Hey all, im sure if you have seen afew of my threads lately all ive been posting is help and opinions on what to get. The reason is we (the family) are finnally moving to a new house after many years of working towards it. And we are getting a new PC, new everything, plus im making a cockpit out of MDF too and going to have my own space for that.

What i was asking, i am getting a new PC but am customizing it completely for performance, and i was wondering if people could give me a good idea, or if possible, the best specs out so far.

Stuff like OS, graphics/video cards, memory, HDD etc.

Is W7 the way to go these days or still Vista? and 32-bit? or 64? with which OS?

With video cards, id perfer an nVidia card, but i really have no idea what the best is, and what is needed for it to run to its max performance.

Would anyone be able to come up with a spec list of the best pc that could be put together? That would all run well together. I would love to help out in some other way for whoever, if possible? :S (design?)

Thanks

I don't know much about PCs but I can say Win7 Ultimate 64 bit and 4 gb ram should do the trick with a decent graphics card like a ATI Sapphire HD4850 512MB and a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 thats about all I know


o yea and a 750 watt power suply

people will add stuff later

If you plan to play current & future games I would what t'll january 2010. Big changes in pc hardware. Direct x 11 GPU's. current Direct x 10.1, Also PCI xpress will be 3.0 with 1GB/s per lane. Current PCI xpress 2.0 at 500 MB/s per lane. And of course new motherboards. Windows 7 64 bit a must have. If you are going to play current and older games than windows 7 64 bit, GPU with atleast 512MB, 4 gb ram, quad core cpu of at least 3.0 mhz ( alot of newer games are quad core hogs LoL ), & as far as HDD the velociraptor 300 GB 10,000RPM with 16MB buffer ( worth every penny ) is smokeing fast.

Quote from JR Cosworth :

...velociraptor 300 GB 10,000RPM with 16MB buffer ( worth every penny ) is smokeing fast.

Exactly what I ordered today. My OS HD has just died !

Quote from JR Cosworth :

If you plan to play current & future games I would what t'll january 2010. Big changes in pc hardware. Direct x 11 GPU's. current Direct x 10.1, Also PCI xpress will be 3.0 with 1GB/s per lane. Current PCI xpress 2.0 at 500 MB/s per lane. And of course new motherboards. Windows 7 64 bit a must have. If you are going to play current and older games than windows 7 64 bit, GPU with atleast 512MB, 4 gb ram, quad core cpu of at least 3.0 mhz ( alot of newer games are quad core hogs LoL ), & as far as HDD the velociraptor 300 GB 10,000RPM with 16MB buffer ( worth every penny ) is smokeing fast.

wat

+ 2TB 7200rpm will be faster than 300GB 10000RPM because of higher density. (So will do even 640GB 7200rpm).

faster at sequential read/write, but slower at normal usage which is access to lots of files all over the place.

If you have background fragmentation monitor like O&O Defrag has, the normal usage of 7200rpm drive will be faster aswell.

defrag is one thing, different files at different positions on the drive is another thing.

the minimum/maximum latency of a drive is determined by the period of its rotation.

7200rpm-> 1 rotation every 8.333ms
10000rpm, 1 rot every 6ms

can't get away from that

it's a physical limitation

Yes, but 1 rotation at 2TB drive has much more data than 1 rotation at 300GB drive..

i said latency, not throughput

Latency matters only if you have a bunch of small files... Games, movies, music, etc are big files.

only when reading or writing a huge file the drive reads/writes sequentialy. in every other case, it's jumping all over the place. even then, the file has to be in one piece.

the entire drive is 'a bunch of small files' anyway, drivers, config files, dlls, programs, etcetc. even many games have lots of small files instead of huge ones. look at lfs as a quick example.

anyway, whatever floats your boat

why LFS as example?

A lot of gamers use Steam, which has ~3-5 ~1GB .gcf files for each game.

you think those files are accessed sequentially, from start to finish?

If you don't mind spending the money, do a Quad Sli setup like mine, you'll never regret it. If you prefer ATI wait they're dropping the 5 series very soon.

Quote from george_tsiros :

you think those files are accessed sequentially, from start to finish?

Every file is not fragmented. At least not for me.

Quote from DHRammstein :

If you don't mind spending the money, do a Quad Sli setup like mine, you'll never regret it. If you prefer ATI wait they're dropping the 5 series very soon.

Four GTX 295's?

(2) BFG NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 H2O 3584MB ThermoIntelligence [Quad] SLI |

there

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17571

This is a much better and more comprehensive guide than the posts above. They have four different types of builds on there ranging in price and performance; you'll be more interested in the sweeter spot and the double stuff workstation. Definitely worth a read.

Quote from Shadowww :

Every file is not fragmented. At least not for me.

This is not a fragmentation issue.

Even if a file is not fragmented, a program access it "randomly" to read only the information it needs (seeks to the point the information resides, and then reads just what's important). This scenario is the most common (let's safely say 95% of common home/workstation computer work...)*. So latency is far more important than throughput!

Today's hard disks hits the physical limits and are just like those from 5 years ago (except for price ). In fact lowering the latency of hard disks was one of the main challenges in electrical engineering of our times, and SSDs are a breath of fresh air.

*The only time a file is read sequentially is when you play a movie file or listen to an mp3, without seeking!

someone who gets it O_O

a miracle?

Quote from george_tsiros :

someone who gets it O_O

a miracle?

Actually it's not a miracle, I'm a bachelor in Computer Science

Quote from DHRammstein :

If you don't mind spending the money, do a Quad Sli setup like mine, you'll never regret it. If you prefer ATI wait they're dropping the 5 series very soon.

You do realize that your CPU can't keep up with follow those GTX 295, right ?

Quote from DHRammstein :

If you don't mind spending the money, do a Quad Sli setup like mine, you'll never regret it. If you prefer ATI wait they're dropping the 5 series very soon.

Tri SLI and Tri CF scale better than quad.


OP should just get a 5850. Though he hasnt posted in his thread since the OP...

Quote from PLAYAPIMP :

I don't know much about PCs but I can say Win7 Ultimate 64 bit and 4 gb ram should do the trick with a decent graphics card like a ATI Sapphire HD4850 512MB and a Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 thats about all I know


o yea and a 750 watt power suply

people will add stuff later

C'mon.. 750W for Q9300 and HD4850? You don't what are you talking about.

With an enermax 550W, my friend has a Q9550, 4gb ram, gtx260 like mine, 2x raptors 74gb raid0, 2xseagate 1.5TB, armor+ and 6 coolers on it,plus neons. And works perfect.

750W for I7, not for quad.

the psu is the component that usually dies first in a system, due to high strain on its components. it's the only analog (electronicaly speaking) component in a system and the closer you run it to its specs, the sooner it will die.

far better to have a psu that is too big for your system rather than edging towards the lowest you can get that still can handle it. i have a 130 W gpu, a 130 W cpu, 4 GB of 666 MHz ddr2, two HDDs and 5 12 cm fans. that's about 300 W peak. according to you i should get a 400 W psu?

your friend is risking a lot.

Quote :

750W for I7, not for quad.

huhuhu
you think there is such a big difference in power consumption between a core 2 quad and a i7 chip? it's a 50 W difference, generally. Some c2q have higher TDP than some i7 (q6600 is 105 W, i7 860 is 95 W...)