Pick your Brains

Offalycool

I want to buy a new PC for gaming and general use. I am willing to spend about a grand on it. I have a 22” widescreen and want to get the most from its 1680 x 1050 native resolution. What Graphics card will give me the best price performance for at least a year, and preferably a few years?

I am confused as to the benefits of the higher memory version of the 8800GTS, and 350 Euro seems a bit much. If I bought the GTX can I expect it to deliver top performance for longer? I also wonder if we can expect a price drop anytime soon as I’m not desperate to upgrade just yet, but I’d like to get it this summer if it’s worth it.

I will probably go P35, but which board, and is there any real advantage over the other chipsets? I would also be interested in the best value processor on the market at the mo, I figure the cheapest Core 2 duo Intel with 4MB catch available, and just over clock, but maybe I’m wrong, what do you think? Is there ever going to be a game that can use more than 2 cores in the lifetime of this pc?

Will probably buy of Hardwareversand.de as they are cheaper. All in all I want the sweet spot, just need to know what possible catch there could be. Thanks.

8T8

The difference between the 8800GTS 320 & 8800GTS 640 is that the 640 performs better when AA is added into the mix at high resolutions. If you stayed at the 1280x... mark then they would be about the same.

As long as you don't use AA or keep it to 2x for select games I cant see you have any performance problems with the GTS 320 at 1680x1050.

The P35 offers better overclocking and CPU support for Intel Core chips so thats about it's only selling point, they are pretty cheap now to get having replaced the P965.

Best value would be a cheap Core 2 like the E2160 and overclock to 3Ghz on air cooling, get a Zalman cooler and your sorted.

PC Games don't really benefit from using multi-core all that much* but there is absolute no point in getting a single core CPU these days.

* Has to be really built from the ground up to do that and most current games have only minor improvements because of it.

Offalycool

While I love a bargain would the q6600 make sense now or should I wait for Intel’s next generation of chips and upgrade later? I would be prepared to spend more on the 640MB 8800GTS of the ATI 2900 if the extra memory would see me through the big titles coming out (especially if the cheaper processor is a better bet). I wonder with all the large textures if 320MB’s is enough?

Inquitus

E2160's smaller cache gives a bit of a performance hit in games, it is some way off the E6600 even when both are clocked at the same speed whether thats 2.4Ghz or 3Ghz+

8T8

Well I haven't seen any benchmarks that show that it takes a big hit at worst it's fairly minor drop and at high resolutions the CPU doesn't really factor in that much so I dont think it's something to worry about.

Memory at high resolutions only factors in when their is too much data for the GPU to handle and it takes a hit when swapping data in and out of RAM. Typically this comes about from large use of textures/high quality ones and applying AA which greatly increases the amount of memory used on the GPU.

If you are not using AA then the 8800GTS 320 should be fine, there will be the odd game that uses more RAM like Stalker or GRAW but it's not something to worry about in fact the last test I saw showed that on average with 4xAA most RAM usage at 1600x1200 was around the 350-400MB mark.

Offalycool

So in the long run the quad core might be a better buy than a more expensive graphics card. I just hope the 320 GTS will pack enough punch for a year or two. Any idea which mainboard I should buy, and if regular 800 MHz memory is a good investment, like this: http://www1.hardwareversand.de/6VfTmlqwAHmgdU/1/articledetail.jsp?aid=7247&agid=599

Thanks again.

Edit: I fig i'll spend the grand, and just get the best long term option.

8T8

Uh no the quad core would not be a better buy unless you have applications that actually make use of multi-threading then buying a quad core is not the best use of your money.

The only game that really benefits from multiple cores is that new rally game "Dirt" because it shares a development history with the Xbox 360/PS3 which have multi core CPU's. But on the flip side another console port like Lost Planet doesn't really benefit from a quad core over a dual core.

If you want the best value get a Core 2 E2160 or E4300 overclock it to 3Ghz & with the money you save put that towards a 8800GTS 640.

That RAM will do fine.

If you want a reliable and easy overclocking motherboard this is the one I use, the MSI P35 Platinum. This motherboard can easily handle the overclocking all you have to do is set the FSB to 333Mhz to get the CPU at 3Ghz and it has a divider {1:1.2} that will keep the RAM running at DDR-2 800 speed. MSI even have a nice little guide explaining all the steps on their website.

If you absolutely don't want to overclock then get one of the E6xxx dual core CPU's and the 8800GTS 320 plus any Intel P35 based motherboard doesn't really matter which.

Khannie

Scythe ninja or Tuniq tower (sexy) or Thermaltake yokie that I can't remember the name of are the best air coolers on the market at the moment.

Offalycool

Thanks guys.. the 4300 and the 640 GTS sounds like the best bet to me. No point in the core's sitting there doing nothing I guess, glad to hear that ram is suitable. The heatsinks on that board look far out, will I have problems fitting any coolers with that? Also, will I be able to fit an IDE floppy and an IDE DVD burner to that board?

EDIT: I am conerned that my old XP disk will be able to read my IDE drive in order to install

Offalycool

This is what I’m thinking about; I selected the 4400 because they are going to stop supplying the 4300



What do ye think?

Cassiel

Great setup for the price. If you can afford the option, go for the EVGA 8800 series card. EVGA is unique in having a 90 day trad-in period, if you find that the 8800gts ain't cutting it, you can tradeup to the 8800gtx for the difference in price between your card and the RRP of the 8800gtx. And you get lifetime warranty, you can't lose

superfly

Offalycool wrote:

The heatsinks on that board look far out, will I have problems fitting any coolers with that?

you might do if there are heatsinks running under the motherboard, i had to cut the nuts off the backing plate for mine and screw them on individually

Offalycool

If the heatsinks were going to be a problem I might go with a different board. I know the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 is a good deal cheaper, is it a quality board or would I be better off with the MSI Platinum?

http://www3.hardwareversand.de/8VDoJ1X0cFx1zo/1/articledetail.jsp?aid=10726&agid=659

Also would a s-ata DVD Burner be a better bet than a IDE drive? For some reason I think there would be a problem installing XP using a s-ata drive.

TerrorFirmer

I have an E2160 and an E6400 and just for testing purposes, running 3dMark'06 on both at the same speed (2.13Ghz give or take a mhz or two) with an 8800gts there is only about 50 marks in the different for the cpu scores, or overall, about a tiny 2-3% difference. I haven't tried many in-game benchmarks like company of heroes, but in terms of how games run in real time there's no visible difference, so I'm guessing its minimal - definitely nothing to worry about anyway, especially if you're overclocking.

Offalycool

Over clocking a low end chip seems to be the best solution for me, though I have no experience over clocking a CPU before (mine runs way too hot, about 60 at idle) I am confident it should be easy enough with a good cooler and a decent main board. I am beginning to warm to the Gigabyte P35 DS3, though I can’t get a review for this particular model. I think the only real difference is the lack of modern RAID support, which I'm not really interested in anyway.

I was also thinking about the 2900XT because it’s the same price as the GTS and can tail the GTX in some benchmarks, better driver support for windows too. Is the only real drawback with this card the slightly greedy power consumption and sub standard AA? I could live without AA. It just stands to reason that ATI/AMD would produce a better performance card than the GTS being such a late comer to this fight.

Jackz

Muhahaha, nvidia v's ati

*skyscraper sized can of worms opens *

TerrorFirmer

You don't even need any aftermarket cooling to overclock a core 2 duo moderately. My E6400 running at 2.6Ghz is still 31c idle with stock cooler and some fans in the case. I'd say you could hit about 3Ghz without needing to even look at serious cooling (maybe just some fans). For a casual overclocker there's no need really.

On Legionhardware, their review of the new Celeron 440 overclocked showed that with an 8800 they had no problems maxing out the latest games. Even at stock, the Celeron did not bottleneck an 8600GTS. Goes to show the importance of a good card, and the efficency of the core 2 architecture. I'd say get a cheap 2160 or 6320 and don't even bother worrying about heavy overclocking - a few hundred mhz even, which can be acheived in about 10 seconds without having to change anything other then fsb, will be more then you'll even need for any game right now. I tested out Call of Duty 2, Company of Heroes at 1680x1050 with everything maxed out and in-game AA/AF options on full with my 2160 at 2.2Ghz - a mere 400mhz overclock - and it was as smooth as butter. And this chip can easily hit 2.8+Ghz on air stock voltage. With watercooling someone got it to 3.9Ghz on guru3d, and most people got it to 3.4Ghz on decent air cooling. All the tests as well show that when clocked at those speeds it performs almost identical to c2d chips at the same speed.

Khannie

That zalman cooler would be well replaced by a variety of other coolers tbh.

Offalycool

Hi all, have decided to go with Komplett as people have been having trouble with Hardwareversand, and I don’t want to sit around for 3 weeks. The power supply is be discounted to 75 Euro tomorrow so I’ll go for it then, or even after 12 tonight if the price changes. Anybody got any last min advice? I got the Jeantech Phong 2 from PC world as it seems to be very well built and has loads of features + delivery costs half the price without a case.

Offalycool

Ok I went ahead and ordered the stuff this morning. I went for the Gigabyte P35 DS3R after as I couldn’t find any reviews for the other board. Will let ye know how my first build goes. Thanks for all the help.

Edit: Goodbye AMD/ATI, it was fun (sob)

Offalycool

Just to let ye know that it arived promptly on Thursday and I put it together without much problems. Very happy with the performance, really nippy The sticky helped a lot.

Anti

Great to hear man

I will be doing a new build log this week for a sticky, if 8t8 wants it. I'll go into more detail, like driver instalation, bios setup, cable tidying and the overclocking basic ( might actually make a second for that )

christophicus

Hey Offalycool I am thinking of getting that board ( its the one that supports ddr2 and 3 isnt it ?) Have you tied overclocking yet? How did you find that board for oc'ing?

Offalycool

Thats a diffrent board, I think there's a "C" in the name of that version. I haven't overclocked yet.