hmm no, i didn't attach a fan to the heatsink! dude, you sure it makes a good difference? I think im gonna attach one today to test it! EDIT: THANKS!
Yea I think it's incredibly stupid. I might like a certain brand better but I'm not going to argue about it especially to somebody I don't really know. I buy what I actually like, or what ever is the fastest or the best at the time is, for the best price. Truthfully, I've never bought an ATI graphics card. But I do feel like last time when I bought the Nvidia 7950 GT I should have got an ATI X1900 or better, instead. I lag in alot of games that I don't feel like I should, like Oblivion for example. But I am also the same with AMD vs Intel. In the past I have bought mostly AMD and my current processor is a 5000+ X2. But I bought it before the Core 2 Duo line was all out and was mainstream. As of now I wish I would have waited a few weeks an gotten a Core 2 Duo. Same goes with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and Xbox vs Playstation. I generally like one thing better but I am open to getting something else if it's better.
As it happens I've not bought an nVidia card for 5 years, but that wouldn't stop me buying one, and I intend to upgrade to one soon.
same thing with me, i usually had amds, now i got an e6600 cos it was the best option; have had nvidia most of the time, now i have a x1900xtx cos i thought was the best option at the time, but im going back to nvidia soon cos i think it is the best option now; ive had playstation and xbox, now i have a 360; and still no bluray or hddvd... but i think ill go with hddvd unless i get a play3 heh ive seen people defending one brand over another for a thousand times, perfect examples the ones above. Even with no arguments at all, or with very similar products with very similar prices. Or even worse, defending the worse product at the moment. Dumb fanboys, I wonder if they realize how dumb they are. I buy what i consider the best option at the time, i get no money from any of those companies!
You sound exactly like me because I don't understand having to have a certain brand all the time just because they made one good product once either. I also usually have AMD processors and Nvidia graphics cards, but have had a few Intel and a few ATI. I also will more than likely go with HD-DVD just mainly because it's so much cheaper and looks almost exactly the same.
i think people get sympathy to some brands... how cute lol fan boys are just nice people with huge hearts lol EDIT: BTW going a little bit off topic, how have rebates been for you guys? for me they almost never work, i usually get only 20% of them, and i put a lot of care when making them (and im not stupid). When i check the websites (like ocz for the power supply), then i get something like invalid upc code, yeah right Last time I sent them with delivery confirmation and I took a picture of the form with the upc code and extra requirements (like the serial number for the hard drive). Out of 4 rebates guess what? I got NONE! 1 from western digital, 1 from corsair, 1 from sapphire, 1 from ocz. All with delivery confirmation !
Rebates are an excuse to sell a product at a higher price than advertised and get away with it. I wouldn't trust the system unless I was buying from a local retailer I could query the staff about. Is that why they're always shouting at each other in allcaps? lol
Yeah, don't trust the rebates ! Going back to the original topic, I think I'm gonna stick to the x1900xtx for a while. Seems like 8900 is on the way, which will make 8800 prices drop, and x1900xtx performance at 1440 x 900 (what I got) seems still very good. Unless I finally buy a 1600x1200, I think I will keep this baby for a few more months...
What games do you play anyway? Pretty much any games I play right now play fine on max settings on 1440 x 900. Sometimes I use my 22" at 1050 but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. That is with a 7950 GT 256 MB Ram. The only game I have trouble with is Oblivion, I absolutely can not get that game to run smoothly. I guess I could take the settings down a bit since their on Ultra High with everything turned on such as distant trees. I tried it at 1440 x 900 but it lagged too much so I took it down to 1280 x 1024, now it's playable, but I still feel like it should run smoother than it should for one of the best DX9 cards. I don't know how a single 8800 would handle that game.
I play many games, I'm an occasional gamer but own quite a few games. One of the ones I play is oblivion, with everything maxxed out plays nice on my 1440x900 19" widescreen. It doesn't go smooth, but very very playable. Actually I play with everything maxxed out. I play css which is cake, eventhough the new HDR high dynamic range lighting drop the framerates in some maps to 60-80 which is decent for me. I got a sapphire x1900xtx 512mb which I overclocked 10% btw. I play dark messiah maxxed out as well, and it is very playable, I drop the settings just a bit to play smoothly. The e6600 at 3.15 helps too
I run my games at 2560x1600 using an X1900XT, and most games run fine. Even Oblivion was OK, but didn't seem to look right. Stalker and Rainbow Six vegas are the only games it absolutely cannot handle, but then neither could an 8800GTX!
Thats odd because I can run Tom Clanys Rainbow Six Vegas on max settings with a low but very playable framerate, but that was with a resolution of 1440 x 1900. So I guess your high resolutions make a difference. I guess thats a better way to describe how mine plays. It isn't jumpy all the time, and for the most part it has a high frame rate but there is an occasional pause here or there (especially with a lot of effects like fire). It just doesn't play through without any lag like most games I play. I haven't tried stalker yet so I don't know what that will be like for me. And of course CSS run perfectly on max settings.
The jumpy feel to Vegas is because the game speed varies, not just the frame rate, it's a bug from porting from the 360 which they didn't bother to fix. 2560x1600 is 3.16 times as many pixels as 1440x900, so my frame rate will suffer from that. I typically run at 1680x1050 with most of the shaders on low. Then it runs acceptably, but not well. Stalker I run at 1680x1050 max, but using Object Dynamic lighting, not full. The game's frame rate is again just passable, but the load lag makes it unpleasant to play. This, however, occurs regardless of the settings used.
Would a SLI or Crossfire setup help any of those games run smoother? I've herd that SLI Crossfire is kind of a waste now because the game has to support it for it to do any good, and that not very many games support it. But I thought if they were wrong, it would be an easy was to make my games run smoother. But yes, with Vegas I did notice what you were talking about, it doesn't feel like a hardware problem. So I guess that would make it an actual game issue.
Sometimes it makes a huge difference, other times no difference. I wouldn't recommend it unless the cost was of no significant burden to you.
No, it's not like I can spend a ton of money of the latest hardware for gaming. But on the other hand, who can? With that being said, I do spend enough so that I can play pretty much any game I want at max or atleast high settings. I spend enough for a nice computer but I don't go overboard. I buy pre built PCs from different companies like HP, with some of the best specs at the time, and then upgrade then as until I eventually make it into (basically) a custom built PC.
Hey Spenman, I recommend you to build your own pc. Sometimes companies like HP use crappy motherboards that drop the performance of the whole pc for up to 25%, and it can be even worse. Same thing happens with memory, and other parts as well. And, if you make a decent set up with the right parts, you can easily overclock it to get easily a 25% extra with no hazard to the processor. EDIT: And prebuilt pcs most times are locked so you cannot overclock them! (i.e. dell) About crossfire / sli, I think those are solutions for people that have tons of money to burn. Otherwise, getting 20-30% more performance and needing to spend 2x video card price, doesn't seem like a reasonable solution to me. hmmm I thought games didn't need to support crossfire/sli, please correct me if i'm wrong
I would love to build my own computer. But I've always thought it would be too overwhelming to put all of that together and make sure it works right together. I mean for the most part I know exactly what I would build if I did it and what all of the parts would be. But if I ran into a problem I would be screwed. When I rebuild PCs it doesn't seem that bad, because I do maybe one or 2 things at a time. Replace the GPU and PSU, then replace the ram, add another HDD or a DVD drive maybe. I do alot of things like that. But I've never changed cases, and I've never upgraded a processor. So it seems like the three hardest and main things in building a PC, I have no experience in. Since I've never installed a new motherboard, never changed cases, or processors. Pretty much any of the other stuff I've done though.
Well, there's a chance to mess up, that is for sure. But if you never do it, you never learn, so it's a bit of a risk you're taking but a rewarding one. If you research enough and you have common sense, you won't have any problems. Oh and patience, because if you run into a problem you can research and ask in forums, and find a solution. I only build my own computers which is every 2 years usually, and I started as a teenager. The hardest thing, in my humble opinion, is attaching a damn heatsink / similar to the processor. Like the ninja plus I have attached to my e6600, what a freakin pain in the a** to install the damn thing right. EDIT: prebuilt pcs always f**k you up! you can save money and get a better set up doing it yourself, and it is not that hard at all!
Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, home-built PCs obliterate anything you can buy from a retailer, as mentioned the motherboards are very limiting, and all too often the cheapest part that meets the bullet point on the specification is used. It wasn't that long ago I was in your position (having done most of the upgrades by modifying prebuilt PCs) but the bigger steps really aren't that much more difficult. As for SLI/Crossfire, there's no official "these type of games support SLi and these don't", but it depends how the game is coded. SLi works more often than Crossfire, and the gains are often bigger, but they are very rarely 100%, usually nowhere close.
