Computer Jargon

[J_Red33]

2x 5850's will KILL a 5870. The difference between the two types isn't that great. A 5850 is basically a cut down version of a 5870, with about 70-80% of the processing power. Put 2 of them together & you do the math....

Same goes for 2x 4850's vs a 4870 or a 4890. In fact I think I read reacently on Toms Hardware that they were about the same performance wise as 5850.

There's nothing wrong with the system you have, should be able to make it last a bit longer yet.

[Madaz]

yeah i also bought the gigabyte OC version of the 4850 because i think its core clock was 75mhz faster than standard

so you have like:

4870 @ 750mhz

4850 OC @ 700mhz

4850 @ 625mhz

so spend a little more and it come with a better cooler from zalman too

>>This Article<< helped me choose the 4850 OC as id did very simular performance to the 4870 in the gigaFLOPS

have you tried MSY or they dont have the ICEQ4

[J_Red33]

This is the major issue now. No one has any 4800 series cards anymore, just when I was ready to buy my second card they dissapeared off of the shelf in prepariation for the 5800 series cards.

I actually got my HIS card from Allneeds as MSY didn't sell this card (also an OC job 770MHz instead of 750, not quite as big a gain that way, but the price difference wasn't that great), and they also have much better service with still competitive prices.

Also went for this because the equivalent Zalman fanned Gigabyte model was actually quite noisy unlike the 4850 version.

[Madaz]

you will have to ring around or send some emails but here are some options

>>Option 1 $216.56<<

>>Option 2 $220<<

>>Option 3 $235<<

>>Option 4 $237.30<<

>>Option 5 $239<<

[Aberax]

Have a look at StaticIce or...if all else fails, Ebay

[Madaz]

Nothing on fleebay at the moment, all those links i posted were from a staticice search

[Normsta]

It was inevitable, after 3 1/2 years of having pretty much the same computer, I decided that this weekend was going to be the time to finally upgrade my computer.

Previous specs were:

-AMD Athlon64 3500+

-Gigabyte K8 Triton Motherboard

-4x512MB DDR2(?) RAM

-Gigabyte Nvidea 9800GT

-2x160GB, 1x320GB & 1x640GB HDDs

-DVD Burner

-Netgear Wireless Network Card

-Fusion HDTV Pro Card

-Themaltake Soprano Case

-Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate (RC)

Now as it stands, its:

-AMD AM3 Phenom II x4 965 3.4Ghz

-Gigabyte GA-MA785GT

-2x2GB DDR3 RAM

-Gigabyte Nvidea 9800GT

-1x160GB, 1x320GB & 1x640GB 1x1.5TB HDDs

-DVD Burner

-Netgear Wireless Network Card

-Fusion HDTV Pro Card

-Thermaltake V9 Case

-Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate (RC) (Still to reformat and go to Win7 64-bit Home Premium)

Here's how the upgrade went...

Went to MSY in Plympton and bought all the gear necessary... cost me about $800.

New case sitting ready to go

New motherboard ready to go in

After having some issues removing the standard plug stencil panel, finally got the motherboard in

CPU and heatsink ready to go in

CPU set into the socket

After stuffing around with the heatsink, finally got it on properly

Memory ready to go in, haven't had one with a heatsink before

And sitting nicely on the board

This is where I finshed off on Saturday night, all the connectors attached

Sunday arvo I disconnected my current case and was ready to raid the remaining parts from it

Then put all the hard drives into their respective bays

Video card was a bit dusty, so a bit of cleaning got rid of most of the dust

Had to get rid of one of the HDDs as the motherboard only has room for one IDE drive

Then transferred over the graphics card, TV card and wireless network card

Next was transferring the PSU, but the secondary cable (no idea what it's called) wasn't long enough, so I got my brother's old PSU and put that in instead.

Then proceeded to installing the DVD drive

Still have somewhat of a mess in regards to HDD cables, but it's a lot better than it was before

Then closed up the case and it's ready to go!

Funnily enough, Windows proceeded to boot up with my old Win7 RC install, and after some driver installation and a restart, it was all working fine I would have thought a complete reformat would have been necessary, but no, Windows 7 seems to really be that good!

CPU is running at a constant 38-40C, which I believe is a good temperature to sit at.

Now all I got left is to set up my old case for the parents, which only requires the removed hard drive, a new video card and some basic claening, as well as installing my old copy of Vista.

Below are the WEI scores:

Previous specs:

Internim specs:

So far the system's been very fast with all the Windows 7 functions, but a complete reformat on a SATA drive will really show off the system's shine.

[Madaz]

nice one Norman i have the same case

its very good to build with, my only gripe was where you put the hdd in getting the SATA cables back to the hard drive there could of been more room but that could also be design faults with the P5E deluxe has 90deg connectors

[Normsta]

Yeah the SATA cables were a major pain, but still better than the mess I had in the previous case.

[Madaz]

good to know it wasn't just me

the case i really wanted was the HAF932 or 922 but only wanted to spend a little over $100, in saying that i am very happy with the case even if it is TT's cheap range

[Normsta]

I wanted the Antech 300 case, but all the MSYs were sold out of them. Hopefully this one'll last a while. How long have you had yours?

[J_Red33]

Have a look at StaticIce or...if all else fails, Ebay

Nothing on fleebay at the moment, all those links i posted were from a staticice search

Thanks for this guys. Didn't know about Static Ice, has given me renewed hope. May even call Allneeds just to see if they can still get them, if not these are priced reasonably & will give me the killer performance I am after. The main game I've got at the moment that struggles is Stalker Clearsky. Would be a lot more fun with 2 cards on the go

I wanted the Antech 300 case, but all the MSYs were sold out of them. Hopefully this one'll last a while. How long have you had yours?

There's a snag with the Antec 300 case, it only comes with one fan, so if you want it to cool sufficiently you need to spend extra on another fan for the front at least.

[pyro-ns]

hey guys, have just moved to sa (christies) from qld. just wondering, is MSY "it" for pc bits in sa?

where i lived i had a choice of umart and msy, but msy were always ultra shithouse in terms of customer service and actually getting exactly the parts you were after...

going to be chasing some i7 goodness in a few months i reckon! time to start researching again!

[Dohmar]

hey guys, have just moved to sa (christies) from qld. just wondering, is MSY "it" for pc bits in sa?

where i lived i had a choice of umart and msy, but msy were always ultra shithouse in terms of customer service and actually getting exactly the parts you were after...

going to be chasing some i7 goodness in a few months i reckon! time to start researching again!

msy are the cheapest, their customer service and parts availability still sucks but they do have several branches for you to choose from. for what its worth i still order most of my stuff from pccasegear.com.au which is based in melbourne.

-D

[Madaz]

had mine over 6 months the fan on top stopped due to the portable phone station being put on top of the case and eventually pushed down on it

[Aberax]

hey guys, have just moved to sa (christies) from qld. just wondering, is MSY "it" for pc bits in sa?

where i lived i had a choice of umart and msy, but msy were always ultra shithouse in terms of customer service and actually getting exactly the parts you were after...

going to be chasing some i7 goodness in a few months i reckon! time to start researching again!

Go i9, ETA is First Quarter of this year.

...You also have IT Warehouse in SA too, your closest ones are at Christies/Noarlunga on Dyson Road and one at Marion on Marion Road, excellent service from these guys

[CRoNic...]

Isn't IT Warehouse at Noarlunga for sale?

Don't mean to bad-mouth the place, but they used to be alot bigger than what they are now a few years back. I was good mates with the manager there for years (Brendan I think?) but I think he's moved on. It's hilarious that he was told to bring in those water tanks to sell :| I saw no point in that, but apparently that was word from higher-up.

These days the place is heaps smaller and seems alot emptier? I swear it was bigger back when it was still open on Beach road hahaha and that was god knows how many years ago now.

[Nightcrawler]

The main game I've got at the moment that struggles is Stalker Clearsky. Would be a lot more fun with 2 cards on the go

I just finished Stalker Pripyat last night .... awesome game. COS and CS were good too, but Pripyat melds the best of both together. You are lucky you are playing CS now - I bought it the day it came out and couldn't even play it, it was so full of bugs. Took no less than 5 patches (which erased my saved games each time) to finish the game (so I played around 3200 hours all up believe it or not). I have NEVER had so many blue screens of death in my life. I followed the Russian forum chatter closely and everyone was having the same issues - they released the game under significant time pressure and barely beta tested it at all.

I played all 3 with my single 4850 1Gb and they managed, but only just. Pripyat is the most demanding - at 1920x1200 with everything set high it did struggle in the big battle scenes.

[Aberax]

Isn't IT Warehouse at Noarlunga for sale?

Yes and No, we are wanting to move into a smaller store, however our lease isn't up yet, so we are trying to find someone to sublease to - hence the for sale sign out the front.

Don't mean to bad-mouth the place, but they used to be alot bigger than what they are now a few years back. I was good mates with the manager there for years (Brendan I think?) but I think he's moved on. It's hilarious that he was told to bring in those water tanks to sell :| I saw no point in that, but apparently that was word from higher-up.

Ah Yes, Brendan, He now works at NextByte, selling Apple's to Schools, etc.

It was great years ago, nice and open, but we started having the amount of staff we could have on cut back, head office started getting lazy - not sending us what we wanted/less of what we wanted, and stock getting stolen was too hard to handle with a store that size with 2-3 staff. So that's why it was downsized, to make it more manageable, and a storage area out back for furniture and those infernal tanks.

These days the place is heaps smaller and seems alot emptier? I swear it was bigger back when it was still open on Beach road hahaha and that was god knows how many years ago now.

It was bigger back in the day when we got what we ordered from head office, now it sucks, we order 10 of an item, we get sent 0-5, and they don't keep there stock levels up, so we have to wait longer for stock to arrive. In 2009 we had an awesome range of Superflower cases, the SF800-SF1000 series, we sold out of the stock back in Nov/Dec 2009....it is now March 2010 and still no stock of them

[pyro-ns]

msy are the cheapest, their customer service and parts availability still sucks but they do have several branches for you to choose from. for what its worth i still order most of my stuff from pccasegear.com.au which is based in melbourne.

-D

cheers mate

Go i9, ETA is First Quarter of this year.

...You also have IT Warehouse in SA too, your closest ones are at Christies/Noarlunga on Dyson Road and one at Marion on Marion Road, excellent service from these guys

o rly?! am scoping specs now... thanks for the details about IT Warehouse too