Got some PC specs i wanna get your opinion on...again...

[chobski]

I was hoping to get a new rig back in august but due to monetary and time constraints aka uni life I never got round to buying one, which seems to have benefited me somewhat as prices seemed to have dropped a fair bit in the last few months! anyway in april i'm getting a much appreciated cash boost from the powers that be and hopefully ill be able to invest in a new rig for ETW at last (hopefully!). So to the matter at hand i wanted to run some system specs by you lot here to get a feeling how you think the system might run ETW, bearing in mind its not out and benchmark tested which i understand!

Intel® Core 2 Duo E8600 2 X 3.33GHz 1333MHz (heard that dual would be better for gaming than quad atm?)

ASUS® P5QL: DDR2, SATAII, PCI-e x16, 3 PCI, 2 x PCI-e x1 (hoping its quad core compatible incase I later want to upgrade)

4GB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz (2x2GB)

250GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE

512MB RADEON HD 4850 PCI Express + DVI (tempted to upgrade to a 4870 if the cash allows!)

already got the monitor and keyboard, mouse etc.

just wanna get an idea about specs for current games like crysis, far cry 2,maybe sims 3 when it comes out and etw of course is the biggy, wanna run it with large unit settings and hopefully little or no lag at med. or higher settings. All help and opinions is much appreciated! Oh and i honestly would like help not just going for an ego trip or trying to show off or something!!!

[Strelok]

1. I trust you have a 64bit operating system to use up that 4GB of RAM. Corsair is a good brand.
2. Horrible hard drive, get a fast physical spinning 10,000rpm / 15,000RM or a SSD, having a 4850 and E8600 with a slow hard drive will only frustrate you as you get high frame rates but constant stuttering. (Alternatively you can get another one of those 250GB and put it in RAID 0, so you get 500GB and still much better hard drive performance than a single 250GB 7200RM

The CPU is an excellent choice and will give you great performance, the 4850 is a good card, too.
I would try to get a GTX260+ Max Core, although.

What resolution is your monitor?

[Gondor_King]

having a 4850 and E8600 with a slow hard drive will only frustrate you as you get high frame rates but constant stuttering

Since when HDD's play a role in gaming performance?He shouldn't go for these super fast hard drives, a normal SATA II 7200RPM 16/32MB cache would get the job done.

[Freddie]

Are you sure 250Gb is going to be enough? If your planning on getting Windows 7 at some point in the future that will require around about 50Gb of space games can occupy anywhere between 10gb's to 20gb's a time and on top of that you still have your music of films collection and anything you download. The difference between the cost of a 250Gb hard drive and a 500Gb hard drive is negligibly in the price of a new build (even 750Gb are cheap these days).

As for Raid 0, by all means have a raid array but remember for every hard drive you add you double your chances of drive failure and resulting in loss of all your data. On top of that there's the worry of RAID failure which is a real possibility, just about everyone I know has experienced some sort of RAID failure even at work out studio PC RAID failed. The difference was we had RAID 1 so all the data was mirrored in RAID 0 data is striped so you get more speed but should the RAID fail your up poo poo creak without a paddle. Unless you going to invest in a decent RAID controller (don't bother using the crappy onboard motherboard controllers) the cost/benefit of RAID really don't bore out. Sure Windows loads 2 seconds quicker and you might save a few seconds on level loading, the only time I've ever seen RAID 0 really kick ass is when high end SDD's from Micron have been put in a array.

Just out of curiosity I've been using 7200 RPM hard drives for as long as I can remember and I've never experienced any 'micro stuttering'. Long level loading is often a result of low amount of Ram e.g Company of Heroes, frame rate drop outs and low minimum frame rates are as result of poorly configured video drives often found on dual video cards such as the 7950GX2, 9800GTX2, 3870X2.

[Simetrical]

Yeah, I think tw3kr-PC is mostly alone here in putting emphasis on fast disks. Unless you want to go all the way to an SSD, I don't think there's so much point in investing in good disks for games. Mostly they're not disk-bound. (A good SSD will make everything a lot faster, though, not just games, so it might be worth it.)

[Wheelchair]

Yeah, I think tw3kr-PC is mostly alone here in putting emphasis on fast disks. Unless you want to go all the way to an SSD, I don't think there's so much point in investing in good disks for games. Mostly they're not disk-bound. (A good SSD will make everything a lot faster, though, not just games, so it might be worth it.)

Tweak takes turns being obsessed with certain hardware, now it's HDD's.

Sure their good but He goes on and on how he has trouble using all 150GB of his Raptor, he dosn't understand some people can use 1000GB easily.

I say, Storage, THEN Speed lateron.

[Strelok]

Tweak takes turns being obsessed with certain hardware, now it's HDD's.

No.

A hard drive is probably the most overlooked component when building a PC.

Sure their good but He goes on and on how he has trouble using all 150GB of his Raptor, he dosn't understand some people can use 1000GB easily.

Actually, I do. It's just "me", my opinion. I am not saying it for everyone.

I say, Storage, THEN Speed lateron.

I say storage, and put that storage in a RAID array.

If your slow HDD can't access games files fast enough there "will" be an increase in stuttering, and also, a good hard drive "will" reduce game loading times in half.

I don't think there's so much point in investing in good disks for games. Mostly they're not disk-bound. (A good SSD will make everything a lot faster, though, not just games, so it might be worth it.)

Just because games use a lot of RAM doesn't mean they don't need to rely on the hard drive. There are still game files you need to access via the hard disk, not everything is loaded into the RAM. Either a RAID array, or something faster than 7,200RPM should be good enough.

Just out of curiosity I've been using 7200 RPM hard drives for as long as I can remember and I've never experienced any 'micro stuttering'. Long level loading is often a result of low amount of Ram e.g Company of Heroes, frame rate drop outs and low minimum frame rates are as result of poorly configured video drives often found on dual video cards such as the 7950GX2, 9800GTX2, 3870X2.

I never said "micro"-stuttering.
Big and fast RAM and a good CPU does help loading times, however the hard disk can make even bigger of a difference.
A faster hard drive "does" stabilize minimum frame rates and can help achieve higher maximums. For example my FPS meters go through the numbers really fast(on my 7,200RPM they were a bit slower), and the recovery time from a low frame rate is amazing.

[Simetrical]

A hard drive is probably the most overlooked component when building a PC.

Because it's not useful to gamers. Some tasks are disk-bound, some aren't. Games are not normally disk-bound for any significant percentage of their runtime. Their working set fits in memory except possibly during level loads, which are only a small fraction of the game. So you're much better off putting money in RAM, CPU, and GPU than hard disk speed.

I say storage, and put that storage in a RAID array.

Which is either less reliable or still more expensive. And which won't do much of anything to seek times, which are likely as much as or more than a bottleneck than sequential read times (unless you use an SSD, which I've already said is a good decision for a high-end machine).

If your slow HDD can't access games files fast enough there "will" be an increase in stuttering, and also, a good hard drive "will" reduce game loading times in half.

Have you benchmarked this? I find it hard to believe, if you have plenty of RAM and are running a well-written game (say, Half-Life 2). The sensible option if you have spare RAM would be to read in the files in advance in the background, using asynchronous I/O. Or just to touch them so that they're in the page cache.

Besides, level loading times in slow-loading games can often run to a minute. There's no possible way that even half of that could be due to disk access, if your disk isn't badly defragmented.

Even if you halve level loading time, that's only a small minority of what you spend your time actually doing. Mostly you spend your time playing the game. Fast disks are not likely to speed that up. Again, I could be wrong, but I can't see any reason for a game to wait on I/O while you're shooting enemies and whatnot. It might do background I/O, but it won't stutter unless it waits for the I/O to complete before rendering the next guy's head blowing up, and I can't imagine why it would do that.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to hear evidence. Otherwise I'll have to start benchmarking again, sigh. (I'm about to set up RAID 5 on my machine to ensure my home directory doesn't die in a disk crash, so I could test moving a game there . . .)

Just because games use a lot of RAM doesn't mean they don't need to rely on the hard drive. There are still game files you need to access via the hard disk, not everything is loaded into the RAM.

You can do this in advance, though, before the data is actually needed, if you have enough RAM. Except when the application first starts, admittedly. That's what SuperFetch is good for.

[Strelok]

Because it's not useful to gamers.

Well obviously we have differences in opinions, then.

Some tasks are disk-bound, some aren't. Games are not normally disk-bound for any significant percentage of their runtime.

Not all contents of the game is loaded into RAM, and barely any games will bother to be smart and unload and load them in advance. (Nor is that even smart too!)
You need a LOT of RAM for that, and a game that will utilize it.

Their working set fits in memory except possibly during level loads,

Level loading times, are again, like I said, cut down in half with my velociraptor.

which are only a small fraction of the game.

The difference between 20seconds and 60seconds is huge. (See below)

So you're much better off putting money in RAM, CPU, and GPU

And if you already have adequate of them:

then hard disk speed.

Which is either less reliable or still more expensive.

Reduced life span. (Unless you have a SSD), If you are talking reliability as in stability of the game, then it doesn't apply.

And which won't do much of anything to seek times

Not true at all!

Have you benchmarked this?

Crysis Warhead on 7,200RPM on the first level with all save games + cache cleared: 80 seconds
Crysis Warhead on my 10,000RPM on the first level with all save games + cache cleared: 27 seconds.
I have no screenshots or anything, when you open the console Crysis will tell you how long it took to load, I can just take a screenshot of my velociraptor, but I'm not one to put in an old 7,200RPM just to test it.

[quoteThe sensible option if you have spare RAM would be to read in the files in advance in the background, using asynchronous I/O. Or just to touch them so that they're in the page cache.[/quote]
Yes, because all games do that and everything. (sarcasm).

Besides, level loading times in slow-loading games can often run to a minute.

A minute is unacceptable, I remember on an older system I used with a 5,400RPM drive, God those days were horrible .

There's no possible way that even half of that could be due to disk access, if your disk isn't badly defragmented.

Crysis says otherwise, that is just one game. Games I play like: Assasin's Creed, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and Mass Effect are reduced in almost exactly half. (And yes they were both defragmented right before the games were played)

Even if you halve level loading time, that's only a small minority of what you spend your time actually doing.

I only play games for a short period of time before getting bored. I have a little hint of ADD, so a lot of time is loading the game.
Actually I find I mostly like the storyline of games, even if they are average I am still interested to see the end.

Mostly you spend your time playing the game.

Or tweaking it. Last night I optimized all the *.nif files of the meshes in Oblivion with PyFFI and Python. This was done by extracting the contents of Oblivion - Meshes.bsa and and putting it into a seperate folder, I then search for *.NIF, and right-click context menu "optimize with PYFFI", took a long time. I then use the BSA creator with Oblivion Mod Manager and renamed the old Oblivion - Meshes.bsa and replaced it with the new Oblivion - Meshes.bsa. The result was amazing. I also have the .ini file heavily tweaked (believe it or not the most important one is forcing the game to cache more files into RAM )

Fast disks are not likely to speed that up.

Not true in my experience. Like I said they are a great reduction for stuttering, no game uses a proper RAM cache for ALL the game files, even if you have enough RAM to do just that! For example in Crysis, if I set r_displayinfo to 1(the FPS counter built in), I first notice the FPS changes dynamically much faster, if I do suffer low frame rate, it will recover mch quicker.

In Crysis WARHEAD the game used to stutter quite a bit for me(original Crysis didn't) and my velociraptor has completely eliminated that.

but I can't see any reason for a game to wait on I/O while you're shooting enemies and whatnot.

Say that to the developers

It might do background I/O, but it won't stutter unless it waits for the I/O to complete before rendering the next guy's head blowing up, and I can't imagine why it would do that.

I assume you are not a "huge" gamer, you may play some, but not a whole lot. I have at least 400 bought PC games and over 100 bought games on the console, I have seen many unoptimized games that suffer from major stuttering on an un-tweaked and average hardware system (Oblivion, Gears of War) and with my shiny new velociraptor they are absolutely stutter free (and like I said, the loading times are cut in half!).

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to hear evidence. Otherwise I'll have to start benchmarking again, sigh. (I'm about to set up RAID 5 on my machine to ensure my home directory doesn't die in a disk crash, so I could test moving a game there . . .)

You need to play some more unoptimized games. I'm actually quite surprised the questioning of the ability of a fast hard drive, I've been use to an environment of enthusiasts who share my concern on hard drive performance.

RAID 0 wouldn't bother me much as I have an old PC with a 5,400RPM HDD, 1.0GHZ Pentium 3 and 512MB of SDRAM with 100GB of disk space sitting on idle 24/7. I installed Xubuntu on there and plugged an extra ethernet cable into my router, I then created a folder where I put all my backups on (I am going to buy a faster 7,200RPM drive for it in the future) such as registry backups, documents, game saves, etc. Besides, if one of my drives failed I would be more worried on how to replace it rather than my stupid data!

You can do this in advance, though, before the data is actually needed, if you have enough RAM.

"Can". Doesn't mean they will.

The only time the hard disk won't matter is with around 8GB's of RAM, and the OS is tweaked to only use a small amount of RAM(but not crippled) around 100MB(which is what my XP uses), with no page file, and then the game uses 7.8GB (100mb free) of RAM just for the games files.

[chobski]

That whole HDD rpm thing is new to me, I've only ever used 7.2k rpm drives in my pc's and not really noticed a problem with them though i might get a couple of 250gb drives but im not sure yet and i've never really been a fan of using the RAID setup, my dad had a RAID1 setup and still managed to lose both drives!

My main inquiry at the moment is that the motherboard could take a quad core in the future if i wish to upgrade (which i think it can because when i had a look at a test build for quad core it used that mobo) and that the system as a whole should hopefully run ETW pretty damn well.

For me space isn't too much of a problem as i tend to stick most of my work files and music etc. on my laptop and I want this new desktop pc to be a gamng workhorse to replace my now aging setup thats at home.

Also when is windows 7 supposed to be coming out? heard about it a few months ago and then nadda since then...

[Strelok]

Than is correct here. If I meant then, I would have needed an extra comma.

You do not understand what I was trying to do.

You said GPU, CPU and RAM is more important than the hard disk speed.

I changed it around.

If you have adequate GPU, CPU and RAM speed, thEn you need hard disk speed.

Have you actually tried benchmarking seek times with RAID and without?

I did not realize you ment a RAID array. That is true, I thought you ment with a faster hard drive. (I actually am guilty of sometimes not reading what you even replied to me on, I just copy + paste what you say under quote and /quote and reply to what you say)

Okay, I have to admit that's fairly impressive. How did you benchmark the difference? You have two disks installed on the same computer, and a copy of Crysis installed on each disk?

No.

Before I installed my VelociRaptor that's how long WARHEAD took to load (Crysis takes half the time compared toWARHEAD). When the level is finished loading, and you bring up the console with `, it tells you how long the level took to load. Then when I installed my VelociRaptor that was the diference.

Note: I usually have an install of Windows on for maximum a month, and I defragment more than once daily and do other maitenance, so that was not the case for the loading times.

It's especially a trial to get them to work on Linux. I might try The Witcher with and without RAID and see how quickly it loads (although the conditions will be weird since it will be on Linux).

The Witcher can work with Wine O.K, check the Wine HQ Database

Yeah, but with RAID 5 you get better performance and hassle-free protection against disk failure. Replacing a failed disk isn't a big deal, you just buy a new one. But I have years of documents that are currently only on one disk, and which I'd lose irrecoverably if that disk crashed.

I was going to use a RAID 0 + 1 setup with 4 Seagate Barracuda's but I don't have enough splitters since I don't have a modular PSU. (I also read an article on the advantages of setting up RAID 1 + 0 array rather than 0 + 1

Replacing a failed disk isn't a big deal, you just buy a new one

This is what I was talking about was a big deal. With a family of 5 and neither with any jobs (unemployment pay and possibility for disability money from the goverment in the future) money is very tight.

[chobski]

ermm...yeah....

Think I'll stick with the old 7200rpm hard drives since loading times don't bother me too much and I'd rather get 2 640GB or 750GB 7200rpm hard drives than 150GB to 300GB Velociraptors.... money's an issue for us poor students!

But definatey taking on board the advice and getting larger hard drives I'm thinking if I have enough cash I'll be getting either a couple of 640GB hard drives or 2 750GB's plus I can always upgrade the technology with quad core and better hard drives and graphics as time goes on if I need to!

[Strelok]

ermm...yeah....

Think I'll stick with the old 7200rpm hard drives since loading times don't bother me too much and I'd rather get 2 640GB or 750GB 7200rpm hard drives than 150GB to 300GB Velociraptors.... money's an issue for us poor students!

But definatey taking on board the advice and getting larger hard drives I'm thinking if I have enough cash I'll be getting either a couple of 640GB hard drives or 2 750GB's plus I can always upgrade the technology with quad core and better hard drives and graphics as time goes on if I need to!

Then RAID is for you. Example if you want 750GB of space, get a 500GB drive and a 250GB drive into RAID 0, which will usually double the hard drive performance. A fast hard drive is not just loading times, the main issue is a reduction of stuttering, *and* can greatly increase minimum frame rates.

[Freddie]

I can tell you now RAID 0 will not double your hard drive's performance at best you get around 10%-15% boost in real time applications, just Google for 'RAID 0 benchmarks'. If you want a decent hard drive I suggest the Samsung F1 Spinpoint 1TB (again Google the reviews and compare it to expensive Western Digital 10K RPM drives), it's pretty cheap but as you can see from reviews it’s faster then other hard drives including previous Raptor 10K RPM drives (not the Velociraptor though but the difference between all standard SATA hard drives isn’t exactly staggering either).

Velociraptor benchmarks. Check out the level load for Crysis, the Velociraptor is less then a second quicker then a standard 7200 RPM drive. That's enough about RAD and hard drives for now, I've made my point.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I hate checking out motherboard manufacturing websites, all of them no matter which company you use have the slowest websites on the internet.

According Asus this motherboard will support Core 2 Quad CPU's (but it won't support the latest Core i7 CPU's because Intel have changed the socket).

If you can afford a HD4870 I would recommend it if your playing games on a 22" or above if not a HD 4850 will suit your needs for the time being. However if your building this computer with half an eye on Empire Total War I would suggest you wait until the game comes out and gets benchmarked, it would give you some idea on what kind of hardware you will need to get the most out the game.

[Strelok]

<font face=&quot;Comic Sans MS&quot;><font color=&quot;Green&quot;>I can tell you now RAID 0 will not double your hard drive's performance at best you get around 10%-15% boost in real time applications, just Google for 'RAID 0 benchmarks'.

I would disagree with that. I used two Seagate 7,200RPM drives in a RAID 0 array (they were both 250GB) HD Tach showed an increase of read speed from 60mb/s to 120mb/s. Access times of course are not effected. Boot time was considerably much faster and Gears of War was stutter free.

If you want a decent hard drive I suggest the Samsung F1 Spinpoint 1TB (again Google the reviews and compare it to expensive Western Digital 10K RPM drives), it's pretty cheap but as you can see from reviews it’s faster then other hard drives including previous Raptor 10K RPM drives (not the Velociraptor though but the difference between all standard SATA hard drives isn’t exactly staggering either).

A lot of the big 1TB drives seem to have pretty good write and read speeds, I must admit.

Velociraptor benchmarks. Check out the level load for Crysis, the Velociraptor is less then a second quicker then a standard 7200 RPM drive. That's enough about RAD and hard drives for now, I've made my point.

That is absolute bull, as much as I like anandtech. (For one Crysis takes exactly 20 seconds to load a new game and took well over double the time with pre-velociraptor). The operating system, tweaks done to the operating system, tweaks done to Crysis, fragmentation, etc, can all affect loading times greatly, which is why I never really trust even the best hardware review sites. It comes down to the hard drive is always overlooked, and it is always important to have a fast hard disk. Crysis with my 7,200RPM would have occasional stutters, especially when turning around or zooming in with the Assault Scope, nothing too major, but doesn't compare to the stutter free environment with the velociraptor. I mean, if hard drives are so non essential, lets just use some crappy spindle speed 3,200RPM drive! Heck, let's just run the game off of the disk with an IDE 4x drive!

[Simetrical]

Okay, this is way off-topic. I'll start a new thread if I want to argue about the value of hard disks, RAID, etc. for games (let alone whether The Witcher works on Wine, which I know it does because I got up to Part II in it already).

[Freddie]

Okay, this is way off-topic. I'll start a new thread if I want to argue about the value of hard disks, RAID, etc. for games (let alone whether The Witcher works on Wine, which I know it does because I got up to Part II in it already).

Did you buy the Enhanced Edition?

Minor Withcer spoiler

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I've just started Act III myself. Your going to bashing your head against the wall trying to work out how to kill the big plant thing (it's called a Coccidium a giant planet that comes out the ground) in the swamp, it took me ages to work out how to defeat it.

[luciferleigh]

Intel® Core 2 Duo E8600 2 X 3.33GHz 1333MHz (heard that dual would be better for gaming than quad atm?)

since you are on a budget, id say either the E8400 or E8500, special mention for the 85, since it runs at 3.16 ghz, but costs 80$ less, that you could spend on a decent cooler and make up that .17ghz loss and go way over it as well and add the excess $$$ towards that better hard disk

[Strelok]

The CPU is a tricky choice (IMO), the E8600 is not really worth the extra 200MHZ. The E8400 can get 3.2GHZ with ease anyways. I personally was going to order an E8400 65nm to replace my E2200, however I decided to take a risk and get the much better (imo) Q6600 45nm

EDIT:

My reasons being:

1. It runs much cooler than a E8400/E8500/E8600
2. It's a quad core
3. It's much more future proof

Games like UT3 that properly support quad technology for example can see almost, or up to double the performance. It can get 3.0GHZ with ease, and 3.4-3.6GHZ with a half-decent cooler.

So the Q6600 is an option to consider!

[chobski]

I was looking at possibly getting either a Q9400 2.66GHz or a Q9550 2.83GHz from somewhere like dabs.com, don't suppose anyone knows any other cheap british websites like dabs?