building for far cry 2

I've been asked to spec a PC that will run Far Cry 2 at a reasonable speed - only problem is, last time I spec'd a gaming PC, it was back in the days of Geforce TI4200's!!

I have around £450 to spend and I'm looking for CPU, PSU, Graphics Card, RAM and HDD

So far I have:

• 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2 Dominator, PC2-8500 (1066), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5
• 620W Coolermaster Real Power M620 Modular PSU SLi, PCI-E, SATA, 80%+ Eff' ATX 12V V2.3 EPS 12V V2.91
• 500 GB Samsung HD502IJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ
• MSI P45 Neo-F, iP45, S 775, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR2 667/800, SATA II, ATX
• 512MB XFX 9800 GTX+ XT, PCI-E2.0, 2200MHz GDDR3, GPU 765MHz, 128 Cores, 2xDL DVI-I/ HDTV + Far Cry 2
• Intel Core2 Duo E7400, Wolfdale Core, S775, 2.8GHz, FSB 1066MHz, 3MB Cache, 10.5x Multiplier

Coming in around £480

Hoping to use his current PC's ATX case - one thing I'm worried about is whether the graphics card will work with his old VGA CRT?

Thanks for any advice!!!

It be better to get 4GB of 800mhz than 2GB of 1066mhz since they are the same price.

thanks for that - does that mean I will need to buy at 64bit version of XP?

IIRC Farcry2 supports quad cores and hence has better scaling than most other games. Hence a Q8200 or Q6600 may do the job. I would get a cheaper HD4850 instead of the 9800GTX+ if there is more than a £10 difference and buy a quad core instead

This is what I came up with from Scan:

512MB Palit HD 4850, PCI-E 2.0(x16), 1986MHz GDDR3, GPU 625MHz, 800 Cores, 2x DL DVI-I/ HDTV, HDCP £116.73

Asus M3A78-VM, AMD 780G, S AM2+, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, uATX, VGA £58.64

AMD Phenom II X4 920, Deneb Core, S AM2+, 2.8GHz, 8MB Total Cache, FSB/HT 2000MHz, 125W, Retail £185.06

4GB Corsair (2x2GB) TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18 £38.81

500 GB Samsung HD502IJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQv £41.39

650W Xclio Greatpower Modular SLi U-Quiet 14cm Fan 87%+ Efficiency Quad+12v 4SATA 4 PCI-E £49.44

The last four components are on Today Only. The motherboard supports both the Phenom II 920 and 940. The PSU is made by CWT too!

The total comes to £490.07 excluding postage.

The Phenom II 920 is faster than a £220+ 2.83ghz Q9550 in Far Cry 2:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...d-920-review/7

thanks for all your help - one more question; is there any point going for 4GB, when 32bit XP will only see 3.5GB ish of it? I've been reading up on PAE, and some sites mention instability when enabling PAE

Thanks again

My install of 32bit Windows XP recognises 3.25gb.

BTW if you prefer to go the Intel route you could always get a Q6600 and suitable motherboard and overclock it for a similar price!! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by luap.h

thanks for all your help - one more question; is there any point going for 4GB, when 32bit XP will only see 3.5GB ish of it? I've been reading up on PAE, and some sites mention instability when enabling PAE

Thanks again

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I didn't notice much difference in XP going from 2 --> 4GB I have to admit, apart from maybe in Photoshop, only Vista felt different after the RAM increase.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GSte

I didn't notice much difference in XP going from 2 --> 4GB I have to admit, apart from maybe in Photoshop, only Vista felt different after the RAM increase.

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I noticed the same thing with Vista and XP too!!

Really? 512MB --> 1GB in XP, definitely.... I suppose 1GB --> 2GB was useful too, meant I could actually minimise games to desktop....... :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GSte

Really? 512MB --> 1GB in XP, definitely.... I suppose 1GB --> 2GB was useful too, meant I could actually minimise games to desktop....... :D

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My experience exactly!! Going from 512mb to 1gb for XP was a big upgrade for me. 1gb to 2gb also was noticeable. 2gb to 4gb not so much(Borat voice)!!

However going from 2gb to 4gb in Vista made things a bit more zippier.

Depends what you do/use, for most uses 1gb is fine for xp, for games you will notice the extra gig if you up it to 2gb
It fall off after 2gb as there's not that many games that make use of the extra.

Yes you will be restricted to 3.something by xp 32bit if you put in 4gb, however don't bother with xp 64bit, it's support is patchy at best.
to make full use of it go for Vista 64bit or wait a while for windows7 to come out and get the 64bit version of that.
4gb now is not so bad, it's cheap and will probably not drop by much more (may even start going up) and even if you cannot use it all now it does leave you open for a future OS upgrade.

You can use a vga crt on any graphics card without major issue, most cards come with a dvi to d-sub adaptor.

Here's some handy farcry2 reviews/comparisons
Quality settings and dx9 vs dx10
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,664776/?page=1

DX10 high vs very high vs ultra high and graphics cards
http://www.techspot.com/review/123-farcry2-performance/
intresting to note here the 4850 is equal to the 9800gtx+ at ultra high but falls well down the table at high or very high, while the 9800gtx+ stays near the top (at 1280x1024 which I'm guseeing is the res you'd use seeing as it's a crt)
However that is without antialiasing and antiscopic filtering

Indepth dx10 vx dx9
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==
Seems it does run better on dx10 esp with AA on and while it does use all 4 cores of a quad core cpu it's not exactly stressing it out. granted they used a top of the range qx9650 but when total cpu useage doesn't climb over 60% at 1920x1200 you should still get simular resaults out of a q6600 at 1280x1024 esp if overclocked.
They also did a graphics card comparison but it only covers the top cards and at high res
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?...hlbnRodXNpYXN0

Here is another performance review for Far Cry 2:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...-review-6.html