Hardware

[Krait]

Hey all,

I'm going to be building a new computer in January and was wondering who had any kind of expert (or enthusiast) input. I'm pretty sure I'm going the AMD64/Nvidia route. I'm undecided on dual core or not though . Anybody have any issues playing with 64bit CPUs/OS? Is it worth ponying up the plat for a 7800GTX (future considerations, not necessarily because it is needed today)? 10k rpm hard drives? 2 Gigs RAM vs 1? Anybody get a good deal online or at retail recently? (oh man, i'm gonna have to have the wife get a second job to bankrole this thing)

Krait/Ellich/Nelo/Yanzo/Broan/Rukhan

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[Grimwulf]

cool i got a nice rebate from tigerdirect on two 7800gt and 600 power supple got 150 off them. there prices on cpu not to bad if you need a motherboard the 939 socket sli ones are on back order when ever they nice enough to send me my new motherboard i be able to tell you more about any problems running the game if any on the 64 platform

[Tanadil]

Ahhhh to have some kind of money to be able to do this....

So far Duel Core is pretty good to have around, but alot of it is if you plan on doing alot of multi-tasking with your computer. It does help with the load and will always help....my suggestion, I would wait a little while longer before going Duel core to make sure they get the model down pat. Get a socket 939 AMD/64 Like Grim suggested.

Do go Sli! It will help in the long run when the new 7800 GT(X)* models do drop in price and you can use the bridging on it to double the effect of your graphics input and output. This PCIexpress slots are gonna be really cool in the future when they find more uses with them.

Right now Tigerdirect and a few other places are currently running a sale on an eVGA Motherboard socket 939 combined with an eVGA 7800GT for $359 dollars right now. Those video cards ALONE are selling for that much! so the fact that you get a motherboard with it....is almost unbelievable.

If i remember right I think the motherboard they have do have four RAM slots so you could easily get 2 gigs on it, and hey it never hurts to go 2.

I think Tigerdirect is having a sale on 10k RPM Harddrives as well.

If you have the time shop around on Tigerdirect and Newegg.com for pricing and matching. I am currently trying to earn money to do this exact same thing....some day.
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[Sathak]

From a price/performance standpoint, dual-core is expensive. You're paying more for a very small performance jump, IMO. Same with paying more for a 7800GTX over a 7800GT (or even a 6800GT or similar card).

I'd definitely go with as much memory as you can afford, 2GB sounds good for MMO gaming to me. A good fast hard drive might also be a better place to spend extra.

Mind you, this comes from someone who would not think twice about dropping serious money on a dual-core 4800+ and dual 7800GTX cards. But I'm neither rational nor sane when it comes to my own hardware purchases.
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Formerly Lizarde/Miltorrus of <Epic Shadows> in EQ
Now wasting my time in WOW
Running the guild <Hugs> on Stormrage US

[Renvik]

I was just at a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and VisualStudio 2005 launch a few weeks ago, and the rep said no Microsoft products, including Windows Vista, will be taking full advantage of dual core processors. Their platforms are barely catching up to 64-bit processors.

Even their Windows server platforms aren't set up to use dual core, but they love 64-bit since you can pile memory onto the system and it can use it ALL. Windows has had to segment memory into small blocks for a long time, but 64-bit windows can use it all at the same time (up to terrabytes). So if you have 1gig+, a 64-bit OS is very nice.

So yea the only things I've been hearing about that use dual cores are some new flavors of linux and high end 3D rendering software. But if it was me, I'd have a hard time choosing between the 4000+ and a 3800+ dual core. The 3800+ is really only a little more expensive, not hundreds, and who knows maybe TMPGEnc will release a DVD encoder that will use the two cores and cut my DVD ripping time in half. Probably the only advantage I would ever see.

But like I said on TS last week, AMD will be launching their new chipset that supports DDR2 memory in January. Probably will take a month or two before some boards will be out that will use it and be reasonably priced, but from what I gather it's going to be a nice boost in performance.

www.tomshardware.com for all the computer geek reading you could ever need. Only problem with that site is it makes it hard to pick something to buy right now, cause you read there about what's new and cool and just around the corner
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[Sathak]

Yeah, that's one thing to keep in mind when considering upgrades and other purchases-- software tends to lag way behind hardware advances, because it isn't cost effective to develop for technology that is only being used by a very small percentage of people. Dual-core technology is nice, but developers aren't in a real rush to spend the time to optimize for it. Well, some developers will make tweaks and offer token support, mostly as a selling point for their software. But for the most part it will be a while until you see a general boost in performance from dual-core, aside from a slight improvement in "smoothness" because Windows 2000/XP can split the general computing load between the cores.
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Formerly Lizarde/Miltorrus of <Epic Shadows> in EQ
Now wasting my time in WOW
Running the guild <Hugs> on Stormrage US