Questions for a new PC

[dirk45]

Ok, it's time to buy a new PC for me. My last one is 4-5 years old and while I can still run LotRO on it, I'd prefer to do it with nice graphics. Target is to build a computer that is able to run most games on medium settings for the next three years I don't really want to meddle with hardware if I can prevent it.

OS will be Windows 7 once it's out and Windows Vista before. But there are some topics I need to decide on and I'd gladly ask for your help.

1. AMD Phenom II or Intel Core2Duo or Intel Core2Quad?
While I would go for the AMD Phenom II because I think that within 3 years most games will support more than 2 cores are there any reasons why I should go for Intel?

2. SSD or not?
Should I use an SSD as starting Partition and for LotRO? Or should I spend the money on a good RAID system? If RAID, which RAID would you recommend for speed?

3. AMD 4870 or NVidia GTX 260?
I won't go for SLI or any other two graphics cards combos. So which one would you recommend? Or is the GTX 280 worth the money?

Additional Question - Should I wait for USB 3.0?

 

[Oopsie]

1. Take the Phenom II. A much better bang for your buck.
2. I agree with mister Tea.
3. Get the radeon 4870. It's a little bit less powerfull, will work wonders on a so called "dragon" platform (amd MoBo chipset, graphics card chipset and CPU).

As for the USB, not worth the wait in my opinion.

 

[Signa]

1: Go AMD if you ONLY do gaming. If you do any sort of processing like video compression/editing, or winrar, Intel has better performing chips. IF that is the case, I would wait for the cheapish i5 to come out in October. I personally am going for the i7 in May when my current PC turns 3. The differences are a little unclear to me between the i5 and i7, but I'll let you do the research if you think Intel is a better choice for your needs.

2: I don't see how it is worth it. It might be worth it if you get a small one for your OS and a few other programs, and then a second HDD for installing your games on. I did see a video of a 32 drive RAID with SSDs and it was very impressive. They didn't say how much the rig cost, but I'm sure it was retardedly expensive.

3: One thing to always remember about Nvidia is that they have been allowing your video card to act as a physics processor. I'm not sure how much that helps when you have a nice multicore processor, but I would think it would be beneficial regardless. I used to be a huge ATI fanboy, but they have failed me in recent years. I'm currently working off of a 8800GT and I couldn't be happier. I doubt you will be very disappointed in your choice, whatever it is.

No USB 3. I thought to wait myself, but then I realized how long and expensive it would be to wait for that upgrade. I'm sure it will be in full swing by the time you get your next PC. I doubt you will miss it much before then anyways.

 

[oliveira8]

Here consult this thread.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.105715

 

[Horticulture]

What's your budget?

 

[CommodoreSven]

Definitely AMD to number one. Cheap and perfectly capable. Solid State Drives are a no at this time. The 4870, like the Phenom, is a cost-effective solution that works just as well as (if not better than) similarly-performing hardware by the competition.

EDIT: If you want to get that PC ASAP, Vista is not necessarily a total no-no. I'm sure that, if you're willing to spend that extra for the new OS, you can easily make the upgrade from Vista to 7 when the final version makes its appearance.

 

[dirk45]

Thanks to you all, especially for the AnandTech link which is VERY informative.
- My budget is about 1000?, but if I had an improvement that's really worth it I wouldn't mind spending 200? more. Hardware prices in Germany are a bit higher than their US counterparts so you might calculate with about 1100 US$.
- I brought the SSD into the topic because LotRO (as many MMOs) is very dependent on the disk speed. When you enter a zone with lots of players the system needs to load tons of textures and these textures depend on the other players running around. Thus you need to be able to load lots of files very quickly, otherwise you have the effect I have currently, one character is popping up after the other and it takes ten to twenty seconds until everything is ready.
So if somebody could elaborate on RAID, it would be nice.
- I need Vista or Windows 7 for DX10. When I buy a new Gaming PC, I don't want to be stopped by an old OS.

 

[S.H.A.R.P.]

2. SSD or not?
Should I use an SSD as starting Partition and for LotRO? Or should I spend the money on a good RAID system? If RAID, which RAID would you recommend for speed?

I don't have any good answers for the other questions, but I think I can give a reasonable answer on this.
Well not exactly, since I don't have a SSD myself. I do however have an awesome C: partition, where I installed windows and all my games. I have two WD VelociRaptors 150 GB in Raid 0, and it is truly wonderful. I don't have any benchmarks, but I did notice significant improvement over my previous HD.

To elaborate on RAID.. There are different kinds of RAID configurations. With the help of a certain driver, you tell your hard drives to work together in a certain way. With RAID 0 (what I have), I basically tell my two Hard drives that they are one larger HD. The benefit of this is that when I save something on my disc, half of the data is put on disc A, and the other on disc B. Since it uses both the same discs at the same time, it is significantly faster than on one disc. This also is true for reading most data, since the read speed of two discs is used at the same time.
The drawback is that if you break one HD, then ALL your data is lost. Therefore I made sure no essential data is left on C:\, by for example remapping the My Documents folder to another disc.

To read more on RAID, go here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks].

 

[Gruthar]

Thanks to you all, especially for the AnandTech link which is VERY informative.
- My budget is about 1000?, but if I had an improvement that's really worth it I wouldn't mind spending 200? more. Hardware prices in Germany are a bit higher than their US counterparts so you might calculate with about 1100 US$.
- I brought the SSD into the topic because LotRO (as many MMOs) is very dependent on the disk speed. When you enter a zone with lots of players the system needs to load tons of textures and these textures depend on the other players running around. Thus you need to be able to load lots of files very quickly, otherwise you have the effect I have currently, one character is popping up after the other and it takes ten to twenty seconds until everything is ready.
So if somebody could elaborate on RAID, it would be nice.
- I need Vista or Windows 7 for DX10. When I buy a new Gaming PC, I don't want to be stopped by an old OS.

As far as 1 and 3 are concerned, I would go with whoever has the better deal when you start looking at parts. I would suggest i7, but your budget may be a bit short for that. I would also not sweat USB 3.0, unless you do a lot of large file transfers to/from external hard drives. There's always firewire as an alternative, if that is a concern.

Given the cheap price of hard drives these days, I find RAID to be a lot more attractive than it used to be. I agree with everyone else on saying that you should give SSDs a pass, for now. You can have better transfers with a RAID array for less than the cost of a decent SSD.

I don't know how much you know about RAID arrays, so I'll start with the basics. Every hard drive in your array should be of identical size and performance. It doesn't have to be, strictly speaking, but any difference between the two is going to mean some wasted performance. If you just plan on having two hard drives, your choices are either RAID 0 or RAID 1.

RAID 0 basically divides the data up evenly between all your hard drives (AKA striping). So if you have two hard drives, this means double the performance and double the storage capacity. The drawback to RAID 0 is that you multiply the risk of complete data loss with each additional disk. With two drives, the risk of losing everything is doubled. This is because if one hard drive dies, everything is lost. Remember that the data is divided amongst all drives in the array; each holds a piece of the puzzle, as it were.

RAID 1 has every drive be an exact mirror copy of each other. In this case, every drive you add to the array increases redundancy and performance, but unfortunately the storage capacity remains the same. If you had two 500 GB drives and put them in RAID 1, you would have double the performance, but only 500 GB of storage space for the whole array. The benefit is if one of those drives dies, you haven't lost any of your data.

Which one you choose is up to you. My personal preference for gaming machines is RAID 0, with the caveat that the things I would like to keep for a long time (music, movies, disc images, etc) are stored on a separate disk outside the array, or another computer.

Edit: as far as the OS is concerned, if the Win7 beta is any indication, Win7 should be a better OS than Vista. I like 7 far better than Vista, anyway. The downside is it's going to cost more; I would expect the price of Vista to drop once Win7 ships later this summer.

 

[Oopsie]

Thanks to you all, especially for the AnandTech link which is VERY informative.
- My budget is about 1000?, but if I had an improvement that's really worth it I wouldn't mind spending 200? more. Hardware prices in Germany are a bit higher than their US counterparts so you might calculate with about 1100 US$.
- I brought the SSD into the topic because LotRO (as many MMOs) is very dependent on the disk speed. When you enter a zone with lots of players the system needs to load tons of textures and these textures depend on the other players running around. Thus you need to be able to load lots of files very quickly, otherwise you have the effect I have currently, one character is popping up after the other and it takes ten to twenty seconds until everything is ready.
So if somebody could elaborate on RAID, it would be nice.
- I need Vista or Windows 7 for DX10. When I buy a new Gaming PC, I don't want to be stopped by an old OS.

If your current pc is 4-5 years old, you probably still use a IDE interface HDD. A SATAII HDD (which is more or less the standard these days) will resolve most of your problems.

Considering you have an amazing budget, be sure not to skip money on the case and power supply in favor of (for example) a "better" graphics card.

 

[Horticulture]

Thanks to you all, especially for the AnandTech link which is VERY informative.
- My budget is about 1000?, but if I had an improvement that's really worth it I wouldn't mind spending 200? more. Hardware prices in Germany are a bit higher than their US counterparts so you might calculate with about 1100 US$.

With that budget, you might even be able to manage a Core i7 build. Like you mentioned, prices vary from country to country, but using your price guideline I came up with this:

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202]
MoBo: Foxconn Renaissance [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186161]
Memory: 6 GB DDR3-1600 [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227388]
GPU: Radeon 4870 1 gig [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102825]
HDD: WD Black 640 [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319]
PSU: Corsair 650w [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005]
Optical: LG DVD+R [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136152]
Case: Antec 900 [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021]
=$1150

The price difference here between a high-end Phenom II build (955BE, 790FX, 4 gigs DDR3) as some have suggested here and that i7 is only about $80 (after the rebates). If prices in Germany are similar, the i7 is a better price/performance deal.

- I brought the SSD into the topic because LotRO (as many MMOs) is very dependent on the disk speed. When you enter a zone with lots of players the system needs to load tons of textures and these textures depend on the other players running around. Thus you need to be able to load lots of files very quickly, otherwise you have the effect I have currently, one character is popping up after the other and it takes ten to twenty seconds until everything is ready.

Adding RAM will likely help this more than faster hard drives. As long as you have enough system memory to store all the textures in RAM, you'll barely need to access your hard drive at all after loading the game. If you do decide you want an SSD, though, OCZ's Vertex [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227394] is well-reviewed and affordable, at least as far as SSDs go.

 

[dirk45]

With that budget, you might even be able to manage a Core i7 build. Like you mentioned, prices vary from country to country, but using your price guideline I came up with this:

An i7 build might definitely be in it, especially if I wait fot Windows 7 which might be out in Autumn. But then I might decide to go for a better graphics card like a GTX280 or GTX285 instead.