Caltrops - American McGee's Honda Civic





	[quote name="Motherhead"]&slname[quote name="Fussbett"]Always a popular thread idea, we all talk about what compontents would make a good new gaming computer. I'm starting with a Radeon X800 PRO 256 PCI-E, so work outwards from there. I'm sure other people will benefit from this discussion, what with all the Christmas money floating around, and besides, don't you want to see me post about a PC game that <i>isn't</i> BF2*? I have FEAR, CoD2, Black and White 2, Dungeon Siege 2 and Fable all waiting to be posted ABOUT. We all win when I play new games (unlike Jhoh's WoW adventure, which has cloistered an already sheltered man inside a secondary gayer shelter). So! Ray of Light says to go with the dualcore CPU because the 64 bits of the Athlon64 is never taken advantage of... <i>and he owns an Athlon64!</i> Is he full of shit? Tell him to his face if so! And should I care about the 2 meg cache versus the 1 meg? Is RAM still directly linked to the motherboard speed? <font size="1"> My new joystick makes me an awesome dogfighter, and rejunvenated my BF2 love yet again.</font> [/quote] Without knowing what you want to spend and not wanting to type up 20,000 words describing everything in gory bullshit detail, I will describe what i have and what i recommend based on that. If I am not clear on anything specific i will followup after you call me on it. <b>Box 1.</b> AMD FX-55 / Stock Cooling. Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (to be replaced with an Asus A8N32-SLI) 2GB of matched Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO Memory 1 74GB Western Digital "Raptor", 1 250 GB Western Digital HD 1 500GB Hitachi. (I haven't gotten around to building a RAID. Perhaps I will this year, probably not.) Plextor PX-716A Creative X-FI "F4t4l1ty" edition sound card 2x BFG 7800GTX OCs in SLI I big fucking Powersupply that isn't big enough and will be replaced with a PC Power and Cooling 510/SLI Cooler Master CMStacker case, which is big as a fucking Volvo and will be replaced soon with a Silverstone TJ07 <b>Box 2</b> AMD64 X2 4600+ / stock cooling Asus A8N-SLI Premium 2GB of matched Corsair TWIN2X1024-4300C3PRO 1 250GB Wester Digital SE16 drive and a couple of older ones. Plextor PX-716A (because they rock) Creative Audigy 2 ZS 1 BFG 7800GT Lian Li PC-60 Case <font size="5" color="yellow"><b>Recommendations:</b></font> <font size="4" color="yellow">CPU</font> Get The X2, yes they are 64bit processors as well. The 4400+ is the perfect sweet spot as of TODAY. the 4800+ is the better chip, but will cost you a grand. On the cheap, get a 4000+. How I came to that recommendation based on my shit: AMD FX-55 The fastest, best performing CPU I have ever run, also the last single core chip I'll ever buy. Games are not multi-threaded, so they take no advantage of a multi-core chip. With that in mind why wouldn't I stick with the FX series (which are all single core and multiplier unlocked for easy over-clocking)? Because the most recent generation of X2 processors have the same fucking specs but add another core and are <i>usually less expensive then these</i>. Even though games are not multi-threaded windows XP is, and having another core to run background programs (Anti-virus, soft firewalls, whatever) while you are playing BF2 isn't going to hurt you. If they were available at the time, <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2410&p=7" target="new">I would have been better off with a 4800+</a>. The next FX chip down the pipe is the FX-60, few details are available but to underscore that single-core processors are so much 2004, AMD is breaking with doctrine and switching the FX series to dual core. AMD64 X2 4600+: I fucked up here. What I wanted was a 4800+ and none where available, but I figured I would only be taking a 200MHz hit. But, see, if I had my MIND with me I'd realize the 4000+, 4400+ and the 4800+ all have 1MB of cache (the 3800+, 4200+ and 4600+ have half as much), the larger cache makes a bigger difference in performance than 200MHz in either direction. Stupid on me, but also pointless to replace it. So I probably will. Coming in 2006 is the 5000. <a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27283" target="new">Not alot of details</a> on this either. It should be ridiculously expensive but it might hasten the discounting on the previous chips. <font size="4" color="yellow">Mainboard:</font> You want to be future-proof so I'm going to tell you to get an SLI based board based on Nvidia's Nforce 4 chipset. Even with the ATI card you have today. I recommend the <a href="http://www.asus.com/products3.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=148=NVIDIA%20nForce4%20SLI" target="new">Asus A8N-SLI</a> in deluxe or premium, or spring for the new <a href="http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=15&l3=0&model=744&modelmenu=1" target="new">A8N32-SLI</a> when they are more widely available. The earlier Deluxe models had some glitches, if you can't be sure of getting a later revision consider the premium. Why go with this chipset? Sooner or later you'll replace that video card and even though you might not replace it with an Nvidia card (though for the time being, you would be insane) it will drive ATI cards just fine. Besides, further down the road you lose nothing betting on Nvidia SLI technology. Non scientific comparison of competing multi-card technologies. Nvidia <ul><li>Based on PCI-E.</li> <li>Mature. Hardware and drivers polished pretty well over the last year.</li> <li>Minimal conflicts, long compatibility list expanding every driver revision.</li> <li>Works great in the real world.</li></ul> ATI <ul><li>Based on PCI-E.</li> <li>Looks fucking retarded on paper.</li> <li>Lackluster performance in labs.</li> <li>Does not exist in the real world.</li></ul> Aside from the extra card slot you will or won't ever use, the boards based on the Nforce 4 are solid performers and very well supported by Nvidia. <font size="3" color="red"><b>Alternate.</b></font> The <a href="http://us.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_product_spec_details_r_us.jsp?PRODUCT_ID=3872&CATEGORY_TYPE=LP&SITE=NA" target="new">DFI LANPARTY</a>, is supposed to be <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2620" target="new">extraordinary</a> (note: that article was from earlier this year). Though I could never get past this: <img src="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/motherboards/dfi/expert/box.jpg"> <font size="4" color="yellow">Memory</font> Corsair, Crucial, Kingston or OCZ. I could spend a couple pages discussing latency timings but it would bore us all to suicide. When you make decisions based on Mainboard and CPU and how much more you want to spend, further recommendations will appear. It used to be that 1GB was generous enough. Then MMHOMORPGs, which benefit greatly from the extra gig, caught fire and a large percentage of the 5,000,000 WoW players started to shove in that extra gig. The result is more boxes with extra memory and developers less weary of writing for 2GB systems. BF2 certainly runs smoother with it, as does F.E.A.R. From what I understand Unreal 2007 (and games based on it's engine) will list 2GB as it's "optimal" system req. If you take my advice and get an Nforce 4 based board, be aware of a problem that will knock your speed from DDR400 to DDR333 if you fit a DIMM in all four slots, so 2 sticks of 1GB if you want 2GB at DDR400.[/quote]