DescentBB

OK, so I finally got around to ordering my new machine last night, and here are the specs.

Athlon 4800+
Gigabyte G-Power BL Heatsink
A Pair of 1GB Corsair Matched Sticks of RAM
Asus A8N SLI Premium mobo
2 XFX GeForce 7800 GTX
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music
Thermaltake Armor VA8000BWS Case (Black)
BenQ 1640 DVD-RW
BenQ 1625 DVD-RW with Lightscribe
2 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB Hard Drives
ViewSonic 191b 19" LCD
Logitech Z-5500 Speakers
Logitech MX518 mouse
Mitsumi Floppy Drive with 7-in-1 Media Reader
Enermax Noisetaker 600W P/S
Belkin Split Key Keyboard
Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition

Any thoughts?

$$$ ???

Nexus_One wrote:Any thoughts?

Holy ★■◆●?

How hard will it be to run D3 on this set up? I seem to remember hearing about problems with D3 and Windows XP...

D3? No Problem ...

Iceman wrote:$$$ ???

Iceman wrote:$$$ ???

A few dollars is all...

Sigh ...

How much did he pay? Lets glance down the list here and see what I'd figure off the top of my head...

Athlon 4800+ >> $880
Gigabyte G-Power BL Heatsink >> 3rd party HS, $40 or more
A Pair of 1GB Corsair Matched Sticks of RAM >> $120 if you got cheap ones
Asus A8N SLI Premium mobo >> Probably around $120
2 XFX GeForce 7800 GTX >> Minimum $450 X 2, so atleast $900
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music >> $130
Thermaltake Armor VA8000BWS Case (Black) >> Probably over $100
BenQ 1640 DVD-RW >> Around $40
BenQ 1625 DVD-RW with Lightscribe >> Another $40
2 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB Hard Drives >> Probably atleast $120 x 2? So $240
ViewSonic 191b 19" LCD >> $400 is probably minimum, right?
Logitech Z-5500 Speakers >> $100?
Logitech MX518 mouse >> $50?
Mitsumi Floppy Drive with 7-in-1 Media Reader >> $30?
Enermax Noisetaker 600W P/S >> I'm sure it's over $120
Belkin Split Key Keyboard >> Hopefully no more then $30
Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition >> $150ish, unless it wasn't
Atleast bare minimum $30 shipping, assuming you bought everything from one site.

My conservative guestimate is you just dropped $3600+ on a new machine. I hope you didn't pay tax. Or maybe I do.

"More Money than Brains" springs to mind Nexus.

But kicka$$ box nevertheless!

Hope you'll be very happy together.

Damn Nexy!! You must have a kickass job these days. Nice machine man, I'm sure it will run everything you throw at it much less Descent 3.

"More Money than Brains"? While the 4800+ X2 is questionable for gaming, the rest (assuming he got the good RAM) is a solid ultra-high end gaming system.

The only real hiccup in that rig is only one LCD monitor, with the amount of video card power, a couple LCDs and a single 22" CRT all together would probably be better (A SLI with 7800 GTX cards can drive up to 4 monitors). The CRT would run either 1600x1200 or 2048x1536 in games to take advantage of the raw power of those video cards in today's games. While two 1600x1200 LCDs on each side of the CRT make windows a lot more fun to use.

I'm too lazy to post a STFU Mobius pic.

CPU is a waste of money and SLI is useless IMO but everything else looks good.

Nice rig.

BTW what type of Corsair did u get?

So many flames in one post. Wow.

Mr. Perfect, you got only about half the prices right, you should do more homework, I know I did. Shipping, btw, was less than $30 for the whole damn thing.

Krom, I really didn't want another huge and heavy CRT to lug around, my last one was a 22", and it was just too damn big. This LCD will work just fine for me.

As for the CPU, I run enough programs at the same time to make this worth the money for me. As for gaming, it's still a 2.4Ghz 64 bit proc, or rather two of them. And yes I know that no games currently support dual cores, so save it and be happy for someone who got something nice.

Nice dude. The only thing I'm not keen on is Enermax, but its your machine. Personally, I would've gone for the MX1000 ($59 @ Sams Club, which is the cheapest I've seen it since Best Buy had that $30 IR on it two weeks ago.) over the 518, but its still an excellent mouse. I hope you put that thing to some really good use, like using it for 3D rendering.

Actually for gaming I think the MX510/518 are better then the MX1000. Or you can get the latest and gratest 2000 DPI corded laser mouse from logitech.

Krom wrote:Actually for gaming I think the MX510/518 are better then the MX1000. Or you can get the latest and gratest 2000 DPI corded laser mouse from logitech.

Ditto, MX1000 isn't that great for gaming. Thats why I have my $15 MX510

I should also mention I have a MX1000 AND a MX510, I use the MX1000 in windows and everything else, the 510 in any FPS game.

Krom wrote:I should also mention I have a MX1000 AND a MX510, I use the MX1000 in windows and everything else, the 510 in any FPS game.

ditto again

Update time...

Almost have it finished, just waiting on the BenQ 1640 DVD-RW and the X-Fi card to arrive, hopefully next week.

Having never built a computer before, I've got to say that it was kind of a b!tch at first. My only saving grace was the fact that the Armor case was so easy to use, and very spacious to work inside of.

I'm hoping to be up and running in about a week or so, I'll also post pics too. Should be a nice machine when its done.

Thats why whenever I buy a case, a removable mobo tray is a MUST.

Keep us posted on how Windows XP64 Edition 1 turns out


The "edition 1" from mikrosoft scared me

Mmm, looks good man.

Yes, looks awesome man. I am happy for ya

Also let us know how it will handle the upcoming games due out this fall or next year. Such as:

Warhammer (no not Warhammer 40,000)
F.E.A.R.
UT 2007
Quake 4
Sin 2
Age of Empires 3
Earth 2160
Battlefield 2

I could go on...

Ned wrote:Keep us posted on how Windows XP64 Edition 1 turns out


The "edition 1" from mikrosoft scared me

I'll let you know, I'm getting Service Pack 2 installed with it, so hopefully it will work pretty well.


As far as games go, I think the new rig will do all right, frame rates should be fairly high for the next year or so.

woodchip wrote:Battlefield 2

Which has been out for a couple of months now.

OK, so the BenQ 1640 was out of stock when I ordered it, but Zipzoomfly didn't bother to tell me that until a week later when all my parts had arrived except for that one. I've now ordered the Plextor 716SA DVD-RW to replace it, with a black bezel to match the rest of my machine. My X-Fi should also be here Tuesday, thanks to a similar Snafu by Compuvest.

Too many damn delays, I just want to get this machine built before it's completely outdated. No comments from the peanut gallery either, flamin' bastids.

The machine is officially built. I'm having the wiring and the OS done by a local shop, I didn't want to mess with all the cabling. I should have it back by next Monday. Woohoo!!

You could have done it in one night and had it the next day. And learned a lot in the process. Either way, I want to hear how that thing runs. I'll be building a new one shortly. So in a few weeks expect to hear from me bugging you for thoughts on what you would have done differently etc. as well as what worked.

3DMark 05 score = 11236 in SLI single card score = 8023

more benchmarks to follow

I just wanna say that it is so nice to have Doom 3 running at the highest detail levels all around and still running at a buttery smooth 80+ fps consistently.

Nexus_One wrote:I just wanna say that it is so nice to have Doom 3 running at the highest detail levels all around and still running at a buttery smooth 80+ fps consistently.

Doom 3 is limited to no higher then 60 FPS.

Eh whatever, all I know is I haven't seen any drop in framerates at all. The thing is just plain smooth.

Black and White 2 is also gorgeous to see, the miracles this time are amazing.

Krom wrote:

Nexus_One wrote:I just wanna say that it is so nice to have Doom 3 running at the highest detail levels all around and still running at a buttery smooth 80+ fps consistently.

Doom 3 is limited to no higher then 60 FPS.

Can be overridden during gameplay by entering com_fixedtic -1 in the console..

True, but...
There are two methods of removing the 60 FPS cap in Doom 3 using the com_fixedtic command (valid settings for that variable are 0, 1 and -1) one method causes the video card to render the frames as fast as possible but keeps the engine tic at 60 FPS. This is exactly the same as capping the game to 60 FPS since what the video card is supposed to render does not get changed till the next engine tic, so even at 240 FPS all the video card is doing is rendering the same frame 4 times.

The other method syncs the engine ticks to the framerate, which is fine as long as you are getting exactly 60 FPS constantly, however if you bump it up to 120 FPS then the game physics are effected, you will find yourself playing the game at double the normal timescale.

So one method changes nothing but how you see screen tearing and will make your video card warmer, the other method screws up the games time so it is unplayable.

Either way it's not something you want to play with.. I was going to mention that.. but I wanted them to try it and see how horrible it was... why did you have to go an ruin it..

"dude I got 180 fps.. but gameplay was like a timedemo"

Oh, hehe sorry.

Krom wrote:Actually for gaming I think the MX510/518 are better then the MX1000. Or you can get the latest and gratest 2000 DPI corded laser mouse from logitech.

Ffffffft! I think ill have any mouse from Razer over the Logitech any day. Better software too.