Building a gaming pc..

[</rant>]

I'm a die hard Quake 3 player, played HL2 DM yesterday for the first time at a mates house. Played 2 games, on 2 different servers and won both games. Now im hooked >;]

What I want to do is build my machine in stages. Initially Im gonna get a case, processor, mobo, and psu. I have an old pc so I'll keep the cdr/dvd/floppy/hd from that and upgrade later. I figure if I build it slowly, by the time I get paid next I can slap a couple of 6800gts in it.

• Thermaltake Dream Tower VA3000BNA Tsunami Black (£76.38)
• AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester 90nm Retail Boxed (Socket 939) (£152.57)
• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Socket 939 Motherboard (£123.26)

Order total: £361.55 (so far)

I didnt really want to spend over £450 first time round, being xmas and that. But I still need ram and a decent psu. Any recommendations for use with the above? Or alternatives for the above that are cheaper that will allow for similar performance and the SLI stuff. If I get a cheaper processor will it alter frame rates or is it mostly down to the graphics card(s)?

PSU - Will it need to be extra powerful to cope with two gts?

RAM - Do I really need a gig? Is it that noticable a difference compared to a 512 or dual 256?

SLI - Can I buy one gt then put another in later? Or is it advisable to put them both in at the same time?

I work on macs so this is only going to be used for shooting people with.

</rant>

 

[Descent]

Don't bother getting dual GT's. There is not a CPU fast enough to handle both of them on the market. In your case, it would perform worse than one 6800GT due to the CPU overhead. I would just get one 6800 GT or an X800 Pro.

 

[betrayed]

Just go to tech tv and follow the guide there, it's extremely easy and under $300..

 

[tzedek]

holy shit, like one 6800gt isnt enough?

 

[Descent]

holy shit, like one 6800gt isnt enough?

Wow, now THAT is fucking true! Repped.

By the way, if you want a nice ass gaming rig, get this:

Dual AMD Athlon XP Mobile Barton 2600+
Gigabyte Radeon X800 XT Video Card
One 74GB WD Raptor 10,000 RPM HD
One 200GB ATA-100 WD 7200 RPM HD w/ 8MB Cache
1GB Mushkin Enhanced PC-2700 RAM
USB 2.0/Firewire Card
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card (Creative sucks, just ask me, Junglizm, or BRiT).
Logitech X-530 Speakers
ThermalTake Butterfly 480w PSU

That would kick the living shit out of a comparable A64 4000+/FX55 machine, not to mention that it would be a god for multitasking.



Motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-152&depa=0

Processors (Buy TWO!)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-436&depa=1

Video Card:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-125-149&depa=1

Memory:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-197&depa=0

Hard Drive:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-160&depa=0

Second Hard Drive:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-309&depa=0

SATA Card:

http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?submit=search&item=15-150-018&ATT=&CMP=

USB 2.0/Firewire card:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=15-124-002&depa=0

Sound Card (CREATIVE SUCKS, ASK ANY AUDIOPHILE! I HAVE A SANTA CRUZ, AND IT KICKS ASS!)

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=29-118-101&depa=0

Speakers:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=36-121-118&depa=0

Power Supply:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-153-012&depa=0

 

[BRiT]

Actually, that A64/FX55 would so own that dual-cpu XP rig for gaming. Hell, even an single cpu XP 3200+ would own that dual-cpu 2600+ rig. Games do not benefit from dual-cpu's.

 

[Jung]

Games do not benefit from dual-cpu's.

Doesn't BF1942 support SMP though? I'm probably wrong, but I seem to remember a game or two that supported it.

Edit: I am aware that most games don't support it though.

 

[BRiT]

The games that are CPU bound do not benefit from dual-cpus. They are not coded to handle SMP. I've participated in several conversations on Beyond3D with actual developers about handling SMP and future dual-core cpus. Currently no games genuinely benefit from it. There's a line between supports and benefits. Support means it won't crash if the process is context-switched from running on the current cpu to the other one. And in some cases, running in SMP hinders the performance. Even the poster-child game for SMP, Quake 3, doesn't gain anything from multiple cpus. It did in the beginning, but once any recent patches are applied to it, no benefit is shown from SMP. The concensus was what is required is a major shift in development effort and game-engine design in order to even remotely benefit from it.

 

[Descent]

Nope. All Quake 3 Arena based games benefit from it, as do all games based on the Doom 3 engine. Also, the Unreal Engine version 2 and up support it, as well as the Half-Life 2 engine, and the BF1942/Vietnam and furture games. Didn't you see the Dual Xeon vs. P4 EE story on Tom's Hardware?

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040514/index.html

I'm surprised you didn't know that BRiT. You usually dwarf my knowledge...All of the latest games support SMP.

 

[Jung]

All of the latest games support SMP.

I'm no gaming geek, but even I know that's not true.

 

[BRiT]

JStager, go find RECENT benchmarks of Q3 and games derived from it. None of them will show more than a single-cpu one or two speed-bin higher cpu benefit for having dual cpus. [That is to say, a dual 2600+ won't perform much faster than a single-cpu 3000+.]

And as for BF1942, show me benchmarks that show it being significantly faster on a dual-cpu system than on a system with 1 or 2 speed-bin higher cpus. You can't because it doesn't benefit from it.

 

[Descent]

By latest, I mean the really demanding ones.

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot that I read in another forum that performance decreases by 10% for games, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Why the would Carmack fuck up like that? I'm worried about my SMP system being able to run my games orgasmically...

 

[BRiT]

I'm surprised you didn't know that BRiT. You usually dwarf my knowledge...All of the latest games support SMP.

That's a flat out lie. I have had conversations with the developers from the latest big-title games about this, including battle-cruiser series, tomb-raider series, splinter-cell series, and source-engine based series (CounterStrike, HalfLife2).

Also, why bother dragging in INTEL into this, none of the conversation has to do with intel-based cpus. Their latest single-cpu product is a joke. We're talking your obsolete AMD XPs vs AMD 64 / FX-55s.

 

[Descent]

Yeah, seems that you are right. I skipped over that part, for some reason I didn't read it.

Now I have a question: How good should Dual 1.8GHz Durons run HL2?