Computer Improvement

[Paragon Fury]

Well, either tomorrow or Monday, I'm going to order a new desktop computer to replace my (slowly dying, cursing me for forcing it to play high-end games) laptop, and I was wondering what kind of improvement I could expect from the upgrade. The expected key changes are:


Current Laptop
Intel Duo Core T8300 @2.9GHz

NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

285GB HDD

4GB RAM

Integrated Sound Card

Air Cooled



New Desktop
Intel® Core? i7-970 (12MB Cache) 3.23GHz

Dual 1GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon? HD 6870

Dual 1TB SATA 6Gb/s (7,200RPM) 32MB Cache

12GB RAM

Liquid Cooling

I'm assuming of course that it will work better, but how much better is the question. Its main purposes obviously is for gaming (though I'll still use my laptop for presentations and such at university), and there are a few games I'm looking to play on it that either just barely run on my laptop, or don't run at all. Any ideas on predicted performance? (Remember, these are all on the laptop currently)

Starcraft II - Runs on Standard Def, Low-Moderate Settings

Crysis 1 - Runs, barely, low FPS even on low

Crysis 2 - Haven't tried, assumes it wouldn't work

Shogun 2: Total War - Doesn't run

Command and Conquer 4 - Runs, on low settings

Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Doesn't run

EDIT: Updated with newest information.

 

[ephemeross]

SC2 - Should run 60fps at 1080p on extreme/ultra - may dip during big battles/team games/4x & 8x replays when a lot is going on.

C1 - Should run at 60fps on mid/high settings in most scenarios, can't say for sure how high the settings could go to at 1080p whilst still being 40 - 60fps.

C2 - High at 60fps in almost all scenarios, possibly Extreme 40 - 60fps in most scenarios.

S2 - Will run fine on at least medium at 1080p, not played the game so can't say for sure, I would expect high settings will be 40 - 60fps in most situations though.

C&C4 - Same as SC2 I would expect.

BC2 - Should run 60fps at 1080p on highest in almost all scenarios.

My system is pretty similar (i5 760 @ 4GHz, 8GB Corsair Dominator @ 1600MHz) and I was using a GTX 460 1GB (Gainward GS GLH) which gave the above performance or a little bit lower, then I got a GTX 570 1.3GB (Gainward Phantom3) and the performance is the above/keeps a stable 60fps where my 460 would dip.
The 6870 should be about the same performance.

I can the list rest of my hardware if needed for a better comparison.

 

[ephemeross]

Go for an i7. It's only a 70 bucks more and way better performance. If you get the i5 now, you will regret it when BF 3 releases. You also don't need liquid cooling for a single 6870.

[edit] I have 6970 just running off of the PSU fan cooling with an additional 3.5 inch fan. ATI GPU's alot more heat efficient than Nvidia right now, so don't worry.

i5 is better value for money over the i7, plus there's not much point in getting an i7 unless you do a lot of video editing etc to make proper use of the hyper-threading. Gaming wise the i5 and i7 give pretty much the same performance (depends on overclocks too).

You're only presuming the liquid cooling is for the GPU.
I know I'm going to presume as well, but it's more than likely a stand-alone WC solution such as the H50/H70 etc for the CPU.
Of course either way, the water cooling greatly benefits the CPU for the overclocking potential more so than it would for the GPU unless that is going to be overclocked as well.

As for the GPU heat, it depends on the cooling used, so unless you're only referring to the reference design, there's not much point in mentioning that.

 

[Paragon Fury]

The liquid cooling is part of the package deal, not my choice. I would've gone for dual GPU's, but the motherboard only has the 3 PCI/e slots, and I fill that with the single GPU, the Sound Card and the Wireless.

And my putting BC2 was a mistake; even though I have BF2142 and BF2 for PC, I've gotten all the newer BFs for 360, and likely will continue to do so. Other than Guild Wars 2, there isn't an absolute ton coming out soon that I want. And I would get the i7, but it costs $300 extra; which at $2500 already, I don't want to be adding any more than I have to.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I'm not "building" it.

I will not ever build a computer, because I lack both the dexterity, grace and luck to do so.

 

[Paragon Fury]

The liquid cooling is part of the package deal, not my choice. I would've gone for dual GPU's, but the motherboard only has the 3 PCI/e slots, and I fill that with the single GPU, the Sound Card and the Wireless.

And my putting BC2 was a mistake; even though I have BF2142 and BF2 for PC, I've gotten all the newer BFs for 360, and likely will continue to do so. Other than Guild Wars 2, there isn't an absolute ton coming out soon that I want. And I would get the i7, but it costs $300 extra; which at $2500 already, I don't want to be adding any more than I have to.

If you are already at 2500 dollars, i suggest you build your own rig if you have not already ordered it. For 2100 dollars you can build a core i7 PC with two 6970's in SLI.

It's not hard to build a PC, and if it does not work out, tiger direct will take back opened components.

You can say its not hard to build a PC, and I could tell you its not hard to do any number things I know how to do, but that doesn't make it true.

 

[ephemeross]

The liquid cooling is part of the package deal, not my choice. I would've gone for dual GPU's, but the motherboard only has the 3 PCI/e slots, and I fill that with the single GPU, the Sound Card and the Wireless.

And my putting BC2 was a mistake; even though I have BF2142 and BF2 for PC, I've gotten all the newer BFs for 360, and likely will continue to do so. Other than Guild Wars 2, there isn't an absolute ton coming out soon that I want. And I would get the i7, but it costs $300 extra; which at $2500 already, I don't want to be adding any more than I have to.

The difference you'll experience will be overwhelming, it's going to be quite the shock when you start playing those games on the new PC compared to your laptop. Best have a change of underwear (or two!).

For future upgrades you'll only really have to update the graphics card to stay up to date with graphics requirements, the rest of the system should not cause a bottleneck for quite a while.

 

[intheweeds]

Go for an i7. It's only a 70 bucks more and way better performance. If you get the i5 now, you will regret it when BF 3 releases. You also don't need liquid cooling for a single 6870.

[edit] I have 6970 just running off of the PSU fan cooling with an additional 3.5 inch fan. ATI GPU's alot more heat efficient than Nvidia right now, so don't worry.

i5 is better value for money over the i7, plus there's not much point in getting an i7 unless you do a lot of video editing etc to make proper use of the hyper-threading. Gaming wise the i5 and i7 give pretty much the same performance (depends on overclocks too).

You're only presuming the liquid cooling is for the GPU.
I know I'm going to presume as well, but it's more than likely a stand-alone WC solution such as the H50/H70 etc for the CPU.
Of course either way, the water cooling greatly benefits the CPU for the overclocking potential more so than it would for the GPU unless that is going to be overclocked as well.

As for the GPU heat, it depends on the cooling used, so unless you're only referring to the reference design, there's not much point in mentioning that.

For what its worth, i also run an i5 760. It is in my opinion great value for the money. The only difference between high i5 and i7 is hyper-threading. Both are quad cores. I have it with 4G (i know) RAM and ATI 5770 and i find it runs most games on high settings just fine with 1920/1080 monitor.

 

[thelonewolf266]

Sounds like a pretty good rig the only thing I would change is the graphics card but that cause I hate Radeon cards because I've had bad experiences with them so I much prefer Nvidia so I don't actually know if that particular card is any good.

 

[Who Dares Wins]

So how exactly does one get a Sandy Bridge i5 that's also 2600? I am very confus.

OT: It "looks" good to me, but then again I don't know shit about computers. Look up some benchmarks.

I'm not "building" it.

I will not ever build a computer, because I lack both the dexterity, grace and luck to do so.

It's not so hard, really. You could pay someone to build it for you.

 

[ephemeross]

I'm not "building" it.

I will not ever build a computer, because I lack both the dexterity, grace and luck to do so.

Try this out:

Spoiler

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=176146&CatId=1886

Just buy another terabyte drive.

GT430..
Stop giving bad advice, really.

Paragon Fury also didn't ask for advice about building PC's etc, he asked if the upgrade he is getting would be mediocre or a lot better than his current gaming solution - which of course, it will be a hell of a lot better and quite the shock at first.

 

[ephemeross]

I'm not "building" it.

I will not ever build a computer, because I lack both the dexterity, grace and luck to do so.

Try this out:

Spoiler

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=176146&CatId=1886

Just buy another terabyte drive.

GT430..
Stop giving bad advice, really.

Paragon Fury also didn't ask for advice about building PC's etc, he asked if the upgrade he is getting would be mediocre or a lot better than his current gaming solution - which of course, it will be a hell of a lot better and quite the shock at first.

Are you blind? I told him in the same post to take the GT 430 out and replace it with an HD 6970. It would still cost him less than the number he quoted. The build he is getting is a ripoff.

You edited the post after. Congrats.

Sandybridge has better performance than the old i5/i7. Just because the number is bigger doesn't mean it's better.
8 because of hyper threading, but that's only needed for video editing etc, do some research. By the time HT actually makes as serious difference to mainstream gaming performance, even better processors such as Ivybridge will be far better anyway. Money wise his choice is much better.

 

[not_you]

One thing I noticed you didn't mention was RAM...

The standard for now-a-days is about 4Gb so, any number higher than that is good...
But as for the processor, as many people have said, it'd be better to go for the I7 over the I5...

Sure, you get a slower clock-speed, but in the end you gain an extra 2 cores (Or an extra 4 logical processors since it's Hyper-Threaded) which will enable better quality of games in the further off future...

I'm not saying that the I5 is a bad processor, it's brilliant for what it is, but, in the long run, the extra two cores is much better in the end....

 

[Paragon Fury]

It was 8GB RAM, twice what my laptop has.

 

[pokepuke]

Anything above $1500 is a waste of money, unless you are getting specialty equipment and not just high-end stuff with diminishing returns. That isn't including the monitor, if you want a fancy one.

i5 is great; ignore all the i7 bullshit. The only thing that matters is the number of cores.

SLI is not worth the hassle or the exorbitant price. Just get something at the top of the mid-range area. $200-$300. If you were even considering getting two cards, you might as well spring for a GTX570.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Since we seem to be having a bit of a pissing match here, I'll go ahead and post what the computer was going to be, and its price. If you wish to make a counter-argument, you must remember several things:

It must included at least an equal GPU.

It must included a dedicated Sound Card.

It must included Wireless.

If any compentents have to be swapped out or replaced, it must require minimal skill, comparable to Lego.


The build of the computer I was getting was:

Cost, $2,566 ($2,600)

PROCESSOR Intel® Core? i5-2300 (6MB Cache) Overclocked Turbo Boost to 3.3GHz edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English edit
CHASSIS COLOR Matte Stealth Black Chassis with 875W Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply edit
MEMORY 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz edit
VIDEO CARD 1GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon? HD 6870 edit
HARD DRIVE 2TB SATA 6Gb/s (7,200RPM) 32MB Cache edit
MEDIA READER Alienware® 19-in-1 Media Card Reader edit
MONITOR 21.5? Alienware AW2210 OptX? Full HD Gaming Monitor edit
SOUND CARD Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi? Titanium edit
WIRELESS & BLUETOOTH 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR USB Combo Adapter edit
OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (BDROM; DVD/CDBurner) and DVDRW edit
My Software & Accessories
PRE-INSTALLED GAMES Steam and Portal? Factory Installed edit
KEYBOARD Alienware TactX? Keyboard and Mouse Bundle edit
MOUSE Mouse included with Keyboard purchase edit
AUDIO OPTIONS Alienware TactX Headset edit
My Accessories
WARRANTY AND SERVICE 3 Year Advanced Service Plan edit
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2010 edit
ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM
Alienware Aurora-R3 Alienware Aurora Desktop
COOLING OPTION Alienware? High-Performance Liquid Cooling
Adobe Reader Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader
AVATAR Alienhead 3D
AUTOMATIC UPDATES Automatic Updates: Enabled

 

[intheweeds]

Go for an i7. It's only a 70 bucks more and way better performance. If you get the i5 now, you will regret it when BF 3 releases. You also don't need liquid cooling for a single 6870.

[edit] I have 6970 just running off of the PSU fan cooling with an additional 3.5 inch fan. ATI GPU's alot more heat efficient than Nvidia right now, so don't worry.

i5 is better value for money over the i7, plus there's not much point in getting an i7 unless you do a lot of video editing etc to make proper use of the hyper-threading. Gaming wise the i5 and i7 give pretty much the same performance (depends on overclocks too).

You're only presuming the liquid cooling is for the GPU.
I know I'm going to presume as well, but it's more than likely a stand-alone WC solution such as the H50/H70 etc for the CPU.
Of course either way, the water cooling greatly benefits the CPU for the overclocking potential more so than it would for the GPU unless that is going to be overclocked as well.

As for the GPU heat, it depends on the cooling used, so unless you're only referring to the reference design, there's not much point in mentioning that.

For what its worth, i also run an i5 760. It is in my opinion great value for the money. The only difference between high i5 and i7 is hyper-threading. Both are quad cores. I have it with 4G (i know) RAM and ATI 5770 and i find it runs most games on high settings just fine with 1920/1080 monitor.

i7 has 8 processor streams, i5 only has 4.

I think you'll find they have four logical cores and hyperthread to 8. As the guy above said, hyperthreading is not as important in gaming as the two will give similar performance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)

 

[shado_temple]

Other than the fact that Alienware tends to have less bang for your buck than other builders, the setup looks rather fine to me.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Well, perhaps its because I'm going a bit insane, but I decided to resurrect my old "If I was going to build a PC" Wish List. After putting everything together, the only things I still need are a compatible CPU, Motherboard and Case. But other than that, monitor, parts and programs have come in under $1,700 so far.

So I'll post a link to the list here, and I need a CPU, Motherboard and Case to tie it all together. (Ignore the games while you're on the list, since I won't be getting them with the system at the time I order).

PC Parts List [http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/36EC8TH5821QI/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go]

 

[The_Healer]

Get an i7, lose the liquid cooling, get a 6950.

Dance.