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I find the very suggestion of such behaviour to be horrifying! :har: Seriously, I do not do that. I hate stutter in games and will close everything (even system services) to ensure a smooth game. That's a long-time habit and not likely to change. So, from what you say it sounds like I'll be good with 2Gb. :rock: Quote:
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Onelife - seriously reconsider the 450W ps...
The 4850x2 alone requires a 650W ps. You try hooking it to a 450, your going to have problems. With the rig your looking at - a 750 or 850 Watt is probably a better long term option. DO NOT SKIMP ON THE PS! I suggest something like Corsair or other high end, quality PS. I just picked up a 750W Corsair for $120. Can't beat that when it has a 5 year warranty. Processor questions have already been addressed. As for vid cards, I have used both Nvidia and ATI, have been on ATI for most of the recent years, but went ahead and got a GTX260 OC'd out of the box by BFG. Lifetime warranty - $200. So far, I haven't been able to force ANYTHING I playunder 60fps. (But dang that thing was HUGE!) For Crossfire/SLI - you have to have 2 pci-e X16 slots - and usually you have to use the same family of cards... Like 2 GT9800's - but not a 9800 and an 8800. Going with an X2 style board is fine as long as you make sure your Mainboard has the room for it without losing additional slots because they are covered. More memory is always good. If you choose 32 bit OS though, don't get over 4. It can't address it. No reason not to go 64 bit UNLESS you run really old stuff. Then, you have dosbox. 7 is definitely the way to go regardless. Its what Vista should have been years ago. |
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Also, only having 2 sticks instead of 4 puts less strain on the system. I'd recommend only using half the memory slots of a motherboard for any gaming PC, if only for that little bit lower power-consumption and slightly (unnoticeable) increased stability+performance. That post you linked to has another good point: more memory makes it less likely to run out, which avoides paging to the HD (though more than 4GB is never nescesary with current Windows versions; any single program is limited to 2GB max). I ran 2GB for a while, but went to 4GB eventually (from 2x1GB to 2x2GB). Can't say I really notice the difference, but at least I know that if a game needs the full 2GB it can ask for, it's available with plenty to spare for the OS and other progs running in the background. (trust me, there's plenty of games that need the full 2GB they can get) Imho, considering the prices, there's really no reason to not go for the 4GB. You'll never regret it, I can promiss you that. ;) For the 64 vs 32 bit thing, I'd say go with 64. I only switched to 64 bit when the Win7 beta came around, and I haven't run into any issues yet. All I had to do was collect the correct drivers for my system, that's it. Don't know about this "emulation mode", but if it's there it's fully transparant; no actions are required from you to get something running. Win7 (and I guess Vista) puts 32bit apps in a different "program files" folder as 64bit ones. I guess as long as you stick with the default directories there's nothing to worry about. Though I put all my games somewhere else (all 32bit, offcourse), and everything runs fine. :hmmm: *ah yes, and you gain excess to the full 4GB of RAM, should you go with that. ** like CH points out, reconsider the PSU. I have 520W, and I'm a bit afraid to stick in, say, a radeon 5870. Performance degrades over time as well, which is another thing to keep in mind. If you ever decide to stick in another graph.card and go SLI/Crossfire, you'll be glad you got that 750W one instead. (for your average system, 500+ should be fine for single card, 600+ for dual, but I'm inclined to recommend 600 for single and 750 for dual, considering the fact cards demand more and more power) |
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http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid...=expert&pid=10 Besides, the general consensus and my own experience both suggest that the quality of the PSU is far more important than it's power rating. Still, I take on board the general point you're making and I may use the money I save by leaving out the OS to change the 450W up to a 600W, just to be on the safe side. :cool: |
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Games, right? If a game needs 2GB, it can only get 1.5, because your OS is sapping the rest.
You really want 4GB, but you don't nescesarilly need it. ;) |
Okay here's a question for you Arclight. If you could choose between these, which would you choose?
1) 2GB RAM with a 640GB HDD (7200rpm, 16MB cache) 2) 4GB RAM with a 250GB HDD (7200rpm, 8MB cache) Bearing in mind that for me, the extra space on the HDD is not of benefit but the extra speed given by that space (and by the extra cache) is appealing. In my experience many games do not make good use of RAM. They tend not to preload very well, and will happily thrash the HDD when data is needed, in spite of the fact that I have (typically) a spare 1 Gb of RAM sat around doing nothing (which could have been preloaded with the data beforehand). Because of this, I'm inclined to go with option 1. Option 1 is also a bit cheaper than option 2. |
The second.
I think you'll get a better experience from doubling the RAM than doubling the cache on the HD. Once everything is in memory, paging is minimal. Are you looking at WD drives? You might consider a 160GB drive then, should be faster than the 250GB model. :hmmm: |
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Edit1: The site doesn't specify the HDD manufacturer. I'll call them and ask. Edit2: I found the part of their site listing manufacturers. Apparently all their hard disks are either Seagate or WD. |
It's just a theory though, I'll see if I can dig something up.
Basically, most manufacturers use 250, 500, 750 etc. WD switched to 160, 320, 640 etc. It comes down to the way the platter for the drive is manufactured. Those 640GB drives are very fast, so I extend the logic to conclude those 160 (or 320) drives will have high performance as well. On memory use; depends on the game. I don't know what you usually play, but I imagine OFP2 doesn't do a proper job because it was designed to run on consoles, which obviously are pretty limited memory wise. For example, Supreme Commander can suffer a crash from exceding it's 2GB address limit, so there are definetly games that actually need all of it. |
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And maybe Crysis.
Just to see how nice it looks. :lol: |
I will take:
a PSU from Corsair because they have a single powerful +12V rail. 4 gb of ram in an instant. I will go with Mushkin Ram. I used Ram from Mushkin in 3 PC-s in the last year and they work fine. Sh3 with GWX3 eats almost 700mb of ram. Add that to whatever Windows eats up and you find that 2gb is rather...low. and I have Win Xp pro 32bits. Videocard wise take a ATI 5850. It is DX11 capable. If you have more money take the 5870. A 4850X2 is powerful but limited in some games because some of them are designed in a way that those 2 VPU-s won't be used. The same thing goes sometimes for crossfire and SLI sistems. Regarding the Hdd get a SATA2 WD or Seagate or Hitachi Hdd. They are fine all of them. 500gb at least PS. £600 is not much for a gaming system. |
@bybyx
DX11, eh? The list of current DX10 games is rather short... and even those games usually only have one little extra thing (e.g. God Rays, or Cloud Shadows) that DX10 can do and DX9 can't. I'm not sure that DX11 support is a priority for me right now. SH3+mods uses only 700Mb on your system!? :o On my old rig it will quite happily eat up all of the 2GB RAM and then some. Seeing all my RAM being used like that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. :smug: But SH3+mods is very much the exception to the rule, at least in the collection of games that I own. Generally, games that could be using 2GB (if they'd only been programmed to) will only use 1GB. As for Windows itself, if properly configured XP will use hardly anything at all. Quote:
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