I'm trying to help out the boss who is due to buy a new gaming box. He sticks to a strick rule of buying one top end machine every three or so years and leaving it unchanged or the meantime. Thus it is completely overspec for current requirements. No overclocking intended. The fixed requirements are: Quad-core CPU: QX6850 Two top end graphics cards 4GB Memory Vista Ultimate 64Bit Gaming soundcard Wireless networking Drive space not too important - really gaming only. Case required but monitor, keyboard etc are already there. PhysX card only if we have a free PCI slot and cash. So I'm looking at either a Crossfire setupwith 2x1Gb HD2900 on x38 and DDR2 or it's 680i and 2x 8800 GTX/Ultra. Hoping to do Raid 0 on 150Gb Raptors. Have to bring it in at <£2500 inc vat. Anyone fancy suggesting a spec?
If your going high end gaming then 8800's are the way to go, but ultras are basically out of the question with your price limit.......
I'm gonna have to say not completely after watching Joe UT3 with it, but like 95 of the way there. I'm also still certain that the new Seagate 7200.11s and Samsungs will be faster than Raptors. If you want a reliable board - don't buy 680i, basically. Wait a month and come back to SLI Gaming sound - X-Fi Wireless - something draft-n Remember Penryn too! How long can your boss wait?
Back to the brief guys! It's a build within constraints siuation and re the above: Afraid there's: no waiting, no overclocking no updgrades after purchase! Not how I'd do it, but hell, it's his money and choice. Within those limits where would you go?
Graphics: I wouldn't recommend SLI, just get a faster graphics card. In your case the 8800 would be the fastest there is and you may think improving performance requires another one and your right, it would, but SLI imo rarely, if ever, comes anywhere near x2 performance. Bottom line go with the fastest single card you can afford and spend the rest of the cash on other components. Sound: I think everyone would agree - X-Fi HDD: Get one of those massive (space wise) Seagate drives. You may not need all the space but its good value for money, i think, and speed should be comparable to other fast drives like the raptors. Everything seems ok, as bindi said theres Penryn which should be worth waiting for and PhysiX will depend on the games your boss plans on playing. Id say forget it for now and if anything buy one further down the line and make that his only upgrade when more games take advantage of it
8800s in SLI maybe get a factory OCed GTX I like DFI's 680i MB; has more PCI slots than any other 680i; and IMHO better laid out
X-fi doesn't like nForce's (4 and up) It has cracking and poping issues, specially if you have more than a 2.1 sound setup or SLI. In my case, sometimes, in some games the music plays like if you fast forward a tape and press play at the same time on a casset. Very annoying. The fix is to change "panel mode" and come back to the one you want (for my issue), as for the crackling and popping, well there is no fix. The worst part is that it doesn't occurs right away, it's after when you can't return it anymore. Creative also refuse to RMA it. Motherboard manufacture and nVidia blames Creative, and Creative blames them. Here is he fun forum: http://forums.creative.com/creative...essage.id=71962&view=by_date_ascending&page=1 They are 109 pages of rants (1090 posts, and growing)... have fun! Some people claim that getting the X-fi from Auzentech, causes no issues. So... yea... Creative screwed up, and can't admit it as it seams. If I was you, I would defiantly forget the X-fi and go with ASUS Xonar. Sure you don't have EAX 5 HD Extreme Plus.., but if people don't get Creative then game developers will stop using it, or give you the option on which engine you would like to use, like in WarCraft III. Maybe ASUS has UI issues with the Xonar (from all the reviews I read, only bit-tech mentions that issue, so maybe it's resolved) but either way... do you really use that panel? or more likely to simply use Windows audio panel, specially you setup everything once and that's it. If I had the money, I would definitely trow away my X-fi (no I'm not going to sell it... it like make that person in pain), and I would give ASUS a try. Beside the X-fi IS the Audigy 2, just tweaked with added features using software.
just get a single 8800 Ultra (or even GTX if not overclocking) would be enough for most games. and DO advice your boss to upgrade the graphics card next year, it'd be much easier and cheaper to do an upgrade instead of blowing all the cash in one go. for hard disk drive, get the Seagate 7200.11 500GB, large enough, yet also very fast (but more expensive than other 500GBs) for the motherboard, i would recommend a Asus Maximus Fomula (ddr2 since he's not looking for upgrades, so currently equal performance/more expensive DDR3 is pointless) also, q6600 would be fine, just clock it to 3.2GB would be fine, the Intel Extreme series are for super hardcore overclockers. so: -q6600 with a tiny OC of 3.2Ghz -asus maximum fomula gaming x38 motherboard or asus P5E deluxe -4GB 800Mhz any low latency RAM -single 8800 Ultra and save the other 500 pounds for an upgrade next year -not sure about X-fi in Vista 64bit though -p182 case with Hx620w or the new Tx750w. -single or 2-in-RAID0 Seagate 7200.11 500GB. how's that?
Alas, it's a restrictive spec here - no upgrades. He buys one box every three or so years and like to be able to play what he wants in the meantime. He knows it's ovespec for now, bu tthat's his line, no screwdriver's for three years. The reason I'm throwing it out here is that it's an interesting case to spec, given all these restrictions.
Careful with Wireless N... it's draft... if next year it standardized to a new version, then his wireless card can be at the garbage as no one will even buy it.
wireless N is pretty pointless at the moment as goodbytes said it is only draft. Better to buy a cheaper a/b/g card rather than spend more money on a card that will be obsolete in under a year and upgrade to wireless N instead of draft hope this helps
lol, that is REALLY hard to do given this time. where Intel's new Penryn with new motherboards and new graphics cards are coming out.......
wait unitl next month penryn will be out which is essentially a core 2 refresh @45nm q9650 and will clock alot higher whilst performing ~ 10% better at stock then you will also be in line for a x38 board and the 3870 cards (AMD's new release)
Why is pre-N given a drubbing? I use it and it works fantastically.. I can't see what the problem is, tbh. I connect at 270mbps wirelessly - where's the problem? I didn't know about the NForce4 + X-Fi incompatability until I tried to get me X-Fi to work on a K8N Neo2 mobo. It was left to the mobo manufacturers to update the bios to make their boards compatible with the X-Fi cards. Strange as it sounds, it's not only sound cards that bios's are updated to cope with - new cpu's and certain brands of ram don't work out of the box on some boards. Fortunately, I found a beta bios that allowed the X-Fi to work flawlessly and I think most other NForce4 boards had a bios update available to ensure the X-Fi cards worked okay, certainly Abit did at the time.
Oh yes, NOW the X-fi works OK with the nForce 4 with the latest BIOS for your mobo, and the driver update that is ONLY available on Microsoft update manager (not on Creative website for some reason). My issue has been diminished by over 80%... now it really doesn't bother me to perform the fix as it's rare, or sometimes it gets fixed itself if you want a couple more seconds. But nevertheless, it's an issue from Creative and they don't want to take blame nor even show effort or interested in fixing the problem. Maybe they prefer to drop the X-fi and think on their new sound card that will probably have the same issue or others, or in the hope by then chip makers like Nvidia, will fix the issue FOR THEM. The problem occurs more with the Nforce 5 and 6 series.
You are wasting a lot of money with that setup. Buy a Q6600, only £170. Just bump the FSB to 333mhz and you will be ready to go. Get a 7200.11 hard drive (seagate) and an 8800Ultra. (1, not 2)
This is a really bad way to spend money. Raptors suck anyway and cost a lot, you're better off with two large Seagates striped. Also your boss is throwing away loads of money for no reason for hardware that will probably get outdated very quickly the way things are going.
I would have to suggest sticking to 802.11 G and avoiding draft N until it is ratified, unless they know they are only going to connect to one and only one network.
