Hey guys, I'm on the verge of clicking the "Checkout" button for the components of my new soon-to-be-self-built computer, but I wanted to check with you guys to see if what I have is good for what I do. First, what I do. I game a bit, and those games normally revolve around popular Valve games such as HL2, HL2:E*, Portal, CS:S, and so on. Not to mention Trackmania Nations Forever (duh), Geometry Wars and other related games. So, I won't be needing anything that will run Crysis. I do the odd Photoshooping, a lotta audio and video playing, and lots of torrenting. The likelyhood is that I will be transisting to dual or tri monitors sometime in the future, but Ultramon seems to work well in Vista under 64-bit. I read in one bit-tech article that 32-bit programs can work under 64-bit pretty well. What is everyone's experience with this sort of thing? Secondly, I'll be using Vista 64-bit. Computing seems to be advancing quickly now, and the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit seems nigh. As far as I know, all my hardware and its drivers are fully compatible for this OS, and I don't see any problem there. Plus, the Source engine (as I know) has a 64-bit version, so I don't see any worries behind that. I won't be playing anything old. Thirdly, my graphics card will be the 512MB NVIDIA 8800GT (by XFX). It seems to have the highest spec that I can get for the lowest price (my budget for the graphics card being around £140). Does this seem a good choice for the games I will be playing? My board doesn't support SLI, as I don't believe I need it. If I want more graphics power, I'll probably just buy a better card. Here's the rest of the specs of my computer in case they're needed: MB: Asus Maximus II Formula PROC: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (2 x 3.16GHz) HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB PSU: OCZ GameXStream 600W RAM: Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 (2 x 2GB @ 1066MHz) Thanks, Haz
You should be fine, but if you can get it, I'd reccomend an AMD 4850 GPU for around £120~ http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/07/11/summer-2008-graphics-performance-roundup/12 Outperforms the 8800GT on Source games quite happily
Thanks a lot for the recommendation. But, I was taking a look at the 9800GTX and the dual-slot cooling really appeals to me. The card apparently gets really low temps and is very quiet. The advantage of the cooling and the low price that I can get it for is forcing me to turn in the direction of this card, rather than the 4850 which I did consider, despite the 4850 being able to outperform the GTX in certain situations.
you can get 9800GTX cards for a shade over that. XFX sell an overclocked one for about £165. edit: tada! http://scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=797755
Yeah, I found that one and I decided I'd get it for the price. BTW, what is the XT version? I can't find out anything about it on XFX's website... I'm aware of what the XXX versions are, but not the XT version.
If you aren't overclocking, you can REALLY cut down on the motherboard without losing any significant functionality. Its an important component, but its not needed to go that far up the range when the only practical differences to non-overclockers are model names and a few gimmicks.
Do you have any recommendations? I hear Zalman have some of the best for GPU's, but the more people I find out from, the better. Also, let's say if a case has a front-panel eSATA port, but the motherboard doesn't have a specific eSATA connector onboard, is there another method of connecting up this eSATA port?
