Building a $650 gaming computer?

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Originally Posted By: FusilliJerry82
Good for you but they're simply not as fast as Intels for the same money.

Taking into account the whole system including motherboard and power supply, as well as the quality of all those components, this hasn't been my experience.


Have you built anything core-series era? This is where things got interesting. The Core i5 750 is a phenomenal "bang-for-buck" CPU. Coupled with an Intel-chipset based motherboard, you end up with a rock-solid combination, who's reliability can't be touched by AMD. The Intel chipset is the key.


+1 PCworld has a real good write-up on this. The i7 isn't worth the $$ now as certain model i5 CPU's bring nearly all the goodness of the "i" series to the table w/o the high co$t of the i7's.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Have you built anything core-series era? This is where things got interesting. The Core i5 750 is a phenomenal "bang-for-buck" CPU. Coupled with an Intel-chipset based motherboard, you end up with a rock-solid combination, who's reliability can't be touched by AMD. The Intel chipset is the key.

I built a computer for the lab with a Core i7 920, Intel chipset, etc. My laptop has a Core2 Duo. Most of the other computers here have Core i7s and Core2 Duos. They're all great machines.

I'm just saying I don't think it's not a hard-and-fast rule that Intel is better than AMD dollar-for-dollar. They have traded places several times in the past few years and probably will continue to do so. It depends on the era and the price point you're looking at.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Have you built anything core-series era? This is where things got interesting. The Core i5 750 is a phenomenal "bang-for-buck" CPU. Coupled with an Intel-chipset based motherboard, you end up with a rock-solid combination, who's reliability can't be touched by AMD. The Intel chipset is the key.

I built a computer for the lab with a Core i7 920, Intel chipset, etc. My laptop has a Core2 Duo. Most of the other computers here have Core i7s and Core2 Duos. They're all great machines.

I'm just saying I don't think it's not a hard-and-fast rule that Intel is better than AMD dollar-for-dollar. They have traded places several times in the past few years and probably will continue to do so. It depends on the era and the price point you're looking at.


AMD's position has pretty much always been "there"; the bang-for-buck market. And over the years, Intel has often not been able to provide the same "value" for the dollar as AMD did in that segment. However, with the advent of the Core series CPU's, this has not been the case. The Q6600 was one of the first real kick-to-the-stones CPU's that brought the value-for-dollar battle to AMD. It was Intel's SLOWEST Quad-core, and it was faster than AMD's fastest Quad-Core. Things went downhill from there.

With the i5 750, it is like the Q6600 all over again.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

It's funny that it's Intel's slowest Quad-core, yet it runs fantastic with Win7 64bit and a Seagate .12 series drive. I don't see a reason to go the SSD route to enhance speed since this setup is already fast enough.

 

[JustinH]

For gaming, you could buy a xbox 360 and a ton of games.

If you need a computer for other reasons then ignore this suggestion, but if you want to really game, I would like to do it in front of a big tv on my couch..

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: JustinH
For gaming, you could buy a xbox 360 and a ton of games.

If you need a computer for other reasons then ignore this suggestion, but if you want to really game, I would like to do it in front of a big tv on my couch..


An HDMI cable easily takes care of that. And no console matches the performance of a good PC setup for gaming.

 

[GMFan]

Drop the WD 'Green' drive and get a black one. The hard drive is your biggest bottleneck.

 

[dorkiedoode]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
It's funny that it's Intel's slowest Quad-core, yet it runs fantastic with Win7 64bit and a Seagate .12 series drive. I don't see a reason to go the SSD route to enhance speed since this setup is already fast enough.

ahhh its a night and day difference with my wd black and ssd. to me at least.

 

[xxch4osxx]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: JustinH
For gaming, you could buy a xbox 360 and a ton of games.

If you need a computer for other reasons then ignore this suggestion, but if you want to really game, I would like to do it in front of a big tv on my couch..


An HDMI cable easily takes care of that. And no console matches the performance of a good PC setup for gaming.
Exactly. No console for me, real gamers use pc's!

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: GMFan
Drop the WD 'Green' drive and get a black one. The hard drive is your biggest bottleneck.


It's only a bottleneck when you are using it

And ALL hard drives are bottlenecks compared to the speed of RAM. Always have been.

 

[javacontour]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: GMFan
Drop the WD 'Green' drive and get a black one. The hard drive is your biggest bottleneck.


It's only a bottleneck when you are using it

And ALL hard drives are bottlenecks compared to the speed of RAM. Always have been.


Exactly.

When I taught System Administration, I used the following example. The figures are dated, to 1990's technology. The problem is that memory is much faster, while hard drives, not so much.

If you have RAM with an access time of 60nS 60x10^-9 seconds and a disk with a 10ms 10x10^-3 seconds access time, then access is like the following.

Since humans probably don't understand 60nS, lets make that 60 seconds. To do that, we multiply 60X10^-9 by 10^9 yielding 60 seconds.

Now do the same to the disk, we multiply 10x10^-3 by 10^9, and we get 10x10^6 or 10 million seconds.

So what takes 60 seconds to do in RAM takes over 115 days.

That is the order of magnitude difference between RAM and DISK. What takes a minute to do in RAM takes 4 months to accomplish on disk.

So having the most RAM possible is on of the greatest performance boosters one can provide their system.

I've not sat down to compare SSD's to see how they change the calculus of drive access times.

But disk is a lot slower than RAM, even today, as RAM is much faster than 60nSec access.

 

[MrHorspwer]

Quote:
It's only a bottleneck when you are using it And ALL hard drives are bottlenecks compared to the speed of RAM. Always have been.

Quote:
So having the most RAM possible is on of the greatest performance boosters one can provide their system.


If a hard disk is only a bottleneck when you are using it, RAM is only a performance booster when you're using it.

If a user isn't using all the available physical memory, simply adding more isn't going to provide a meaningful performance boost. Yes, Vista and Win7 are supposed to better utilize available memory to cache files through it's ReadyBoost function, but real gains are scarce. The difference between 3 and 12 GB of physical memory is a 1.5 second reduction in the startup of a program that typically takes between 7-9 seconds to launch.

Basically, if you're not dipping into virtual memory, additional physical memory has no performance benefit. I've run 4 GB (3.5GB in the case of 32-bit OS) in my machines since XP. Photoshop, Premire, AutoCAD, gaming... I've never run out of physical memory.

Some reads:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264.html

From article:
Quote:
We can only recommend larger capacities of 8 GB to 12 GB for professional applications where its usefulness has already been documented and for servers. None of our tests required high-memory capacities and wasted RAM is a burden both financially and ecologically.

 

[javacontour]

I'm guessing Tom's Hardware doesn't work much with servers that can have hundreds of GIGs of RAM.

My customers often have very large databases and with very large installed RAM, many if not all tables can be maintained in memory, improving database performance.

So it depends on what you are doing.

You are right in the abstract. Having more than you need will not improve your performance.

However, there are systems that benefit from volumes of RAM that are far larger that what is mentioned.

In the PC world, for most desktops, I tend to agree, 4GB is probably sufficient.

RAM and disk space both are the sorts of things where too much is usually better than too little.

There are exceptions. When you get into High Availability, the more components you have, the more chance there is for something to break.

RAM has an MTBF, adding more DIMMs lowers the MTBF because it's measured in component hours of operation. The more components you add, the lower the entire systems MTBF.

I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say that doubling the number of DIMMs increases, not decreases, nor does it keep the same, the chance you'll suffer a DIMM failure taking down your system.

So the only way I'd recommend less not more, is if someone has HA as their number one requirement. If that's the case, then fewer components is one way to provide HA.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
Quote:
It's only a bottleneck when you are using it And ALL hard drives are bottlenecks compared to the speed of RAM. Always have been.

Quote:
So having the most RAM possible is on of the greatest performance boosters one can provide their system.


If a hard disk is only a bottleneck when you are using it, RAM is only a performance booster when you're using it.

If a user isn't using all the available physical memory, simply adding more isn't going to provide a meaningful performance boost. Yes, Vista and Win7 are supposed to better utilize available memory to cache files through it's ReadyBoost function, but real gains are scarce. The difference between 3 and 12 GB of physical memory is a 1.5 second reduction in the startup of a program that typically takes between 7-9 seconds to launch.

Basically, if you're not dipping into virtual memory, additional physical memory has no performance benefit. I've run 4 GB (3.5GB in the case of 32-bit OS) in my machines since XP. Photoshop, Premire, AutoCAD, gaming... I've never run out of physical memory.

Some reads:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264.html

From article:
Quote:
We can only recommend larger capacities of 8 GB to 12 GB for professional applications where its usefulness has already been documented and for servers. None of our tests required high-memory capacities and wasted RAM is a burden both financially and ecologically.




I'm using 4.3GB of RAM just sitting here. While I agree with your premise, one must consider that their usage patterns may in no way resemble those of whom they are contrasting against.

 

[MrHorspwer]

Quote:
I'm guessing Tom's Hardware doesn't work much with servers that can have hundreds of GIGs of RAM.


From the quote I posted:

Quote:
We can only recommend larger capacities of 8 GB to 12 GB for professional applications where its usefulness has already been documented and for servers.


Quote:
I'm using 4.3GB of RAM just sitting here. While I agree with your premise, one must consider that their usage patterns may in no way resemble those of whom they are contrasting against


Absolutly. I'm idling with IE open using 744 MB. If your usage shows more than 4GB, you need 8... and etc. Throwing 8GB at your new build simply because you think it'll make it faster, though you'll only be running Modern Warfare 2, MS Office, and Firefox, is a poor use of money. Money that could be better spent in areas where you will see a greater difference, like a processor, video card, or HDD/SSD.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: MrHorspwer
Quote:
I'm guessing Tom's Hardware doesn't work much with servers that can have hundreds of GIGs of RAM.


From the quote I posted:

Quote:
We can only recommend larger capacities of 8 GB to 12 GB for professional applications where its usefulness has already been documented and for servers.


Quote:
I'm using 4.3GB of RAM just sitting here. While I agree with your premise, one must consider that their usage patterns may in no way resemble those of whom they are contrasting against


Absolutly. I'm idling with IE open using 744 MB. If your usage shows more than 4GB, you need 8... and etc. Throwing 8GB at your new build simply because you think it'll make it faster, though you'll only be running Modern Warfare 2, MS Office, and Firefox, is a poor use of money. Money that could be better spent in areas where you will see a greater difference, like a processor, video card, or HDD/SSD.




Precisely. I have VMWare running almost constantly. It is running right now. It is a big contributor to my memory usage. I have FF with about 20 tabs, IE with 3 tabs, Outlook, iTunes, uTorrent, MSN...etc running pretty much all the time. Subsequently my idle memory usage is pretty much always at LEAST 3GB, often going well over 4GB at times. I have 8GB total, and have in my last two builds for this very reason.

 

[Popinski]

Originally Posted By: xxch4osxx
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: JustinH
For gaming, you could buy a xbox 360 and a ton of games.

If you need a computer for other reasons then ignore this suggestion, but if you want to really game, I would like to do it in front of a big tv on my couch..


An HDMI cable easily takes care of that. And no console matches the performance of a good PC setup for gaming.
Exactly. No console for me, real gamers use pc's!


+1.

 

[Popinski]

Ok, so maybe 4 gigs of 1600 MHZ ram..
The motherboard I want can handle 1600/1333/1066 Mhz from the ram.

Does anyone know if I need a RAM cooler if I get 1600 MHz?

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Popinski
Ok, so maybe 4 gigs of 1600 MHZ ram..
The motherboard I want can handle 1600/1333/1066 Mhz from the ram.

Does anyone know if I need a RAM cooler if I get 1600 MHz?


If the RAM needs cooling, it comes with it. My Dommies all have massive heatsinks on them.

What board are you looking at?

 

[Popinski]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: Popinski
Ok, so maybe 4 gigs of 1600 MHZ ram..
The motherboard I want can handle 1600/1333/1066 Mhz from the ram.

Does anyone know if I need a RAM cooler if I get 1600 MHz?


If the RAM needs cooling, it comes with it. My Dommies all have massive heatsinks on them.

What board are you looking at?


I replied to you on the first page. I'll give you a PM. Thanks.