Computer upgrade tips?

CrazyHarij

CrazyHarij

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My computer broke, I'm getting a new (shitty) one together with money to upgrade it, somewhere between 1000-2000 bucks depending on what I need.
My focus is on getting a strong work computer for music making (sufficient RAM and hard drive space) but I also want to run some of the most graphic intensive games around (and those coming up soon).

I pretty much don't know anything about the technicalities, I haven't been up to date with gfx cards, but I'm pretty sure I'll get an intel core duo 2 with about 2.2ghz (affordable) and planning to overclock it so it'll be somewhere around 4,5 ghz.

Graphics wise I tried the geforce 7600gt out at a friend and it can run games like stalker and SC double agent really well, and it apparently outperforms the 8600gt, apart from being really cheap. I'm considering the 7900gt since it outperforms both and has dx10. I'm open for any suggestions around the same price range, I can probably go up a 100 bucks or so from there if there's anything extraordinary there.

I'm probably looking to get about 2 gigs of ram and a hard drive space of 300gigs or more

Apart from the suggestions I need on this, is there anything else I need to keep in mind?
 
Might as well get the 500 GB hard drive. That's the best bang for the buck. I'm going to end up with like 4 of them if I don't stop with my download addictions.

I really like the Western Digital 500GB SATA Caviar 16.

insert into browser...


I got the OEM version (just the drive) for $119 with free shipping! zipzoomfly I think was where I bought it.


Can't be much help beyond that. Have fun
 
cheers western digital makes good stuff and you can't really get too much hard drive space, for the reason you stated :P
 
I was at my brother's house last night, and he had this old computer magazine from 1984, and there were Tandy computers in there for like $25,000, and they had like 16MB hard drives. That's a big twenty-five thousand dollars - no typo. Money was worth more back then too.

I remember when some home computers had 1 or 2K of RAM. My brother and I had one. I know I'm getting older, but at only 32, it's hard to believe computers have come so far so fast.

Yeah, lets see 2K. You can't do much with that! That's like 5 paragraphs of text I guess.
 
Just thought i'd mention, pretty positive that the 7900 doesn't support DX10, it's only the 8xxx series so far that do. If you wanted DX10 support, and your budget is around that of the 7900, then you could get an 8600GTS, they are pretty quick, although have a slightly restricted memory bus, thought to be holding them back. This may be rectified by a refresh product or an 8700 range, or something along those lines, so it might be worth waiting to see how that pans out.

If you did go with a DX9 card, then the ATI X1950 Pro will be faster in most games than the 7900, and should be a similiar price.
 
"I also want to run some of the most graphic intensive games around (and those coming up soon). "

The 8800 GTX is a must, if u buy anything else underneith that you will regret it
 
Ok lots of things to say here. I'll go from start to bottom.

Core 2 duo's overclock well, but don't expect it to overclock more than 50% when doing it the easy way (meaning following some guide without actually knowing what you're doing). Those overclock you've probably heard about are the world records without stability, with a lucky batch and massive cooling, the right mainboard etc..

July 22nd the prices of the core 2 quad q6600 (2.4ghz) will drop to about $266, which should be an awesome deal, right now they're still over $500. If you plan on some massive multitasking, that's what is recommended. This thing will overclock to around 3.5ghz with a good mainboard and good cooling if you're lucky.

4gb DDR2 ram kits (2x 2gb) are getting affordable these days. And with the q6600 and a proper mainboard, you won't have to go too expensive for some good overclocking.

You want to run games properly for a while, the 8800gts 320mb is a very awesome deal. They're twice as fast as the 7600gt and it can be found for about $260. And it supports dx10. The 8800gtx is not worth double the price.

Huge hard drives are getting faster and cheaper. Right now I'm a fan of the WD RE2 400gb disks. They're almost as fast as the raptors in most of the tests and they're only about $120 iirc.

If you want to do some good overclocking, the mainboard choice is very important. The new p35 chipset is an amazing overclocker, but not all mainboards do as well with quad core chips.

A power supply is important too. It's not worth to save money on it. I'm very impressed by the Corsair HX models. The 520W version should be plenty for this caliber hardware. If you plan to go SLI in the future, the 620W version is recommended.
 
Brick in which town do you exactly live and how much time would it take you to travel to Rotterdam.

Ooh and the 2900xt seems to be the best bang for your buck.
 
Ehm, I live in alkmaar, and it takes 1 hour and 39 minutes by train. Why?

And no, the 8800gts cards perform better and they're cheaper most of the time. The factory overclocked 320mb cards have the best performance/price ratio.
 
Ravioli said:
"I also want to run some of the most graphic intensive games around (and those coming up soon). "

The 8800 GTX is a must, if u buy anything else underneith that you will regret it
Click to expand...

the gtx is not a must......i would rather get the 8800gts that is about 300-400 dollars cheaper then the gtx. 700 is way to much for a card.
 
The Brick said:
Ehm, I live in alkmaar, and it takes 1 hour and 39 minutes by train. Why?

And no, the 8800gts cards perform better and they're cheaper most of the time. The factory overclocked 320mb cards have the best performance/price ratio.
Click to expand...
Are you sure about the card, because the 512bit interface and 512mb should make it more future proof. With all the normal maps being used the extra texture memory should come in handy.

And the reason I asked was that maybe if I give you like 50,- you could sometimes in the future come here, overclock my hopefully new pc and then go back home.
 
Hmm yes I could. What hardware are we talking about? Anyway, take it to PM, let's not derail this thread.

And the 8800gts performs better in most current games. I can't really say much about future games. The hd2900xt don't perform much/any better in DX10 than the 8800's either. And the game that uses the most shaders and memory currently would be STALKER, and the 2900xt sucks MAJOR at that game. Even a crossfire setup of that card isn't half as fast as one 8800gts in stalker. How much of that will be improved with drivers is unknown, but I wouldn't count on it.
 
At the moment the HD 2900XT is lack luster and power hungry. Possible performance aside, it is all over the charts atm (up and DOWN). If you want an HD 2900XT wait and see if new drivers can improve those lows, like with AA enabled, since there has been a difference with previous drivers and how they use shaders is more depended on them. But there is no reason not to get a 8800.

Yeah, I don't expect drivers to help with STALKER performance much if anything.
 
A few things I'd like to say to reinforce what Brick and Asus said:

- You will not be able to clock the C2Ds to 4.5ghz unless you use liquid nitrogen or phase cooling. You'll probably need some volt modding too.
- The 2900 is definitely NOT the best bang for your buck. In fact it may be the worst bang for your buck.
- Wait for Intel price cuts and get either the Q6600 or the E6850.
- The 8800GTS are ****ing awesome.
 
I built my PC below for...probably cost a total of $1500...
 
From what little I read on the www.tweakguides.com front page (archived news), it seems that the current hardware runs DX10, and it's beautiful, but current hardware can't run DX10 well, so you might as well not go overboard with a DX10 card that will be obsolete once they get the DX10 ball rolling.
 
You shouldn't even need to overclock the processor (Nevermind the near impossible 4.5 GHz overclock.), it runs fairly efficient. GHzs don't mean shit.
A GeForce 8800GTS won't get you far in the DX10 world when it matures, so its your choice: Now or later.
You can pick up a 320 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 for quite cheap, I have one, and I love it.
 
Fliko said:
You shouldn't even need to overclock the processor (Nevermind the near impossible 4.5 GHz overclock.), it runs fairly efficient. GHzs don't mean shit.
Click to expand...

ghz mean everything is performance. higher the ghz the faster the processing.
 
Depends on what chips you're talking about. A 3ghz core2duo is faster than a 5ghz pentium D.
 
The Brick said:
Depends on what chips you're talking about. A 3ghz core2duo is faster than a 5ghz pentium D.
Click to expand...

Is a single 3ghz core of the core two duo also stronger then a 5ghz pentium d. I'm just asking because most games still run on 1 core.

Also I wish they had some processor scale on which you could compare all processors, because since the core2duo's came with their seemingly low ghz I got very confused, and I stopped knowing how much stronger they actually are then a Pentium.
And it doesn't need to be superaccurate, I can understand that there is going to be trouble with that
 
The Brick said:
Huge hard drives are getting faster and cheaper. Right now I'm a fan of the WD RE2 400gb disks. They're almost as fast as the raptors in most of the tests and they're only about $120 iirc.
Click to expand...

I was going to get another WD Caviar 16 500GB drive within a week. Is this drive you speak of any better than the WD RE 16 500 GB? I mean, because I might just get the WE RE 500GB. Is the 400 GB RE better than the 500 or something? I need another hard drive.

Oh, by the way. I think Grey Fox was talking about a theoretical single core 5Ghz compared to a theoretical dual core 3ghz comparison. Since most games use one core, the single core processor would be better, even though the dual core can process at up to 6Ghz since it has two cores - right? Something to think about.
 
Are you sure, I can't find any quad core for that price
http://azerty.nl/producten/zoek/472/core-2-quad.html
And in that toms hardware chart the AMD quad was way up there outdone by the Intel's but not by much, certainly not worth 200,-. And I thought AMD's run hotter because they are already over clocked by default, saving you the trouble.
 
Nr1. The 276 euro is only for ONE of the two processors needed for quad core.
Nr2. The mainboards for the fx-72/74 are about 360 euro.
Nr3. They don't overclock half as well.
Nr4. They eat a LOT more power and cooling, waste mainboard space bause they're 2 cpus.
Nr5. If you look at game performance the Q6600 is quite a tad better.
Nr6. The q6600 will be about 240 euro july 22nd.

Blah.
 
Now it makes sense. Anything else worthy happening this summer. Like some new video card, new memory type or whatever coming.
I want to know because in July/August I plan to buy a new PC.
Anything reason to wait like a couple of months with upgrading.
 
The Brick said:
Ok lots of things to say here. I'll go from start to bottom.

Core 2 duo's overclock well, but don't expect it to overclock more than 50% when doing it the easy way (meaning following some guide without actually knowing what you're doing). Those overclock you've probably heard about are the world records without stability, with a lucky batch and massive cooling, the right mainboard etc..

July 22nd the prices of the core 2 quad q6600 (2.4ghz) will drop to about $266, which should be an awesome deal, right now they're still over $500. If you plan on some massive multitasking, that's what is recommended. This thing will overclock to around 3.5ghz with a good mainboard and good cooling if you're lucky.

4gb DDR2 ram kits (2x 2gb) are getting affordable these days. And with the q6600 and a proper mainboard, you won't have to go too expensive for some good overclocking.

You want to run games properly for a while, the 8800gts 320mb is a very awesome deal. They're twice as fast as the 7600gt and it can be found for about $260. And it supports dx10. The 8800gtx is not worth double the price.

Huge hard drives are getting faster and cheaper. Right now I'm a fan of the WD RE2 400gb disks. They're almost as fast as the raptors in most of the tests and they're only about $120 iirc.

If you want to do some good overclocking, the mainboard choice is very important. The new p35 chipset is an amazing overclocker, but not all mainboards do as well with quad core chips.

A power supply is important too. It's not worth to save money on it. I'm very impressed by the Corsair HX models. The 520W version should be plenty for this caliber hardware. If you plan to go SLI in the future, the 620W version is recommended.
Click to expand...
Thanks a ton for the extensive advice, it's really appreciated.
The 8800gts sounds very tempting indeed, double the capacity of 7600gt sounds insane. great price too on it, and the C2D and the rest
I'm not too sure what SLI is, it's abit above my league I suspect.
Gunner said:
A few things I'd like to say to reinforce what Brick and Asus said:

- You will not be able to clock the C2Ds to 4.5ghz unless you use liquid nitrogen or phase cooling. You'll probably need some volt modding too.
- The 2900 is definitely NOT the best bang for your buck. In fact it may be the worst bang for your buck.
- Wait for Intel price cuts and get either the Q6600 or the E6850.
- The 8800GTS are ****ing awesome.
Click to expand...

I meant that core 2 duo means 2.2 ghz = 4.4ghz, i didnt mean overclocking the separate ones to that much lol. that's pretty much how i've understood the core 2 duo works
 
CrazyHarij said:
Thanks a ton for the extensive advice, it's really appreciated.
The 8800gts sounds very tempting indeed, double the capacity of 7600gt sounds insane. great price too on it, and the C2D and the rest
I'm not too sure what SLI is, it's abit above my league I suspect.
Click to expand...



In particular tests, the 8800GTX is ****ing phenomenal, but in almost every case, the GTS is quite enough, and a much better value, especially when considering that there will be better cards to come later.


I may just buy one of these. But my lowly X1900GT is good enough to run any game so far, at least with respectable graphics settings.



The 8800 GTS appears to be on par, or even faster than two X1950XTX cards and in the same league as two 7900GTX's !



This is the benchmark source I referred to.

I'm not going to bother with SLI or crossfire until I can learn to shit money.
 
CrazyHarij said:
I meant that core 2 duo means 2.2 ghz = 4.4ghz, i didnt mean overclocking the separate ones to that much lol. that's pretty much how i've understood the core 2 duo works
Click to expand...

That's not how it works, is it? Can anyone confirm this?
 
I'm not too sure what SLI is, it's abit above my league I suspect.
Click to expand...

Oh, I mis-read what you said.


SLI = more than one Nvidia graphics card capable with supported motherboards. Crossfire = more than one ATi graphics card with supported motherboards. Same concept, but implimented entirely differently.

Wikipedia or something should give you a great rundown if you need more info.
 
Unfocused said:
That's not how it works, is it? Can anyone confirm this?
Click to expand...

Overall no that's not how multi core processors work. Getting into the whole multi threading thing is confusing for most people.

Put it this way you get the same amount of processing power x2 so you could be doing two really intensive tasks at the same time and not have them compete with one another for CPU cycles, if they where single threaded apps that is. That's in the normal dual core PC user environment.

Then you get crazy. 4 cores is actually worse than 2 unless your heavily into media editing or serious multitasking such as being a software dev or some such. My work rig has 60-80 processes and other apps running around the clock.
 
Kyo said:
Overall no that's not how multi core processors work. Getting into the whole multi threading thing is confusing for most people.

Put it this way you get the same amount of processing power x2 so you could be doing two really intensive tasks at the same time and not have them compete with one another for CPU cycles, if they where single threaded apps that is. That's in the normal dual core PC user environment.

Then you get crazy. 4 cores is actually worse than 2 unless your heavily into media editing or serious multitasking such as being a software dev or some such. My work rig has 60-80 processes and other apps running around the clock.
Click to expand...

Wait what? That can't be. If I have a quad core 2.4 ghz, it has to be faster then a dual core 2.4 ghz. Besides a lot of apps are going multi core nowadays.
 
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