Just Bought Kick A$$ Gaming Pc, What Games To Get?

[insu]

duke nuken 3d

lol

still one of my fav's though... on N64 though... the only way to play it!

[Mayuri Krab]

I have seen that there is a new range of Nvidia GEforce cards as well.... somthing like GX2 series.... for like $800!!?? is this because of DDR5 RAM? bugger and i thought my 9800GTX was good but looks like the world of gaming is still going strong, just as you buy something good it becomes outdated :-)

Well if its the 9800GX2, thats becially two 8800GT cores stuck on one PCB, so its like SLI on 1 card. Last time I checked the price was $650 - $800 depending on what brand & where you buy it from. A friend bought a generic branded one for $650

The other card I can think that costs $800+ would be the the new GTX280.

But like pkblade said, the 4870 is the best $ for performance card atm.

[joeleo87]

got my 4870 card last night.... and wow... play UT3 on max everything (AA and AF) its amazing, im only running it on medium res atm coz my screen doesnt support the higher settings (next thing on the list). its idles hot but under load it doesnt get much hotter.

people will say because the temp is high its a shit card, but under load other cards temps will climb to just as high.

i couldnt get the MSI card so i bought xpertvision, they are only reference cards atm so they are all the same just different stickers ;p

next test is COD 4 tonight!

[mid life crisis]

just like to thank tangles for putting my pc together the other day :-) twin gt8800 in sli hdd set up in raid this thing goes like a cat with deep heat on it;s nuts can play games in high settings now with no shuttering or lag next week comes the 22 inch moniter and g15 keyboard and it's all complete thanks again mate it really is appreciated

cheers mid life crisis

[Gus-]

i just got my new setup, pretty similar....wooot

im waiting for gears of war 2 to come out, should be really good if the first one is anything to go off....

what servers do people usually play on for cod 4?

Edit : i got bored so this is my setup - what do people think

case - 300 by antec

motherboard - ga-ma790x-ds4 by gigabyte

cpu - am2+ 9850 phenom by amd

hdd - 500gb by wester digital

dvd- lg

graphics card - 9600gt-e3 512mb

psu - game power 750w

total $1548

mouse + keyboard - G9 +g15

total $200

monitor - 22" asus

total $365 (with free keyboard and mouse)

Grand total - too much

i love it, plays all my games on max graphics settings, no lag or anything

Edited July 17, 2008 by Gus-

[25GTT]

nice setup there Gus!

Why did you go the AMD in the end and not the dual core extreeeeeeeeme?

nothing wrong with your decision what so ever, just interested as to why thats all :-)

Mayuri - yeah the GTX280 is the one i was referring to, might see if that comes down somewhat in the future..... I have now sold my skyline so instead of modding the line the modding will be done to the pc :-) I was about to clock my cpu then realised my 480wat psu that comes with the case aint going to take much more, so am going to get corsair psu plus a nice little fan lcd controller for the front of the case.

Also talking about gfx cards my friend recently clocked his, clocked the mhz on it but recons he didnt really get much diffference, is there a lot to be had clocking gfx cards or should clocking just stick with the main cpu of the system ie dual core. I read your thread before and they had recommend clocking the gfx card even had a link for a prog that assisted in clocking it for you.

[Gus-]

mainly because two of my mates have the same setup and it works for them so i thought id would work for me, so yeah, i thought id tag along haha

[joeleo87]

I was about to clock my cpu then realised my 480wat psu that comes with the case aint going to take much more, so am going to get corsair psu plus a nice little fan lcd controller for the front of the case.

25GTT please tell me you arent running your new setup on 480w PSU :S depending on the brand i dont think your PSU will b giving your hardware enough amps, especially your prescious GTX O.o

[pkblade]

got my 4870 card last night.... and wow... play UT3 on max everything (AA and AF) its amazing, im only running it on medium res atm coz my screen doesnt support the higher settings (next thing on the list). its idles hot but under load it doesnt get much hotter.

people will say because the temp is high its a shit card, but under load other cards temps will climb to just as high.

i couldnt get the MSI card so i bought xpertvision, they are only reference cards atm so they are all the same just different stickers ;p

next test is COD 4 tonight!

sweet....can't wait to get mine, also, the new > Arctic Cooling Accelero twin turbo is something I'm lookin into to keep it chilled . So, did it live up to expectation in COD 4? and just for reference what card did you have prior to this one?

[joeleo87]

COD 4 MAX everything, its unreal. lol, my sister came into my room and says "what movie is this?", i lold IRL.

im getting about 60fps on max everything so its pretty awesome. if i lowered the rez to 1024x860 or something id get near 100.

i had an NX8600gts, brilliant card. did its job well. cod4 medium graphics.

yourself? what are you running atm pkblade?

[25GTT]

*ahem* yes Joel I am using the 480w with the 9800GTX, i used the online calculator here:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp

It shows my system should be runing at 440w. doesnt tell you though if that is 440 under heavy load, hmmmm do you think under heavly load the gfx would chew up an extra 40w??

yeah it is low though i do agree which is why i should really order a new psu quite soon before i start ocing.

good news!! I just finished Crysis!! :-) Now I am starting company of heroes getting back into a strategy game again

[Mayuri Krab]

*ahem* yes Joel I am using the 480w with the 9800GTX, i used the online calculator here:

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp

It shows my system should be runing at 440w. doesnt tell you though if that is 440 under heavy load, hmmmm do you think under heavly load the gfx would chew up an extra 40w??

Yeah, I would say thats about right, even a dual graphics card system will rarely chew up more than 600w on full load, but theres more to that then simple watts.

The main thing with psu is that no PSU is 100% efficient, general ones are around 70% efficiency & the good ones are ~80%, however even this various slightly depending on factors like load, efficiency etc etc. Someone here whos a electircal degree can probably explain better.

Also, like many other things in the computer industry, many "cheapo" powersupply "fake" the wattage rating in a way that they PSU can only sustain the calimed power output for a limited about of time b4 dying. One example I can think of is the crappy 430w PSU that came with the Soprano case, it really is a rebranded 350w PSU & testing has shown that the PSU quickly failed when its loaded closer to that limit of 430w.

If your 480w is a good brand PSU with a high amp rating on the 12v rail (this is very important), then it should be fine, otherwise consider getting a higher wattage one with a good amp output on the 12v rail (like the cosiar one, forgot the model #... think theres a 550w model & a 620w model).

[25GTT]

yeah i have seen some nice corsair psu's on www.pccasegear.com.au

Only thing I am worried about is becuase my pc is so new if i change around the PSU and something goes wrong netplus might turn around and say its the new PSU's fault. might have to pay them the extra $40 for installation of it even though its a piece of pi$$ that way they cant turn around to me and point the finger if somehting goes wrong, that is also why i still have not oc'd the pc yet always good to make sure everything runs well for a bit first of all :-)

Any upgrade PSU's you would recommend from here? www.netplus.com.au they did have some corsairs but it looks like they had taken them off???

or i wonder if they would let me get PLE to install as they are also quite good.

[Mayuri Krab]

Netplus have the 620w cosiar ones back in stock; heres the Link.

The good thing I like about the Cosiar is that is pretty much the best one value for $ one, good power rating, triple 12v rails (gives 60 amps combined I think), all the extra "fancy" PSU features like active PFC, 80%+ efficiency & it has detachable cables so you won't get messy cables all over the place (unlike my PC atm ), also it should also give you enough headroom should you wish to upgrade to dual video cards later down the track.

Think I'll pick up one when netplus have the antec 1200 case back in stock. , then I'll start my way of adding 2x750Gb Hard drives & breaking the 2TB barrier for my com

Edited July 19, 2008 by Mayuri Krab

[pkblade]

^^ won't be too long before SAU will be using you as their server . Yeah the modular PSU are a nice feature to keep things tidy and provided you don't regularly upgrade or like rearranging things in the case.

Think the 9800GTX would easily require min 400'ishW to run a game at load & the other few basic components.

Like Mayuri Krab mentioned when looking for a PSU, most of the better model brand names have good power efficiency (80%) and, also, importantly usually rate their units at continuous power (eg. Coolermaster RealPower Pro 650W has a peak power upwards of 780W) and not peak power, which the generic models & brands tend to do (eg. Shaw). Some other reputable brands not already mentioned are - Antec, Seasonic and SilverStone. You should find plenty of reviews on their various models.

joel - currently have the 8800GS but now that I've gone from a dual 19" to single 24" screen (tis also used for watching HDTV) I wanted something better for the higher res and settings.

[25GTT]

Well finalllly did the mods i wanted!!

Went the Corsair 620W moduler PSU

RED Scorpion Xigmatek CPU cooler (Toms hardware choice of 2008)

And the Zalman fan speed controller! I absolutely love this! adds some real LCD bling to the front of my case, looks really cool!

So have now just completed a very gentle clock in the BIOS from the dual core standard of 3gig, up to a gentle 3.29g

Strange thing though is the prog CPU-Z which monitors your cpu speed was showing 3.29 and has now just gone down to 2.19??? is that because it is resting? in my windows vista PC details however it constantly sits at 3.29..... quite strange really.

Also can someone tell me if when i do raise it through BIOS does that also mean the Graphics card AND ram gets clocked up as well? if so there would then be no point in seperately clocking the gfx card?

THanks all :-)

[kralster]

What you need to do is disable speed stepping in your bios!

And no your ram graphics cards bus speed won't go up, in the old days these things are worked together but the cpu has it's own bus speed now.

[25GTT]

Cheers Kralster, yeah just checked my ESIT which is the stepping controller you were talking about, basically from what i could read on it is that the CPU's now only hit max when then need to then they just go to an idle cpu speed so to speak.

Is it bad if it is continually stepping when loading? i guess it has always done it but up to 3gig before so it should be ok??

Strange one as i then checked mine and it was disabled, I am going to have a look in BIOS again in a sec.

Also what is interesting, is that idle on these e8400's is mid 40' degree's. more around the 45 - 48 degree mark. THat seems quite high compared to my old Pent 4 i had before this one, but what is more interested is when these things are clocked there really isnt a huge temp increase like the old P4, so even though it idles hotter, when clocked it only goes up 2 - 3 degrees at idle. I am also using a program called OCCT which is stressing the RAM and CPU whilst i type this, sitting quite comfortably on 59 degrees and i have only seen it hit 60 once for a very brief second. Most of the tests in reviews shows these E8400's doing 3.6g but i dont like pushing things too far for longevity, plus ihave the aftermarket cooling so about 3.4g - 3.5g should be nice....its funny as the E8600 which is a 3.3 gig costs an extra $150 than my chip :-) Value for money the 8400's are Schweeeeet!

[Mayuri Krab]

You will find that increasing your FSB to OC your CPU won't affect your temps by much, its when you increase the voltages (to sustain stability for a higher OC) thats when you start getting significant temp increases.

Are you using the motherboard's auto OC feature thats like all you gotta do is increase the FSB or are you setting all the parameters by urself?

Coz if you are using the auto feature, most motherboard will "play it safe" & also up the voltage & several other parameters as soon as it detects increased FSB, if you do all the parameters urself you can probably overclock it to 3.4 - 3.6Ghz on stock voltages.

& no continuos use of the stepping & loading won't damage your CPU, its want its designed to do.

EDIT: Just skimmed this thread from the beginning & remembered that you got this DS3, similar board to mine (DS3-P) & if you OCed it just by increasing the FSB & left the other parameters to auto, then the mobo have most probably also increased the various voltages, so thats probably why your temp is a bit high.

What you need to do is disable speed stepping in your bios!

And no your ram graphics cards bus speed won't go up, in the old days these things are worked together but the cpu has it's own bus speed now.

When you up the FSB, on the intel chipset mobos, your RAM speed will still go up if you leave the mobo on auto mode, this is done in order to keep the FSB:DRAM ratio. You can unOC the ram by changing this ratio.

Last time I checked only the high end Nvidia chipset mobos (680, 780, 790s) have a feature that can "unlink" the ram from the system FSB.

As with the video card, increasing the FSB won't affect the cards clock speed or Ram speed, however if you leave the PCI-E clock to "auto" then it MAY get upped, this should be aovided at all cost (by manually setting this parameter to 100mhz) as an increased PCI-E clock is know to cause all sorts of problems with various video cards.

Edited September 13, 2008 by Mayuri Krab

[25GTT]

OK so am changing it to PCIE to 100mhz, so just to check again, if i put that up to say 105 mhz does that mena i have now clocked the graphics card?

What is an ok limit to make that PCIE number up to do you think?

Have used google and i see some people running at 110 mhz. Also a guy clocked my combo to 4.0 after he changed the RAM settings, i have now intention of stressing my CPU that much, but if he did those numbers would his PCIE mhz be screwed? the thread made no mention of him changing his PCIE mhz

thread here: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthre...4594&page=3

I just cant beleive this guy was clocking it to like 3.7 of the standard 380w PSU i think it was..... crazy!!!