Topic: Building a new PC (Read 1767 times)

[SJ]Cooter · « **on:** December 04, 2008, 07:24:45 pm »

Well I got hired on at the place I was temping at, so now it's time too build a new gaming rig.This is the stuff I ordered so far, Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case, CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory ,Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor , ASUS P6T Deluxe/OC Palm LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard ,EVGA 01G-P3-1280-AR GeForce GTX 280 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card. Looking at a 1200W power supply, WD harddrives (80G and 750G) I don't know what kind of DVD/Drive,Burner to get, if I should get a seperate drive and burner or a combination and I need a Windows XP OS or would I be better off getting Vista now? I"ve heard the stories about Vista, some people say it's better then XP and some say it still sucks ass so I'm cofused and need help or advise on the OS. I will probably get a sound card not far down the road too. Any suggestions for DVD Drive/Burner would be appreciated. BTW, how do I get my posts to show a nice list?

[SJ]DRokK · « **Reply #1 on:** December 04, 2008, 07:31:29 pm »

mmm sounds a nice rig mate. yes Vista still suck big fat ass (imo).
dvd burners are 10 a penny these days m8 so just grab a cheap one locally, keep recipt and if it fails return it. as for getting your list all neat
the
return
key
is
your
friend :biggrin:

[SJ]Cooter · « **Reply #2 on:** December 04, 2008, 07:39:59 pm »

Thanks
for
the
quick
response
DRokk.

[SJ]JuneBug · « **Reply #3 on:** December 04, 2008, 08:08:54 pm »

Vista has been OK for me but I won't say that is what you want... IMO- XP SP2 would be less of a hassle by far.

I do think though in order for you to utilize all 6 Gigs of RAM the OS will need to be 64 Bit as 32 Bit OS can see that ram but will only use a max of 3 GIGS.

Hope this of some help.

[SJ]Byron · « **Reply #4 on:** December 04, 2008, 08:13:50 pm »

or you could
get all fancy
with
bullet
points

:biggrin:

Code: [Select]


[list][li]or you could[/li][li]get all fancy[/li][li]with[/li][li]bullet[/li][li]points[/li][/list]

[SJ]kramer5 · « **Reply #5 on:** December 04, 2008, 08:20:42 pm »

I'd agree with skipping on vista and going with the 64bit version of XP. I'm fairly confident tht vista will eventually be tamed but why pay for it to be a tester.

As far as what brand of dvd burner? They're all pretty much the same. I favor the samsungs, good features good price. I've used the combo drives for years and not had issues. I used to like lite-on alot but they got very cheep feeling and sounding over the years. I used sony for a long while untill samsung came out, decided to try one and kept with em. The ones I use have lightscribe but I've never used it

. The disks are too expensive. I've also never burned a dual layer dvd on mine so I don't have any info on how well that works. The dvd/cd reader player burner part works fine.

That system sounds like a killer enjoy and have fun building it!

[SJ]DenDanger · « **Reply #6 on:** December 04, 2008, 08:50:29 pm »

My understanding is that supposedly XP dies use the extra gig to run the O.S. and it just doesn't "show up"

Wouldn't 64 bit limit hardware/software etc?

[SJ]kramer5 · « **Reply #7 on:** December 04, 2008, 09:05:59 pm »

I've heard that too but I don't think that's correct.

Here's my Take, 32bit XP has a 4GB memory "brick wall" meaning that it can only address a total of 4GB of memory. That includes any memory. Video ram system ram etc.

It's gonna subtract approx what it find in video ram from the system ram, in modern terms this means approx 3GB of the 4 GB installed in system ram is available for use. That being said, does it make a noticeable and or useable difference for you. Maybe maybe not.

I run 32bit XP on all the stuff I own and build to sell. Everything has 4GB of system ram in it and video ram of at least 512 sometimes more. Being modern machines, theyre fast. Fast as heck. Do I miss the 1GB of ram? nope.

Hardware Software and driver support can be an issue in the XP 64bit world, but it's gotten alot better. The good news is that it's easy to find out. Go to the mfg's website and see if there's a driver. Barring that google search for it and see what the users of said hardware/ software say.

It's your call and your dough. If you wanna run vista that's fine too.You've got a pretty big service pack released by MS in your favor plus all the units that have been sold since Vista's release are out there and working.

For my money I see vista as a twin of windows ME. An interim OS release that's just not up to snuff. When I beta tested it and ran it in my home environment it brought me nothing in benefits. Everything that came with it was a hassle. I spent hours looking up workarounds for stuff that should have been straightforward and simple.

It ran the hardware it was installed on just fine, altho it taxed the heck out of it just to show a desktop. Printer sharing and network file transfers sucked. The security stuff was a pain. The visual look was already outdated to me, looking like a bad copy of years old linux environments.

It sucked up a lot of resources to give me nothing and eventually went in the bin. I got it free and still didn't want it.

EDIT: wow that was long

. Short version. I work with PC's that use Vista and the various flavors of XP every day. I've never seen a PC that had vista that did anything better than and XP box. In the past that wasn't true comparing 98 to 2000, or 2000 to XP. The only time I've seen a comparison like this is in 98 to ME or 2000/XP to ME meaning ME was a turd compared to what else was out there.

[SJ]Kristof Huyck · « **Reply #8 on:** December 04, 2008, 11:59:11 pm »

I use Vista 64bit on my game pc, Vista 32bit on my laptop and XP 32bit on my 'regular' pc and I certainly would not compare Vista with Windows ME.

I mean ME was 90% the same as Win98SE, and the other 10% contained some very bad code

. But aside that fact it was also released in about the same timeframe as Windows 2000, which was the OS of the future (designed with multi user environments and networks - internet in mind) It was pretty obvious which was the better choice back in those days.

Almost every OS has some issues when they're launched, also WinXP has had it's issues but at the time of the launch of Vista is was become a very stable OS with no big flaws really. Vista just isn't a big revolution, but neither was Windows XP in fact (it's a Windows 2000 with a different GUI

)
Only difference is that at the launch of WinXP there were still a lot of users who used 98SE or ME as Windows 2000 was not targeted at home users.

I use Vista 64bit on my game cumputer for almost 2 years now and while initially there were indeed some drivers lacking or some programs refused to work properly - most important was the one for the Logitech G25! - the situation now is very different and I can't think of any issues I had the last year really.

I would not really recommend WinXP 64bit, I mean if you buy a 64bits OS you're already taking a risc (not very high anymore, but still) that some things might not be supported or will not be well supported, so you can take a little bit 'more risc' by buying Vista 64bit instead. Vista is even cheaper to buy and comes in 4 possible flavors while WinXP 64 bit is only targeted at bussiness users as there is only a 'Pro' version available in one possible language (which in your case isn't much of an issue of course)

[SJ]Cooter · « **Reply #9 on:** December 05, 2008, 06:31:54 am »

O.K. now I'm even more confused. More then usual.

But I did get my case and memory today. :biggrin:

[SJ]Peter Enqvist · « **Reply #10 on:** December 05, 2008, 06:47:39 am »

I prefer XP pro over Vista, but if you want to go with 6GB of Ram then I have to agree with Kristof that 64bit Vista would be a better choice. Personally, I'd go with 3GB of Ram and 32 bit XP Pro. (I thought it was a 3GB limit on 32bit OS's, not 4GB, but I could be wrong :think:)

[SJ]Cato Larsen · « **Reply #11 on:** December 05, 2008, 06:56:43 am »

Quote from: [SJ]Peter Enqvist on December 05, 2008, 06:47:39 am

I prefer XP pro over Vista, but if you want to go with 6GB of Ram then I have to agree with Kristof that 64bit Vista would be a better choice. Personally, I'd go with 3GB of Ram and 32 bit XP Pro. (I thought it was a 3GB limit on 32bit OS's, not 4GB, but I could be wrong :think:)

Well, I have 4GB in but XP sees only 3,2 of them so you are right there. In a way anyway.

Might be that it uses all of the 4gb if required. I dunno. I am not THAT much into all these things.

[SJ]kramer5 · « **Reply #12 on:** December 05, 2008, 07:54:50 am »

[SJ]Cooter · « **Reply #13 on:** December 07, 2008, 06:21:02 pm »

I'm checking up on harddrives but should I get SATA or IDE? Does it matter? Oh yeah , what about the cache?

[SJ]kramer5 · « **Reply #14 on:** December 07, 2008, 07:08:19 pm »

No reason not to go SATA, the performance is better (mostly) and even it it's the same as an IDE, the smaller SATA cable means better airflow inside the case. Also, a lot of the modern motherboards only have 1 IDE connector on them, that means the possibility of the optical drive and the hard drive sharing the same cable and that's not a great config. It works but can bring in bottlenecks because the transferes will happen at the rate of the slowest drive on the cable, meaning the optical drive.

I'd also go for a Sata DVD/CD drive burner. I've had issues in a couple of instances but generally they're fine. Smaller cables, easier to route (altho sometimes depending on the case I've had to mount the dvd drive in the lowest bay to get the cable to reach the mobo.)

Cache? The bigger the better, most decent affordable Sata drive have what, 16MB cache now?

I use lots of these, they're 32MB cache, quiet, roomy, and cheap

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288

[SJ]JuneBug · « **Reply #15 on:** December 07, 2008, 07:40:59 pm »

Quote from: [SJ]Peter Enqvist on December 05, 2008, 06:47:39 am

I prefer XP pro over Vista, but if you want to go with 6GB of Ram then I have to agree with Kristof that 64bit Vista would be a better choice. Personally, I'd go with 3GB of Ram and 32 bit XP Pro. (I thought it was a 3GB limit on 32bit OS's, not 4GB, but I could be wrong :think:)

It is kind of confusing with this... you can certainly put 4 GIGS of RAM into your machine and the BIOS will show you 4 GIGS because the hardware can recognize that however a 32 Bit OS can only see or use 3 of the 4 which is just the software, thats all it can see and use. You can see this by opening Task Manager and look at your Performance under the 'Physical Memory (MB)' section, it will only show 3096 MB (3Gigs).

[SJ]Kristof Huyck · « **Reply #16 on:** December 07, 2008, 07:44:42 pm »

Well, I don't see much reason to not go 64bits these days. 4 gigs of memory is about the standard for desktops today and it will only increase.

[SJ]kramer5 · « **Reply #17 on:** December 07, 2008, 08:09:20 pm »

Quote from: [SJ]Kristof Huyck on December 07, 2008, 07:44:42 pm

Well, I don't see much reason to not go 64bits these days. 4 gigs of memory is about the standard for desktops today and it will only increase.

Especially if the OS needs at least 2 Gigs just to show a background image and shadows under the icons

[SJ]Kristof Huyck · « **Reply #18 on:** December 07, 2008, 09:56:13 pm »

Quote from: [SJ]kramer5 on December 07, 2008, 08:09:20 pm

Quote from: [SJ]Kristof Huyck on December 07, 2008, 07:44:42 pm
Well, I don't see much reason to not go 64bits these days. 4 gigs of memory is about the standard for desktops today and it will only increase.

Especially if the OS needs at least 2 Gigs just to show a background image and shadows under the icons

Any 64bits OS needs a bit more memory than it's 32bits variant, but I guess you're referring to Vista 64bits which uses indeeds a bit more memory than it's ancestor

I don't think that companies like Samsung, hynix and elpida have complains about that fact and neither do the regular computer stores I guess

Anyway, the situation is not that dramatic imo, Vista runs just fine with 2 gigs for most users, just like XP does with 1 gig. With today's memory prices in mind 1gig more is almost a non-issue.

[SJ]kramer5 · « **Reply #19 on:** December 07, 2008, 10:10:50 pm »

Quote from: [SJ]Kristof Huyck on December 07, 2008, 09:56:13 pm

Quote from: [SJ]kramer5 on December 07, 2008, 08:09:20 pm
Quote from: [SJ]Kristof Huyck on December 07, 2008, 07:44:42 pm
Well, I don't see much reason to not go 64bits these days. 4 gigs of memory is about the standard for desktops today and it will only increase.

Especially if the OS needs at least 2 Gigs just to show a background image and shadows under the icons

Any 64bits OS needs a bit more memory than it's 32bits variant, but I guess you're referring to Vista 64bits which uses indeeds a bit more memory than it's ancestor
I don't think that companies like Samsung, hynix and elpida have complains about that fact and neither do the regular computer stores I guess
Anyway, the situation is not that dramatic imo, Vista runs just fine with 2 gigs for most users, just like XP does with 1 gig. With today's memory prices in mind 1gig more is almost a non-issue.

Nope I mean vista in any flavor and they way it hammers resources.

Roll on my friend, I don't agree at all but if it works for you have at it.

[SJ]Stick · « **Reply #20 on:** December 07, 2008, 11:56:03 pm »

Theres a similar thread running over at another forum I visit, and I thought I would quote a guy over there:

"The most popular reason I hear people cite for not liking Vista is "it's a system whore."
There are two common causes: crappy computers + unrealistic expectations and ignorance.

Some people expect Vista to work with Aero and all the other eye candy on their 2002 Dell with integrated video and the complain when it runs like crap. Do you expect a Ford Taurus to win the Daytona 500? I've installed Vista Ultimate on a Latitude C400 and it ran pretty **** good. It was an 800 mhz P3 with 512 of ram and about 4mb of video ram (if that) and with eye candy turned off, it was as snappy as can be. Will XP as a rule run better than Vista on old systems? Yes, but the difference is less significant the more recent your hardware is.

Secondly, people saying Vista is a system whore don't know what the heck they're talking about. They open task manage and see a gig of utilized RAM and freak out failing to understand what superfetch does. Your RAM is full because Vista watches what you use and when and then preloads it into RAM for you. This is good because programs will start faster. I hear you asking, "Well, what if I want to run something else!? My RAM is full, Vista sucks!" Simply, the prefetched data is discarded (near instantly) and your program of choice is loaded like normal."

As you can tell I have Vista Ultimate x64, and love it. Performance is great, all my hardware installs perfectly and all my games run, I personally think its more stable than XP, and its definitely more secure.

[SJ]Pierre61 · « **Reply #21 on:** December 08, 2008, 12:21:33 am »

I'm a simple man. XP gives better frame rates in games than Vista ... that sums up my entire knowledge of the relative merits of Microsoft operating systems

[SJ]DenDanger · « **Reply #22 on:** December 08, 2008, 12:25:49 am »

I was reading an article recently in which the writer said people complaining about Vista were complaining about stuff from a year ago and should "get over it". LOL. My understanding is as you said, if one HAS the memory to run it.......run it.

I can't (run Vista) and I like XP (and only recently went to THAT!! Haha) so have no real intention of it, but thought the observations were interesting along with a story he was reporting whereby Microsoft had been having people try the new "Mojave" O.S. saying it was to replace Vista. This was known as "The Mojave project".

After they oohed and aahed MS then revealed they had been using Vista all along! hahahaaaa. The abovementioned writer disagreed with the tactic but myself, I found it really funny!!

I'll not judge it until I have reason to base those judgements on something. I recall XP having many complaints too......

But I was using '98 then....

[SJ]Pierre61 · « **Reply #23 on:** December 08, 2008, 12:31:56 am »

I remember the XP debates too Den, there were many folk who swore that 98SE was the ultimate OS and wouldn't even consider moving to XP.
I do understand the arguments for and against Vista, but it's clearly a mass user OS and requires considerable tuning for the 'gamer' minority.

[SJ]kramer5 · « **Reply #24 on:** December 08, 2008, 12:53:42 am »

I have all the needed horsepower to run it, and run it well on 3 machines. It still sucks

.

Author Topic: Building a new PC (Read 1767 times)