Compuderp: The top fan grill on my case has a filter over it, which I didn't realise and mounted an output fan on it, making a dust trap inside my case.
I cleaned out the dust buildup and moved that fan to the rear of the case, already cooler temps.
Building a new PC from scratch, should one Windows 8 or Windows 7?
Windows 8
Whichever you can get for the least money. There's basically no practical difference between them. If the metro interface offends you to the point that the one keystroke to get past it is an issue, get 7.
Whichever you can get for the least money. There's basically no practical difference between them. If the metro interface offends you to the point that the one keystroke to get past it is an issue, get 7.
Do you count improved efficiency of the OS as not practical?
I find Metro much more practical. It functions like an on-demand spotlight, much faster than the Mac version. I use the shit out of it with keystrokes only, all the time.
Whichever you can get for the least money. There's basically no practical difference between them. If the metro interface offends you to the point that the one keystroke to get past it is an issue, get 7.
Do you count improved efficiency of the OS as not practical?
I have not noticed any huge improvement in effeciency. Also its not that os effeciency isn't practical. It's just largely meaningless for most use cases. Along with that I havn't noticed any big quality of life improvements like graphics crashes no longer blue screening. Which was a big reason to upgrade from XP.
So yeah to me win 8 is win 7 with a slightly different UI, a larger footprint, and some performance gains I don't notice.
I have not noticed any huge improvement in effeciency. Also its not that os effeciency isn't practical. It's just largely meaningless for most use cases. Along with that I havn't noticed any big quality of life improvements like graphics crashes no longer blue screening. Which was a big reason to upgrade from XP.
So yeah to me win 8 is win 7 with a slightly different UI, a larger footprint, and some performance gains I don't notice.
I'm not referring to the UI as that is not used if you have a mouse and keyboard. There are more system resources available using Windows 8 versus 7.
Windows 8 has a smaller footprint, not a larger one.
The only downside I see with Windows 8 is the lack of built in media center but I only need this on my HTPC.
People just like trashing Windows 8 because other people are doing it.
I upgraded to Windows Vista from XP after the bugs were fixed and heard everyone complaining but it ran rock solid after I set it up. Vista and 8 had poor PR and initiations into the market but were fundamentally good OS updates.
I'm not referring to the UI as that is not used if you have a mouse and keyboard. There are more system resources available using Windows 8 versus 7.
Windows 8 has a smaller footprint, not a larger one.
The only downside I see with Windows 8 is the lack of built in media center but I only need this on my HTPC.
People just like trashing Windows 8 because other people are doing it.
I upgraded to Windows Vista from XP after the bugs were fixed and heard everyone complaining but it ran rock solid after I set it up. Vista and 8 had poor PR and initiations into the market but were fundamentally good OS updates.
I think you must misunderstand me. I have nothing particularly against Win 8, except for the UI changes for Metro. I don't like them. I don't like getting kicked into metro to view a picture and I don't like having to skip a screen I never use every time I boot. I'm also not fond of the "start" menu being a slide out thing on the right side. That said those are minor complaints overall.
As for performance from the metrics I can find quickly you get 10% (and that's generous) which doesn't much outweigh the benefit of say going 32bit to 64bit. The best boost is in start/stop times, which an SSD makes a bigger difference.
For footprint I wasn't clear. I mean the HDD footprint which is plus a couple gig.
So my trusty computer died and it's been about 5 years since I've built one. Now isn't the greatest time for me, so I can really only budget about $400 for this thing. This is what I've just about decided on. I'm re-using the power supply & hard drive from my old computer.
Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? I can't afford more than $400 right now, but will be adding a graphics card in 2-3 months. I was hoping to find a cheaper motherboard, but it was the cheapest one I saw that had PCI Express 3.0 slots on it.
So either I used the wrong link, or the website removed it....here's a working link for anyone curious.
I've also started looking into a lower-end and cheaper option, the more I think about it, the more I'm liking my alternate option. I don't think it's a great PC, but I think it's a solid mid-range gaming PC. I'll probably re-purpose it in a year or two as a replacement HTPC and upgrade my main system then. Intel Build Alternate Cheaper/AMD Build
So I just installed a second GTX 660ti and went SLI. I could have sold the card and spent a lot of money on a 770 or something but I was going for best deal to get me running games at good settings for the next year or so. Since you can pick up 6xx cards for over a hundred bucks less than they were going for up to maybe a few months ago, I think it's a pretty decent deal for someone running a simple 1080p 60hz single monitor setup for their gaming.
Anyhow, It runs great! I double my framerates most of the time, and I'm blasting games like Battlefield 4 at max settings and averaging 80frames (but with some significant dips down into the 40s when SHTF, so, I tend to back off the juice a litle in multiplayer)
But, I'm not sure if my 620w PSU will handle this whole rig running everything at full capacity, as I've had two restarts while running the BF4 single player mode (which adds so many graphical things to the game that it's almost insane compared to multiplayer, which itself is an insane jump from BF3) so I'm thinkin of going with an 800+W supply just to be sure I'm not overdrawing in high loads. Is this the correct line of thought or am I blowin' smoke and/or smokin' trees?
But if I do go for the upgrade Anyone got a favorite PSU? (Anyone need an Antec 620w PSU for cheap?)
I'm looking at a minimum of 600w and recommended 650w, on my current setup, with no aging factored in. If I add even 10% aging (which may or may not be appropriate) it jacks my needs by almost 100w alone. That means I'm currently riding on the edge of my power budget if I'm running my junk at full bore.
So, I think I can survive for a month or two, but it says to me I ought to get at least a 750 (or maybe an 850 for about the same price), as I plan to add more drives and crap in the future.
Anyhow, It runs great! I double my framerates most of the time, and I'm blasting games like Battlefield 4 at max settings and averaging 80frames (but with some significant dips down into the 40s when SHTF, so, I tend to back off the juice a litle in multiplayer)
Can you replicate the problem in any other way as in with a Heaven test on loop for example?
If so then it will more than likely be power inefficiency.
However if it isn't, don't worry.
Battlefield 3 had major bugs when it came out last year, it did random resets or crashes, sometimes a few minutes after starting a game, other times after a few hours and other times not at all.
There is reportedly more problems with BF4 than with BF3 so I would recommend checking if it is the software's fault first in this situation.
As to my personal recommendations on PSU's in the range you indicated -
OCZ Silencer Mk III 850W (use to be PC Power and Cooling before it was bought by OCZ)
Corsair RM850
Coolermaster V850
Corsair AX850
I don't have too much experience with brands other than these but a solid bet is if the power supply is a rebranded Seasonic power supply.
Is there any advantage to playing a BF game on the lowest resolution settings possible?
If you are playing multiplayer, then there is less processing and less effective lag.
Any minor graphical or computational lag which is unperceivable to you when running it locally will become very obvious when you play online as your machine has the extra load of dealing with the other 63 players movements on the map plus any connectivity load. I assume so any how as I needed to reduce my AA settings to get many multiplayer FPS games to feel more accurate to what is going on in the game (i.e. making that headshot versus getting killed and thinking "I'm sure I clicked before him").
However I never set them to the lowest settings unless I'm checking for bugs.
Lag... Reminds me of the day a foot soldier killed me while I was in a tank in BF3 because of lag. He was standing right in from of my main gun and I could not hit him. Nor could I run over him. All the while my buddies are in chat asking why I keep shooting the place where he was two seconds ago and why I keep swerving to miss him rather than run him down.
I have two 560Ti's, and I'm thinking about getting a 780Ti around Christmas. Most of my components are only about 2-3 years old, so that's the only real bottleneck. For reference, the current specs:
2x 128 gig SSDs (one for windows, one for steam, with various HDDs for data) i7 2600k Sandy Bridge (still pretty rock solid, as far as CPUs go) 16 gig ram
The graphics cards are pretty much the only bottleneck, as far as I can see. Also, any CPU upgrade (to Haswell) would require a new mobo (1155 to 1150), which would probably entail getting new DDR4 ram, etc etc. Thoughts? I haven't really done much research on hardware in the past two years, so I could be missing something.
I havn't been looking very hard into it, but from what I gather, there's really nothing Haswell offers over Ivy Bridge processors that would justify a motherboard swap over what you gain if you were to simply put the same funds into a better 1155 processor. With a 2600k I don't really see much reason to swap it until maybe the next Intel tock comes along.
In fact if I were to build a new machine today for a decent price, I'd potentially stick with 1155 because I can probably get a bitchin mobo for the price of a less-awesome 1150 board.
There needs to be a memory controller on the Intel chipset to provide enough bandwidth to support DDR4 RAM.
So far there was a Haswell-E processor which has been demonstrated by Intel to support this but release is speculated at Q4 of 2014.
I would forget about DDR4 till it has bug free Intel support. DDR4 has been around for ages but no one has implemented any compatibility for it.
I'm not sure about whether the 780 Ti could bottleneck your CPU but I doubt it, I would skip the CPU upgrade unless you can find information to the contrary.
Yeah, from what I can tell the 2600K and 16gigs ram will last for at least another year (if not two). I'll stick with getting the 780Ti (maybe in some kind of holiday sale) sometime in the next month or two.
Comments
http://promotions.newegg.com/neemail/guerrilla/LP/13-SEP/index-lp-16.html?nm_mc=EMC-GD091613&cm_mmc=EMC-GD091613-_-index-_-Header-_-ClickHere&;
I cleaned out the dust buildup and moved that fan to the rear of the case, already cooler temps.
If the metro interface offends you to the point that the one keystroke to get past it is an issue, get 7.
So yeah to me win 8 is win 7 with a slightly different UI, a larger footprint, and some performance gains I don't notice.
Windows 8 has a smaller footprint, not a larger one.
The only downside I see with Windows 8 is the lack of built in media center but I only need this on my HTPC.
People just like trashing Windows 8 because other people are doing it.
I upgraded to Windows Vista from XP after the bugs were fixed and heard everyone complaining but it ran rock solid after I set it up. Vista and 8 had poor PR and initiations into the market but were fundamentally good OS updates.
As for performance from the metrics I can find quickly you get 10% (and that's generous) which doesn't much outweigh the benefit of say going 32bit to 64bit. The best boost is in start/stop times, which an SSD makes a bigger difference.
For footprint I wasn't clear. I mean the HDD footprint which is plus a couple gig.
Intel Build
Does anyone have any advice or suggestions? I can't afford more than $400 right now, but will be adding a graphics card in 2-3 months. I was hoping to find a cheaper motherboard, but it was the cheapest one I saw that had PCI Express 3.0 slots on it.
I've also started looking into a lower-end and cheaper option, the more I think about it, the more I'm liking my alternate option. I don't think it's a great PC, but I think it's a solid mid-range gaming PC. I'll probably re-purpose it in a year or two as a replacement HTPC and upgrade my main system then.
Intel Build
Alternate Cheaper/AMD Build
Anyhow, It runs great! I double my framerates most of the time, and I'm blasting games like Battlefield 4 at max settings and averaging 80frames (but with some significant dips down into the 40s when SHTF, so, I tend to back off the juice a litle in multiplayer)
But, I'm not sure if my 620w PSU will handle this whole rig running everything at full capacity, as I've had two restarts while running the BF4 single player mode (which adds so many graphical things to the game that it's almost insane compared to multiplayer, which itself is an insane jump from BF3) so I'm thinkin of going with an 800+W supply just to be sure I'm not overdrawing in high loads. Is this the correct line of thought or am I blowin' smoke and/or smokin' trees?
But if I do go for the upgrade Anyone got a favorite PSU? (Anyone need an Antec 620w PSU for cheap?)
http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine
I'm looking at a minimum of 600w and recommended 650w, on my current setup, with no aging factored in. If I add even 10% aging (which may or may not be appropriate) it jacks my needs by almost 100w alone. That means I'm currently riding on the edge of my power budget if I'm running my junk at full bore.
So, I think I can survive for a month or two, but it says to me I ought to get at least a 750 (or maybe an 850 for about the same price), as I plan to add more drives and crap in the future.
If so then it will more than likely be power inefficiency.
However if it isn't, don't worry.
Battlefield 3 had major bugs when it came out last year, it did random resets or crashes, sometimes a few minutes after starting a game, other times after a few hours and other times not at all.
There is reportedly more problems with BF4 than with BF3 so I would recommend checking if it is the software's fault first in this situation.
As to my personal recommendations on PSU's in the range you indicated -
OCZ Silencer Mk III 850W
(use to be PC Power and Cooling before it was bought by OCZ)
Corsair RM850
Coolermaster V850
Corsair AX850
I don't have too much experience with brands other than these but a solid bet is if the power supply is a rebranded Seasonic power supply.
Any minor graphical or computational lag which is unperceivable to you when running it locally will become very obvious when you play online as your machine has the extra load of dealing with the other 63 players movements on the map plus any connectivity load. I assume so any how as I needed to reduce my AA settings to get many multiplayer FPS games to feel more accurate to what is going on in the game (i.e. making that headshot versus getting killed and thinking "I'm sure I clicked before him").
However I never set them to the lowest settings unless I'm checking for bugs.
2x 128 gig SSDs (one for windows, one for steam, with various HDDs for data)
i7 2600k Sandy Bridge (still pretty rock solid, as far as CPUs go)
16 gig ram
The graphics cards are pretty much the only bottleneck, as far as I can see. Also, any CPU upgrade (to Haswell) would require a new mobo (1155 to 1150), which would probably entail getting new DDR4 ram, etc etc. Thoughts? I haven't really done much research on hardware in the past two years, so I could be missing something.
In fact if I were to build a new machine today for a decent price, I'd potentially stick with 1155 because I can probably get a bitchin mobo for the price of a less-awesome 1150 board.
So far there was a Haswell-E processor which has been demonstrated by Intel to support this but release is speculated at Q4 of 2014.
I would forget about DDR4 till it has bug free Intel support. DDR4 has been around for ages but no one has implemented any compatibility for it.
I'm not sure about whether the 780 Ti could bottleneck your CPU but I doubt it, I would skip the CPU upgrade unless you can find information to the contrary.