The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Well...I do have SOME money to spend LOL.
These are what im looking at. Looks like Asus is dominating based on reviews. But, looks like Sapphire is dominating on price. Thoughts??
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121291

 

Personally I prefer the design of the Sapphire over the Asus. All the hot air escapes through the port louver instead of inside the case!

Russ

 

LOL, you know what brought all of this on? I went into walmart recently and saw Grand Theft Auto IV on the shelf. It said the minimum requirement was EXACTLY the card I have! So I was like ahh man!!! Yes, I realize I could overclock, expecially considering this extremely cool HAF I just purchased/built and love. But what about a month or 2 down the road. I see its time to upgrade. I've employed my 8600GT for over a year. Perhaps its time to move on. Besides, My brother doesnt game on his PC. No doubt his basic usages would benefit from it. His on board chipset is the 8200. So it would be a step up. He currently likes a program called Cooliris. I must admit, I like it quite a bit myself. Those of you with decent Gpu's might wanna give it a shot! I guess im open to Nvidia as well. Im not sure what I want to do yet. One things for sure, I gotta upgrade!!! LOL I love Grand Theft Auto!

 

LOL, now im considering buying the 150GB veloci!!! See...its either one or the other. Im on my last bundle of cash out of my tax return. I wonder just how considerable the difference is between a raptor and the best 7200rpm drive. Because my FALS drive is pretty friggin fast. And im seeing VERY similar bitrates with my used raptor. The two as well as my 500GB AAKS are VERY similar. Other than size, they act very similarly. I wonder what what would be quicker, A veloci or two 5000AAKS drives in Raid. My AAKS Keeps up with the Regular Raptor!

 

ok im drawing blanks here. how do i boot up in safe mode? ive gone into bios,just hit the rest button. i cant seem to get that window to show up to choose safe mode or normal start up ect....

 

ok i got my 100gb ide hdd installed getting ready to format and install xp home(yes legit...lol)old version. will need sp1 and sp2.
time for some fresh windows and then hopefully i can get the stuff off the infected/bad hdd so i can try and format that.

EDIT:
well for some reason it wont let me install windows on the 100gb hdd. something about a error with the way windows shut down of some sort.
iguess im gonna clone the 250hdd onto the 100gb if i have enough space then reformat the 250 and take it from there. its not looking like im gonna be able to recover anything

 

Rob,
Hmm! This is beginning to sound more and more like the things my Intel did, just before my CPU died. XP would not install, drive errors and corrupt files, Try the bootable version of Memtest on it. Mine gave me all sorts of errors, thousands of them. It about drove me crazy trying to figure out what the problem was! How can you have an error caused by an error when windows shut down, when there is no operating system to begin with. It boots from the CD! I assume that you have the other drives disconnected? If not, you can try that as well!

Good luck,
Russ

 

If they get artifacts they have a bad driver or faulty card. It takes serious heat to cause that unless you overclock. The cards happily run about 90ºC when in full load. Before you ask, both ATI and nvidia cards, past and present are all fine with doing this, and do.
The HD4870X2 is a fabulous card and has overall very few bugs normal ATI cards don't experience, but do you really need something that powerful? A single HD4870 alone is five times as powerful as an 8600GT.

 

No! A single would be just fine. Thats exactly what I needed to hear! Thank you! Perhaps one day, I can toy with a Sli, or crossfire Configuration. At this point, I just want something very powerful, affordable, and will play most/all games! Thanks again

 

The HD4870 is a very potent card at 1920x1200 and a force to be reckoned with at 1680x1050. With a bit of lag it can handle Crysis Warhead at 1920x1200 on the 'Gamer' setting. Even two X2s can only manage Enthusiast at the same resolution. 2560 Enthusiast is strictly reserved for Triple/Quad SLI with the GTX200 series. 4xAA is even beyond the scape of three GTX285s, though they put up a good fight.

 

Crysis has been out for how long now? And even the most powerful of cards cant run it at full potential? LOL, ive never played the game. Heck, ive only seen a couple of screen shots and one trailer of it. LOL, shows what kinda gamer I am huh. Im currently getting back into gaming. Thats the main reason for my upgrade. Besides the 8600GT wont be supported forever!

 

Well, Warhead has only been out since September 08, but the original isn't that much less demanding, and came out in November 07. The main problem is drivers though, most versions of Catalyst have bugged support for Crysis, nvidia ones do not. Then again, 9.2 is by far the worst driver release I've seen. It has at least 7 completely different severe bugs that I've encountered and generally makes using a PC for games really difficult. I hope 9.3 isn't as bad. Reverting to 9.1 now as I just can't stand it.

 

LOL. Looks like ive got some catching up to do! I was unaware that Crysis has a sequel! VERY intrigued!

Which ones are you running? Which one would you recommend?
E.G. Sapphire, Asus, Msi, Etc...

 

It's not really a sequel, the plot is parallel to the first game but you play as one of the other characters. I run an ATI Engineering Sample and a Sapphire HD4870X2. See the link in my sig for full details. The pics are out of date though.
The HAF is now up and running, pics will be added soon.

 

Engineering sample? How did you get your hands on that?

 

The guy at DriverHeaven.net was auctioning on ebay...

 

Well, the verdict is in! It came, I installed, it conquered! The MSI 9500-GT works flawlessly! No more having to re-boot two or three times until it makes up it's mind to see my monitor. It comes up 1680x1050 every time!

3DMark 06 = 5776

3DMark 03 = 18487

The fan is a bit noisy at startup, until the software loads, After that it's pretty quiet!

I'm happy!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

As does any other ATI product bar the HD3300, I'm going to remind you of that.

 

Sam,
Why? I'm not condemning ATi, or suggesting no one buy them. Just yesterday I gave Oman7 a link for an ATi card. I just have almost "0" luck with them, and I couldn't find anything better than what I bought for the money. I haven't given up on the HD-3300 either. I know that the problems are being caused by the software! Once they get it working right, I'll move this card into Oxi to replace the 6150 OBG in it! Eventually I want to get that MSI 4650 I like. I just couldn't afford it right now.
EDIT
My card came with a Free Far Cry 2, so I installed it. Turned on all the goodies and was absolutely Gassed! It makes me feel like I'm in a movie, while it's being shot! Excellent graphics and Dolby surround sound. I can easily see why so many people lose themselves in modern games! Hell, they almost border Cinema Quality with the graphics!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Catalyst 9.3 is released later this week. Perhaps try again with that. Even I will recognise 9.1 and 9.2 are both abysmal driver releases.
Out of interest, when I reattached my CPU cooler in my new Coolermaster HAF932 today, my CPU temps were in the 60s at the desktop and 80s in games (despite the cores being 15C lower). Finally redid the CPU with Arctic Silver V and my idle temps have dropped to 32, even with the 150mV overvolt. Much better