Attila Computer & Hardware Recommendations

[Biggus Splenus]

4K Personal experience post time.

I bought myself a 4K monitor (this one from Dell: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=30305), and the quality and clarity is absolutely stunning. The high resolution is also extremely useful with some types of programs (eg. Gimp, Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, 3ds Max).

With games, the improvement depends on what you're playing (in my opinion); I prefer 1080p for most strategy and mobo games (eg. Europa Universalis, Civ5, League of Legends) (I think some might like it for Total War because it focuses more on pretty graphics than most others in its genre, but I still use 1080p on TW anyway). 4k is definitely best on FPS and RPG games (eg. Battlefield, Skyrim, GTA, Bioshock, Farcry, Assassin's Creed), but the amount of PC power needed to run games like this at 4K & high settings is definitely too much, so not a realistic option at this time.

Windows 8 generally scales the UI well most the time for programs, but sometimes it doesn't, and it breaks the experience eg. Photoshop is unusable for me at 4K on Windows 8 because the UI doesn't scale at all (same with other Adobe programs, and Gimp) and I get minuscule buttons. So if you want to use Adobe professional programs like this and want a 4K monitor, either wait for Windows 10 (which will have a much better API for UI for scaling), or run it on Mac OS X (which has had great UI scaling for Adobe programs for a long time; this is what I do).

Also, Windows does a terrible job at scaling the UI for a multi-monitor setup, where both monitor have different resolutions. I have my 2650x1080 monitor (not a typo, it's a ultra wide ) and 3840x2160 connected at the same time, and the text will be annoyingly blurry on whatever monitor I set as my secondary. Sounds like a small deal, but when you spend $500 on each monitor, it's definitely not (don't scald me for spending this much, I actually need it for what I do )

All in all, I don't think 4K is worth it at this time. The industry isn't ready for it, and we're still waiting for plenty of the massive companies to properly support it in their products. By the time 4K is supported properly (probably not too long after Windows 10 is out), and graphics cards are better geared for these higher resolution screens (higher memory bandwidth, higher VRAM capacity), 4K monitors would have decreased significantly in price.

I'll just say don't buy a 5820K I7 unless you want 2 min load times like me.

Owww... that'd hurt :/ Have you done much searching as to why this is?

[alQamar]

Hey Splenyi thanks for this post. Was interesting to read!

[alQamar]

I have a 1TB 840Evo SSD (Not affected by the 840 issue).

And I've tried it on both the HD and the SSD the HD is 7200.

Both have terrible end turn times.

Can you please submit a CPU-Z and DXdiag logfile, perhaps I am able to figure things out.

Hello Guys!!

I have a question. Is very bad if my PC have a FX8320@3.5ghz??? I can't run this game up of 30 fps. I have a GTX760 (2gb) and 8Gb of Ram @1600mhz. Something that I could do with my CPU? :c

I play Rome2 in Ultra settings at 50fps but Attila I play at 20 fps :c (annoying)

Very probably you suffer the problem that Attila has higher requirements at all and also has severe issues to serve on AMD processors. Refer my post #307

As said to Duram, a post of your CPU-Z log would be helpful for further investigation, or take part in my benchmark thread for the purpose so we have a native comparison.

[Biggus Splenus]

Latest Steam hardware surveys: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

For anyone interested.

[Jdp1698]

Hi all my old pc recently broke and I decided that I wanted to just upgrade in order to play the likes of Attila Rome 2 and other rts games my budget is about £800-850 excluding monitor and other peripherals as I have them already here is a build I recently made and considering to make cheers for any replies in advance https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

[SPARTAN VI]

Hi all my old pc recently broke and I decided that I wanted to just upgrade in order to play the likes of Attila Rome 2 and other rts games my budget is about £800-850 excluding monitor and other peripherals as I have them already here is a build I recently made and considering to make cheers for any replies in advance https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/

You linked us to a blank part list. You need to use the export/share/permalink links from your build to share the part list. The permalink URL is located at the top of your part list.

[SPARTAN VI]

I recently discovered the LGA771 to LGA775 sticker mod that allows the use of (currently) cheap and fast LGA771 Xeon processors on antiquated consumer LGA775 boards. This is actually a really cheap way to update a LGA775 board to non-K Haswell i3/i5 levels of performance. The Xeon E5450 is a highly binned processor from 2007 that retailed for about $1300, and when overclocked it still keeps up with i3s and i5s.

Over the past few weeks, I've been accumulating, modding, and finally building a Xeon E5450 machine to upgrade my HTPC machine (Athlon II X4 AM3 platform). Last night, I more or less completed the build and verified it works.

The total cost of my upgrade? $66 and change.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5450 - $30 (ebay)
Mod: LGA771-775 adapter/sticker - $4 (ebay)
Mobo: Asus P5QPL-AM - $32 (ebay)
HSF: Zalman CNPS8900 - $0 (already owned)
GPU: Powercolor HD6950 1GB - $0 (already owned)
RAM: 4GB Ballistix DDR2-800 - $0 (already owned)
PSU: OCZ 500W ModXStream - $0 (already owned)
Case: Thermaltake Lanbox Lite - $0 (already owned)
Storage: Seagate Momentus XT 500GB SSHD - $0 (already owned)

Over the next few days, I'm going to hot swap my primary gaming rig's SSD and GTX 970 over to the Xeon machine to see how its performance stacks up against my Ivy bridge Core i5 3570K @ 4.3GHz. This would be a great alternative for those who still have their aging LGA775 board, and dont want to shell out $150+ for a new CPU, HSF, mobo, RAM, etc.

[A Barbarian]

I recently discovered the LGA771 to LGA775 sticker mod

That's funny. Never new such a thing exists. Looking forward to the benches. Make sure your power supply can deal with the GTX970.

[alQamar]

Hi lads, I am going for an upgrade from my EVGA 670 FTW to a Zotac AMP! extreme core edition, for the phenomenal price of 237 €, after resale of my card. I am very excited and will do a last Attila and Rome 2 benchmark before I change it.

Latest Steam hardware surveys: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

For anyone interested.

Always interested into that. I use the figures for another thread of mine: Plea for a new engine instead of a soon next Total War game

Thankfully Steam fixed the stuff, since it was broken for 2 months and the support is really dumb ass man, it took 4 emails again till they realized the issue I reported and from the start they tried to put the blame on my computer - those 1st level dudes...

[SPARTAN VI]

That's funny. Never new such a thing exists. Looking forward to the benches. Make sure your power supply can deal with the GTX970.

It's pretty impressive stuff. I was looking for a cheap way to get the HTPC back online and stumbled upon it looking at used Core 2 Quad Q6600s.

Here's a capture from an E5450 machine OC'd to 4.2GHz hanging with Haswell i3 and i5s:



The next step is to see how it performs in games.

The GTX 970 should be okay in the HTPC rig. I've been running a relatively power hungry HD6950 on it. The GTX 970 will be sipping power by comparison.

[A Barbarian]

Here's a capture from an E5450 machine OC'd to 4.2GHz hanging with Haswell i3 and i5s:

Nice. Unfortunately it also shows again that the last couple CPU iterations haven't brought much archtiectural improvements with them. So that's a CPU from 6 years ago doesn't perform much worse when running with the same clock speed. Supposedly Skylake might bring some more IPC improvements but that's only speculation so far.

[alQamar]

impressive fin Spartan.

The reason why I went for the Zotac were many actually. Given my researches were not that long as for other hardware things I was about to choose between the MSI, EVGA or Zotac.



Zotac had the best performance on the paper (highest OC), which it has to proove when arrived (probably tomorrow), even though it has got the best cooler, as the idle and load temperatures were the best around even better than MSI G4 and Asus Strix, on the other hand this both could shutdown their coolers completely (0 rpm) which would have been nice when not playing, but then I have only a ITX case and I doubt that the coolers would have turned off anyway.

I think with the capable Zotac cooler that is far over dimensioned for this TDP, I should have a good ride im my rig and no cooling issues - I hope.
The motivation to switch to the 970 at all, despite the issues (3.5 G VRAM etc) coil noise (little though on Asus, MSI and Zotac) were following:

- saving energy compared to the 670,
- lesser TDP, lesser heat which is overall a benefit for my silent power cube.
- more silent coolers
- more performance and finally 4GB VRAM* to bench and play all stuff again, like Attila.
- cheap price for 237 €
- Zotac also grants a 5 year warranty like EVGA, I hope that the service is equal.
- Eventually getting Witcher III for free.

[SPARTAN VI]

The idle temperature panicked me at first. I saw my fans weren't spinning, so I thought my unit was broken. Some quick research put my mind at ease; I've since adjusted the fan profile in Asus' Tweak tool to kick on the fan at 50C instead of 60C. Really impressed so far with these GTX 970s. VRAMgate be damned.

[LestaT]

Do Attila still use mainly single core ? I'm thinking upgrading my 2nd gen rig to 4th gen. Getting high end i3 saves me abour RM200 than getting low end i5. Or should I be better finding second hand i5-2500/i7-2600 to replace my i3-2100 rather than getting i3-4150/4160 since I can get them at the same price (obviously going to 4th gen I'll need to replace my mobo too).

[A Barbarian]

Do Attila still use mainly single core ?

Sporadically SLI works very well and gives very good scaling. Unfortunately it's not stable yet and utilization breaks down intermittently. So u can't really count on SLI for Attila at the moment.

Zotac had the best performance on the paper (highest OC)

OC potential is to >90% determined by the individual CPU/GPU chip and not the card design (as the GPU manufacturers want us to believe).
Here is a test of 13 GPUs from different brands. As u can see, the lowest and highest overclocks are achieved by the same model. It shows exactly that the silicon lottery matters much more than card design.


It's only important that the card provides the basics and that's a decent cooler and in the case of the GTX9xx cards, a high power target. Voltage range for example is not so important for a GTX970/980 but more important for a 7970/7950

[LestaT]

Sporadically SLI works very well and gives very good scaling. Unfortunately it's not stable yet and utilization breaks down intermittently. So u can't really count on SLI for Attila at the moment.




OC potential is to >90% determined by the individual CPU/GPU chip and not the card design (as the GPU manufacturers want us to believe).
Here is a test of 13 GPUs from different brands. As u can see, the lowest and highest overclocks are achieved by the same model. It shows exactly that the silicon lottery matters much more than card design.

I mean the CPU not GPU. Can't even affor the single 970 anyway.

[alQamar]

Hello Lestat neither Rome 2 nor Attila are only made for single core.

I made a thread about that once. Given from those very intensive measurements Rome does benefit from having 2-4 cores. Have a look at the first table please:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14360604


What you wrote is actually true Barbarian but even though the power target of the Zotac is only at 109% percent, the cooler is just stunning. My best stable OC core speed is now at 1538, which the Zotac also run indeed, as I tested that with a live monitoring using MSI Afterburner OSD, the card comes with factory turbo of 1380 MHz. The temperatures are about 60° under load. I am very impressed to be honest.

I have updated the benchmark thread with new results and will also include yours and other submission later on.

[Duffeldof]

Hi guys!

I'm planning on building budget computer that would have upgrade potential.
This is what I had in my mind:

Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition
SSD 240GB
ASUS Z97-C
Corsais Spec-001
Radeon R7 260X
8GB RAM
Corsais CX 430W

Resolution FHD

I plan overclocking it. I read somewhere that OC G3258 is better option than i3 if planning to upgrade to i5/i7 later.

[LestaT]

Hello Lestat neither Rome 2 nor Attila are only made for single core.

I made a thread about that once. Given from those very intensive measurements Rome does benefit from having 2-4 cores. Have a look at the first table please:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14360604

So i3 4160 @ 3.50 should run faster than i5 4440 @ 3.10 ?

[alQamar]

So i3 4160 @ 3.50 should run faster than i5 4440 @ 3.10 ?

Hyperthreading gives you a little advantage when only having 2 cores but the i3 does not have 4 real cores but just 2 cores and HT = 4 threads, so I assume an i5 (4 real cores) would be still faster regardless the clock speed. Not worth to think about any upgrade though in this regard, the advantage will be quite minimal considering the expenses.