slomotion
Premium
join:2002-11-10
Chiloquin, OR
|  My Dream "Gaming PC"
Well after countless hours reading reviews, and comparing prices.
Here is what I finally put together!
I would welcome any feedback or opinions you might have?
This is my dream PC! I have been waiting for 5 years to build this
monster! It will arrive next week! I can't wait to start building.
Operating System: "Microsoft" Vista Ultimate SP1 64bit Retail... with Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit - Upgrade offer.
Case: Cooler Master "HAF 932" Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case.
CPU: "AMD Phenom" II X4 955 Black Edition Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology (3.2GHz)
CPU Cooler: "Cooler Master" V8 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler.
MOBO: "ASUS" M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard.
Power Supply: "CORSAIR" 1000 Watt, ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 CrossFire Ready Modular PSU.
Memory: 8GB (2GBx4) PC1600 DDR3 PC3 10666 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Dominator)
Video Card: "SAPPHIRE" Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit.
Monitor: "Asus" VW266H 26" Active Matrix LCD Display ) (25.5 Viewable) Wide Screen HD 1080p TFT / XGA 1920x1200 w/ HDMI)
Hard drive(s): "Seagate" Barracuda 500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200 - RPM, Internal HDD.
Optical Drive: (Black) "LG" 6X BD-R, 2X BD-RE, 16X DVD+R, 6X BD-ROM, SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner Super Multi Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive Model GGW-H20L with LightScribe.
Sound: Hi-Def On Board 5.1 Audio.
Tell me what you think?
TIA slo-motion
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Mchart
Super Joe
join:2004-01-21
Gurnee, IL
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| Well, to be honest, i'm not quite sure why you went the AMD route for a high-end gaming rig. Core i7 performs signifcantly better, and will upgrade better in the future when they release the 8-cores that will be compatible on the current Nehalem motherboards.
The 1KW power supply is complete overkill and a waste of money. You'll never need that much power even if you get dual 4870X2's. The Corsair 750w would have been beyond sufficient. I probably wouldn't have gone the 4870x2 route, but it's still an acceptable choice.
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StubbyinKCMO
join:2008-11-15
Kansas City, MO
·Time Warner Cable
| reply to slomotion
Is money not a concern? It seems like it. What with all the high end parts in there. Lots of good things.
My only thing is why go SLI/Crossfire? And why not get a good soundcard? One more thing that the CPU wouldnt have to do. I mean that CPU will have no problems, but still its just me.
If those are corners you can cut, then go for it. Meaning use onboard if you want to save a bit.
As for the vid card, most of the newer cards have 1GB of DDR3 RAM on them nowadays. So am I reading that wrong? You are getting 2 cards with 1GB each? or 2GB each? And what is the 512-bit you are referring too?
The only other thing is that I would think about an SSD for the OS. 200-220MB/sec read speed and .01 seek time. OCZ vertex series. Think oversized thumb drive using SATA2 ports at 3GB throughput. New ones are about $100 for a 30GB size. Good for OS, but can be RAIDed or have a regular SATA drive for backup/storage.
But overall, good stuff on your list! GAME ON!!!! |
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slomotion
Premium
join:2002-11-10
Chiloquin, OR
| reply to Mchart
I went AMD because of the price. And my budget was $2000 dollars.
I did go over by about $300 but that was shipping plus an increase in prices from the time of design to purchase. Also I have been using AMD since the Intel PII days! I trust them to deliver.
I will eventually add 1 or more video cards, hard drives etc. So the 1000 watt PSU is just my way of making sure I can add more of whatever I need to stay current. Tis also why I went with the Cooler Master HAF 932 full tower case. Room to grow.
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slomotion
Premium
join:2002-11-10
Chiloquin, OR
| reply to StubbyinKCMO
Hey KC! You are not wrong. The Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a single slot card with 2 GPU's, each with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, and 256bit bandwidth.
Total = 2GB memory, and 512bit bandwidth.
www.sapphiretech.com (Full specs!)
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The Flash
You don't win friends with salad
Premium
join:2002-10-17
Toronto, ON | reply to slomotion
Well since you already ordered it, there's no point telling you what you should have went. Enjoy. |
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slomotion
Premium
join:2002-11-10
Chiloquin, OR | Thank You!  |
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Pyrion
Liquid Metal Nanomorph
join:2001-12-01
Poway, CA
clubs:
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| reply to StubbyinKCMO
said by StubbyinKCMO  :My only thing is why go SLI/Crossfire? And why not get a good soundcard? One more thing that the CPU wouldnt have to do. I mean that CPU will have no problems, but still its just me. For the sake of argument, I tried SLI 8800GT's in my rig and although the energy consumption and heat generation were both prohibitive (CPU temp went up 5C on each core at idle), I got better framerate in TF2 using the same settings (1920x1200, 4xAA, 16xAF, everything else turned to high) than a GTX 285. I always have that to fall back upon if my GTX 285 dies.
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Pyrion
Liquid Metal Nanomorph
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Poway, CA
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2 edits | reply to slomotion
said by slomotion :Hey KC! You are not wrong. The Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a single slot card with 2 GPU's, each with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, and 256bit bandwidth. Total = 2GB memory, and 512bit bandwidth. www.sapphiretech.com (Full specs!) The problem with that statement is that the memory is not shared between the processors (after all, this is CrossFire on a single PCB). In other words, you cannot load 2GB worth of textures on that, rather, you have to load two copies of the same textures so that each GPU has access to them. This limits you to 1GB of effective texture memory at 256-bits per GPU.
And here's another thing about SLI/CrossFire. Your load times will be a lot longer than an equivalent single-GPU setup, because you're having to load twice as much texture information as it has to be replicated across all the GPUs involved. Again, for the sake of comparison, TF2 took twice as long to load on SLI 8800GTs than it did on a single 7950GT, or on my current rig, a single GTX 285 (though as I already stated, I did get better framerates from the SLI setup).
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Lamiel
join:2008-04-05
Saint Johns, MI
| reply to slomotion
Well, although a $2,000 budget would have comfortably allowed an i7 build, and although the i7 will kick Phenom II's ass, I wouldn't say you made a bad choice... It's still a very powerful rig, and choosing an AM3 mobo should future-proof you as far as you need - who's knows? Maybe AMD will release an AM3 socket proc that can meet or exceed i7's power? Hey, we can dream, right? Ha! As for the PSU - you can't have too much power. Maybe you won't ever need it, but it certainly doesn't hurt anything! Oh, and regarding the Crossfire/SLI comments - why not buy a dual-GPU board? These days they're comparatively cheap, and YES, upgrading to a 2nd video card is a viable solution when framerates being to drop...
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Core2Quad Q9450 @ 3.4GHz, XFX 780i SLI mobo, 2x MSI 8800GT OC in SLI, 4GB Patriot Viper DDR2-1066, Samsung 20x optical, Samsung F1 750GB HDD, Antec TP3 650 watt PSU, CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case, Vista Home Premium 64 bit... |
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Pyrion
Liquid Metal Nanomorph
join:2001-12-01
Poway, CA
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| said by Lamiel :Oh, and regarding the Crossfire/SLI comments - why not buy a dual-GPU board? CrossFire/SLI architectural limitations still apply. That was the whole point of the first paragraph of my second post here. Whether you CrossFire/SLI multiple GPUs on multiple PCBs or you CrossFire/SLI multiple GPUs on a single PCB, you're still limited to whatever is allocated per-GPU.
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slomotion
Premium
join:2002-11-10
Chiloquin, OR
1 edit | reply to Pyrion
I see you did your homework my friend. I read the same thing in a Max PC review. I am not concerned about the shared GPU's or the fact that the effective memory is only 1GB. My plans are to max out all 4 PCIe 2.0 X16 slots with X2's! When the price comes down that is lol. That should make up for any bottlenecks due to Crossfire configurations. I hope? Either way I am upgrading from an AGP 8X/512MB with an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ machine now. So almost any video card and CPU on the shelf today smokes my current setup!
Thanks for the heads up!
slo-motion.
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Pyrion
Liquid Metal Nanomorph
join:2001-12-01
Poway, CA
clubs:
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| Yeah, your computer would double as a space heater for a small warehouse, and probably have similar power requirements, but any game with a CrossFire profile would be ridiculously outmatched. Even Crysis.
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Mchart
Super Joe
join:2004-01-21
Gurnee, IL
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2 edits | reply to slomotion
You won't see any gains by doing dual 4870X2's. Any gains which are seen will be so insignifcant that it won't be worth the money. Stick with what you have. The benefit of crossfire/SLI is only apparent when used in dual-configurations. Tri/Quad shows such insignifcant gains that it isn't worth the money - Even if you can get another 4870X2 for dirt cheap.
As allready stated numerous times in this thread, Crossfire/SLI is never as good as a single better graphics card. It will boost the maximum and average FPS in many games, and there are a few games that run fantastic with Crossfire/SLI like the Call of Duty series. However, the majority of the games don't like Crossfire/SLI, some don't even have working profiles. A good example are dual 8800GT's in SLI. A single GTX260 in real-world application is still faster, even though it appears not to be. What people tend to forget when running benchmarks is the minimum FPS value. A single better card will show much better minimum FPS, thus making a game more 'smooth'. So while the average FPS will not appear as high, you will still be able to run with higher settings in the majority of games using a single better card because you won't run into situations where the minimum FPS dips under 30FPS.
You have a good setup, my only concern, as I originally stated would be the longevity of your system. It will without a doubt support the latest and greatest graphics cards. However, the longevity of the AM3 platform is unkown as of right now, and it's allready well behind the current Intel offering (Which will show longevity as any current I7 motherboard should be able to run the upcomming 6/8 core CPU's being released).
At this point there aren't many games which require anything beyond a dual-core CPU. However, a half a year from now all of that will begin to change with games like Alan Wake on the horizon and D3D11.
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The Flash
You don't win friends with salad
Premium
join:2002-10-17
Toronto, ON | You know Alan Wake may not even release on PC. |
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Mchart
Super Joe
join:2004-01-21
Gurnee, IL
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| It will. Considering all of the tech demo's and development has been for the PC, I don't see them scrapping a bunch of work for nothing. It may be delayed for the PC release, but they won't cancel it.
That is besides the point though, Alan Wake is one of many games which will make use of more then just dual-core CPU's.
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The Flash
You don't win friends with salad
Premium
join:2002-10-17
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Execulink
| said by Mchart :It will. Considering all of the tech demo's and development has been for the PC, I don't see them scrapping a bunch of work for nothing. It may be delayed for the PC release, but they won't cancel it. That is besides the point though, Alan Wake is one of many games which will make use of more then just dual-core CPU's. If it's upto Microsoft and they want it on 360, Rip Alan Wake PC. |
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Mchart
Super Joe
join:2004-01-21
Gurnee, IL | This discussion can be saved for another thread. I used the game as an example, and there are numerous games which will have similar requirements.
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Pyrion
Liquid Metal Nanomorph
join:2001-12-01
Poway, CA
clubs:
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| reply to Mchart
Yeah that's the one thing that constantly pissed me off about AMD: every minor update to their microarchitecture required a completely new socket. Intel stuck with LGA-775 for how long?
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Gonzo1970
join:2009-08-03
Belleville, IL
| reply to slomotion
Sitting here stuck at work, bored... figured this would be a fun thing to do..
Intel Core i7-920 - $280
Asus P6T6 WS Revolution - $350
Thermaltake Tsunami - Black Edition - $90
Thermaltake PurePower 600W PS - $80
WD Velociraptor 300gb - $230
Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600 - 12gb - $245
Asus Black 23" 2ms Widescreen LCD - $200
XFX GTX295 (x2) - $500ea - $1000
Pioneer Blu-Ray Burner - $200
Pioneer DVD Burner - $60
Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard - $210
Logitech MX518 Mouse - $40
Not bad for $3,000 |
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