Gaming Rig Build Advice plse

[camalbitboy]

Nice rig, but the Raptor isn't really necessary, get a 1TB Samsung F1 And I heartily applaud the SLI route, as at the moment it looks like that is the only way to go. I was hoping the 9800GTX might be a step above the 8800GTX, but it appears it's gonna be rather similar. Gone are the days of near doubling speed with a new generation

Roll on the ATI 4000 series and let's hope they bring some speed! Else nvidia can sit on their ass a little longer...

Hmm that Samsung does look rather good...... Seems to lose out on game and OS load times, but rules at file copying etc, its quieter, plus its nearly 7 times bigger. Extra £30 though. What to do?

Could get a 500G Barracuda for half the price of the Raptor, but lower performance.

I'm thinking of staying with the Raptor as this is a gaming machine and I do already have a terabyte of space thats not even half full. £150 will do me for OS and 4-5 games that I'll have installed at any one time I rekon.

[camalbitboy]

The dark raider is based on the P35 which is the midrange intel board (often the better overclockers anyway) is yet to be superceeded but there has been mention of a P45 which will probably add PCI-e 2.0 and 1600MHz FSB.

X-38 and 48 are the enthusiast boards which don't really offer that much noticably gain and cost a hell of a lot more than the P35 which is suitable for almost everyones needs. I trust blitzens comments enough to suggest taking a look at the Abit X-38 given it's fairly cheap but that is only when considering the IP-35 PRO which is around £100 not the dark raider at £60.

The dark raider has better compatability than the 680i by a long way. You'll probably find overclocking the Q6600 very difficult on the 680i as my mate has two variants of the board and couldn't get above 3.0GHz (although yours is said to be better)

From what I have read the the 8800GT's in SLi (when they actually work relativly well) only perform as well or just above an 8800 ULTRA which is where the 3870X2 sits anyway. Scout around for one, they have been £230..£235 which is a steal, and you end up with a better motherboard.

Dual GPU on one card isn't really the same as SLi's cards, well support for it is at least a lot better from what i've seen. I dont doubt that SLi improves things in some, even alot of games theses days but it can let you down..its been tried and tested.

No one is trying to cost you more money at the end of the day (far from it) and the single card route offers a cheaper PSU and cheaper motherboard so the savings are in the region of £100.

Very good point about the cheaper PSU if I go single card, I hadn't factored that into account at all. Your right, by the time I take a Dark Raider, 3700X2 and a 500W PSU I'm £100 better off or so. I'll just price up a system now for comparison.

But do bear in mind that the 3700X2 doesn't scale well compared to a vanilla 3700 in all games either. While it doesn't use the crossfire drivers directly it doesn't scale well in the same games that crossfire scaled badly at too. And if you look at SLI vs Crossfire the scaling has always been better across a wider range of games for SLI.

[TooNice]

For £292 I can get 2 8800GT's or a 3870X2 for £275. The dual 8800GT's will outperform the 3870X2 by more than the difference in price. The down side is that the mb will cost me an extra £56 (Dark Raider 69.78 vs Asus P5N32-E SLI NF680i 126.30) but it does give me more options on teh graphics front. Its not a clear price/performance win then eitehr way for me. Hmm.

[...]

Nvidia are meant to be releasing their new GPU's next week so I spose I'd be best off leaving it till then to see what they bring out (only topend above my budget I think) and see what it does to pricing of the existing boards.

The 3870 X2 has been spotted for as little as £235 inc not long ago. The price has increased since then, but I am sure that it is possible to find them for £250 inc right now. But actually, I do doubt that 8800GT SLI could match or even best the 3870 X2 if you are only comparing the cards alone. I do think that it is more appropriate to take the cost of motherboard into account though, and I would say that shift the value towards a P35 based motherboard. Edit: This post was written before you posted your consideration of pricing up a system for comparison.

@staffsMike: I'll have to put a question mark on your comment regarding Dual GPU and SLi. I suspect that dual/multi GPU is much different from SLI/Crossfire, but rather that progress (in optimisation) that has been made thanks to the development of SLI/Crossfire is translating into a smoother start for dual GPU cards. We will be able to verify my guesses when the 9800 X2 is released, but going by reviews of the 3870 X2 I have seen, the X2 does scale pretty much the same way as Crossfire scales, for better or worse - and we are seeing more of the 'better' these days.

Check this review: the 9600GT SLI beats the Ultra except in HL2 and Bioshock out of the entire test.. and the 8800 GT SLI unsurprisingly beats the 9600 SLI on every turns (reason for my newly found optimism for SLi/Crossfire and multi-GPU cards).

[TooNice]

Hmm that Samsung does look rather good...... Seems to lose out on game and OS load times, but rules at file copying etc, its quieter, plus its nearly 7 times bigger. Extra £30 though. What to do?

I am not sure about the 750GB F1 (which uses smaller platter to the 1TB - 250GB vs 333GB, and may not have the same reported problem), but the reason I am not jumping on the F1 series even though I was really looking forward to it, was because of infamous "Check M. C. Error". Personally, I am going to give it a few months before re-evaluating the F1 series. I normally suggest *not* getting a Raptor even though I use one because it is not particularly great value compared to 7200RPM drive. It's noisier than the latest, most quiet 7200RPM drives (Samsung drives, WD AAKS), but not as noisy as older ones (e.g. some Hitachi, Seagate I am using).

But given that you are not particularly space hungry, I'd say that the Raptor does fit the 'nice to have' (from a game loading perspective) assuming you are not going for an inaudible build.

[camalbitboy]

Ok a single GPU set up would indeed cost me £100 less if appropriate MB PSU are selected and the rest of the components stay the same.

Abit IP-35, Dark Raider, iP35 Express, S 775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £59.39 £69.78

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 SLACR, Kentsfield Core, Socket 775, 2.40 GHz 1066MHz 8MB Cache, OEM £122.99 £144.51

4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR2 6400 2x256Mx64 non-ECC 2x240 DIMM unbuffered 5-5-5-18 64bit OS DHX £53.64 £63.03

1GB MSI HD3870 X2 PCI-E2.0 (x16), 1800MHz GDDR3, GPU 850MHz, 320Streams, 2xDual Link DVI-I/HDTV HDCP £233.90 £274.83

150 GB Western Digital WD1500AHFD Raptor X, SATA I, 10000 rpm, 16MB Cache, 4.6 ms, NCQ + FREE GAME £110.59 £129.94

Thermalright SI-128 120mm heat sink for AMD/Intel processor (bare sink) £24.99 £29.36

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) £49.79 £58.50

600W Tagan TG-600-U35XL Easycon XL Modular, SLi, PCI-Ex6, SATA, Molex, EPS 12V, 80% eff. £71.99 £84.59

Ebuyer have 3870X2's for around teh £250 mark, but by the time you add postage its only a tenner cheaper really.

So the question is do I think the extra functionality of the 680i board, and the ability to go SLI, with the higher performance that will bring (i appreciate that some of you still disagree about this) is worth the £100.

I'll need to have a think on that.

[camalbitboy]

The 3870 X2 has been spotted for as little as £235 inc not long ago. The price has increased since then, but I am sure that it is possible to find them for £250 inc right now. But actually, I do doubt that 8800GT SLI could match or even best the 3870 X2 if you are only comparing the cards alone. I do think that it is more appropriate to take the cost of motherboard into account though, and I would say that shift the value towards a P35 based motherboard. Edit: This post was written before you posted your consideration of pricing up a system for comparison.

@staffsMike: I'll have to put a question mark on your comment regarding Dual GPU and SLi. I suspect that dual/multi GPU is much different from SLI/Crossfire, but rather that progress (in optimisation) that has been made thanks to the development of SLI/Crossfire is translating into a smoother start for dual GPU cards. We will be able to verify my guesses when the 9800 X2 is released, but going by reviews of the 3870 X2 I have seen, the X2 does scale pretty much the same way as Crossfire scales, for better or worse - and we are seeing more of the 'better' these days.

Check this review: the 9600GT SLI beats the Ultra except in HL2 and Bioshock out of the entire test.. and the 8800 GT SLI unsurprisingly beats the 9600 SLI on every turns (reason for my newly found optimism for SLi/Crossfire and multi-GPU cards).

I agree about the benefits of SLI. [H] test their cards on more than just timedemos and believe that a 3870X2 sits below a 8800GTX even. [H] Enthusiast - AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2

That review was in Jan though and I've read elsewhere that the newer drivers have made a massive improvement for the 3870X2, it still sits below dual 8800GT's.

[Thorsson]

Oh this is worth knowing, I wonder if it still works?
"Many people are upset by the fact that the economical, "upgrade" version of Vista won't accept a Windows XP or Windows 2000 CD-ROM as proof of ownership. Vista Upgrade is said to install only to a hard disk that already has XP or 2000 on it.

But I've tested a method that allows you to clean-install the Vista upgrade version on any hard drive, with no prior XP or W2K installation — or even a CD — required."

Get Vista upgrade, never pay full price

Well it worked in October and AFAIK nothing's changed.

[camalbitboy]

Well it worked in October and AFAIK nothing's changed.

Cool, I'll have to look at that. I take it that the upgrade cd's come with 32 and 64 bit versions? If so then this is def the best idea.

[TooNice]

I am not going to push the P35 vs 680 much more than this, consider is how well a product's value will hold. Nehalem is due later this year, and this time next year I'd expect the 680 to crash in value (people willing to shell out on SLI motherboard will most likely follow get the new platform). While the Dark Raider will depreciate too, you'll probably find more buyers (more demand - so I'd expect less depreciation), and even assuming equal depreciation as a percentage (say half the price each), you will lose less from a £60 motherboard than a £120 motherboard.

This point is moot if you think you will take advantage of SLI fairly soon after the system is built, and keep it for quite some time. But it's something to keep in mind while you think about it

[camalbitboy]

I am not going to push the P35 vs 680 much more than this, consider is how well a product's value will hold. Nehalem is due later this year, and this time next year I'd expect the 680 to crash in value (people willing to shell out on SLI motherboard will most likely follow get the new platform). While the Dark Raider will depreciate too, you'll probably find more buyers (more demand - so I'd expect less depreciation), and even assuming equal depreciation as a percentage (say half the price each), you will lose less from a £60 motherboard than a £120 motherboard.

This point is moot if you think you will take advantage of SLI fairly soon after the system is built, and keep it for quite some time. But it's something to keep in mind while you think about it

I never sell on my kit tbh. I'll use the new build for gaming, my old gaming pc for general stuff (downloading etc) and my old general pc gets given to my wife to use. Her old pc goes straight for recycling as its gotta be about 8 years old now and so no resale value. One of the graphics carsds out of my old gaming pc might get flogged to freinds, but they are worth about £40.

I would get the 2nd card for SLI in about 3 months, one i've saved the cash for it, so I'll get use of SLI.

Pretty sure I'm gonn await for the 9800 releases next week to see if those are worth running as a single card setup if so will go with the Dark Raider, otherwise prob go with the 8800gt's and 680i setup.

Thanx for all your help though, some very good points here for me to think about.

[Dreaming]

[new build]

I think that's really good. Something I'd be happy to go with, maybe.

Personally for gaming I'd get dual core instead of quad core (faster CLOCKS ) but it's up to you, more games are becoming multi threaded. But at the minute even on my dual core I can happily run two games at once without issues (I often do by accident ).

And I still wouldn't get the raptor. It beats other drives in server applications because of fast random access but other than that the difference is negligible. If you're running a file server or doing lots of work with lots of files then you'll want to invest in raid anyway. Personally - I've said this before - they've been squeezed out of the market. Bear in mind they're an 18 month plus old design, other conventional drives have caught up in speed terms now. For server applications it works out better just to set up a raid array. For enthusiasts get a high end conventional drive.

The WD5000AAKS is very fast :-)

But, that's just my opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if they transplant the perpendicular storage technology over to a 10000rpm disk, which would make it extremely fast (but then with the advent of SSD, is there any point now?), but personally I just feel they're past their sell by date.

[TooNice]

Rather than saying that the Raptor only excels in server applications, I am more inclined to say that large 7200RPM drives have narrowed the bridge but only excels in sequential transfer heavy applications (i.e. video encoding, large file copying, and benchmarks like HDTach). Much as I can vouch the AAKS for value, it loses more rounds than it wins from a performance perspective.

[baius]

[QUOTE=Dreaming;1364345]I can happily run two games at once without issues (I often do by accident ).[QUOTE]
That's a great quote mate. Nice to have people on here that admit to things...



You sure you don't have two 30" Dell 3009's hooked up to your 11800gtx, both by display port, of course, you know, allowing one game for each eye? (Both games run simultaneously off your 10tb SSD drive, of course.)

I bet you do; and when you get bored of one of the games, you simply wink.

A legend is born - "I just got pwned from someone on UT7. First he was behind me, then he was in front of me, and... hey, wait a minute! He's STILL behind me."

[camalbitboy]

Well doesn't that just take the sodding biscuit.

The CPU, GPU, Hard Drive, and memory are all on today only prices at Scan and I bought it all last week!!

I refuse to work out how much cheaper it would be today, but it would go a fair way towards a new case instead of having to reuse an Antec SuperLanby I'll bet

Mind you one unforseen benefit of using the SuperLanboy is that when I got called into work over the weekend to cover a night shift (overtime money already spent obv) I could actually use the handle straps that came with the case for the first time and take my new pc to work.

Rigged it up to a projector in one of the meeting rooms and played CoD4 all night on a 10ft screen.

Not bad when getting paid overtime to do it

[baius]

Rigged it up to a projector in one of the meeting rooms and played CoD4 all night on a 10ft screen.

Not bad when getting paid overtime to do it

I'm actually jealous. Not for long though - want to get a 1080p Prj @ soon.