My new toy...
I pensioned off the P4/3.0 and dragged my system into the 90's
Monday, June 8, 2009 by Jafo | Discussion: Personal Computing
The old box served well for over half a decade ..... but eventually life was passing me by.... particularly during the FULL boot time being around 10 minutes....
It was [in its day] a fairly decent machine...P4/3.0 in an ASUS P4P800e Deluxe mobo with 2 gig [4x500] ram and eventually about the 'fastest' AGP card still around....a HD3850 with 512 GDDR3...all in an old Lian Li P60, powered by a TruePower 550 Watt PSU.
Then I got hacked....ending up as a mule server for email spam [I think] ... along with my having a Win 7 RC to experiment with prompted me to 'do it' sooner, rather than later.
So, off I went to my fave Comp shop armed with a list...
...and a credit card.
Just a little time later.... I had a boot full of boxes and not much money left.
Thursday last it was....as I get it all home and eagerly started poking and prodding and lots of RTFM-ing.
Friday, and out came the drill and jigsaw to cut a hole into the MoBo tray of the Case ..... so the after-market cooler would fit.... bugger of a bloody big thing it was, too.
By Saturday arvo I was sitting at the dining table with fingers in my ears as I switched it on...no OS, etc....no Keyboard or Mouse .... just to see if lights would come on....and there'd be NO smoke......
They did...and there wasn't.
Sunday...was OS time...so in went Win7 RC1 [32 bit].
Took 4/5ths of eff-all time to install and there it was in all its quasi-Vista 'splendour'.
About the only way to describe it all [other than black - as in the box] was/is "fucking fast".
I ain't got the MoBo drivers all in [Win7 compatibility]...and haven't rebooted yet since the Graphic Card driver install....
Can't even see it in real detail/scale as it's currently on a 17" CRT ....
...and I'm learning all about what won't always work as expected [like Sysmetrix]...but darn it's good...
The 'bits' I already have....to migrate across to the new machine ar the bits that plug in .... The DiNovo Edge KB ...the MS Explorer mouse ...the ASUS M221u LCD....scanners....printers....Logitech G15 wheel and pedals...etc.
What I got....
Lian Li PC-A6010 case [black]
Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w PSU
ASUS P6T-se X58 i7 MoBo
Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz LGA1366 CPU
OCZ 6G-Triple [3x2G] PC12800 Gold Ram
CoolerMaster V8 CPU Cooler [that bloodey big thing]
Vantec EZ2 Sata hot-swap racks x2
1TB Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for backup/data]
250G Seagate Sata2 7200 HD x2 [for OS]
ACR-105 Multi card reader
LG Sata DVD-RW x2
XFX 1G GTX285 Black Edition [vid]
When Win7 is finally released I'll opt for the 64bit ver...and possibly double the ram....
Funniest thing is....I thought sysmetrix wasn't working....looking at CPU load and ram usage.....till I looked closer....
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Reply #162 Thursday, December 31, 2009 6:58 AM
The demo of Crysis....is 2007...whereas the PC ver of RE5 is 2009...as in the last few months....they are a 'world' apart.
I expect there would be mods for the full ver of Crysis to help with lower spec gear....but I must admit that gameplay at 50-odd fps is still just fine.
I got similar low fps with GP4...but that was/is an ancient game....certainly not native to Win7 or 64 bit, etc.....it was DX7 back then....
Reply #164 Monday, January 4, 2010 2:07 AM
A friend of my sister rushed out to get Crysis when it was first released... not thinking for one moment that he might have issues running it on his machine. It's not that his rig is a slouch (AMD Phenom 9650 @ 2.3/ATI 4870 1gb/6gb DDR2 1066 RAM), but rather that Crysis is far too advanced/fast/graphically intensive for his (slightly better than) average machine.
Pretty fantastic that he missed the part of the hype that Crysis was a nextgeneration engine game which requires great hardware.
When a GTX295 comes in anywhere between $570 and $1070 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), and an i7 975 anywhere between $1300 and $1813 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), just to enable optimum play in the latest and greatest games, you're talking bigger biccies than the average home PC owner/user/gamer could even dream about, much less afford.
And at the end of the day, though, is any of this hardware really worth the price being levied? Or is a handful of individuals getting filthy rich from the past-times/addictions/perceived needs of game/PC enthusiasts?
The average gamer isn't supposed NOR expected to buy a GTX 295 or a i7-975 (or 965 for that matter!)
Those parts are made for prestige so the companies can say that they got the fastest card/cpu in the world. Only hardwaresites and some enthusiasts buy them. The GTX 260/280 and i7-920/940 are for normal people.
Reply #166 Monday, January 4, 2010 7:06 AM
great rig jafo.... i made an insanely huge jump too as you have seen....
Its not verified but i heard the the corei7 800 series has much more potential than the 900 series
but then again i heard alot of different things.
heres what i upgraded from:
W7 Ultimate Signature Edition
AMD athlon XP 2.4GHz 32bit
500MHz front side bus
K8S-LA mobo by asus (OEM build from hp/compaq)
1GB RAM (2x Infineon 512MB PC3200 sticks @233MHz each)
BFGTech Geforce 7300GT 512MB AGPx8 GPU
Liteon Combo DVD+/CDRW drive
Zumax 450W PSU
Aspire X-Plorer Mid ATX Case with custom rigging and modding
UPGRADED TO:
HP Pavillion Elite e9250t
W7 Ultimate
MSI (P55) HP OEM MOBO
Intel Core i5 750 64bit CPU @ 2.67GHz
6GB of Dual Channel RAM (3x 2GB DDR3 Sticks
1.8GMNvidia Geforce GTX 260
LiteScribe DVDRW+CDRW Drive
ALL Case and PSU is Stock with the exception that I added green Cold cathode tube lights for effect
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Reply #161 Thursday, December 31, 2009 1:07 AM
OK, I misunderstood! I understood RE5 at default (res/hardware) settings was sluggish.
I guess this supports what I was saying about high-end games... sort of. Cryisis was/is touted as one of these 'ultra' games, and yours is not the first case I've read of where a player has had issues with frame rates at native resolutions... and that dropping the res defeats the purpose/enjoyment of the game.
A friend of my sister rushed out to get Crysis when it was first released... not thinking for one moment that he might have issues running it on his machine. It's not that his rig is a slouch (AMD Phenom 9650 @ 2.3/ATI 4870 1gb/6gb DDR2 1066 RAM), but rather that Crysis is far too advanced/fast/graphically intensive for his (slightly better than) average machine.
Advances in the gaming industry are great.. probably welcomed by some (with high-end machines), but if I were a game dev/distributor, I'd want my products to be usable/playable at optimum performance by the widest audience possible.
Hmmm, could it be a conspiracy between the game devs and the hardware devs... to produce games that encourage... er, force gamers to continually upgrade their rigs? The trouble with that, in most cases, is that the latest and greatest hardware is out of the affordable reach of average users/gamers.
When a GTX295 comes in anywhere between $570 and $1070 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), and an i7 975 anywhere between $1300 and $1813 AUD (depending on rating/retailer/manufacturer), just to enable optimum play in the latest and greatest games, you're talking bigger biccies than the average home PC owner/user/gamer could even dream about, much less afford.
And at the end of the day, though, is any of this hardware really worth the price being levied? Or is a handful of individuals getting filthy rich from the past-times/addictions/perceived needs of game/PC enthusiasts?
Oh, and while I'm at it, question-wise, what is the meaning of life??