medium-high settings I'm getting 50-70FPS, and even in large group areas with 24 or more people I'm getting 35-40FPS. I'd think you could easily get something for under $1000...
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Graham Bradshaw wrote:
eg if you are an ATI fan, making sure the motherboard is CrossFire compatible
I used to be a hardware freak, keeping up with all the latest releases on Tom's Hardware and other sites. Now I know almost nothing; I've never heard of crossfire! Given my lack of knowledge of hardware, would you still recommend building my own? And do you think I can get a decent gaming machine for $1000?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
Now I know almost nothing; I've never heard of crossfire!
you know more than you think. Google can tell you a lot. ATI and Nvidia have competing multi-card technologies, Nvidia is SLI and ATI is Crossfire. Knowing that much you can google tests between the two and find which is faster if that is your goal (Nvidia) or less expensive if that is your goal (ATI). You can google which is designed for more cards (Nvidia) or on cheaper motherboards (ATI). With a quick google you can learn just about everything about ATI vs. Nvidia including the floating point hacks and IEEE floating point. as far as assembling yourself, The manual for the case will tell you how to put in the motherboard. The motherboard manual will tell you how to connect the case LED's and powerswitch. Cards slide in and lock, a tool-less case makes it 5 seconds and you are done. A tool-less case can cost you an extra $100 US, but it will save you an hour of assembly at least, and a lot of headaches. Drives slide in and lock, done. Connect the cables close the case. :-D
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
http://www.sharkyextreme.com[^] Look for the "November Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide" - it will price out the best parts on a $1000 budget.
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Last night I fired up Call of Duty: World At War, only to find my machine (Intel Hyper-Threaded 2GHZ, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800 AGP) just couldn't take it. :( The game was playable so long as I was looking at the ground. Glimpse up at the beautiful scenery and ocean, the frame rate became unbearably slow. :sigh: I need a new machine. Up till now, I've always built my machines from the ground-up. Now I'm wondering if it's worth the hassle, or if I should go to Dell or HP and buy a pre-assembled machine. My budget is about $1000. Suggestions? p.s. It's amazing how quickly hardware becomes obsolete. When I assembled my current machine, it was top-of-the-line! There were no PCI Express cards, no mainstream dual-core processors, no mainstream 64-bit OSes.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Scott Hanselman (a very famous software developer) created a very nice article about building the Ultimate Developer Rig. Although his intention was not for gaming, there is plenty of intelligent discussion about why he chose each component and how much he paid (all from NewEgg, I think). I used his article as sort of a basis for my machine that I just built and I couldnt be happier. I ended up in the $1400 range, but the prices keep dropping. Here is a link to his article: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheCodingHorrorUltimateDeveloperRigThrowdownPart1.aspx[^] Erik