The (new) Official PC building thread!

I think your bang on the money there with the 2000 mark difference.
I'm gonna see if i can break the 12,500 mark soon. Just wondering why my card fails at such low overclocks, is it to do with temperatures?

I dled Crysis in 6 hours so i can give that a whirl tommorow.

 

Did some performance tests in anticipation of comparing them to my 3870 when it arrives.
On my X1900XT at 2560x1600, max settings:
Supreme Commander: 18fps, GPU temp 81C
Supreme Commander Forged Alliance: 8fps, GPU temp 83C
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: 17fps, GPU temp 96C
Rainbow Six Vegas: 9fps, GPU temp: 77C
Call of Duty 4: 23fps, GPu temp: 82C

Note the temperature of Stalker, I had to turn my fan speeds up to get below 90!
Tests run at fan speeds of 750rpm (unified).

I'm hoping to make Stalker, COD4 and Supcom playable at max. Vegas is so poorly programmed it's a lost cause, and Forged Alliance, well we'll see. I can put up with frame rates in the high teens in RTS games like that, so I may still find it playable. I certainly hope so.

 

I thought you had a fanless cooler on your GPU.

 

I do, those values are for my case fans and CPU fan.
This is running at max overclock though, which I don't normally do. It's effect on the temps are obvious.
Add to that list:
Colin McRae DiRT (Time Trial Mode): 10fps, GPU temp 91C

I've only played the game for a couple of minutes, but I'm already I'm disillusioned with it, and am certainly glad I didn't buy it. Firstly, I refuse to buy any game that's starforce-infected, and secondly the graphics really aren't that good IMO. They try to cover up poor quality textures with excessive motion blur, which only makes bad graphics worse. I set everything to Ultra and really wasn't all that impressed. The car looks relatively good, but everything else is mediocre at best, especially in the spectator stand, I thought we'd moved away from the cardboard cutouts of gran turismo 4. Obviously not.
So far, Stalker and COD4 are standing out as the best looking games that don't excessively whore your PC.

 

http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-091-HT

3870X2 in. Ill sell my 3870 if the benchmarks are good.



"The Radeon HD 3870 X2's performance is practically identical to that of a two-card HD 3870 setup. Remember, the 'X2 has faster core speeds but slower memory on board."

 

£300 is a good price. just over two 3870s, but it is on ONE card, therfore harder to make, as internal xfire, uses more circuitry, etc.

and you dont need an xfire board to do it.

ill most likely be getting these

 

If the single board improves the reliability of crossfire, they're worth having. Otherwise, not interested.

 

Does this mean the one card(with 2 gpu's) will utilise the full 16x speed?

 

Finally got the new series cards in at the EGG. link to HD3450 and HD3650 cards....

I'm looking at the specs of the HD3650 and I might just go with the HD2600XT.... hhhmmmmmmmmmm any input there sam??

....gm

 

I've no personal experience with either, but benchmarks indicate that the performance of the HD3650 is very poor, it may be inferior early drivers, but either way, right now the HD2600XT is faster, and potentially cheaper.

Quantifiably, the 3650 is a bit slower than the 8600GT.

 

greensman,
I would opt to go this direction, seeing that it has a 256 bit memory interface and 320 vs 120 on the Stream Processing units. There are cheaper brands, but I'm not comfortable with anything but Sapphire for an ATi video card!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102715

At $189 it's a bit more expensive than the HD 2600XT but the larger memory interface and the additional 200 Stream Processing Units would make it a better deal for me!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Yeh I'm NOT impressed with the HD3650 at this point either... hhhmmmmmmm.....and the HD3850 is a good card for the money.... Why do I get pushed into spending more money than I want to???? I guess quality would be the answer!! lol.

I'm lost on which thread we were going on about the Enzotech heatsinks but since it's a part of PC building I'll enter some more info here.

Russ I saw the posted info on the Enzotech thread, I just get a little "worried" when the e-tailer doesn't say the same thing. I'll look at my situation more closely and see if it's really worth messing with. I run in the mid 30's right now so it may not be of real importance for me anyway.

....gm

 

I installed crysis on my brand new compaq sr5210nx presario with windows vista premium, and one megabite of ram, and it runs like crap.
Arn't compaqs supposted to be like the best?
The sales man told me it would do anything I wanted.
Did I brake it?

 

Haha Compaqs are far from the best. The "Best" can only be what you build yourself.

Compaq PCs don't come with good enough video cards to run Doom 3 much less Crysis! Also you're gonna need more RAM than that!

EDIT: Turns out you don't even HAVE a graphics card. lol at integrated graphics. How much did you pay for this bud? I'm sure if you return it we can supply you with a parts list to build something better for less.

 

The sales man told me it was a grate computer, you mean it isn't?
compaqs arn't good for games?
Will Fry's take it back so I can bye a better one?

 

Oh, and I payed a lot for it, it was 249 dollars.
I can built a better one?
I thought you had to bye compaqs, you can make your own?

 

I never built anything before, what would I have to bye?