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The Computer Question Thread


aznriptide859

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If you are basing things on numbers you should probably check those numbers.

 

F1 cars have no meaningful top speed, the top speed is limited by the length of the straight on the particular course and the amount of downforce the car is producing for cornering G.

As much as 225 to 230 at Monza.

At a street course the cars won't go faster than 180 to 185.

 

Unless those are in Km/h in which case a Ford Focus does about 240.

 

An F1 car modified just for top speed has done (from memory) 257mph before.

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So here's a question: What's my upgrade path? This gaming system was really good to me for years, and got a life extension when my high-res monitor died and I started using a 1280x720 as the bedroom TV/gaming monitor, but Battlefield 3 kills it.

 

Core 2 Duo E6300 (overclocked)

Corsair XMS2 DHX 2x2GB

Abit IP35 Pro

Zalman CNPS9500

8800 GTS 640MB

 

Here are the options I'm considering, cheapest first:

 

1) add another 4GB of DDR2 RAM for $40-60 (throwing good money at an outdated platform)

2) replace the Conroe with a Q6600 or similar for $140-160 (see above)

3) Replace the 8800 with whatever mid-priced card for $180-220 and upgrade the mobo/RAM/cpu later

4) Replace the mobo, RAM, and CPU with Sandy Bridge/DDR3 stuff and keep the 8800 a while longer, $???

 

Any suggestions? I'm just a casual gamer, so I don't feel inclined to spend a bundle.

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Not really, especially if you ignored Vista. That's why I'm loathe to buy a new mobo; I want another setup that will really last and LGA 2011 is just around the corner.

 

Mostly thanks to the downgrade from a monitor to a TV and hanging on to XP Pro for so long, my "old" system ran every game at near max settings ever since it was built, right up to installing W7 and BF3.

 

I'll want to do a major upgrade somewhere down the road, when I pick up a large format monitor, but supposing I want to slap a bandaid on this system--for around $100 a Q6600 will move it up five tiers and that doesn't seem like a bad deal.

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OK, so I'm in the process of spec'ing a PC that will run BF3 nicely so I need to dump XP and get Win7. I was wondering, is Ultimate worth the extra £20 over Professional? I've looked at a comparison chart and nothing is jumping out at me that I'll miss from Ultimate unless I have overlooked something?

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If you want a system that really lasts get an AMD based one, they seem to offer more support to the incremental upgraders.

true, but apart from price that's one of the few attractive features of AMD. they seem awfully behind CPU wise.

 

Question.

 

Do i buy a second 5870 and crossfire them or hold out and see what the next generation GPU has to offer??

 

Getting about 55 - 60 fps in BF3 on High settings but would love to be able to set ultra and get 70+.

 

CPU Q9550 @ 3.9 Ghz, 6GB DDR2 RAM

 

crossfire would give you a massive performance boost for a relatively low price. you've got more possible compatibility issues, but i havent really had any trouble with my SLI.

 

odds are the next generation of cards won't bring anything too revolutionary to the table and you'll end up paying a fair bit more money for a card that probably won't match the performance of a crossfire setup. a pair of 5870s should easily handle pretty much anything for the next couple of years at least.

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Sure they are behind but (and I can't believe I am saying this) do you need bleeding edge gear?

 

I have been building my own PCs for over 15 years and I have to say, the CPU hasn't been the bottleneck in a system I have built for about 5 years.

 

Graphics, RAM, drive speed and bandwidth have been the limiting factors.

 

I don't play games and fold in the background, I don't need 120fps to play a game and I'd rather have a cheaper option that allows incremental upgrading and have a bit of cash left to push the budget for some faster RAM or another game.

 

Using 2x older Graphics cards is often cheaper and most of the time faster than spending the same money on one new card.

Or buy one card soon after release and buy another identical one a few months down the line - used and at 60% off and double performance.

 

I like incremental improvements, I had been using the same case for 5 years, nobody expected a serious gaming PC in a 5 year old second hand eMachines mATX case.

 

It was doable though.

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Sure they are behind but (and I can't believe I am saying this) do you need bleeding edge gear?

 

I have been building my own PCs for over 15 years and I have to say, the CPU hasn't been the bottleneck in a system I have built for about 5 years.

 

true i suppose, so really intel's habit of constantly bringing out new sockets shouldnt be a problem as a sandybridge i5 won't bottleneck your system for years. so by the time your CPU needs replacing even AMD will likely have moved onto a new socket design, rendering AMD's longer lasting upgradability fairly irrelevant.

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Good point.

 

Now that they have fixed Sandybridge it is a bit of a no-brainer.

 

I guess that somewhere down the line AMD somehow won my "brand loyalty", I'm not even sure how.

I just don't even consider Intel products when I am shopping for stuff unless there is a product I have more loyalty to that contains Intel stuff like (for example) my Panasonic Toughbook.

 

Thinking about it, it might be the thrice-damned jingle that Intel insist you play if you even mention the word Intel on TV.

I hate that so much it might have caused me to deliberately avoid Intel products.

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I guess that somewhere down the line AMD somehow won my "brand loyalty", I'm not even sure how.

 

Was a big fan of Athlon and was an AMD devotee for a good few years, then Intel came out with the Core 2 Duo.........haven't touched an AMD since then,

I have no brand loyalty, chopped and changed ATI/Nvidia cards in the past, depending on who offered best bang for my buck. If tomorrow, AMD came out with something that whooped i7 "albatross", I'll be buying AMD again :bleh:

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The only thing i want right now is disk space, 10TB at the moment and still growing :)

jesus christ! surely no one really needs that much porn!?

 

I can get a second 5870 for around €170 second hand, I wonder if my Q9550 at 3.8Ghz will bottleneck it.

i wouldnt have thought so, but i dont really know an awful lot about the old core 2s. i only really got into this around the time i7 was released

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I'm planning on splitting my games on my new build between an SSD and my old HDD. I was wondering is it better to install Steam on my new C SSD drive and install a handful of new games I have yet to install on that and keep the rest on my D drive using hard links. Or have Steam installed on my D drive with hard links to the handful of games on my SSD? This would be easier as there would only be three or four hard links at a time but would there be any performance issues for the games on the SSD as Steam is running off the slower HDD?

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