Choosing a gaming PC

[RobM77]

I'm trying to spec my first gaming PC and I'm after some advice. I'm spending about £1500 all in, and have come to the classic decision: AMD or Intel for the CPU (specifically an AMD 5000 and an Intel 6600) and ATI or NVidia for the graphics card (specifically an ATI Radeon X1900 XTX or a GeForce 7900 GTX - both PCI express and I'll SLI another identical card in 6 months time when prices drop). A good friend of mine who is into gaming in a big way has an AMD and NVidia equipped machine and swears by it, but all the benchmark tests that I've seen put the Intel and Radeon top. My friend says that you can't rely completely on benchmark tests. I want to mainly play driving sims (i.e. GTR2 & GTL).

Can anyone offer any advice or give their opinions please?

No suggestions of consoles please , I've played driving games on both PS2 and XBox360 many times and they're just not realistic enough for me - I'll stick to PC Sims

[bez_uk]

2Gb RAM

Core 2 duo (intel)

7950 GTX 1Gb (doesnt need sli)

maybe a 10000rpm raptor drive?

http://tomshardware.co.uk/ has mostly reliable benchmarks. Processor ones slightly in intels favour tho. Either way the current intels are great.

[.Adam.]

The new Intel Conroe chip is meant to be the best at the moment, but you need to be careful what motherboard you use to get the best out of it, apparently. It seems that the Intel chip m/board seem to be ATI crossfire compatible, rather than SLi, but if you are only planning on running one card, then I guess it doesn't really matter which you use. I think you will find that NVidia cards work better on some games, and ATI better on others.

[petros]

Just got my new Evesham Solar Plus. Having checked all the bench mark tests I went for this with the new core 2 processor and upgraded to 2 gb of ram and a 512mb 7900gtx graphics card, very fast.£1600.

[BigAlinEmbra]

Alienware are offering the intel/radeon combo for about £1200 plus delivery.
The amd/geoforce is £100 more...

[petros]

be careful of the 7950 cards, apparantly cooling is a problem

[bez_uk]

I'm sure a big branded 7950 with dual slot (second slots space for the fan things) would be ok. Cost a bit tho!

[RobM77]

Thanks for the advice so far guys. Keep it coming!

There's a lot to learn with this I think.. I've just specced a computer out of parts from Novatech for a laugh (not buying, just looking) and the RAM varies in price hugely. 2Gb of dual channel is £317!! I presume it's worth it?! I ended up with £1700 for a Intel 6600 dual core CPU, X1900XTX gfx card, 19inch viewsonic 2ms monitor etc. Bit pricey just to play games eh? It's pretty tough not to go for the best you can though when you have the option!

[Rob P]

I've got a 7800GTX - its fecking noisy!

[bez_uk]

For that sort of price you can get a gaming laptop!

I have Nvidia go 7900GTX and its only noisey after playing games for a few minutes but the in-game music usually hides it anyway.

edit: the SLI GTX has loads of hot parts, if you built yourself no doubt you can knock loads of the cost
www.meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRODCATEGORYVIEWPAGE&USG=APPLICATION&ENT=APPLICATION&KEY=124336

Remember get OEM kit, it's a lot cheaper if you're building yourself eg win XP pro is <£100 not £215!!!!

Edited by bez_uk on Monday 18th September 08:29

[BigAlinEmbra]

RobM77 said:

Thanks for the advice so far guys. Keep it coming!

There's a lot to learn with this I think.. I've just specced a computer out of parts from Novatech for a laugh (not buying, just looking) and the RAM varies in price hugely. 2Gb of dual channel is £317!! I presume it's worth it?! I ended up with £1700 for a Intel 6600 dual core CPU, X1900XTX gfx card, 19inch viewsonic 2ms monitor etc. Bit pricey just to play games eh? It's pretty tough not to go for the best you can though when you have the option!

Our systems guy in our office says that vista will be able to use flash drives as ram, £15 per gig and as many as you have usb slots!
Might be a bit slow for gaming though...

[stig]

Rob P said:

I've got a 7800GTX - its fecking noisy!

I've got dual 7900GTXs and they're fine in my install?

Check out Mesh for good value PCs.

[FourWheelDrift]

My 7800GS with dual slot (fan) is very quiet and runs at between 45-51 degrees.

[panclan]

How about something like this

600w Seasonic S12-600 SLi Ready Silent PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01 £69.95 £82.19

1 LN11603 600w Seasonic S12-600 SLi Ready Silent PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01

200 Gb Samsung SP2004C SpinPoint P120, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, NCQ, 8.9 ms £34.99 £82.23
2 LN11657 200 Gb Samsung SP2004C SpinPoint P120, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, NCQ, 8.9 ms

LN15048 Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 775, 2.13 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £130.99 £153.91

LN15171 Asus P5N32SLI SE Delux NF4 SLI, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £108.99 £128.06

LN14278 2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC8500 (1066), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15, EPP £234.85 £275.95

LN14147 Antec P180 Advanced Tower Case, Black (no PSU) £79.89 £93.87

LN15713 NEC ND-5170A-0B Black x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK £18.87 £22.17

LN13881 Scythe Miné Quiet Heatpipe CPU Cooler S478, S775, S754, S939, S940 compatible £21.95 £25.79

LN12826 19" Viewsonic VX922 Silver/Black TFT, 1280x1024, 2 ms, 650:1, 270 cd/m2, £182.49 £214.43

LN15489 512MB Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX, PCI-E (x16), Mem 1550MHz, GPU 650MHz, Dual DVI/HDTV, VIVO £272.49 £320.18



Net Total £1,190.45

Carriage £25.54

V.A.T. £212.80

TOTAL £1,428.79

Edited by panclan on Monday 18th September 16:45

[RobM77]

panclan said:

How about something like this

600w Seasonic S12-600 SLi Ready Silent PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01 £69.95 £82.19

1 LN11603 600w Seasonic S12-600 SLi Ready Silent PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01

200 Gb Samsung SP2004C SpinPoint P120, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, NCQ, 8.9 ms £34.99 £82.23
2 LN11657 200 Gb Samsung SP2004C SpinPoint P120, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, NCQ, 8.9 ms

LN15048 Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 775, 2.13 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache, Retail £130.99 £153.91

LN15171 Asus P5N32SLI SE Delux NF4 SLI, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £108.99 £128.06

LN14278 2Gb (2X1Gb) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC8500 (1066), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15, EPP £234.85 £275.95

LN14147 Antec P180 Advanced Tower Case, Black (no PSU) £79.89 £93.87

LN15713 NEC ND-5170A-0B Black x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer DVD-Writer OEM UK £18.87 £22.17

LN13881 Scythe Miné Quiet Heatpipe CPU Cooler S478, S775, S754, S939, S940 compatible £21.95 £25.79

LN12826 19" Viewsonic VX922 Silver/Black TFT, 1280x1024, 2 ms, 650:1, 270 cd/m2, £182.49 £214.43

LN15489 512MB Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX, PCI-E (x16), Mem 1550MHz, GPU 650MHz, Dual DVI/HDTV, VIVO £272.49 £320.18



Net Total £1,190.45

Carriage £25.54

V.A.T. £212.80

TOTAL £1,428.79

Edited by panclan on Monday 18th September 16:45

Thanks. That's pretty much the sort of thing I was thinking of. Everyone seems to say that AMD are better than Intel, but so far as I can see the new Dual Core Intels are quicker than a top end AMD. That Radeon also seems quicker than a GeForce like a 7900GTX. What do you think?

[panclan]

I dont think you will really notice the difference between the graphics cards, both ATI and Nvidia are releasing Dx10 cards soon, so I would expect the current cards to reduce in price when this happens.

Depending on the money you have available, you could change the CPU (or if you want to overclock the current one), swap out the 2 raided x HDU's for 1 larger one, it would be cheaper.

Just for your info, the prices that I got were from Scan.

[RobM77]

panclan said:

I dont think you will really notice the difference between the graphics cards, both ATI and Nvidia are releasing Dx10 cards soon, so I would expect the current cards to reduce in price when this happens.

Depending on the money you have available, you could change the CPU (or if you want to overclock the current one), swap out the 2 raided x HDU's for 1 larger one, it would be cheaper.

Just for your info, the prices that I got were from Scan.

I've been trying (and failing) to find out when these DX10 cards are coming out. Not because I want to buy one (I presume they'll be top dollar, and DX10 only runs on Vista? Vista will also be top dollar..), but because I don't want to pay over the odds for a DX9 card now if they're going to drop in value considerably!

Mind you, another train of thought is that now is a bad time to buy a PC with Vista and DX10 just over the horizon. It is expense that stops me though.. it'll push the whole thing over two grand if I'm paying £200 for Windows rather than £50! Plus the latest DX10 card isn't going to be cheap!

Do you know the benefits of running two identical gfx cards SLI? Do all games support this? That's always an option in six months time when either that Radeon or NVidia are cheap enough to pick up another identical one.

[panclan]

With the motherboard I listed, a Nvidia card would be needed to run it as a dual SLI system, a Crossfire board will work with the ATI compatiable cards. www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_game.html has a list of optimized games and more info regarding SLI

According to PCAdvisor, Microsoft's suggested US retail pricing for Windows Vista is as follows: $399 (about £211) for Windows Vista Ultimate, $299 (£158) for Windows Vista Business, $239 (£126) for Windows Vista Home Premium and $199 (£105) for Windows Vista Home Basic.

[RobM77]

That's not too bad for the home version (aroud £130). Mmm.. I wonder if it is worth waiting? Thing is, I'd need a DX10 gfx card. I suppose I could try and find out what they'll be retailing at - out very soon I believe?

[mr_yogi]

one thing to consider regarding ATi Crossfire is that you require one special crossfire version of the card in a crossfire system, and for some reason these seemt o be quite a bit more expensive than the regular X1900's. Where as nVidia SLi works with any two cards of the same type.

Also SLi seems to have more support, so more games can take advantage of both cards.

Like has already been said, which video cards you go for will decide which motherboards you can use, as Crossfire requires motherboards with the ATI or Intel chipsets and SLi requries motherboards with the nForce SLi chipsets. While either single cards can happily work on any chipset.

Confused?