A compromise machine

LilBudyWizer · 2010-02-27T23:48:49

My wife got a hefty bonus and decided she wanted a nice gaming machine. We settled on the $2k-$3k range. I consider that a compromise machine. You can't afford to get carried away, but you can afford some nice components. I generally by $600-$800 off the shelf machines. So, to me, an important point was having an upgrade path. If I'm going to spend that much then I want to be able to keep it current and use it for a long time. So rather than the high end of the low end I wanted to be at the low end of the high end. We looked at Alienware and Falcon Northwest. When it comes to compromises they don't have a lot of options. It gave me a good guide for what a high performance machine is though in this day and age. Particularly that, apparently, an Intel i7-975 extreme processor is the top of the line. That line being Bloomfield. That requires a X58 northbridge and LGA 1366 socket. The upcoming six-core processors are assumed to go into that same socket and use the same chipset. That makes the tri-channel memory make more sense. That gave me a starting point. I needed a motherboard to plug it into. I decided an eye towards the future required SATA III and USB 3.0. That cut the list down to Gigabyte and Asus. I decided to go with the Asus P6X58D Premium mainly because of the layout of the PCI slots. Just to be safe I checked reviews of the board and there wasn't any indication of any performance issues with the board. Whether it's the best board or not I do not know, but it should be more than adequate. For memory I just went with 3x2GB Kingston 1066 1.5v DDR3 since I have no current plans to overclock it. I decided to go with the Corsair 1000TX power supply. I wanted plenty of power for SLI/Crossfire should I decide to go that route short term and the ability to load it up with drives and turn it into a server long-term. No particularly reason for that particular PSU other than it was used in the review for the board so I figured it was compatible. I went with the Antex Six Hundred case mostly because I liked the look and it was a name I knew. Had I thought to use NewEgg's power search it would have been a lot easier to cut the list down. As it was I was happy to just find something that seemed good enough. When it comes to drives I decided to go with a OSC Vertex Turbo 60GB SSD. It's for my wife and she mainly plays WoW. So I figured fast boot and startup of WoW off of it. I went with a VelociRaptor 10k RPM 300GB drive as a work drive. With games taking 10GB+ not much is going to fit on a 60GB drive. I also worried a bit about cell wear with not much free space left. I figure I have an upgrade path to dual SSD's or dual VelociRaptors in a raid config. I'm not sure if I can do both at the same time. I figured a cheap 3rd drive as a backup. Finally was the video card. I figured either the nVidia GTX 260 or GTX 275. Both are the same price point with the GTX 275 seeming to perform slightly better. I decided to go with the GTX 275 simply because it's newer. I figured adding a second one for SLI gives a cheap upgrade path. That would get me to the performance level of a single GTX 295 without requiring an outright replacement. Finally I added in a Pioneer Blu-ray writer and external media card reader. I would have preferred an internal media card reader, but the cases only externally accessible 3.5" bay is a hot swap bay. I didn't feel like searching out a new case I liked and it's easier to use on the desktop than in the case. Overall, in total, I came in right at $2500. I bought everything at NewEgg except the video card which they were stocked out of so I bought it at CompUSA. Next will be putting it all together.

Hardware Discussion Technical

Started by LilBudyWizer February 13, 2010 05:20 AM

12 comments, last by LilBudyWizer 14 years, 1 month ago

_the_phantom_

11,263

February 26, 2010 02:02 PM

Quote:Original post by LilBudyWizer
That's not really a comparable GPU. The 5850 would be closer, but costs 1/3rd more while only performing maybe 1/5th better. The problem is you start paying a little bit more for a little bit better performance and, pretty soon, you're paying a whole lot more for a marginally faster machine.

Who was going for 'comparable'?

You can't put an Intel i7-975 extreme processor in the machine and then go on to say about 'paying a little bit more for a little bit better performance'.

Which is why I said the 5870 which is nearly twice as fast as the card you selected in WoW (link) and doesn't cost twice as much.

While I'm here;
- Triple channel ram does not 'make sense'. Certainly not on this machine. A dual channel s1156 machine would have been fine and done for some time. Memory benchmark tests show a minor increase and real world tests find next to none. Pretty much the ONLY reason to run a triple channel system is because you want the ram (and then I'd argue you'd want to be shooting for 12gig and up), not for speed.

- SSD vs HD for game launching; I'm running all my Steam games off an SSD now, honestly? Hardly notice a difference. SSDs are great for boot, and probably great for industry but unless you are doing something with alot of IOPs in flight there isn't a great deal of difference.

So yeah; you did it wrong.

LilBudyWizer

491

Author

February 27, 2010 06:11 AM

Well, you would have a point if I put an i7 975 extreme in it, but I put an i7 920 in it instead. The design goal was the low end of the high end. The only single component over $300 was the motherboard and only marginally so. I could have trimmed some there, but I wanted the USB 3.0 and SATA III. All told I spent about $700-$800 on drives which is a bit excessive, but my background is databases.

I felt the SSD was a luxary item at this point, they command quite a premium, but it has a significant impact on her perception of what she paid for. It isn't just loading the game, but every time she teleports or enters an instance. Since she's a mage and raids that can be 20-30 times or more an evening. Particularly if you consider releasing after dieing is one and re-entering the instance is a second. The GTX 275 seems more than adequate to me so far. Adequate to me is staying over 30 fps. I'm lost on arguements about how much better 90 fps is than 60 fps and 120 fps is than 90 fps.

Keys to success: Ability, ambition and opportunity.

swiftcoder

18,997

February 27, 2010 09:43 AM

Quote:Original post by LilBudyWizer
Adequate to me is staying over 30 fps.

You can hit that with a $600 machine if you pick and choose, and handily with a $1,000 machine.

Good for you that you can afford a $3,000 machine to play WoW, but I really don't see the point, myself [smile]

Tristam MacDonald. Ex-BigTech Software Engineer. Future farmer. [https://trist.am]

LilBudyWizer

491

Author

February 27, 2010 11:48 PM

It's entertainment and recreation so cost justification isn't really relevant. Particularly whether it's worth it for WoW. That's what she plays. It certainly wouldn't be worth it for Crysis because she doesn't play that. I had $3k to put into a system and that's how I spent it. My focus was more on running databases than playing games so I sunk a lot into the disks.

Keys to success: Ability, ambition and opportunity.

A compromise machine

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