Hardwareversand question

Boxxy

I am not buying a new build yet but I bought 3 24" monitors from HWVS on the prepayment method and I'm just wondering if they take bank draft payments? My local bank doesn't do bank transfers under €3000 but they do bank drafts to German accounts and do it quickly

I emailed HWVS support two days ago and have no replies yet so I'm just wondering if any1 has ever paid through bank draft? thanks

Monotype

Your bank is probably talking rubbish.

Just do a normal transfer - you don't need a rushed one, unless you're in a hurry (and if you are, you should be using somewhere closer like scan).

Try another branch. People in banks often just make up stuff to get rid of you, I've noticed. If you have online banking, there's a good chance that that'll work.

What bank is it?

Boxxy

It was the Bank Of Ireland's branch. I don't think they were trying to get rid of me because the bank transfer would have a fee of €25 while the bank draft would have a fee of €3 and they talked to me about a bank draft instead of a transfer?

tuxy

Do you have a bank account with Bank of Ireland?
I have a current account and have done a few transfers to hardwareversand. Ranging from €200 - €1100. It has never taken more than 48 hour for hardwareversand to recieve the money. And there is no charge for transfers within the EU.

spix

A bank draft is a cheque which you would then have to send to hardwareversand. Don't do it.

From Wiki

In the United Kingdom the use of bankers' drafts is being phased out.[citation needed] With the advent of new technology such as debit cards, internet banking and Faster Payments the method of a guaranteed paper cheque is now regarded as slower and less secure for both the issuing bank and the customer.[citati

Not to mention that hardwareversand only accept bank transfer. They will probably decline a bank draft and they are non refundable. Tell them you want to do a standard euro bank transfer, which is free although there might be a priority one with a fee.

Boxxy

I could try from Allied Irish Banks instead?
Ill go today and try again.

srsly78

Just transfer the money online, why even bother going in?

If you don't have online banking setup then now is the time to take a great leap forward into the 90s.

Boxxy

Alright Allied Irish Banks did it for me free of charge and I went in because its only a few minutes away from my house and its free of charge if you do it at a machine in my branch so...

Anyway I am not buying a new pc build yet because I wonder if its worth it now that the Xbox One and PS4 will be able to play BF4 with 64 players? They must have had a pretty big upgrade in terms of hardware because they'll definetly play BF4 on 64 players..

Should I spent the money to get a build or wait for the next gen consoles?
My build will be an i5 3570K, Club 3d HD 7870 XT jokercard or Sapphire HD 7870 XT Boost(most likely this overclocked) or Sapphire hd 7950 with 8GB ram and an evo €30 cooler and a good case and good board and it'll have all the other things it needs. My build will amount to €1280 and I got it from something BloodBath picked for me and something else my friend helped me pick.

My main question is, will my build be much better than the next gen consoles or barely better?

uncle_sam_ie

It would be way better then a console. Especially if you want to play BF4.

Boxxy

Thanks!

tuxy

Consoles have advantages too. Not having to upgrade, simple plug and play, high budget exclusive titles. No messing about with drivers.

PCs have upgrade ability , almost endless possibilities for custom mods to games, better internet and online support(generally more stable and faster servers hosting games) . Not sure how the frame rate will be with then new consoles but a good PC shoud still have a better frame rate. You can tweek the graphics to your liking.

Have you experience of using a gaming PC?
I love PC gaming and think it's far superior.
However it's not for everyone and some people will always be happier with the simplicity of a console.

Monotype

Both consoles are going to use AMD Jaguar CPUs - something like a slightly newer version of a 8320 - 8 cores but possibly only half the clock speeds.

The Xbox will use integrated graphics in the form of an APU with DDR3. Difficult to say exactly how powerful this is, but estimates are around a 7770 to 7970.
PS4 graphics are a mobile GPU with GDDR5. Something like a 7970m (laptop) which is equivalent to around a 7850 to 7870.

So your average budget gaming PC (~€600) can keep up with the consoles.

tuxy wrote: »

Consoles have advantages too. Not having to upgrade, simple plug and play, high budget exclusive titles. No messing about with drivers.

You don't have to upgrade your PC either if you don't want to. :P Sure the newer games just run at lower resolutions and various other tweaks to stretch them out.
Also, don't you have to update the consoles anyway to play newer games? It's more straightforward and invisible, but if you wanted to, I think that there's options for patches and graphics drivers in windows update and programs like xfire/steam to check once in a while. You have to install a lot of games too. I don't think that the convenience factor is quite what it was.

Boxxy wrote: »

My build will be an i5 3570K, Club 3d HD 7870 XT jokercard or Sapphire HD 7870 XT Boost(most likely this overclocked) or Sapphire hd 7950 with 8GB ram and an evo €30 cooler and a good case and good board and it'll have all the other things it needs.

My main question is, will my build be much better than the next gen consoles or barely better?

Do you know that the 4670K is out now? The 3570K has got the advantage of being able to overclock better, but there's better connectivity in the newer Z87 motherboards going with the newer CPU as well as more opportunity to upgrade.

Your build will be better than the consoles. A good bit better. Now consoles are always optimised well as their primary function is to play games (although that's also changing now too) - at least we can say that the game designers know exactly what the hardware is, how much is available, what software will be running and what software can run at the same time.

Now, the consoles are very close to mainstream PC architecture this time around, so PC/console versions will be fairly close in design - i.e., programmers won't have much work in redesigning for a new platform, relative to last generation. This means that games originally coded for consoles will run much better on PCs (than last generation).

tuxy

Monotype wrote: »

You don't have to upgrade your PC either if you don't want to. :P Sure the newer games just run at lower resolutions and various other tweaks to stretch them out.

Yes but how do you think a mid ranged PC from 2005(when the 360 was released) would run the games coming out at the moment?

NTMK

tuxy wrote: »

Yes but how do you think a mid ranged PC from 2005(when the 360 was released) would run the games coming out at the moment?

some games actually run fine on 2005/06 hardware if they have a DX9 mode. the issue is atm is that Pc games have been using DX11 for quite a while now where DX9 is mostly phased out now

beno619

tuxy wrote: »

Yes but how do you think a mid ranged PC from 2005(when the 360 was released) would run the games coming out at the moment?

Also the 360 ans PS3 launched with top of the range GPU's.

The PS4 uses a mid range GPU while the One's GPU is a down clocked 7770.

Monotype

Have there been any or many games that are DX10/11 only that have been also released on console?

Let's see... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_10_support

Assassin's Creed III, Battlefield 3, Bioshock Infinite,... oh heck, there's loads of them. Looks like you really do need to upgrade PCs. :eek:

But you don't need to keep upgrading very often. Even if you bought something like a 6850 or 7770 around the €100 mark, it would make a huge difference to an old system and solve the DX restrictions.

Gumbi

Monotype wrote: »

Have there been any or many games that are DX10/11 only that have been also released on console?

Let's see... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_10_support

Assassin's Creed III, Battlefield 3, Bioshock Infinite,... oh heck, there's loads of them. Looks like you really do need to upgrade PCs. :eek:

But you don't need to keep upgrading very often. Even if you bought something like a 6850 or 7770 around the €100 mark, it would make a huge difference to an old system and solve the DX restrictions.

Indeed, there are certainly advantages to consoles and I would never begrudge someone preferring them over PCs.

That being said, I used to be a big 360 guy, but have migrated over to PC only the past 2 years. I definitely won't be getting another console.

NTMK

Monotype wrote: »

Have there been any or many games that are DX10/11 only that have been also released on console?

Let's see... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_10_support

Assassin's Creed III, Battlefield 3, Bioshock Infinite,... oh heck, there's loads of them. Looks like you really do need to upgrade PCs. :eek:

But you don't need to keep upgrading very often. Even if you bought something like a 6850 or 7770 around the €100 mark, it would make a huge difference to an old system and solve the DX restrictions.

Well the way i look at if your goin to upgrade your gpu every 3 years playing on pc you'll save €100-150 on not having to pay for multiplayer and €10+ per game.

This should quite easily offset the cost of a new GPU easily

Boxxy

Well I should be fine because I'm going to get the Sapphire HD 7870 XT Boost soon because it just came back in stock and it is supposinlgy better for cooling and sound than the Club3D version. Tech reviews say it runs a few FPS behind a 7970 when the sapphire is overclocked and I'm getting an i5 3570k with it and a decent cooling array so it should really outperform the Xbox one and ps4 in terms of graphics card and processor and everything plus with 3 screens and a mechanical keyboard and €40 mouse it should feel a lot more comfortable too

Thanks!

Gumbi

Boxxy wrote: »

Well I should be fine because I'm going to get the Sapphire HD 7870 XT Boost soon because it just came back in stock and it is supposinlgy better for cooling and sound than the Club3D version. Tech reviews say it runs a few FPS behind a 7970 when the sapphire is overclocked and I'm getting an i5 3570k with it and a decent cooling array so it should really outperform the Xbox one and ps4 in terms of graphics card and processor and everything plus with 3 screens and a mechanical keyboard and €40 mouse it should feel a lot more comfortable too

Thanks!

Nice system! Yeah, you should have very good overclocking headroom with that cooler with a bit of luck.