Tf Computer Nerds (Gamers, Overclockers, Server-Ists Etc)

[Muel]

I'll have to find out what spec mines currently running when I get home then.

With those system requirements what would I be looking at? Would a powerful, non game specific pc do the job?

Im not too sure what to look out for really, or how much Id be spending on a decent unit.

Ignore minimum specs, they tend to tell you any old rubbish will run it to make you buy the game.

I'd say to get a proper gaming rig, and I'd say you're looking at a minimum of £600, more like £750 if you want the best price point.

[Muel]

Just made an update to my build log if anyone cares. Still waiting on my new CPU cooler (ordered nearly a month ago), and trying to decide about a couple of other things, but it's nearly done.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18418452

[weirdoku]

Tidy Muel. I like how you routed the power cables to the GPUs, I would do that if my case had more room!

Edited July 28, 2012 by weirdoku

[Muel]

Cheers dude. Thought I'd have left it alone by now but I can't seem to stop tinkering with things. Toying with the idea of spraying all the bezels white now, choice choices...

[tomturd]

raspberry pi discussion moved here

[Gandalf the Yellow]

PC tech support has been closed, can we use this for odd support questions?

If we are:

something from the opposite end of the scale, got a HP Mini 110 netbook, recently windows is busted and the built in Roxio restore wouldn't restore XP (it just freezes on this screen and no CPU/HDD light active) as it's a netbook there's no CD drive so I can't boot it with my XP disc, any idea what else I can do? I've been asking around for an external DVD rom but so far no luck.

any help would be great

Steve

[Muel]

PC tech support has been closed, can we use this for odd support questions?

Nope, admins are pushing for people to make more individual topics. Kills off the micro-communities that were the main reason I came on here to be honest, but never mind...

USB DVD drives are cheap now, got mine for £12, but if you're really tight and have a 2gb+ flash drive, you could probably do it this way: http://www.techtipsgeek.com/install-windows-from-usb-flash-pen-drive/559/

Personally though I'd just buy the drive. Could take many hours pissing around trying to get it to work, easier just to buy a USB DVD drive and do it the easy way.

[Gandalf the Yellow]

cheers Muel, just trying to find a way to get it working for free before spending money on it - yes money is tight as I've thrown a load of money in the drain by cancelling holiday and given some gig tickets away etc so £12 will all add up.

someone at my work mentioned Linux, will I be able to install that with the netbook's situation?

Steve

[weirdoku]

Anyone have any ideas how one GTX 660 compares against GTX 260s in SLI? I can't find anything on the interwebs!

[ZeroMatt]

Pretty big difference, should be roughly a 30-40% increase with similar power consumption.

If you want to check it out for yourself a 470 is pretty similar to 260 sli performance wise.

[weirdoku]

Sweet, next question. My current rig is a q6600@3.0ghz, ddr2@1066mhz and a 750 watt psu. Power wise I'm sure my psu is fine for one 660, how about two 660 at some point in the future? What about bottlenecks? My CPU and RAM too weenie to make full use of one 660, two 660?

I'm asking cos I'm upgrading to a bigger monitor that runs at 1920x1080. I don't game much but when I do I like th to run at nice and smooth fps, recent games like BF3 and such.

Edited September 14, 2012 by weirdoku

[Muel]

PSU is easily enough. I run two 5830s on a 650w PSU and they're fine. They draw roughly the same as a GTX260 I think. (About 175w each).

Edited September 14, 2012 by Muel

[weirdoku]

Think I might just get one 660 for now, upgrade the rest of my rig later on then get another 660 after that.

Now then, who wants to buy my 260s? One is a bog standard 260 and the other is the 216 core version, any offers?

EDIT.

Just got the new 23" monitor, my god there's so much more room for activities! Also tried out Assassins Creed Revelations in higher resolution, no fps drop? Can't complain!

Edited September 15, 2012 by weirdoku

[forteh]

Sweet, next question. My current rig is a q6600@3.0ghz, ddr2@1066mhz and a 750 watt psu. Power wise I'm sure my psu is fine for one 660, how about two 660 at some point in the future? What about bottlenecks? My CPU and RAM too weenie to make full use of one 660, two 660?

I'm asking cos I'm upgrading to a bigger monitor that runs at 1920x1080. I don't game much but when I do I like th to run at nice and smooth fps, recent games like BF3 and such.

For what its worth my gtx260 216 runs BF3 very, very smoothly 1920x1080 with mostly high (not max) settings, get a pretty constant 45-50 fps. That's with a 4.03Ghz i3 (dual core effectively) and 4gig ram.

[weirdoku]

For what its worth my gtx260 216 runs BF3 very, very smoothly 1920x1080 with mostly high (not max) settings, get a pretty constant 45-50 fps. That's with a 4.03Ghz i3 (dual core effectively) and 4gig ram.

45-50fps? Mine never got that high, will test it again.

[forteh]

One or two settings need turning down because they rape the gtx260 (it doesn't support them well enough and the visual difference is negligible) but for the whole it's very, very smooth

[weirdoku]

Forteh, are you running BF3 on one or two GTX 260s? Last I tried it with my two 260s I got no where near 40fps!

[i like cunning stunts]

Just bought a gaming rig and some new furniture for the room for a "comfy" set up. Can't wait to get playing on it as I've always thought the controller was holding me back on fps games on the ps3. Plus I've had macs my whole computer life will be nice to have a change and get my hands on some proper fps games like tribes, quake etc.

Spec i7 950 3.6 ghz

Antec case

GeForce gtx 580

6gb hyperX ddr3

1tb Samsung spin point hardrive

Gigabyte motherboard

Xonar hd audio card

23" dell ultra sharp monitor

Harden karmen sound sticks

Razer naga epic mmo gaming mouse

Logitech g110 gaming keyboard

Possibly going to add a 120gb ssd and need some headphones might get the Siberia v2 or the audio technica ad700?

[forteh]

Forteh, are you running BF3 on one or two GTX 260s? Last I tried it with my two 260s I got no where near 40fps!

Single gtx260 216 core (the 216 cores were a fair bit faster IIRC, close to a gtx280). I think SLI is an absolute con unless you're going to be spanning games across multiple monitors, I tried it once and at the time even games with an official SLI profile were no faster than with a single card.

I don't know how much bearing it has on it but I believe the four gig processor makes a massive difference to game performance, I don't think games are being written to take advantage of more than two cores (currently although that's going to change). Comparatively being that I have two cores running at four gig vs your four cores running at three gig (although two are sat idle because the game doesn't use them) I have 30% more processor cycles, for me that is more important than the quad core

[Muel]

SLI/Crossfire on modern cards is much better these days. I have 5830s in Crossfire and they're not bad, but certainly not 100% scaling, whereas the new GTX 6** series and AMD 7*** series offer much better scaling now.

Gig means gb, not ghz btw.

Any games written after about 2009 have been written to utilise multiple cores though. Clockspeed means very little anyway, what matters is the mixture of clockspeed, IPC and the number of cores available. Where Intel are really pulling ahead now is with the IPC. No idea what IPC actually means apart from it's related to the cause of 3.4ghz i5 quad being faster than a 4.8ghz FX-8150 8 core, because it does more calculations in one clock cycle.

Anyways, things have moved on massively in the last year or two, I guess is my point lol. A GTX660 would outperform SLI GTX260s by a big margin, just like the new i3-2120k is faster than the old Q9650 and in a lot of cases, the i7-920/930/950.

[forteh]

Naturally as technologies mature they're going to get better, however for my usage a single gtx260 216 does everything I want for the moment

When you say multiple cores are you referring to dual cores or quads? My point was that a dual core running at a higher clock speed than a quad core that is only using two cores should theoretically be quicker. For benchmarking and software that is written for and utilises more than two cores then yes they will be much, much faster; games will get there eventually but whilst they're still being developed cross platform for consoles without the multiple core hardware I don't believe it will make a significant difference.

My view on SLI is pretty jaded I must admit (being a grumpy old man probably helps ) but for me there is no advantage of doing it.

Surely gig is a abbreviation of giga(watt/byte/hertz/newton etc. etc.) so could be used for either, I just mix and match between the two depending on which falls out of my fingers onto the keyboard first

[Muel]

Naturally as technologies mature they're going to get better, however for my usage a single gtx260 216 does everything I want for the moment

When you say multiple cores are you referring to dual cores or quads? My point was that a dual core running at a higher clock speed than a quad core that is only using two cores should theoretically be quicker. For benchmarking and software that is written for and utilises more than two cores then yes they will be much, much faster; games will get there eventually but whilst they're still being developed cross platform for consoles without the multiple core hardware I don't believe it will make a significant difference.

Was referring to any really, you're right on the whole dual core/quad core thing though, but to be honest these days, how often do you find a dual core with better performance per core than a quad/6/8 core?

Personally though, I believe the significant difference is already here for a lot of games. The only game currently being developed I can think of that only uses 2 cores or fewer is Minecraft. Other than that as far as I'm aware, they all use multiple cores.

My view on SLI is pretty jaded I must admit (being a grumpy old man probably helps ) but for me there is no advantage of doing it.

There isn't if you're running an owd GTX260, but there isn't going to be, it's a 4 year old card from the time when SLI was very young. Now they've refined the technology, the advantages can be huge depending on what you're doing.

[forteh]

Was referring to any really, you're right on the whole dual core/quad core thing though, but to be honest these days, how often do you find a dual core with better performance per core than a quad/6/8 core?

True, of course my little old i3 isn't stock clock speeds, god bless OCUK

Personally though, I believe the significant difference is already here for a lot of games. The only game currently being developed I can think of that only uses 2 cores or fewer is Minecraft. Other than that as far as I'm aware, they all use multiple cores.

You may be right, I've not kept up on any games development for a good while now, perhaps the quad cores are being developed for more.

There isn't if you're running an owd GTX260, but there isn't going to be, it's a 4 year old card from the time when SLI was very young. Now they've refined the technology, the advantages can be huge depending on what you're doing.

HAHA I had sli back when it was first re-introduced with a pair of 7900GS cards in 2004 or there abouts, the gtx260 is a million miles more advanced as a single card. Again the technology has probably matured sufficiently to make it work better

[Jamie_Trials]

I know this isn't tech support but that's been locked now so I thought I'd bob this question in here.

I'm upgrading my computer at the moment from my ancient setup.

Will be getting an Asrock 970 Extreme 3 motherboard, AMD FX-4100 Black edition CPU @ 3.6 Ghz, 4x1gb modules of ram and a HIS Raedon HD 4870 graphics card. All happy days apart from one thing.

The motherboard wants a 8 pin power connector but my current one only had 4, My psu has plenty of spare SATA leads but I'm wondering what adapter I should get?

Would it be fine using something like this?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4pin-to-8pin-Power-Cable-10cm-/350584060574?pt=UK_Computing_LaptopAccessories_PowerSupplies&hash=item51a0703a9e&_uhb=1#ht_785wt_1141

Or will that reduce the power input to the mobo?

Help please

[Muel]

Have you bought yet? Avoid that CPU like the plague! Compared to an i5-3570k they're dog slow. Even the 8 core version of that CPU (FX-8150) is a terrible performer compared to an i5-2500k, see here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=288

Imagine the difference between the FX-4100 and the new i5-3570k!

To your 4 pin question, I believe you can just run it with the 4 pin only plugged in. It's only to add extra power to the PCI lanes, but with one graphics card it should be fine.