Gaming System Specs Guide for the Casual Gamer
Linc
OwnerDetroit Icrontian
Our esteemed guru of graphics, Sledgehammer70, has assembled this informative guide for gamers to break down exactly what hardware they should be looking at.
Gaming System Specs Guide for the Casual Gamer
Congratulations on a great first article, Sledge!
Gaming System Specs Guide for the Casual Gamer
Congratulations on a great first article, Sledge!
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On a more picayune level- the P4C Northwoods also ran 2.4 to 3.4 GHz 800FSB versions with hyperthreading. These CPUs spanked my Bartons, so I'd class them as capable of high-end 'B'-to-'A'(?). I only say this because my son's 2.8 still just rocks- and it was missing from the list.
Sledge- great job. I wished I'd had something like this years ago. I hope we take this idea to other applications too.
I am still deciding what to buy. This setup was recommended to me at a computer shop in Bangkok.
Asus main board $70
AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ $170
512 DDR-SDRAM Kingston $55
GeForce 7600GS $150
120 Gb HDD $70
DVD RW $50
Even though the game websites recommend 512 Mb Ram and up, the guy at the shop thinks 512 Mb is enough. He says there are 4 memory slots, so I guess I could start wtih 512 Mb and see how the games play. Any ideas?
You might also hold on a bit, word is that there will be another big price drom on AMD CPUs when Core2 actually starts shipping.
Are there any 7600GTs available there? Here they are very close in price to the GS and quite a bit faster. Either way it is a great choice. I love ATI cards, but right now the 76s are the best bang for the buck.
Glad to see this write-up gave you a bit of insight in your build. let us know how it turns out
As for the graphics card, the 7600GT is available, so I took your advice and got that, of course the price went up from $150 on the GS to $235 on the GT. Prices seem to be higher here in Thailand. Decided on 2 Gb of DDR-RAM, at a cost of $200. I went to a shop where a friend works. He gave me a discount of $50 for my old computer trade-in. The total price came to $830 U.S. dollars (31,500 baht). They put it together and installed WinXP. It was interesting to watch. First we agreed on the specs, then the guy picked out a case it would fit in, then they put it together and installed programs and it all took about 2 hours. The guy was like, "I want this computer myself!"
That was two days ago and I've been busy loading and trying new games! Yes! I can play all the latest games. It's a miracle. Thanks for helping me here on this forum!
I could give you a really long answer, but it'd end: "In conclusion, as you can see, there's really no reason <i>not</i> to buy a dual core CPU now."
As always... a brilliant read Sledge.
Abit NF7 version 2.0 motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core unlocked multiplier CPU OC'd to 2.2 Ghz (11X200) stock 3200+ speed.
ATI Radeon X700 Pro 256 MB AGP 8X video card
1 GB of DDR PC3200 RAM
Samsung Syncmaster 204B 20" LCD monitor
With this setup, I can run World of Warcraft at 1600 X 1200 resolution, with every video setting cranked to maximum or near maximum, and get over 20 FPS in most high action fighting scenes, and 30+ FPS in normal play running around or flying somewhere on a gryphon. It'll hit 60 FPS in low action scenes.
It works good for me!:bigggrin:
AND -- based on how many system resources it requires just to run, I would NEVER use Vista on a gaming machine! XP will use far less system resources that would be wasted by just getting Vista to turn on and work in the first place!
I knew a guy running a version of Call of Duty on DX7 hitting 200FPS, mainly because his PC wasn't having to process any of the graphical goodies, because it couldn't.
Hugely helpful article... and thanks for the updates!
I have 4 total queries in regards to it's content:
(1) Is the list of VGA cards (or processors) in any particular order? [They don't seem simply alphabetical, just grouped together by manuf.] Could someone provide an opinion (either in the forum or the article itself) of which unit is "better" than the next? I don't want to open the whole can of worms (ATI vs. GeForce isn't what I'm after) but understanding which of the suffixes GT/GS/XT/GTX/GTO/etc... are regarded as better than the next might help.
(2) You say to forget of "more graphics memory = better graphics". So, what SHOULD I look for in a VGA? Clock speed? Pixel thingys? Shader deals? Pipelines? ?
(3) Memory Size vs. Memory Interface? Core Clock vs. Memory Clock?
(4) In this "3-component" philosophy, I think I understand how one component's poor performance can limit another. But when building a new machine, how do I avoid this? Any guidlines? (ex. 512MB DDR2-533 RAM can't keep up with geforce 7950GT, or AMD Athlon XP 3200+ processes data faster than the Raedon 9600GT can handle)
Sorry, but THANKS! I've been looking for clarification all over the internet for years. I'm STILL reading some 1,000,000 page articles that may have the answers, but...
My current rig:
HP Pavilion a220N
AMD Athlon XP +2600
512MB RAM
Geforce 6800XT
...and I can't even run SW: X-Wing Alliance at MAX settings. :sad2:
nVidia: GS < GT/O < GTS < GTX
ATI: XT < XTX
Question 2:
None of those things are clear indicators of the card's performance. The only sure thing to do is check the benchmarks of a card. Real world performance can vary wildly, even when one card is technically better than another.
Question 3:
Doesn't matter. Check benchmarks.
Question 4:
You buy the best you can afford. That's really the best way to prevent it. Always make sure you buy the recommended memory and the best CPU you can get.
First off welcome to Short-Media, glad the guide was semi helpful. Thrax covered some things above fairly well, but let me try to cover them a bit better.
1.) Thrax nailed that head on...
2.) When looking at GPU's you can identify the cards by Series, Nvidia sporting the 6, 7 & 8 series and ATI sporting the X#00 and X1#00 series of cards.
Currently Nvidia's 8 series is the fastest cards of the bunch with full DX10 support, these cards will be broken down from the top dog down to the lower end chips by the following numbers.
8800
8600
8500
8400
8300
The 8800 being the best of the bunch which than breaks down into a few other offerings per chipset getting into your #1 question
8800 Ultra
8800 GTX
8800 GTS
8600 GT
8600 GS
8500 GT
8400 GT
8400 GS
8300 GT
Than each card might go further and break down into different memory sizes in those alpha break downs.
So to put it bluntly, there is way too many options for someone who doesn't know much about the actual components. This is why I wrote the guide and classed everything in a "A, B, C, D" type of grade, allowing the casual user to break the individual cards into classes.
Once you have an idea of what class you want you can look at the different options of each card. If you’re looking for the best of the best either ATI or Nvidia than pixel shader's isn't going to matter anymore nor will clock speeds, it will mainly be just what is the top card offered by each company. Just like AMD and Intel CPU's clock speeds are different and performance is different for each product. The main thing is to check out benchmarks online.
Then again benchmarks are always tricky as you might not have the Quad core CPU or the Dual core CPU they are running the tests in. Most often if you have a top of the line GPU your going to be CPU bound anyways, meaning the CPU can't feed enough data to your GPU.
Okay I think I went a bit too far for #2
3.) Again if you’re going top of the line these things won’t matter to much as for the most part performance differences run around 5% to 15% which is hardly noticeable unless you’re running a 30" LCD.
If you going low end, memory interface and chip set will matter over memory for the most part.
4.) Memory speeds are not a killer in a system for the most part. if you have DDR 400 but have 2GB vs DDR2 800 the performance difference isn't going to be as big as you think. The main goal for gaming is 2GB and you should not have any issues. Now take in mind if you’re buying new parts you’re already going to be forced to buy some pretty nice performing memory. DDR2 800 is not that slow nor is it a bottle neck in the system build. The main thing is the more memory you have the better "well up to 3.2GB due to windows 32bit OS limitations"
I might not have given you the info you need to know, or I might have confused you even more, so feel free to ask more questions, and I will try to clarify...