Building a new PC? Look here first.

[nandersen]

Not quite. I saw this video last week and all I concluded was they a RAID0 setup with 24 drives is fast. But I'm not convinced that this is because the drives were SSDs. I suspect that if you take 24 regular desktop drives (Caviars or SpinPoints or whatever) you also end up with something that feels awesome.

Seriously I just want to see if STALKER loading is IO bound or CPU bound. Loading it from a single fast SSD (e.g. Patriot Warp) should give you a clue?

[rockingmtranch]

Makes sense. Who could afford one though

[EggChen]

Seriously I just want to see if STALKER loading is IO bound or CPU bound. Loading it from a single fast SSD (e.g. Patriot Warp) should give you a clue?

My guess would be CPU. Don't get me wrong I have no benchmarks as such, or anything that would stand up to scientific scrutiny, but.....

When I went from a low core 2 duo to a higher spec quadcore, on my first load of Stalker I remember thinking "Shit that was fast" (Same drives, but faster ram and running Vista 64bit instead of XP32).

[VINTAR]

Well guys, im going shopping for a motherboard and processor this weekend. The only problem in darkest africa is that there is nowhere that you can walk into and buy a decent mobo, so i will have to really look around. It will either be the P5Q or the P45 UD3R. Anyway, wish me luck. Ill report back on monday, probably with lots of questions

[ket]

You may want to give the P5Q Pro a long hard look, its a much better board than the regular P5Q and usually the difference between the two boards is only a few quid

[VINTAR]

Well chaps. It was as i expected, mountains of G31 mobo's and nothing decent to even consider. I will now have to get one off the net. Didnt get a processor either cause it would just be there laughing at me I will try and get the pro KET.

[ket]

Have we lost vintar under a avalanche of mobos do we know?

[VINTAR]

Well guys, i went and ordered a mobo yesterday and ket, youll be happy to know it is the P5Q PRO should get it this coming weekend. Then ill try scrape all i can together and get the Q6600 which i think is a pretty decent setup. On a completely different note, i have recently read an article on how to make a SSD using a compact flash card and a sata compact flash adaptor which was very interesting. The only draw back was the size of the card available being so small, but another plus was that it would also fit a laptop. I purpose you could store a single game on it.

[nandersen]

I think that a CF cards will always be way slower than regular SSDs.

How much did you have to pay for the mobo/CPU/RAM combo?

[VINTAR]

The board is costing me about £160, the cpu is about £230 and the ram for four gigs was £40(transcend). How does that compare with prices there? Oh and the 9800 gt was about £120.

[VINTAR]

Correction to my previous post. The cpu is £180. A question for ket, or anyone else for that matter. I read a review on the P5Q pro saying that it could not really overblock quad core processors that well. Is this in fact so? Sorry for double posting, but as good as my mobile phone is at posting on this site, it wont ket me edit

[nandersen]

It was not so much for comparison. Just curious what a rig like that costs these days.

I'm pretty much determined for buying an i7 kit somewhere around June. I've been tracking prices through an on-line shopping list at a price database site and it looks very promising so far. Especially the mobo that I'm considering (Asus Rampage II Gene) got cheaper recently. The first thing I'm planning to buy, however, is an X25-M SSD

[Nightwatch]

You're still in South Africa? Then I guess you're converting the prices to British pounds. If so, £160 for P5Q Pro is way too expensive there. You can get it from a reputable online shop for around £110 here.

About the Quad-Core overblocking issue of P5Q, I haven't seen any sign of it as I also use a Quad on P5Q. It looks fine to me, but there are of course others who know this stuff better than me.

[VINTAR]

So im not having any luck as usual in darkest africa. I phoned the store that i ordered from and they say it will be another week. I suspect they never even ordered my stuff. I cancelled the order. I have since found a south african online store called take2, i think there is a british version too. Here is what i am finally ordering based on their stock available: gigabyte EP45 UD3R MOBO. Core2Quad Q8300 and a thermaltake 600w psu with 4 x 12v rails

[Nightwatch]

You're having a realy hard tim ethere as far as the PC supplies go. I hope this latest order works well. Btw, I have the same CPU. I'm quite happy with it (other than general Quad problems with Stalker, but I expect some patches will resolve it soon)

[VINTAR]

Yeah, its been an experience for sure. Oh well. I said for the stuff this morning. So three to five days time i will be like a kid at christmas. I think i will document my whole pc build as a project.

[Nightwatch]

Yeah, its been an experience for sure. Oh well. I said for the stuff this morning. So three to five days time i will be like a kid at christmas. I think i will document my whole pc build as a project.

Good news and btw, it's actually a good idea to document your PC building, it could serve a very useful guide to others as well as being a nice memory for your project.

[Balious]

Is it still okay to buy a GeForce 8800 or are they outdated now that I may need a new one to play new games? Not sure right now which 8800 is the best but thats sort of what this topic is for. Right now I stick with Nvidia so the other types of cards are a no go.

Also im not sure which PSU to get (don't even know 100% what mine is).

Memory/Ram is no problem as I can solve that without no help. Unless theres a certain thing I need to know about them?

[EggChen]

8800s are still a good card, especially if you play at a fairly low res like 1024x768, they should cope with most games. Go for a GT with 512Mb.

PSU, get a well known brand make, cheap and nasty are just asking for trouble. Use that online calculater, and build in some headroom for future upgrades.