Time to upgrade...

[Arclight]

Originally Posted by bybyx

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.

What he said.

Even if 2GB is (just) enough today, you might need a little more not long from now.

I'd stick with WD 320 or 640 though.


Add 100-150 to that budget, and imho the overall quality of the system goes up a lot.

[onelifecrisis]

What is wrong with you two? Do you think money grows on trees? My budget is £600 for a reason.

If you think that the 4GB is really all that essential then suggest a lower graphics card or processor or something. From what I'm seeing, the £40 it will cost me to get the extra 2GB of RAM is going to drop my CPU/GPU specs by a massive amount - a much larger drop than can possibly be compensated for with an extra 2GB of (probably unused) RAM. The CPU/GPU looks to me to be the right place to be putting that £40, but if you have ANY evidence to the contrary then I'm all ears. I've scoured the web for (unmodded) PC games that can use 4GB and come up with diddly squat.

[onelifecrisis]

Okay, following the advice here I'm now looking at this system:

Intel® Core™i5 Processor i5-750 (2.66GHz) 8MB Cache
2GB CORSAIR XMS3 DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz
GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2
NO OPERATING SYSTEM (I will install my old *cough* OEM *cough* copy of XP PRO)
640GB WD 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
1GB ATI RADEON™ HD 4850X2
600W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
FREE Operation FlashPoint D.R. Game (RRP: €49.99)

Please read this, from the website I'm ordering from:

Q. I think I need a really powerful power supply, and I have seen a 600W or above model for around £20 - £30 in the shops. Why are your power supplies more expensive?

A. There are no rules that are set in stone governing how you can rate the wattage of a power supply, and naturally people think that more power is better. The rated wattage of power supplies we sell are the true, constant power output and not the peak output. (Peak output is that power that a power supply can output for a few seconds.) Not naming any brands, if you search the high street, you can purchase what apparently appear to be 600W or even 700W power supplies for around £20, but be warned - these are likely to be power supplies that have been rated on their peak output and not their constant output. Some power supplies do not even give their stated output at peak. For a 600W or above power supply with a true constant output using reliable components, you should be looking at paying anything from £50 upwards.

Our high end power supplies (even though they may only be 400W - 500W) are tried and tested to give your computer a constant supply of quality power. Component manufacturers, such as graphics card manufacturers often over label the power supply requirements of their cards to cover for PSU manufacturers who have labeled power supplies as peak output and not constant output.

£574 including VAT and delivery

Thoughts? £600 limit here.

[Arclight]

The difference between a 2GB or 4GB kit is about €30,-.

You're not gonna loose the house over €30,-, right?

And it's cheaper in the long run to get 2x2 than 2x1 and another pair later.



To be honest, I'd be more concerned about that PSU, especially with a dual-GPU card. If money is tight, forget about the memory, just get a decent PSU.

I'm guessing this is some pre-built system? You'd save a lot of money getting the parts and putting it together yourself. 600,- can go a long way, but not if you are paying someone to stick a few components in a case and put in some screws.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Arclight

The difference between a 2GB or 4GB kit is about €30,-.

You are talking about 1600HMz DDR3 RAM? If so, link please.

Originally Posted by Arclight

You're not gonna loose the house over €30,-, right?

I already lost the house, literally. Like I said, there's a reason for my budget. Help me out here.

Originally Posted by Arclight

And it's cheaper in the long run to get 2x2 than 2x1 and another pair later.

You think? Memory prices are always dropping. I figure that by the time I upgrade to 4GB I'll be paying £20 instead of £40.

Originally Posted by Arclight

To be honest, I'd be more concerned about that PSU, especially with a dual-GPU card. If money is tight, forget about the memory, just get a decent PSU.

Did you read what I quoted from their site? It's not a 600W peak power output, it's a 600W steady power output. Also, the test I linked on the 4850X2 showed the entire system using less than 400W at it's peak.

Originally Posted by Arclight

I'm guessing this is some pre-built system? You'd save a lot of money getting the parts and putting it together yourself. 600,- can go a long way, but not if you are paying someone to stick a few components in a case and put in some screws.

It's not pre-built, it's custom built, but I take your point. I could probably just about manage to put a PC together myself. I have plenty of experience swapping components in and out but no experience in building a PC from scratch. My main concerns with buying seperate components and assembling them myself are 1) I may mismatch components (a good PC supplier won't do that) and 2) I get no warranty that way.

[Arclight]

Last I saw was that 400 something PSU, didn't see the update.

memory: http://www.salland.eu/category/produ...%2C00&rt=N.v.t.

Will take a while before 2x1GB kit costs less than 30,-.



Give me a minute (or 30 ); building something to figure out a reasonable price.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Arclight

memory: http://www.salland.eu/category/produ...%2C00&rt=N.v.t.

Thanks but my German is limited to "Yavol hair kaloyn" and "shiff geshistet" but I will have a shop around on UK sites and see what I can find.

Originally Posted by Arclight

Will take a while before 2x1GB kit costs less than 30,-.

Give me a minute (or 30 ); building something to figure out a reasonable price.

Sweet, thanks!

[Arclight]

Bah.

Nope, can't make it work for that price. Probably says a lot about the prices in Holland.
(went over 600,- without the memory)

That last update looks pretty good, my only concern would be the manufacturer of the PSU (don't even get me started on the quad-rail marketing BS ). Other than that it looks solid.

[bybyx]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

@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!? 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. 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.



Now you just spoiled my day. Can you give me more details on this? I thought crossfire was supposed to always work, not just on games that are designed for it but on all games.



If you'd like to send me some cash to help me buy a better one, I won't object.

Crossfire and Sli does not always work. No support in the games for SLI or Crossfire or for dual Gpu an a single card then no gaming at maximum. Go for a single powerful card. I am looking at the links you posted regarding the pc. I'll see what I can find.
Regarding the cash I believe there is a saying in UK, something like Would if i could but I can't? I am sorry but the prices in UK are way to big.
However the sistem at 600 pounds is ok. You could add 2gb more in the future.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by bybyx

Crossfire and Sli does not always work. No support in the games for SLI or Crossfire or for dual Gpu an a single card then no gaming at maximum. Go for a single powerful card. I am looking at the links you posted regarding the pc. I'll see what I can find.
Regarding the cash I believe there is a saying in UK, something like Would if i could but I can't? I am sorry but the prices in UK are way to big.
However the sistem at 600 pounds is ok. You could add 2gb more in the future.

Okay thanks for the advice. I did some digging and found plenty of support for what you're saying. I guess I could go for a GTX 260 instead, which they are offering at exactly the same price as the HD 4850X2. The GTX 260 is less powerful than two 4850's combined, but more powerful than a single 4850.

[onelifecrisis]

Seeing as the i5 has Turbo Boost, I'm thinking of adding this to the spec:

SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER

That pushes the price up from £574 to £589, which is still in budget. I figure that'll give the Turbo Boost "room to breath" (no pun intended). What do you think? Waste of money?

[Arclight]

Turbo boost shouldn't increase temps; it works by shutting down cores that aren't used and "boosting" the active ones. Basically, CPUs are designed for a certain power-envelope. Overclock a normal CPU and the consumption goes up, and temps along with it. But by shutting down unused cores, "turbo boost" keeps the CPU within it's envelope while boosting performance for apps that don't utilize all cores. (most games, for example)

That said, any improvement over the stock cooler is good.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Arclight

Turbo boost shouldn't increase temps; it works by shutting down cores that aren't used and "boosting" the active ones. Basically, CPUs are designed for a certain power-envelope. Overclock a normal CPU and the consumption goes up, and temps along with it. But by shutting down unused cores, "turbo boost" keeps the CPU within it's envelope while boosting performance for apps that don't utilize all cores. (most games, for example)

That said, any improvement over the stock cooler is good.

Oh I must have got my terminology wrong again. By "turbo boost" I meant the built-in auto-overclocking feature on the i5 processor. It can dynamically change the clock speed of each core according to factors like load and temperature. Apparently each core can go as high as 3.2GHz (the default is 2.66) and that's without the user doing any overclocking at all (i.e. without changing multiplier or FSB speeds). Or so I read somewhere...

[onelifecrisis]

I was right, it's called Turbo Boost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Boost

Anyway sounds like the cooler is a good idea.

[Arclight]

That's what I was talking about: it shuts down unused cores and OCs (boosts) the others.

Cooler is good, but like I said it shouldn't increase temps because the CPU keeps using the same amount of power at all times.