I see no point in SLi. By the time you'd want to buy a new card, architectures have moved on so far that you're better off putting the money toward a new single card.
Here's what I would build if I were building today.
An 8800 GTX that's supposedly rather quiet. If not, I can rectify that with aftermarket cooling.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130072[/url]
A P180. I have this case and love it. Very quiet.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129017[/url]
A good, relatively cheap motherboard with an Intel chipset. I went through three nForce4 boards and was 100% satisfied with none of them. Supposedly overclocks well too. I know you said you're not interested in that, but these Core 2 CPUs basically overclock themselves. I'd be surprised if you didn't get to 3 GHz without a voltage bump.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128048[/url]
Q6600. If you get lucky and get a G0, that's cool, but if not, that's okay too. What Sanfam meant when he said that G0s were immeasurably faster is that you can't measure the difference.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017[/url]
Scythe Ninja. This thing is a work of art, all in a giant, passive CPU cooler. You see, in a P180 with a conventional motherboard, this heatsink will be up in the corner where it has two fans blowing on it. No need to directly attach a fan to the heatsink itself.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185046[/url]
4 GB of G.Skill, in 2 GB sticks so you have room to expand to 8 GB. The RAM I've gotten from G.Skill in the past has never let me down - and that's a good thing, since I've had extremely bad luck with the most reputable of companies. If you never, ever, ever plan on overclocking, go with the first link. If you might someday be talked into it, go with the DDR2-800 in the second link.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231112[/url]
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122[/url]
One or more of these. Seagate because they have a beautiful five-year warranty. I personally find Raptors to be overrated.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148136[/url]
I don't quite trust SATA optical drives yet.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151151[/url]
It seems the days of Creative Labs and EAX really have gone by the wayside. I, for one, welcome our new masters with real-time DD encoding!
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156002[/url]
Never skimp on the PSU.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703005[/url]
Oh, and it would seem SupCom performance in Vista is more than on a par...
[quote]That said, there are some real head-scratching results here. It's not surprising that the game runs a couple frames slower in Vista with antialiasing disabled (and that gap might even close with further Vista driver development). But why are the AA numbers either identical or even faster in Vista than the non-AA numbers? For that matter, why are the AA numbers at 1280x1024 basically the same as the non-AA numbers in WinXP? That would normally lead us to believe that the game is limited by CPU power, but the difference between a high-end quad-core CPU and an inexpensive dual-core CPU is just 10% or so, because additional threads aren't that CPU intensive. Also, the frame rate drops in half when we put in a low-cost graphics card, which indicates that graphics is certainly important.[/quote]
Source: [url]http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2107343,00.asp[/url]
[QUOTE=Vertigo_1;166044]One or more of these. Seagate because they have a beautiful five-year warranty. I personally find Raptors to be overrated.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148136[/url][/quote]Not from quieter end of choises (some Seagates even have high pitched idle whine) and while STR is high real world performance is rarely better than opposite. WD5000AAKS wins in both and is cheaper.
[quote]It seems the days of Creative Labs and EAX really have gone by the wayside. I, for one, welcome our new masters with real-time DD encoding!
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156002[/url][/quote]And that's about everything what that card can do well if question is about gaming.
Software soundcards put [b]shitload[/b] of load on CPU compared to hardware DSP card!
[url]http://techreport.com/articles.x/11759/6[/url]
[url]http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardwarecanuck-reviews/2485-auzentech-x-fi-prelude-7-1-review.html[/url]
[quote]Never skimp on the PSU.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703005[/url][/quote]Seasonic innards, possibly quietest 80mm fan PSU but equally probably not on bar with Seasonic's 12cm fanned PSUs.
Corsair HX520 is about quietest PSU and more than enough for single graphic card PCs, and would actually run nearly any dual graphic card PC.
And extension cable for ATX12V/EPS12V cable is also required, very few PSUs have long enough cable to reach CPU's power connector on top edge of mobo in Antec P18x cases.
[quote]Q6600. If you get lucky and get a G0, that's cool, but if not, that's okay too. What Sanfam meant when he said that G0s were immeasurably faster is that you can't measure the difference.[/quote]
My literary prowess is known far and wide ;)
[quote]I don't quite trust SATA optical drives yet.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151151[/url][/quote]
What isn't there to trust? The bus is proven. So is the hardware.
[quote]Oh, and it would seem SupCom performance in Vista is more than on a par...
[QUOTE=Sanfam;166055]What isn't there to trust? The bus is proven. So is the hardware.[/QUOTE]In the past, certain motherboards when paired with certain drives had trouble installing certain OSes. That, and I like as many SATA ports available for HDDs as possible.[QUOTE=E.T;166046]Not from quieter end of choises (some Seagates even have high pitched idle whine) and while STR is high real world performance is rarely better than opposite. WD5000AAKS wins in both and is cheaper.[/quote]I've never had a high-pitched whine from my Seagates. I've got four of them running in my computer right now. No whine.
Remember how I said I've had bad luck with otherwise reputable companies? Every WD I've bought has died, usually within a few months. Even the drives I get from RMAing the dead ones die.
Also, does the WD have a five-year warranty?[QUOTE=E.T;166046]And that's about everything what that card can do well if question is about gaming.
Software soundcards put [b]shitload[/b] of load on CPU compared to hardware DSP card!
[url]http://techreport.com/articles.x/11759/6[/url]
[url]http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardwarecanuck-reviews/2485-auzentech-x-fi-prelude-7-1-review.html[/url][/quote]What I see are graphs of CPU utilization on a last-generation, minimum frequency dual-core processor. What kind of loss will that translate to in the real world? 1 frame per second? Two maybe? Modern games are GPU-bound, not CPU-bound.
I know there are better cards for gaming, but gaming is not all that I do with my PC. If you want the best of both worlds, go with the X-Fi Prelude, but be prepared to pay the premium.
also, the game that we are building this particular system for [B]is[/B] CPU-bound. Every single percentage point counts.
As far as HD reliability goes, they are pretty much even these days. The advent of SMART allows the user to have some advance warning of a potential failure, as well. In fact, most of the failure cases I've troubleshooted were indicated by SMART and ignored by the user. Maybe you had a bad run, but time and time again it has been shown that with very few exceptions, hard drives will run for a long time in the proper environment. This isn't to say I do not have any brand bias. My own experiences with earlier Maxtor drives set me back for a while, but I learned my lesson and now have a system running a pair of them with no reliability problems of any sort looking to crop up in the near future. Right now, WD and Seagate are both my preference for distinctly different categories, if only because they offer drives effectively suited for a particular purpose. Of course, I may just end up with a large cap WD drive if the price is right.
But I do like the 5-year warranty. it does appeal to my inner cheapass. ;)
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
[QUOTE=Vertigo_1;166065]In the past, certain motherboards when paired with certain drives had trouble installing certain OSes. That, and I like as many SATA ports available for HDDs as possible.I've never had a high-pitched whine from my Seagates. I've got four of them running in my computer right now. No whine. [/quote]
I'm not planning on making a file server, and I don't ever think I'll get 6 hard drives. I also had my PATA DVD writer from NZ sent to me (it's region free and I happen to like it very much for DVD playback thanks to a nice large buffer to cover drive spin-down when playback is paused).
[quote]Remember how I said I've had bad luck with otherwise reputable companies? Every WD I've bought has died, usually within a few months. Even the drives I get from RMAing the dead ones die. [/quote]
No offense, but I pretty much ignore any advice relating to hard drives that includes "Company X is always crap, every drive I've had from them has failed." Look around the net and you'll find plenty of people who swear that any company you choose to investigate will always fail. :)
Also, what C_Mon said. :)
In other news, two components (aside from the DVD drive) have been purchased. I have a Seagate 500GB HDD and an Antec P-182 case.
[QUOTE=C_Mon;166067]But from what I understand we're helping Biggles build a computer for him, not fro someone else.[/QUOTE]I highly doubt he will use his PC exclusively for gaming. But as I said, if he thinks the Prelude is worth the extra money, that's his choice. I was merely citing a lower-cost option I would consider if I were building.[QUOTE=Biggles;166075]No offense, but I pretty much ignore any advice relating to hard drives that includes "Company X is always crap, every drive I've had from them has failed." Look around the net and you'll find plenty of people who swear that any company you choose to investigate will always fail. :)[/QUOTE]I never said WD is always crap. All I said is that all the drives I've bought from them has died, which is a fact, not opinion. I was criticized for choosing a Seagate, so I offered my reasons for choosing one. I do realize my experience is probably an abberation, or possibly even user error, which is why I didn't say that WD is crap. I just see no reason to choose a WD drive when I consider Seagate's five-year warranty and my prior history with WD.
I can't tell you what you want to buy or why you want to buy it. I'm just offering my perspective.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
You're absolutely right. Also, I bought a seagate drive. :) I like their 5-year warranty and they're good drives.
I love my Maxtor drives. All still work to this day without a bump...
The 20 Gig Seagate on the other hand was recently identified as the culprit in my missfire booting issue. I was able to fix it easily enough, but then I have some technical experience that allows me to do that, the avergae Joe would have had to send it in for service or chuck it for another drive.
I used to use WD's a lot a decade ago... seems that in recent years when I purchase an HD, it ends up being a Maxtor.
PATA interfaces though... I'm not caught up to all you folk out here with the latest and greatest...
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
OK, here's the current plan. Tell me if I've got something incompatible.
[list][*]Core 2 Quad Q6600 with Scythe Ninja cooler.
[*]Asus P5N32-E SLI or Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4 (this one's probably going to be a spot decision based on how I feel).
[*]Gigabyte 8600GTS (silent).
[*]4GB of suitable DDR2-800 RAM. I've found both Corsair and OCZ, but only in 1GB sticks so I'll probably have to get 4 sticks. I can't see me wanting more RAM before I next upgrade the motherboard so this shouldn't be a problem.
[*]WD Raptor 150GB.
[*]One of Corsair VX450W or Seasonic S12 Energy+ 550 or Seasonic S12-430 or Seasonic SS-400HT or Corsair HX520, depending on which one I can actually find (only seen the Seasonic S12 Energy+ 550 so far).[/list]
All of this is going in an Antec P182 case along with a Seagate 500GB drive. At a future date it will be joined by an Auzentech X-Prelude if I can find one, otherwise some form of Creative X-Fi card, if I can figure out which model really suits my needs.
What else are you going to do with your computer than play SupCom?
I just can't help it, but I really don't like the 8600gts :p
I would throw out a raptor or som memory to get a 8800gts instead. even if SupCom is quite CPU bound I still got 10 more frames per second when I overclocked my 8800gts.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
I'm not getting an 8600GTS instead of an 8800GTS because of budget constraints. I'm not getting it because I don't want a fanned video card and I'm not going to use an aftermarket video cooler. If there was a (good) retail fanless 8800GTS, I'd be all over it in an instant. And to be honest, I don't actually [i]have[/i] a budget.
Also, the 8600GTS has better video decoding than the 8800GTS.
from what has been stated here and on IRC before, Biggles is quite willing to upgrade to a better card when one becomes available. But the requirement will still be silent. :p
And C_Mon, in the heat of battle, your 10fps increase is likely trivialized by a general slowdown in sim speed. You certainly may have gotten an increase in framerate, but that is meaningless if the game itself is actually operating slower to account for the massive amount of processing going on. SupCom will dramatically speed up or slow down given an overwhelming load. The faster HDD helps plow through vast amounts of HDD-centric calculations
And a thought, Biggles. If you really are pushing for the best performance, you just might want to look into a higher level processor as an option. Since overclocking is out of the question, it might be a better deal performance-wise to investigate a Q6700, which while double the price may just be worth the additional .26ghz per core for slightly under twice the MSRP. Or if you're willing, a QX6800, with 2.93ghz per core for the mind blowing price of nearly three times that of the Q6600. :p Or you could consider a long-term upgrade plan. At the very least, you just may want to consider the 6700 given your lack of budget.
[QUOTE=Biggles;165956]I'm not going to buy the cheapest possible components now just so I can upgrade in three months. I'm going to buy the best value performance parts now so I don't have to upgrade for three years.[/QUOTE]
I tought that was what he said here, but don't mind me.
You're right, he did say that. But it doesn't mean he is just going to buy the brand new card when it comes out in the next month or two. Six, perhaps a bit more...possibly. He has stated somewhere a goal for a reduced timeframe 1.5 year upgrade cycle. If he offsets the start of it and performs an upgrade six to seven months from now, when the new model cards have been out for a bit and dropped slightly in price, then it would be reasonable and inline with the market's actions.. The key is availability of silent cooling over everything else.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
To clarify what Sanfam's trying to say:
I fully intend to upgrade the base computer on a 3-yearly cycle, as I have typically done in the past. However, I'm considering moving the video card to a 1.5-yearly cycle (as I have done once in the past). That way I can get a nice new, still silent, video card in 1.5 years at a fairly reasonable cost, and thus don't need a video card now that will last 3 years. I'm [i]not[/i] going to buy an 8600GTS now and replace it in 3 months' time.
I also said this way back on page 1:
[QUOTE=Biggles;165798]Wants to buy? I've already bought a 24" LCD (1920x1200). :) I'm not particularly concerned about being able to run it at native resolution in the latest games. It'd be nice, but I'm well aware that it's impractical.[/QUOTE]
I bought a 1920x1200 monitor for HD video, not for games.
To be honest, you're probably not going to be able to keep a quad core at the level of silence you seem to be insisting upon. For reference, I find "medium" on the TriCools in my P180 to be perfectly acceptable.
Vertigo_1: That's what a friend is also telling me when he read this thread.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
I haven't actually insisted on any level of silence. I'm insisting on "as quiet as reasonably possible." I'm not an idiot, I know the quad core won't run silently or even close to.
I know from experience that little whiny video card fans are noisy, even when idle, and noone's shown me a review of the noise level of any 8800GTS to prove otherwise. Plus, as I've mentioned before, the 8600 line has better hardware video decoding.
If "silence" were all I cared about, I'd be getting a Via mini ITX.
Well, there's some review [url]http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/391/10/[/url]
But from experience I can tell you that at idle you won't hear the 8800gts over the case fans. In games it will be a bit louder but usually I don't notice anything because you play games with sound and stuff. And I have to agree with every forum I read, that thecooling on the 8800gts and gtx and quite good for stock coolers. They are not like my old geforce 4 ti-4400 that had such a high pitch noise that I just used thermal glue to glue a big fanless heatsink to it.
Also, I read some review on Tomshardware that nvidia's video decoding cheats and the output isn't as good as ATI's, I just have to find it again.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
Unfortunately, that review doesn't really say anything at all as there's no indication of the noise level of the PC without the card, and thus how much noise the card is producing. Nor is there any indication of what the noise level at idle is.
Also, while not being able to hear it distinctively over the case fans is a fair point (and what I expect), it's the fact that it adds on to the total noise that's the problem . :)
Anyway, you've got 4 days to convince me that the 8800GTS is not going to increase total noise too much before I go shopping. :p
The worst one I ever had was my old Leadtek ti4800SE. That had two little 4cm fans on it.
First off, video card fans aren't nearly as tiny as they used to be. Even the loudest of them isn't as high-pitched as the video cards of old.
Second, I think it'll take a good bit of detective work to determine which cards are loud and which aren't. I'm not sure what brand of card my roommate bought - I think it might be eVGA - but it gets loud as hell when it spins up.
Here's something I found whilst googling: [url]http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2873&p=9[/url]
Here's another: [url]http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gf8800gtx-roundup_6.html[/url]
Also, I still want to point out that if you put the fan of the 8800gts stock cooler at 100% it will be loud, but not nearly as irritating as some really small fan with high pitch noise.
Comments
Here's what I would build if I were building today.
An 8800 GTX that's supposedly rather quiet. If not, I can rectify that with aftermarket cooling.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130072[/url]
A P180. I have this case and love it. Very quiet.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129017[/url]
A good, relatively cheap motherboard with an Intel chipset. I went through three nForce4 boards and was 100% satisfied with none of them. Supposedly overclocks well too. I know you said you're not interested in that, but these Core 2 CPUs basically overclock themselves. I'd be surprised if you didn't get to 3 GHz without a voltage bump.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128048[/url]
Q6600. If you get lucky and get a G0, that's cool, but if not, that's okay too. What Sanfam meant when he said that G0s were immeasurably faster is that you can't measure the difference.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017[/url]
Scythe Ninja. This thing is a work of art, all in a giant, passive CPU cooler. You see, in a P180 with a conventional motherboard, this heatsink will be up in the corner where it has two fans blowing on it. No need to directly attach a fan to the heatsink itself.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185046[/url]
4 GB of G.Skill, in 2 GB sticks so you have room to expand to 8 GB. The RAM I've gotten from G.Skill in the past has never let me down - and that's a good thing, since I've had extremely bad luck with the most reputable of companies. If you never, ever, ever plan on overclocking, go with the first link. If you might someday be talked into it, go with the DDR2-800 in the second link.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231112[/url]
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122[/url]
One or more of these. Seagate because they have a beautiful five-year warranty. I personally find Raptors to be overrated.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148136[/url]
I don't quite trust SATA optical drives yet.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151151[/url]
It seems the days of Creative Labs and EAX really have gone by the wayside. I, for one, welcome our new masters with real-time DD encoding!
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156002[/url]
Never skimp on the PSU.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703005[/url]
Oh, and it would seem SupCom performance in Vista is more than on a par...
[quote]That said, there are some real head-scratching results here. It's not surprising that the game runs a couple frames slower in Vista with antialiasing disabled (and that gap might even close with further Vista driver development). But why are the AA numbers either identical or even faster in Vista than the non-AA numbers? For that matter, why are the AA numbers at 1280x1024 basically the same as the non-AA numbers in WinXP? That would normally lead us to believe that the game is limited by CPU power, but the difference between a high-end quad-core CPU and an inexpensive dual-core CPU is just 10% or so, because additional threads aren't that CPU intensive. Also, the frame rate drops in half when we put in a low-cost graphics card, which indicates that graphics is certainly important.[/quote]
Source: [url]http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2107343,00.asp[/url]
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148136[/url][/quote]Not from quieter end of choises (some Seagates even have high pitched idle whine) and while STR is high real world performance is rarely better than opposite. WD5000AAKS wins in both and is cheaper.
[quote]It seems the days of Creative Labs and EAX really have gone by the wayside. I, for one, welcome our new masters with real-time DD encoding!
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156002[/url][/quote]And that's about everything what that card can do well if question is about gaming.
Software soundcards put [b]shitload[/b] of load on CPU compared to hardware DSP card!
[url]http://techreport.com/articles.x/11759/6[/url]
[url]http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardwarecanuck-reviews/2485-auzentech-x-fi-prelude-7-1-review.html[/url]
[quote]Never skimp on the PSU.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703005[/url][/quote]Seasonic innards, possibly quietest 80mm fan PSU but equally probably not on bar with Seasonic's 12cm fanned PSUs.
Corsair HX520 is about quietest PSU and more than enough for single graphic card PCs, and would actually run nearly any dual graphic card PC.
And extension cable for ATX12V/EPS12V cable is also required, very few PSUs have long enough cable to reach CPU's power connector on top edge of mobo in Antec P18x cases.
My literary prowess is known far and wide ;)
[quote]I don't quite trust SATA optical drives yet.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151151[/url][/quote]
What isn't there to trust? The bus is proven. So is the hardware.
[quote]Oh, and it would seem SupCom performance in Vista is more than on a par...
Source: [url]http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2107343,00.asp[/url][/QUOTE]
That doesn't quite hold true once you add the core maximizer into account. At that point, XP screams over Vista with a quad core processor.
Remember how I said I've had bad luck with otherwise reputable companies? Every WD I've bought has died, usually within a few months. Even the drives I get from RMAing the dead ones die.
Also, does the WD have a five-year warranty?[QUOTE=E.T;166046]And that's about everything what that card can do well if question is about gaming.
Software soundcards put [b]shitload[/b] of load on CPU compared to hardware DSP card!
[url]http://techreport.com/articles.x/11759/6[/url]
[url]http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardwarecanuck-reviews/2485-auzentech-x-fi-prelude-7-1-review.html[/url][/quote]What I see are graphs of CPU utilization on a last-generation, minimum frequency dual-core processor. What kind of loss will that translate to in the real world? 1 frame per second? Two maybe? Modern games are GPU-bound, not CPU-bound.
I know there are better cards for gaming, but gaming is not all that I do with my PC. If you want the best of both worlds, go with the X-Fi Prelude, but be prepared to pay the premium.
As far as HD reliability goes, they are pretty much even these days. The advent of SMART allows the user to have some advance warning of a potential failure, as well. In fact, most of the failure cases I've troubleshooted were indicated by SMART and ignored by the user. Maybe you had a bad run, but time and time again it has been shown that with very few exceptions, hard drives will run for a long time in the proper environment. This isn't to say I do not have any brand bias. My own experiences with earlier Maxtor drives set me back for a while, but I learned my lesson and now have a system running a pair of them with no reliability problems of any sort looking to crop up in the near future. Right now, WD and Seagate are both my preference for distinctly different categories, if only because they offer drives effectively suited for a particular purpose. Of course, I may just end up with a large cap WD drive if the price is right.
But I do like the 5-year warranty. it does appeal to my inner cheapass. ;)
I'm not planning on making a file server, and I don't ever think I'll get 6 hard drives. I also had my PATA DVD writer from NZ sent to me (it's region free and I happen to like it very much for DVD playback thanks to a nice large buffer to cover drive spin-down when playback is paused).
[quote]Remember how I said I've had bad luck with otherwise reputable companies? Every WD I've bought has died, usually within a few months. Even the drives I get from RMAing the dead ones die. [/quote]
No offense, but I pretty much ignore any advice relating to hard drives that includes "Company X is always crap, every drive I've had from them has failed." Look around the net and you'll find plenty of people who swear that any company you choose to investigate will always fail. :)
Also, what C_Mon said. :)
In other news, two components (aside from the DVD drive) have been purchased. I have a Seagate 500GB HDD and an Antec P-182 case.
I can't tell you what you want to buy or why you want to buy it. I'm just offering my perspective.
The 20 Gig Seagate on the other hand was recently identified as the culprit in my missfire booting issue. I was able to fix it easily enough, but then I have some technical experience that allows me to do that, the avergae Joe would have had to send it in for service or chuck it for another drive.
I used to use WD's a lot a decade ago... seems that in recent years when I purchase an HD, it ends up being a Maxtor.
PATA interfaces though... I'm not caught up to all you folk out here with the latest and greatest...
;)
[list][*]Core 2 Quad Q6600 with Scythe Ninja cooler.
[*]Asus P5N32-E SLI or Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4 (this one's probably going to be a spot decision based on how I feel).
[*]Gigabyte 8600GTS (silent).
[*]4GB of suitable DDR2-800 RAM. I've found both Corsair and OCZ, but only in 1GB sticks so I'll probably have to get 4 sticks. I can't see me wanting more RAM before I next upgrade the motherboard so this shouldn't be a problem.
[*]WD Raptor 150GB.
[*]One of Corsair VX450W or Seasonic S12 Energy+ 550 or Seasonic S12-430 or Seasonic SS-400HT or Corsair HX520, depending on which one I can actually find (only seen the Seasonic S12 Energy+ 550 so far).[/list]
All of this is going in an Antec P182 case along with a Seagate 500GB drive. At a future date it will be joined by an Auzentech X-Prelude if I can find one, otherwise some form of Creative X-Fi card, if I can figure out which model really suits my needs.
I just can't help it, but I really don't like the 8600gts :p
I would throw out a raptor or som memory to get a 8800gts instead. even if SupCom is quite CPU bound I still got 10 more frames per second when I overclocked my 8800gts.
Also, the 8600GTS has better video decoding than the 8800GTS.
And C_Mon, in the heat of battle, your 10fps increase is likely trivialized by a general slowdown in sim speed. You certainly may have gotten an increase in framerate, but that is meaningless if the game itself is actually operating slower to account for the massive amount of processing going on. SupCom will dramatically speed up or slow down given an overwhelming load. The faster HDD helps plow through vast amounts of HDD-centric calculations
And a thought, Biggles. If you really are pushing for the best performance, you just might want to look into a higher level processor as an option. Since overclocking is out of the question, it might be a better deal performance-wise to investigate a Q6700, which while double the price may just be worth the additional .26ghz per core for slightly under twice the MSRP. Or if you're willing, a QX6800, with 2.93ghz per core for the mind blowing price of nearly three times that of the Q6600. :p Or you could consider a long-term upgrade plan. At the very least, you just may want to consider the 6700 given your lack of budget.
I tought that was what he said here, but don't mind me.
I fully intend to upgrade the base computer on a 3-yearly cycle, as I have typically done in the past. However, I'm considering moving the video card to a 1.5-yearly cycle (as I have done once in the past). That way I can get a nice new, still silent, video card in 1.5 years at a fairly reasonable cost, and thus don't need a video card now that will last 3 years. I'm [i]not[/i] going to buy an 8600GTS now and replace it in 3 months' time.
I also said this way back on page 1:
[QUOTE=Biggles;165798]Wants to buy? I've already bought a 24" LCD (1920x1200). :) I'm not particularly concerned about being able to run it at native resolution in the latest games. It'd be nice, but I'm well aware that it's impractical.[/QUOTE]
I bought a 1920x1200 monitor for HD video, not for games.
I know from experience that little whiny video card fans are noisy, even when idle, and noone's shown me a review of the noise level of any 8800GTS to prove otherwise. Plus, as I've mentioned before, the 8600 line has better hardware video decoding.
If "silence" were all I cared about, I'd be getting a Via mini ITX.
But from experience I can tell you that at idle you won't hear the 8800gts over the case fans. In games it will be a bit louder but usually I don't notice anything because you play games with sound and stuff. And I have to agree with every forum I read, that thecooling on the 8800gts and gtx and quite good for stock coolers. They are not like my old geforce 4 ti-4400 that had such a high pitch noise that I just used thermal glue to glue a big fanless heatsink to it.
Also, I read some review on Tomshardware that nvidia's video decoding cheats and the output isn't as good as ATI's, I just have to find it again.
Also, while not being able to hear it distinctively over the case fans is a fair point (and what I expect), it's the fact that it adds on to the total noise that's the problem . :)
Anyway, you've got 4 days to convince me that the 8800GTS is not going to increase total noise too much before I go shopping. :p
The worst one I ever had was my old Leadtek ti4800SE. That had two little 4cm fans on it.
there you go :D
Second, I think it'll take a good bit of detective work to determine which cards are loud and which aren't. I'm not sure what brand of card my roommate bought - I think it might be eVGA - but it gets loud as hell when it spins up.
Here's something I found whilst googling: [url]http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2873&p=9[/url]
Here's another: [url]http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gf8800gtx-roundup_6.html[/url]