Gamer pc challenge

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by nugget, Jul 16, 2009.

  1. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    If there is a budget of of 3.500 (1989 pounds) I will get you the dogs, I'll post back in a bit
     
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  2. Qs

    Qs Semi-Honorary Member Gold Member

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    Make sure it's pink.
     
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  3. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    This is what I got for 3237.65swiss franks that include VAT and delivery (not sure if do VAT over there.

    BFG GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card

    Asus Rampage II Extreme Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboar

    Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail + World In Conflict PC Game

    LG BE06 Blu-Ray ReWriter & HD-DVD ROM External Drive - Retail

    Corsair XMS3 12GB (6x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Triple Channel (HX3X12G1600C9)

    Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD3000HLFS)

    Seasonic M12D 850w Quad GFX Enabled ATX Power Supply

    Antec 1200Twelve Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU)
    Xigmatek Thor's Hammer S126384 Heatpipe Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA 775/1366)
     
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  4. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    Depends entirely on cost. :)

    See where I'm goin? ;)

    Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to price you out a system, because shipping would be prohibitively expensive with the online stores I purchase from. I don't know the best online tech stores in Europe.
     
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  5. nugget
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    nugget Junior toady

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    Yes....and no. I didn't mention anything about that it had to be in a certain price range, only that 2686 Sfr was what the parts cost that I chose. I just said these are the parts I chose for a gaming machine and this is what the parts cost and for you to put up your own suggestions. You alluded that it should be possible to do better for less cost.

    I only mentioned a guideline budget much later. It's got to be cheaper than an Alienware pc otherwise what's the point.


    Not asking you to post it to me. We can get the same parts here too (mostly :oops: ). Just wanting suggestions of what you would put together.

    So....

    Well now, here's your challenge. Knock that system sideways for half the price which in this case is (coincidentally) around 1200 USD.
     
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  6. onoski

    onoski Terabyte Poster

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    Just out of curiousity how much did the above amount to in pound sterling or even US dollars:)
     
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  7. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    Almost £1900 :blink the Graphics card and the motherboard are the most expensive pieces of kit.
     
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  8. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    Well, although this one doesn't "knock yours sideways", it's at 39% of the cost... and yours doesn't even account for the OS. Taking that out would make it almost a third of your price, leaving plenty of room to bump up the components with the extra $447 that I could use and still be at 50% of your cost:

    Intel Core i7 920 Socket 1366 $295
    MSI R4870-T2D1G Radeon HD 4870 1GB $205
    GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R X58 $185
    Patriot Viper 3GB (3x1GB) DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) PVT33G1333ELK - Retail $70
    Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB $95
    LG BD/HD DVD / 16x DVD+/- RW GGC-H20LK $105
    COOLER MASTER Centurion 534 RC-534-SKN2-GP ATX Mid-Tower $50
    OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS 700W SLI Ready CrossFire Ready $70
    Microsoft Vista Home Premium OEM $99
    TOTAL $1174

    I actually found this build in an article on Anandtech, and the prices were valid in February of 2009... so these prices would likely be even LOWER, particularly with regards to the video card. I could take the time to research them this weekend... but I think the point is already made.
     
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  9. dmarsh
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    dmarsh Petabyte Poster

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    The US prices are massively cheaper than most of the rest of the world for some reason, I even think the US prices are cheaper than most of asia where the stuff is fabricated !

    You can't get the Core i7 920 for less than £206 in the UK, thats about $327. So your prices seem at least 10% off, maybe part of its the sales taxes.

    Some of the other parts the UK pound price is the same as the dollar price (without conversion) this is not uncommon.
    This could mean your system could be around 40% cheaper without changing any components.

    Nugget says components are even harder to come by in Switzerland so give the poor guy a break !

    The ATI cards are generally much cheaper than NVidia, but I wouldn't want one.

    I'd still be looking at a decent SSD for the system if moneys no object, they seem to be maturing now.

    Reasonable pre-built i7 systems can be had for around £900 in the UK. I doubt you could build it much cheaper on UK prices.

    http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-065-OE&groupid=43&catid=1270&subcat=
     
  10. nugget
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    nugget Junior toady

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    Okay, granted mine didn't have the OS included but .... as you wish.

    Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit, Win7 Coupon CHF 129

    brings the total to 2815 CHF = 2614 USD (and half of that is 1307 USD)

    so with OS 1307-1174=133 difference

    or without OS 1245-1075=270 which seems to fall far short of the extra 447 you mention.

    So, I fail to see the point you're trying to make. You post a build that is put together with a very low budget viewpoint that isn't even yours and admittedly doesn't knock my suggested build sideways as claimed possible.

    This is what I wrote.
    I did mention an Alienware pc so it was kind of implied that it should be somewhat cheaper but also if it was near the same cost then it's not worth the effort to DIY.

    BTW, I just put together the same pc with the components you posted and it came to 1416 CHF which works out to 1314 USD. I guess that tells a story right there.

    It's great that you brought your willy to the party though.:twisted:

    Edit: Would you buy this system?
     
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  11. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    Well, that was my point when I started... I've got an unfair advantage with the prices over here, so I wasn't even going to spec out a system until he asked again.

    My 4830 handles everything I throw at it... absolutely no problems. :)
     
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  12. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    The point I'm trying to make is that prices are cheaper over here... not that I have a bigger e-willy, mate... :rolleyes:

    Of course it is. You can choose the components YOU want to put in your system rather than Alienware choose the components that are in your system.

    This system? Mine, yours, or the Alienware one? I dunno - I really didn't take the time to do the research. If I had no PC, I might get something similar... I typically go for best bang-for-the-buck, so I'd probably wait on the i7 until the prices came down. I'd also probably try to spec out an ASUS motherboard and a different brand of PSU. And considering I can get a 4850 for less than $100, I'd probably go that route.

    However, the main reason I wouldn't buy it right now is because my 3-year-old C2D is working just fine. If I were to upgrade, it wouldn't cost me a lot, because I wouldn't need a lot of the components - I would only need a mobo, proc, and memory. My video card is new, my sound card is great, my HD is sufficient, and my optical drive is fine. I've got a stable, 500W PSU and an awesome case.

    Now that I'm thinking about it... when the Core proc prices come down, I might just upgrade my existing processor and nothing else... that'll extend this system's life quite a bit. :hhhmmm
     
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  13. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    Agreed and this goes for food, petrol and just about everything else.


    Also agreed. ATI drivers and support is crap at best and with AMD buying them and having massive debts there can only be one winner in the end.

    If money is no object then yes get a couple of SSD drives

    This is also true, as we pay VAT over here and i7s cost £206 your looking at adding 15% onto it, the system I put together earlier included the 15% but as you can see it doesn't have a monitor and you would have to get an OEM OS which will add about £300 to it if your lucky.

    This were I priced the parts from, their pre-built systems are good too.
     
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  14. Modey

    Modey Terabyte Poster

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    What gives you that impression? They seem to release new drivers regularly and had 64bit W7 drivers available the day the RC came out.

    I certainly don't think it's a foregone conclusion either that AMD will 'lose' just because the company has debts. I read quite the opposite recently in an article that suggested that Nvidia potentially looked in a much weaker position than AMD when it came to the GFX market.

    Time will tell I guess. Will also be interesting to see if Intel's Larrabee turns out to be any good.
     
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  15. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    I used to have ATi cards but I felt that the drivers were becoming really slow and a bit dodgy which put me off them.

    As for the debt thing AMD/ATi are putting just about everything they have into their combine CPU/GPU time will tell.

    Not sure what to make of Intels Larabee time will tell on that too.
     
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  16. dmarsh
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    dmarsh Petabyte Poster

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    I had about four duff ATI cards about 13+ years back, now I won't go back without a good reason, same reason I don't buy Vauxhall cars anymore.

    'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.'

    I bought a STB Velocity 4400 instead of all the Voodoo crap and have never looked back, even made some money on NVidia stock.

    Sometimes its worth paying for peace of mind and quality, support etc.

    I'm also interested in GPGPU computing and NVidia currently seems to have the edge.

    The Intel stuff looks interesting, but I get the impression its targeted at allowing people to build cheaper clusters by essentially allowing more cores per node. It doesn't really look like GPU competition on the desktop just yet. All this is a bit like transputers all over again, just this time it looks like multicore is here to stay.
     
  17. BosonMichael
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    BosonMichael Yottabyte Poster

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    Well, I've used both ATI and Nvidia for years, and haven't had a major problem with either of them.

    Perhaps it was your skill level at the time, my friend. ;) Heehee! :p
     
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  18. dmarsh
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    dmarsh Petabyte Poster

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    The cards worked, they were just generally crap, mainly due to drivers I think, but the hardware wasn't anything special either. Most cards were rubbish at the time especially at 3D which is what created the gap for Voodoo/3DFX.
    Some of them were given to me by people who were less than impressed and were upgrading to other cards. The ones I bought myself were little better.

    NVidia drivers weren't always perfect either, but they were generally a lot better than ATI's. I had a couple of glitches over about 6 years and driver fixes were out within about a month both times.

    I don't play games anymore and I don't buy ATI anymore, so I can't comment on their current performance.


    I can assure you it was probably better than your skill level at the time. :wink:


    Years before I had successfully upgraded my Amiga 1.2 ROM and Agnus chip, had to cut a few tracks, think I even had to do some soldering.

    Worked a charm. Built a small robot too from discrete components on breadboard and controlled it using the parallel port.

    Wrote some stuff in 68k assembler. Some graphics routines that were all mine. Also someone elses 3D game in 68k from a book. Wrote fair amount of C too.

    Also wrote my own paint package in Borland C++ for DOS at college from scratch.

    Later I got my first PC a brand new Pentium 60 complete with FPU bug. I even wrote a single precision floating point software library for it in 80x86 assembler.

    All of this 16+ years back.

    So no my skills are not in doubt, I suspect you were busy playing with your Super Nintendo ? :D

    ATI seems ok now from what the reviews say, but they've had a lot of driver issues in the past, its well documented.
     
  19. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    Nah they were pants, there's plenty of dodgy ATI card stories about far more than any Nvidia ones anyway.
     
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  20. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    Waste of money all this gaming malarkey. For the prices you lot are spouting above I could stick another three hosts in my ESX cluster and get a second OpenFiler SAN to replicate to.
     
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