The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Sam, I had some trouble understanding exactly what these numbers are conveying. Can you explain for my own curiosity please? I have a hunch but I want to fully understand what you mean.

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My close friend will be purchasing a new laptop with Windows 8 in a few weeks.

It's based on the AMD A10 4600M 2.3GHz APU(nice little CPUs) with a 7660G integrated that can hybrid Crossfire with the discrete 7670M with 1GB of dedicated VRAM. His current laptop, an A8 4500M at 1.9GHz with only the integrated 7640G, already runs many modern games quite decently so this will be nice.

They are technically dual cores with some extra guts in each core BTW. They detect like quad cores and perform quite well but they only have two real cores. They have only two modules with four integer-cores and two floating-point cores so they're not true quad-cores.

He had a laptop shortly before his current one with an AMD E-450 at 1.65 GHz with integrated Radeon 6320. Its performance was laughable and was barely adequate for some things. I believe it was a Bobcat-based "Zacate" dual core. These newer APUs are based on Trinity and closer to something like Piledriver or Jaguar which is going in the consoles. Much more reasonable performance. Actually adequate for a variety of games.

He's going to be trying ClassicShell so I'll have quite a bit of time on Windows 8 playing games and taking care of some projects we've been working on. We are both curious as to how it runs. My significant other's laptop uses Windows 8 but she won't let me play with it lol. I'll have to try again haha.

 

They're rough relativistic figures for performance per core per clock, and thus performance total per core, and performance total overall.
The benchmark is Intel's Core platform, scoring 100 per Ghz per core, so an example of this CPU, the Q6600, uses 4 cores at 2.40Gghz -> 240 per core, 960 overall.
Hopefully that makes sense.

 

That makes sense. I needed to know the baseline really. My 6-core Phenom II remains reasonable in a multi-core environment then

 

Reasonable certainly, although we are now at 75% higher performance per clock per core on the latest Intel CPUs. Not much to show for 5 years progress though I'll admit, especially considering Intel still had a 12% lead even back then.

 

Hey Sam, thanks for the great cpu chart, and thanks Jeff, for asking Sam to clarify - I thought I understood but I see I didn't, however now thanks to you I think I do (correct me please anybody if I again missed the point.)

So the numbers on the left are power per 100 ghz, basically the raw power of the processor,

and so then multiplying that number by the operating frequency (I'm adding this to Sam's chart) we get

without factoring in over-clocking:

For gaming, Sam would probably add that the 8 core numbers don't count. And furthermore I suppose we could add to this a third column based on ease of over-clocking, which I won't try to do here, but for example, SANDY overclocks better than IVY, am I right?

And thanks Jeff for the info on Assassins Creed - I will check it out starting with something past the first one (if I like it I'll probably go back and play the first one.)

So Shaff - you're out of university now too, right? So what kind of work are you doing? (Say hi to your brother - has he broken any more of your computer hardware lately? hahaha)

Stevo, I took that photo for you of the two 27" 2560x1440 cad monitors my brother is using, like you are thinking of setting up when you buy your second monitor.




Sam - finally - these are the real monitors for my brother's CAD system.

As I mentioned a month or so ago over on the gaming thread, we set him up temporarily out on my work station in the sun room. That monitor sticking up behind is my official test bench monitor, a Dell 20" 1600x1200. (Just to illustrate the post, a month ago I had included a stock google photo of two monitors, both of which as Sam correctly pointed out, were only 20's, lol.)

I'm glad Kevin that you don't sit right on top of your 37", lol, but take a look at the resolution of these 27" monitors, bordering on twice the resolution of 1080p.

So, zosolv, 1080p on your 27" may work perfectly well for you - it works fine for Jeff on his 24" - but Stevo and Joe have these - just a lot more pixels for more detailed information - but at about twice the price.

Hey, speaking of Kevin watching movies - are you guys into Game of Thrones? My two brothers are and I finally started watching them - I'm two-thirds of the way through all 28 but we already received two cease and desist letters from cox cable - I didn't think anybody cared about tv shows. It's the most pirated tv show of all time! I don't know exactly how we're going to get SO309 unless one of you guys wants to upload it in 720p 1.5 gigs to my ftp site. Hahaha. (-- to the powers that be, of course this whole thing is a joke as we all know I don't "sample" --)

Lastly, don't think I didn't notice the words "significant other" in your post, Jeff - and that reminds me of what you said some time back about dating now starting to take up a significant amount of your time. Congratulations! Do you care to elaborate? (Have you dropped your plans to go off to Afghanistan?)

Rich

 

I WANT a higher resolution monitor! It's not practical at the moment I'm working on an invention, and need the funds for that. I may hold out though for an even higher resolution monitor. Though the GPU/s needed to run at anything higher than 2560 x 1600, would no doubt be expensive, and power hungery LOL! But, my invention will make my electrical bill trivial

 

That's a nice layout he has a chair very similar to mine too. He could benefit though from a dual monitor arm which is what I will be doing.

MonoPrice DUAL Monitor Desk Mount Bracket

It says 15" to 22" but that isn't true as I have dual 24's on the one I have and I could easily put my 27" on it I believe. They say smaller due to the Vesa mounting size truly the most important factors are the distance the two arms move apart and of course the weight they can handle.

 

Hmmmm. I see. Well let me ask you, Kevin, is water involved in any way (again!)

That chair he is using is nice - you're right, Stevo. He won't take that with him when I move him into his room with the MAC and the 3 monitors side by side (unless he insists.) As I recall it's all leather - I remember picking it up for around $200 as a gift for a family member in LA who does a lot of writing at a desk computer, and was getting backaches - but the chair wouldn't fit in her new place.

Regarding that mounting bracket - interesting idea. That might be something we end up doing. The sunroom is supposed to only be temporary (I want my test-bench back, lol) and the idea is to move him into his room next to his Mac setup that he is on virtually 24/7 (he DLs lots of stuff, like japanese hari-kari flicks - I can't think of the real word - naragame? or is that how you fold paper? - you guys know - the cute girls and stylized cartoons.)

Anyway, one disadvantage of the sunroom with 3 walls of solid windows, is that it gets boiling hot in the summer - and we are almost there - but he has A/C in his room - you know ......... like Sam. (You know how hot it gets in England!)

So I already set him up a few years ago in his room on his Mac and his 27" monitor (not high res) using a card table no less. I have a couple more card tables but for the dual monitor setup they won't work, nor will they support a mount.

There is a bunch of stuff in the garage and we have to do a garage clean-out project to discover what is available that we can use - discarded doors, etc., and I might be able to assemble a wide table deep enough for him to slide under, like with the table in the picture, but wide enough to accommodate 3 monitors side by side, for the two separate computers.

Or I might buy some lumber and build something - nothing too fancy - my last woodworking class was in junior high - and my brother doesn't care about fancy anyway. But like any reasonably handy person I can certainly build a solid 9 foot wide table that would work. With framework using a couple of 9 foot metal U-beams, I'm sure I could build it with no center supports. I'll go over to Home Depot and see what they have.

Or maybe I'll ask Kevin to invent something.

As to whether I would need a mount like that - I'm not sure. In the old days of CRTs, I actually had a single monitor mount that I picked up at Best Buy which attached to the side of a large desk and gave me back a lot of valuable desk real estate by perching the monitor off to the side - the desk was away from the side wall just a bit, a foot or two.

It was a pretty heavy-duty mount. This was a 17" CRT and was fairly heavy - what - maybe 35 pounds? The mount cost just a little more than this one - I recall about $75 or so. I left it there when I moved my office - I hated to leave it, but it was rather bulky and when would I ever need it again (now, lol.)



Rich

 

There is a self standing dual or tri mount that is pretty slick but Monoprice doesn't sell it I'll try to dig up the link for that in the next couple of days if you're interested or anyone else is.

I work with a guy that loves the Japanese anime you are speaking of plus he goes to all of the different Comic-Con type events, 4 or 5 of them every year.

Japanese anime

If you have Kevin invent something you may not want him to use any type of power tools or stuff that rotates, if you know what I mean...

 

Hahaha. That is exactly what I was talking about, Japanese anime. I knew you guys would know - good call Stevo. There certainly is something catchy about it. My other brother is heavy into it also - he married a Korean lady and that for sure is one thing they have in common. All I can say to that is that I knew someone quite well a few years ago who was infatuated with anime soft-porn. I'm not talking about myself of course. Just someone I knew quite well. But it wasn't me.

Well, okay, I admit it, but I'm over it now.

I believe that was just before Jeff stole my girlfriend.

Regarding our friend Kevin, also known as Kevin Edison, actually I'm not exactly sure I know what you mean about stuff that rotates. I am aware that he has quite a bit of expertise at combining liquids and electricity - but his skills at rotation I was unaware of.

 

Rotation? Ha! He's talking about my poor samsung LCD monitor, which had a run-in with a ceiling fan :S Oops...

I won't go into details about the invention. For fear of the idea being stolen. I must admit, I find it amazing we don't see devices like mine available. I suppose the electric companies probably paid to hush people up LOL! Because the design is so basic, you'd (to coin a phrase) $h!t Brix!

No, water is in no way associated with "The Device". But then, you could guess and guess, and I may throw you off, eh?

I guess not everyone would understand though. An electrician tried convincing me it wouldn't work. Simple physics... I didn't argue with him LOL! He's dead wrong...

 

Awww Kevin - what a kill joy! You're gonna make us wait until you're rich! How selfish.

An LCD monitor had a run-in with a ceiling fan?

Hmmm. If I searched the thread for ceiling fan do you think I'd find those posts? Sounds like something worth reading.

How do you do it Kevin? Just when we're all settled in with our daily routine, you decide to jerk the monitor up off the table to take to the other room, forgetting that the fan just above it is going full blast - and just the week before that you decided to cool down your overheated PC by pouring water into the case, which actually worked quite well for the first 3 milli-seconds.

Okay, I guess no amount of insults are going to get you to spill the beans on your invention that your electrician friend told you violated all the known laws of the universe - he obviously doesn't know who he is dealing with. Did he ever hear of the Assassin? Or Kevin Edison for that matter?

I just watched the E-3 introduction of Assassins Creed 3 - and like the very attractive black lady presenter said "Holy crap!" (That's exactly what she said. LOL)

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION!!! WOW!!! All that snow. Deer, wolves - red coats!!!

Sam, uhhh - well... - let me just say that Dishonored it ain't. You see, in this game, not only do we kill every member of the town guard that we can lay our assassin hands on, we actually kill everybody who speaks with a British accent.

So - uhhh.... what I would do if I were you is stay away from this game. Or, maybe at least disconnect your microphone. Yeah that might work.

That goes for you too Shaaf - and your brother.

LOL

I'm steam downloading the game right now - thanks for the tip Jeff. I'll start with Assassins Creed 3 and see where that takes me. They've sold 55 million total of the franchise so far - Go Ubi!

Rich

 

Ceiling fan would probably get you some hits LOL!

The VGA and electrical cords were ran behind the desk. I already had a grip of the monitor, so I lifted very high, to get the cords out. In doing so, the fan blade made contact with the LCD panel I think it only cost me $150USD to repair a $300 monitor. Though that same monitor might run a bit cheaper now. I don't regret fixing it. Only introducing it to the ceiling fan! LOL!

The electrician was not seeing my logic. I guess I appreciate where he's coming from though. He see's "square one" of the puzzle, and nothing beyond it. At least at the time. I'm not even sure if he was a certified electrician. He worked at some plastic molding company. Though I think he was the go-to guy/repairman.

It should be noted, I was trying to surprise my brother and sister in law, with a new-ish LCD monitor. Much larger than what they were using. I was in a hurry to get it done. I wasn't paying attention :S

 

It really depends on the game, but ultimately the highest multiple you can really get away with is 5 - i.e. if you have a 6 or 8-core CPU, you can see the benefit of one additional core as the game can use 4 and background operations can still use one of the others. That's about the limit though.

Kevin's invention has me intrigued - I just hope it's not a perpetual motion machine - Although from what's been said, I'm guessing it's probably something like a rate-optimised device that stores power overnight at lower energy rates and powers the house (or part of it) during the daytime when the mains feed is more expensive, something like that. Those are already around, but I've not seen any commercial products worthy of note for it.

As for high resolution monitors, you obviously don't need to worry about graphical performance in anything other than games. This said, if you do play demanding games, having to run a lower resolution than native on a monitor is more annoying than playing on a smaller monitor, I assure you!

I'm still holding out for a 4K monitor. Asus' 31.5" 4K display has now been priced at $3800, so we're getting close to the realms of affordability. If I were reasonably well off, I probably would buy one, but not from Asus!

As for Game of Thrones, I don't watch it (although I know I should), but if you're desperate, send me an email. Anything piracy-related is strictly off-limits both in the thread and PMs.

 

Not really too fussed about resolution personally. 1920 x 1200 on a 24" panel means I often end up playing games without turning on AA and never notice. In fact, I quite often depend on the pixel density of my panel when purposely leaving AA off. If antialiasing as a technology didn't exist, I would not be suffering.

My 1080p panel at 24" is another story. Just fine for desktop use and great for movies, but depends on AA for games or it suffers a bit from the jaggies. Pixel density does make a difference at this level.

In contrast, you guys are using 2560 x 1600 at 30" which is a much greater pixel density than I have already. I have used those monitors before and I understand that the difference is quite basic and plain to any seasoned PC enthusiast or gamer. And now, you're telling me 2560 x1600 just isn't quite enough, and you need a 4K monitor? 2560 x 1600 I definitely get, especially on a 27" panel. But 4K on a 27-32" monitor seems almost like overkill especially considering nearly no media exists that can take advantage of it, let alone 2560.

 

4K media will come in time, and will look stunning, but that's not the reason for it, nor is it games really, as there are only a few games that really necessitate the extra resolution (primarily strategy).
It's really for desktop real estate - how much you can work with and manipulate at once. 2560x1600 is a huge productivity benefit over 1920x1200 in that regard when you work with large documents, particularly Excel. The same leap from 2560x1600 to 3840x2160 is welcome.

See these images, taken on Sharp's 31.5" 4K display:
http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/img_3768.jpg
http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/img_3767.jpg (I'm aware it's a copypaste job, but that doesn't really matter, does it? )
http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/img_3764.jpg

http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/img_3770.jpg
http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/img_3771.jpg
http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/sharp-igzo-ces-2013-01.jpg

 

I see your reasoning from a utility standpoint, but forgive me if I'm not too excited about it, haha. I see most of it from the view of a home power user with typical needs. I play games, watch movies, store files etc. Rarely, if ever, does my PC do any actual "work". The few times a month I actually need to open excel or video/photo-manipulation software, just about any monitor has been more than enough to get the work done. Only when going from very small(<19" 4:3) to fairly large (22"> 16:10/16:9) have I noticed a practical difference.

If I ever NEED a monitor like that, I would hope the business I am working for would have enough foresight to supply it. Personally, 2560 x 1600 would be nothing but lavish and luxury for my home build. Much cheaper and more practical to use my second monitor for work that fills the full work area.

I understand that a large chunk of PCs these days are used in a business environment, and many of them are expected to work quite hard. I would be very curious as to what qualifies as needing 4K in your own work Sam.

 

If anything, the sort of work that necessitates resolutions like that is more for me personally at home than it is at work. Agreed that generally multiple displays will cover it, but for having a single uninterrupted workspace, one big display is the answer.

 

I'm certainly a country yokel but I do understand the need for a large display for large amounts of data and big projects. I guess it just seemed to me that 2560 x 1600 would be an "all bases covered" solution for that. I suppose it is, but I keep forgetting it's you we're talking about here. You've never been one to turn down a higher resolution display, practical or not. Personal preferences are just that.

Yes, in general having a secondary monitor covers most of my needs. Notice how I've never turned down the notion of a larger display though I would certainly go for something larger whether my hardware was suitable for gaming on it or not. As you stated, there are many uses for high resolutions that don't even touch gaming. I guess 4K just boggles my mind a bit. No thank you, lol.

 

You're never going to cover all bases, as there'll always occasionally be a document so large that you'd need a display 20 feet across to display it all one page. It's just a question of what is reasonable to have. If 4K is within your means, then I think it's worthwhile doing. Others of course, wouldn't care about it