Zerker on 28/8/2011 at 11:50
Unless it's an SSD, it's not likely a regular hard drive can saturate a SATA ONE interface, let alone SATA III, unless everything you are reading is from the disk cache.
Ostriig on 28/8/2011 at 22:11
Quote Posted by Raymond Luxury Yacht
As for the motherboard, the Asus ones you suggested were a little more than I was looking to spend, but I found the M4A88TD-V for 90 bucks on sale after rebate.
Like I told Dia, the reason I suggested the 89 model was for the possible support for AM3+ processors coming further down the line. If having the option of upgrading to one of these CPUs after a while isn't something that interests you should be just fine with the 88 you found.
Quote:
that said, I also got thinking about a new rig, because of her comment that the new OS doesn't play nice with old games, and I will not get a computer that can't/won't run Deus Ex or NOLF or Doom 3.
Yes, as I know there are some games that won't play on Windows 7, but they're pretty few and far in between. Also, not necessarily "old" games - the only one that I've pointedly heard of as not playing nice with 7 is KoTOR II. However I've ran Deus Ex, Thief II and System Shock just as easily as on XP. If you're concerned about some games in particular, throw their names into Google and see if it turns up any wobblies with 7.
Quote:
I still wonder if the GTS 450 will be sufficient for my purposes (FEAR 3, DX 3 Alice)...?
It would definitely be
sufficient to play these games. Just not with all the bells and whistles for the new ones, likely, and it will become outdated for gaming a little bit faster than a 460. I'd go with the 460 or the 6870, they're in the same price range and not overwhelmingly more than a 450. At the end of the day, bear in mind that right now you have DX3 out, but there'll be a DX4, and a Thief 4, and... you get the idea.
Quote Posted by Raymond Luxury Yacht
Ostriig, I forgot to list my parts...
Phenom II 965
Asus M4A87TD EVO (or M4A88TD-V if I can get it for the sale/rebate price of 90 bucks..)
GTX 460 Superclocked
Antec 500W Green 80PLUS bronze (or CoolerMaster GX450 80PLUS Bronze, if it's enough)
CoolerMaster 430 case
8GB Kingston HyperX RAM
Western Digital 500GB SATA II HD
450W should probably cut it, but I'd stick with the 500W Antec to have a little more leeway. The rest looks fine to me.
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 30/8/2011 at 02:01
I found an older thread today, where some one gave some specific pieces they used in building their own. The motherboard was an MSI 870-G45. It's SATA II and seems to use an older chipset/Northbridge (?) - AMD 770. It's pretty inexpensive (around $70) and has a lot of good reviews. Since I am simply trying to build a basic gaming rig, I was thinking of going with it. It's significantly less expensive than the Asus I was looking at (M4A87/88 EVO, M5A97), which i can see as an excuse to upgrade my video card.
Speaking of that - MSI has a GTX 460 Hawk, which listed the core clock at around 780MHz, and from what i read, people are overclocking to 850MHz+. And the best part is, it has $40 mail-in rebate, so I am basically getting a GTX 460 for just a littlre more than I would have paid for the GTS 450.
Any one know good/bad experiences with MSI stuff?
Ostriig on 30/8/2011 at 08:24
I've had two MSI graphics cards, including my current one, and I haven't had any complaints from my personal experience with them. Not exactly a vast one, though, said experience. Can't comment much on the motherboard, but the available expansion slots look fine.
If you decide to overclock stuff I suggest reading up thoroughly ahead, you can fry stuff or decrease stability if you do it wrong. Can't give much advice on it I'm afraid, I got myself overclockable parts but won't bother with it until I actually need it, would have to get the info and add in some better cooling in my rig anyway. I would definitely get that GTX 460 if it's right there with the 450 in price.
Matthew on 30/8/2011 at 08:35
I had an MSI K2N Platinum for many years with no problems occurring, save for the fact that the placement of the main graphics card slot prevented the use of tall northbridge cooler replacements.
june gloom on 7/9/2011 at 03:23
Yeah, that article sounds about right. Friends don't let friends use $20 PSUs.
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 8/9/2011 at 10:02
One final question:
If I am limited in what I can spend on the motherboard/GPU combo, should I go with the more expensive motherboard to get SATA III and get a lesser card, say the GTS 450 or radeon 5770, with the intention of upgrading it later, or just get the better card now, and the less expensive SATA II board.
I am leaning toward the better motherboard, and upgrading the card at a later date
Ostriig on 8/9/2011 at 13:49
If the only relevant difference between the motherboards is that one supports SATA III and the other one only SATA II, get the latter and the better graphics card. Like Zerker said, unless you put SSDs in there, and not just any drives but the latest high end ones, you're not even gonna get any benefit from the SATA III interface anyway.
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 11/9/2011 at 06:57
Okay, so I have one more final question...
Is the new AMD APU any good? It apparently has an integrated video chip, a Radeon 6550. And, according to the sales guy, if you did end up with a discrete video card as well, you could set up Crossfire with essentially just one card, since the APU's video chip acted as the second part.
Of course, it's a different socket, requiring a different motherboard as well, but the price difference was a mere 20 or 30 bucks, depending on the motherboard I chose. I may choose that route, since it'll allow me to skip the card initially, unless the 6550 is crap. And i couldn't find an aftermarket CPU fan that fit that socket type, so I would be stuck with the stock one, unless there's a decent liquid cooling system (or my very basic system doesn't require one because I am not overclocking).
