Full Version: Gaming Rig

From: Kriv [#1]
10 Mar 22:23
To: ALL

After stuttering through Bad Company 2 I thought sod it and am wanting to get a proper gaming machine. Trouble is last PC I bought was in 2001 where your choice was simple, AMD or Intel and the more clock cycles the better. Now there is i5's i7's duo, Centrinowhatsis and not even sniffed at AMD. And i've not even started on PSU ratings, memory speeds blah blah blah.

Would this work?
Intel Core i7 930 2.80Ghz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard
Patriot Viper 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel (PVT36G1600ELK)

XFX ATI Radeon HD 5870 "AVP Edition" 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

Antec TruePower New Modular 750W Power Supply
Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two Ultimate Gaming Case - Black

From: Serg (NUKKLEAR) [#2]
10 Mar 23:32
To: Kriv [#1] 10 Mar 23:32

Yea but no but yea but:
- i7 920 instead: save yourself a bit of cash.
- buy a decent CPU cooler (such as the Xigmatek HDT-S1284) and overclock the CPU to 3.6GHz anyway (should be quite easy to do). edit: Scan do'em
- Buy an Antec P193 case with the special PSU that they make for it, they're the dog's danglies (very quiet case, very good PSU, very good dust filtering). Add one or two Noctua fans like this one if you want more airflow, they're awesome. edit: Scan do'em
- For extra oomph if you want it, use an SSD as your system drive (even 32GB should be plenty) and add some fast normal SATA drives for storage.

Sorted.

From: Dave!! [#3]
11 Mar 14:31
To: Kriv [#1] 11 Mar 23:42

All depends on how far you want to go. To save a bit more money, the Core i5 750 is well worth considering as it's basically an i7 920 without Hyperthreading and with only a dual channel memory controller. It overclocks nicely and when paired with 4GB or 8GB of RAM will still perform very similarly to the i7. If you do go for the i7, I agree with Serg - the 920 will still overclock very nicely, so the extra money on the 930 may be a bit wasted.

The 5870 is a nice card, but I would question as to whether it's worth it over the 5850. It's roughly 15% faster, but is nearly 40% more expensive. If you definitely have the money, go for it! Personally, I'd just get the 5850 and pocket the saved £70.

From: THERE IS NO GOD BUT (RENDLE) [#4]
12 Mar 4:13
To: Dave!! [#3] 12 Mar 10:41

I've been reading stuff saying that the variety of operations involved in game code (physics, AI and so on) parallelize across hyper-threaded cores very nicely. I can't remember which engine, one of the main ones, Source or Unreal or iD's new one, but the latest build thrashes as many cores as it can get its hands on. So the i7 is probably worth the extra pounds for a gaming rig.

From: Serg (NUKKLEAR) [#5]
12 Mar 9:19
To: Kriv [#1] 12 Mar 22:58

Actually, Dave has a very good point about the 5850 v 5870 - the 5850 might be a much better bet price/performance wise, and if you want to future-proof to some extent then your (three-way!) CrossFire-compatible motherboard will allow you to add another one or even two 5850's at a later date. Good motherboard choice too!

From: Dave!! [#6]
12 Mar 10:48
To: THERE IS NO GOD BUT (RENDLE) [#4] 12 Mar 12:26

I'd be interested to see which game that'd be. I've seen quite a few games where Hyperthreading reduces performance. It knocks down the framerate in Far Cry 2 by about 5% for example when enabled. Unfortunately, there seems to be a distinct lack of reviews out there which compare other more multi-threaded engines/games such as the latest Unreal engine, GTA IV, etc.

From: THERE IS NO GOD BUT (RENDLE) [#7]
12 Mar 12:27
To: Dave!! [#6] 12 Mar 12:37

I think it was something linked from Twitter; I don't seem to be able to find it now.

From: Kriv [#8]
12 Mar 23:06
To: Serg (NUKKLEAR) [#5] 14 Mar 20:29

Thanks for yours and Dave's posts.

I opted for the cooler you recommended. I just hope the 750w PSU will be ok to power everything.

My long term plan with this is to overclock it to 4ghz in a couple of years - I know with the CPU / Mobo / Ram combination it will cope excellently with this. Plus by then I can pick up a couple of cheap vid cards if I start having FPS challenges.

From: Dave!! [#9]
13 Mar 0:34
To: Kriv [#8] 18 Mar 0:50

A 750w PSU should be more than adequate. I recently tested my system by plugging it into one of those energy meters, then fired up Modern Warfare 2. According to this meter, my Core i5 system with a Radeon 5770 and 5 hard drives was pulling just under 350w during gaming and about 280w whilst sitting at the Windows desktop. I doubt yours will pull 400w more than my system!

From: Kriv [#10]
18 Mar 0:55
To: Dave!! [#9] 18 Mar 12:10

Oooh that's good to hear. Means I can slap in more HD's tomorrow when I'm off :D

I built the system Saturday night. Did have one buttock clenching moment where it powered on and nothing happened. Panicked thinking I just blew £1200 on an expensive doorstop. There was an 8 pin connector I needed to attach to the mobo which I realised the morning after.

Runs beautifully, but much to the annoyance of people on my steam list I am hopping in and out of games like there is no tomorrow to see all the shiny. Next stop Crysis....

From: Dave!! [#11]
18 Mar 12:12
To: Kriv [#10] 18 Mar 16:28

Download and run the STALKER Call of Pripyat benchmark as well. It's a satisfying feeling when you crank the detail to extreme, the renderer to DX11, the resolution to 1920x1200, then watch the lovely, smooth visuals from it.

Full Version: Gaming Rig

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