PC Build - Recommended Systems Thread - February 2012

[desertergreg]

Cheers for bringing that up.  It wasn't quite a typo so much as my being as clear as mud. At stock (and let's face it that's where the majority of people leave their cards) the 6950 is faster than the GTX 560 Ti and as such it's 'just right' for the $2,200 build.  The GPU market is refreshingly competitive - what I was meaning is that Nvidia have pretty much cleared AMD out of the higher end builds - of the four 'gaming' builds the one you mentioned is the only one with an AMD card, however the price vs performance differential is razor thin, so whilst Nvidia is a bit dominant overall it makes sense to have the 6950 in that dollar build - basically I overstated Nvidias dominance a bit, albeit that they are ahead.

... of course that's until the 28nm Southern Islands (including one code named 'New Zealand'!) come out, allegedly before the end of the year and well ahead of Nvidia's new cards.



*rubs hands together in glee*

That truly is clear as mud. So do I get a 560 ti or  a 6950? At a glance the 560's are chePer...

But then my 4830 plays bc2 on low fine, in theory will it play bf3 on low fine? Is an upgrade gpu really only an upgrade to medium settings? And is that even worth it?

Do I already know the answer which is wait for bf3 to come out before I make a call to upgrade?

How many more questions am I allowed?

[O-L-W-A-G]

BF3 will be very taxing don't expect the 4830 to play it at all, go grab a 6950 currently the best bang for buck (http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6950-1gb-vs-geforce-gtx-560-ti-review/12)

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139235/CATID=300/ID=16313/SID=920130071/productdetails.html

vs

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afa.asp?strOrderBy=Title&strKeyword=560+ti&CATID=301&SubmitType=GO&idWebPage=39234&page=1&ListOptions=Submit

[ChineseKiwi]

A couple of questions Philo in regards to those builds:

Why the Seagate 500GB over the faster Samsung F3? Also I'm more than sure people can spare an extra $20 for a 1TB.....

The Antec Neo Eco 620W is a good bit cheaper than the Antec HCG 620W while both are extremely similar. The saving on the PSU negates the extra for 1TB, resulting in a better value system.

[philo-sofa]

That truly is clear as mud. So do I get a 560 ti or  a 6950? At a glance the 560's are chePer...

But then my 4830 plays bc2 on low fine, in theory will it play bf3 on low fine? Is an upgrade gpu really only an upgrade to medium settings? And is that even worth it?

Do I already know the answer which is wait for bf3 to come out before I make a call to upgrade?

How many more questions am I allowed?

Only one more question is allowed! The 560 Ti and 6950 are both good cards.  If you don't want to overclock, go with the 6950, if you do want to mess around with overcloking and BIOS', then either are good.

A couple of questions Philo in regards to those builds:

Why the Seagate 500GB over the faster Samsung F3? Also I'm more than sure people can spare an extra $20 for a 1TB.....

The Antec Neo Eco 620W is a good bit cheaper than the Antec HCG 620W while both are extremely similar. The saving on the PSU negates the extra for 1TB, resulting in a better value system.

Have to agree on the 1TB hard drive, as much for capacity as speed (there isn't all that much performance difference IRL) have edited the gamer build accordingly (left the 500GB in the ultra budget build tho).

Diagree on the Neo Eco 620w, which just isn't as well built, or as efficient (80+ vs 80+ bronze), it also doesn't come with a fucking power cable for goodness sake.  I'm aware a lot of people have spare ones, but some don't and frankly I can't be bothered explaining they need to pick up one separartely because Antec are so tight with their Neo Eco series. For a mere $15 extra, the included power cable, better components and superior efficiency of the High Current Gamer is well worth it IMO.

[Emrico1]

[Xenolightning]

I'm going spam you with more questions about your choices just cause I <3 you. (By spam I mean one)

Your Budget Gaming has the X4 955. Reason being? The i3 2100 is on par if not faster, and performs better in a lot of games. I would understand if you would to argue that if you overclock the X4 955 then it would become the better option but with stock cooling and mildly restricted airflow overclocking would be limited.

I guess what I'm trying to say is; Why don't you build a billion systems to cater for everyone's needs then we won't have this problem

[philo-sofa]

They're broadly comparable CPUs - the Intel is a little faster for gaming, but loses out in other areas.  For the same price, I'd rather have a chip that can O/C another 10% with stock cooling or 20% with an aftermarket cooler.

[Aquila Rossa]

I wonder if this could be a new contender for SSD in these system recommendations. New Kingston has performance of the OCZs using sandforce but also has the Intel long life nand chips. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/45558-kingston-hyperx-240gb-ssd-review-13.html

Also, what is the reliability on the F3 Samsung 1TB drives? I am thinking that four of them running RAID10 would kick ass yet still offer redundancy.

[philo-sofa]

Unfortunately by the nature of these things, we'll have to wait till they've been on the market a while before any given SSD can be assumed to be more reliable than another :/  Even if it's the best drive evar for reliability wise it'll take a while to prove itself (firmware wise in the case of the Kingston). It does seem that the issue with the current drives may be that 25nm NAND - if so the Vertex 3 Max IOPS (and for that matter the Kingston you linked) should be pretty solid.  Till that's confirmed one way or the other I'm thinking Intel 510 and Crucial m4 series (same controller) drives will take the place of SF-2000 drives completely.

As for RAID 10 - the issue isn't throughput it's latency SSD's offer <0.1ms latency vs ~12ms for hard drives. If you're interested I rabbit on about latency vs speed in the first few paragraphs of my old Vertex 2 review.

[Aquila Rossa]

I did not mean in place of an SSD, I meant RAID 10 as well as a SSD.
On another note, i was looking at the transfer rates of revo drives. fast as. pity they cost so much. must be an option to consider for any 'ultimate' or money no object system though

[philo-sofa]

I don't really see the need ever for RAID 10, with the exception of a very few apps like video conversion and SQL etc?  Unless you go the whole hog with a ZFS file system you seem more likely to lose your data even with mirroring!  Love the Revodrives too seems a pity we have to choose between those kind of speeds and a third GPU tho - one thing X79 might bring is those kind of speeds (via four striped drives) with three GPUs.. not that that's an honest RL dilemma for me sadly lol.

There's a $50k PCIe SSD thing on a server at work.  AFAIK it's 1.3TB of SLC with a > 150,000 IOPS - I imagine stealing it quite often...

[Aquila Rossa]

I imagine stealing it quite often...

lolz

Yeah, RAID 10 is possibly not worth it, but when the F3 drives are only 70 bucks or so then what the heck, worth trying just for the sake of it.

[philo-sofa]

28/08/2011 - Minor edit to move all SSDs over to the Crucial m4 (cheers to 5loth and others for bringing up the true extent of growing issues with Sandforce-based drives), and to avoid memory which doesn't like Sandy-Bridge or isn't rated to run at its 1.5v (cheers to Aquila for that suggestion) as well as move to schmexy new large 27" monitors, new power supplies (welcome to the NZ PSU market proper OCZ!) and a few other tidy ups and price updates.

Have some fairly severe doubts about Bulldozer if I'm honest, but all will be revealed soon... if AMD don't push back release again.

[5loth]

I would imagine if Bulldozer was going to give Sandy Bridge/Sandy Bridge-E a run for its money AMD would have been showing us that already, but they haven't.

[desertergreg]

BF3 will be very taxing don't expect the 4830 to play it at all, go grab a 6950 currently the best bang for buck (http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6950-1gb-vs-geforce-gtx-560-ti-review/12)

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139235/CATID=300/ID=16313/SID=920130071/productdetails.html

vs

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afa.asp?strOrderBy=Title&strKeyword=560+ti&CATID=301&SubmitType=GO&idWebPage=39234&page=1&ListOptions=Submit

hey can anyone tell me the difference between the XFX 6950 above and the XXX version also avail through playtech? I presume it isnt as straight forward as extra $10 gets you better performance?

[Growler]

The $409 has slightly higher clocks (830,1300 vs 800,1250)  so factory OC i guess

[desertergreg]

righto, done. now we wait...*rubs hands in anticipation*

...one new psu later and I'm sorted, bc2 on highest settings yay!

Weird tho, card wasn't clocked at all, in fact instead of 830 MHz it setup at 590. What's up with that?

[camy205]

Another question sorry, is it nessecary to go to 8gb ram from 4gb and should I upgrade my 5850?



Processor:    
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor (6 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory:    
4096MB RAM
Hard Drive:    
1X500GB 1X1TB
Video Card:    
ATI Radeon HD 5850
Monitor:    
Samsung P2250

All good?

[O-L-W-A-G]

Not sure, with BC2 + TS + Steam I remember it used to use about 3.5 gig/4 since I got 8 I haven't bothered checking usage. BF3 might need that extra 4 gig

[Froglotion]

I'd put my money on video card personally. If you plan to play with lots of programs running at the same time, then memory will help. Otherwise 4GB should be fine. Hell I know people that play BC2 with 2GB..... it can't be toooo bad

[Benji77]

i would upgrade both. RAM is so cheap these days.

I just got 12GB for around $100

[SheepShagger556]

i would upgrade both. RAM is so cheap these days.

I just got 12GB for around $100

This.

[Emrico1]

Another question sorry, is it nessecary to go to 8gb ram from 4gb and should I upgrade my 5850?

Processor:    
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor (6 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory:    
4096MB RAM
Hard Drive:    
1X500GB 1X1TB
Video Card:    
ATI Radeon HD 5850
Monitor:    
Samsung P2250

All good?

What motherboard/PSU/case do you has? I've gone for the el-cheapo 2x 5850 idea (maybe you can too) and I'm confident it will be ok. Nobody has really mentioned RAM tbh.

[Xenolightning]

What motherboard/PSU/case do you has? I've gone for the el-cheapo 2x 5850 idea (maybe you can too) and I'm confident it will be ok. Nobody has really mentioned RAM tbh.

Speaks the truth. Well considering 4GB is almost the minimum these days, nobody should be worrying about memory. If you need more than 4GB of RAM to play the game I'd be seriously concerned with the underlying game engine. 1GB OS + ~3GB maximum for a single game should never* be an issue.

*Applies to this point in time only.

[philo-sofa]

Yeah, if building new with RAM prices why not.  Else just wait, if BF3 does (surprisingly, as Xeno says) need > 4GB then just whack another 4 in there at that point.