New Computer Advice

[Goldberg-Chessy]

I am shopping for a new desktop and think I know what I want except for a couple of details.

Processor(Intel i7-920) and memory(6gb tri-channel) are pretty set.

What I am unsure about are the vid card and Hard drive. Current vid card I am looking at is ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb. I know there are better ones but it fits in the system package and seems ok?
My main concern though is the hard drive. The 'customized' package only allows for a nice 7200. I know there are 10000 hard drives out there though and I am wondering if it is a big mistake to put together a nice system and not have the 10k?

Lastly, does anyone know for sure if the supposed 'gaming' nic cards that are approx $100 and up really do make a difference?

Ty in advance for any possible SOLID advice

 

[JoO]

For most things 7200 will be satisfactory. PERSONALLY I run 2 raptors in RAID 0 and it is a noticeable difference from my wifes similar build with a single 7200 hdd. As far as the video card I can't really comment on ATI, as I'm an Nvidia guy and I don't want to speak purely from my bias. There should be a wealth of information on toms hardware or similar benchmarking sites for you to compare cards to figure out which best suits your needs. I never bought into the gaming network cards. I figured maybe at best it would shave a few ms off. I figured if they really worked as well as they claimed you would hear alot more about them.

 

[phantus]

If all you play is UO then the vid is fine. If you play other stuff then go for something better. The HDD is fine. Like the other guy said if you aren't going to raid it don't worry about it. If you really want performance get a SSD hard drive and use it for OS. As for gaming nics, they are ********. They can't possibly make the path between you and the server any better and that is the biggest factor to speed there.

 

[Old Man of UO]

A couple additional points:
On the gaming NIC cards, the companies that make them say they work really well! But the reviews from actual testers say they really don't make much difference. They don't hurt anything, but your $100 could be better spent on other components.

If you are tight on money, you can also go with the newer ATI Radeon 4770 - 512MB for less than $100... it is almost as fast and sometimes faster than the 4850 (which I have and love). The 4870 can be found for about $170. Unless you go with anything bigger than a 24" monitor you won't notice the difference.

If HDD speed is a concern, grab an SSD hard drive for the main and two 500GB in a RAID. The price on the SSD's have dropped a lot and you can get a 64GB solid state for about $150 and a 120 GB for $300... still not cheap. But since you aren't going to buy the NIC card, you have the cash to pony up for it!

You didn't mention operating system, but I would suggest the 64 bit RC Windows 7 or Vista x64 since you'll have 6GB, otherwise you computer can use only 3GB.

 

[Kratos Aurion]

Lastly, does anyone know for sure if the supposed 'gaming' nic cards that are approx $100 and up really do make a difference?

Ty in advance for any possible SOLID advice

As long as your NIC/motherboard that come preinstalled with your current configuration are rated for gigabit data transfer speeds, then it shouldn't really make too much of a difference. "Gaming" stamped components are usually looked at as being the ultimate type of component you can use, but in reality you can find a boatload of alternative manufacture components that work as good and cheaper than stamped versions.

There are a ton of NICs out their from a lot of differen't providers. Just make sure it's rated for gigabit data transfer capabilities for newer ethernet standards/wireless standards (if its a wireless capable NIC) that will be coming out over the next few years.

As far as the HDD/Video Card goes, if you can't afford SSD, 7200 RPM is really all you need, unless you want to buy a 10k RPM drive which tend to be louder and more expensive. The video card will be fine in most instances. 512 is good enough, unless you want to buy a highend card that runs 1 gig, or buy two cheap cards and hyper-thread them to equal 1 gig (which I think is the best approach).

Really it just matters what you're using the computer for. If you only play 1 game, UO for example, those specs are probably 100x better than UOs requirements, and you shouldn't have any worries. But if you're a hardcore user and like to run multiple apps, highend software such as CADs and Photoshop etc, then maybe a 1gig vid card may be the better way to go for the long run. Just be sure to research the minimum requirements/recommended requirements of all the apps/software you use to be able to build a computer that BEST suits your needs versus dumping 3 grand into something that outperforms everything you do and is really a waste of money because you didn't need to spend that much to get the performance you require.

 

[superstang]

I really like this site:

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17102

The prices are all based around building your own system. You can select a system based on budget. They will automatically put all of the components in a newegg cart for you. They also have options if you prefer intel or amd. Check it out. It is great for semi-technicals like me.

Use the dropdown at the bottom of the page to see the different systems.

 

[Corpsecrank]

The 4850 is a great choice I just built a system for someone using that card and chose the witcher to test the cards ability it was pretty awesome.

Your wasting your money on 6GB of ram. In fact 4GB is a waste if your running a 32bit OS but even if you are running a 64bit OS your still wasting anything over 3GB because your never going to use the entire amount of ram installed not even close to it.

I frequently run both photoshop and flash at the same time while doing a bunch of other crap in the background and listening to music. It never uses a full 2gb of ram to do that and those are some seriously memory intensive programs.

Games generally use even less ram because they access video ram on your graphics card to handle the bulk of the load a game puts on your machine.

 

[Setnaffa]

1. Intel i7 920. Good Choice.
2. 6GB of Memory. Since you are going with more than 4GB, you are definitely going with XP64 or Vista64 since the 32-bit versions can't use more than 4GB. You might want to go with 12GB since you like Photoshop. You won't regret it if you can afford it (and memory is still the cheapest way to boost your system's performance). In fact the next version of Photoshop will require a 64-bit Windows OS (it won't run on a MAC in Mac mode), and will take advantage of any memory you throw in it.
3. ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb. Not a bad compromise. It's high-end enough to be a good card for a couple years, but not so outrageous as a top-end $500-$700 card; let alone a triple SLI configuration that would cost more than some entire rigs.
4. Hard Drive. I just tested a pair of Patriot Warp v3 64GB SSD drives in a RAID 0 and I must say they blew the doors off my old 10K Raptors. I was thoroughly impressed. They aren't cheap (about $195 each), but they make a great system drive. I just ordered 3 Western Digital 2TB Green Caviars for my data drive. I'm probably overdoing things, but the real point I'm trying to make is you should at least consider an SSD drive for you system drive. That's where all your applications and your OS will reside.
5. Skip the Gaming NIC. It's 90% marketing. With an Intel i7, you wouldn't even notice the difference.

Links:
Western Digital 2TB Green Drives: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576
Patriot Warp V3 SSD Drives: http://www.patriotmemory.com/produc...&prodline=8&group=Warp Series SSD v3&catid=21
Adobe Photoshop 64-bit: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adob...p/photoshop/pdfs/ps_cs3_64-bitsupport_FAQ.pdf

 

[Anakena]

A NIC can work, but it will depend on many factors. It does take the networking tasks from your OS. If you experiment bottleneck effects from your OS, then you may see a result by using a NIC. Since you plan to use one the fastest cpu on the market I suppose you won't really need a NIC.

 

[Old Man of UO]

...
Your wasting your money on 6GB of ram. In fact 4GB is a waste if your running a 32bit OS but even if you are running a 64bit OS your still wasting anything over 3GB because your never going to use the entire amount of ram installed not even close to it. ...

This is really bad advice. If you use an x64 bit OS, it does make a difference. Of all the components to spend extra money one, dollar-for-dollar more ram will get you the biggest boost.

 

[Harlequin]

Half correct actually, max addressable RAM in 32 bit OS like XP is slightly less than 4 GB. Vista 64 bit supports up to 128 mb. Depends on what OS Goldberg intends to use.

But yes, dollar for dollar, if you have less than max RAM the OS can support, it's the cheapest way to boost performance. Mainly due to disk swapping (windows uses hdd for virtual memory). Mechanical parts that requires physical movement (spinning and r/w arm in the hdd) are the bottleneck.

On that subject, personally, while I am jealous of people running SSDs *eyes setnaffa's SSDs*, imho, the technolgy's still a bit new. I'm not comfortable with the current projected limit on how many times each cell can be written to before it loses reliability. Windows does a fair bit of memory swapping esp if you don't have enough RAM. So lots of RAM is useful even if you use SSDs.

I suggest the OP use the 10k drives first, or if the vendor's customized system specs really don't allow the upgrade, get the 7200s. Wait for the next generation of SSDs, then swap in the SSDs for O/S and programs (and online games) you want to run fast. And use the 7200s for single player games and other less critical proggies.

Graphics cards wise, ATI has always been known for good cards that are well priced. Though I'd been using nvidia nowadays, so can't help you there.

The gaming NICs I don't use, but I'll give it a pass. From what I've read, they put in a processor that will optimize certain network packets (for proggies like teamspeak etc iirc by stripping useless info). But it doesn't affect your packets to the game server. Might be useful if you use these proggies so that you can devote more bandwidth to you game, but if you don't use these programs, I'm doubtful it'll help. However, if you are set on buying it anyways, let us know if there's a difference!

 

[Old Man of UO]

Half correct actually, max addressable RAM in 32 bit OS like XP is slightly less than 4 GB. Vista 64 bit supports up to 128 mb. Depends on what OS Goldberg intends to use....

This is correct, but nearly 1 GB is reserved for system use, so you effectively get just over 3 GB for program use. And I'm sure you meant 128 GB... heh

Either way, if you have more than 3 GB RAM, get either Vista x64 or the new Windows 7 64 bit. By the way, both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions will be on the purchased Windows 7 DVD.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

I think you have asked a question but I also think you need to provide better information.

If your gaming is going to be UO/UOKR/SA then your computer is overwhelming.

If you have other more demanding games to play then that would be worth knowing.

The 10K drive vs 7200 vs SSD tends to be a bit over rated. Again this kind of analysis requires better information. If a system is doing basically random access of a disk drive, then the 10K may OR MAY NOT make a difference. If your accessing large amounts of contiguous storage on a once in a "Cached LifeTime" then yes the 10K will make a difference.

One more thing, what ever drive you get, get the maximum amount of on board memory you can get (if your worried/concerned about disk performance) as one would hope the manufacture of the disk would have the disk caching algorithm tuned to the drive characteristic.

Part of all that extra memory ends up being disk cached data. Get enough of it and your game may fit entirely in the Cache.

A thing you can do is get a High End USB2.0 Flash Drive of a high end CF drive and have Vista/Windows 7 use it as a ReadyBoost drive.

With the announcement of Windows 7 being available 10/22/2009, Microsoft has also stated that any Vista purchased from the date of the announcement (last Thursday?) will be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7. So there would be very little reasons to go with XP.

 

[Old Man of UO]

... A thing you can do is get a High End USB2.0 Flash Drive of a high end CF drive and have Vista/Windows 7 use it as a ReadyBoost drive...

Flash drives have a limited life, and using them in ReadyBoost will shorten their life. The problem is that you can have only so many read-writes to each location, and eventually you will loose your memory table. The new CF's use load leveling software to improve this, but ReadyBoost makes hard use of them. In other words, don't depend on it, yet. Eventually this should be improved, but certainly a problem with older CF's are a no-no, and newer ones are better but not perfect.

Personally, the performance gain isn't worth it to me.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

... A thing you can do is get a High End USB2.0 Flash Drive of a high end CF drive and have Vista/Windows 7 use it as a ReadyBoost drive...

Flash drives have a limited life, and using them in ReadyBoost will shorten their life. The problem is that you can have only so many read-writes to each location, and eventually you will loose your memory table. The new CF's use load leveling software to improve this, but ReadyBoost makes hard use of them. In other words, don't depend on it, yet. Eventually this should be improved, but certainly a problem with older CF's are a no-no, and newer ones are better but not perfect.

Personally, the performance gain isn't worth it to me.

But that is also true of some of the SSD's for the same reason. Overall. paying $30US for a 16GB usb flash drive with, I think I have seen 35+ MB read and Write characteristics is a ..... good investment in my opinion.

I use a 4GB CF with 25MB R/W characters, one for each of my 2 gaminging computers. Microsoft has assured us that they space the writes out to prolong the device

 

[Old Man of UO]

But that is also true of some of the SSD's for the same reason. ...

HEH... this is probably getting too technical.


SSD's are a type of flash drive, but their read-write cycles are 1-5 million each address area before "wearing out," whereas a typical flash drive like CF cards are 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles. With the wear leveling software built into SSD's, they have about the same lifetime as a standard hard drive with movable read-write heads. I still say ReadyBoost is still a bad compared to other choices, until they improve standard flash drives.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

HEH... this is probably getting too technical.


SSD's are a type of flash drive, but their read-write cycles are 1-5 million each address area before "wearing out," whereas a typical flash drive like CF cards are 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles. With the wear leveling software built into SSD's, they have about the same lifetime as a standard hard drive with movable read-write heads. I still say ReadyBoost is still a bad compared to other choices, until they improve standard flash drives.

Hum, we are in disagreement with the 1K to 10K Write Cycles, the information I have on the CF's and the USB flash drives are the 1M+ Write Cycles. Now how that is achieved is not readily available. It may be on board management of Bad Blocks being remapped to set aside spares.

I know that both CF's have been in use no less than 8 months and no more than 15 months.

It occurs to me you may be referencing older technology. I think that if you reference newer technology, the kind that can put 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and I believe I have seen a 128GB USB Flash Drive/CF these devices can only be built using the most current technology. The same kind of technology that is used to make SSD, with an additional package of a SATAII or PATA interface.

 

[Setnaffa]

Thank goodness I only tested those Patriot Warp Drives (no buy) - one of the benefits of being a Client Engineer. Patriot now has its Torqx line of SSD's starting at 128GB that are possibly the fasted SSD's out there and come with a 10 YEAR WARRANTY.

 

[o2bavr6]

Hi Goldy.

If you don't mind saving money I would look at the Dell refurbished systems. They are dirt cheap and come with a warranty, as well as extended if you want.

On a side note, I have a 10K RPM Raptor drive and I love it and recommend it.

Like the other post, I'm an nVidia guy, too many driver problems with ATI. I have 2 gForce 7950's with 512 MB ram on each in SLi mode. Very tasty graphics

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/topics/global.aspx/arb/online/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/topics/global.aspx/arb/online/en/InventorySearch?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

Select PC choice and view availability.
http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/desktops/xps_gaming_desktops/ct.aspx?refid=xps_gaming_desktops&s=dfh&cs=22

 

[o2bavr6]

7. So there would be very little reasons to go with XP.

Isn't that what they said about Vista?

Vista was the first Microsoft OS since Win 3.11 for Work Groups that I didn't either Beta or have installed on my system day 1..... errr well Windows ME doesn't count as on OS it was more like a big pile of garbage. :loser:

I will wait again this time to see before upgrading although from what I hear they did it right this time. In the mean time XP rules!!

Edit:

I do hope you are correct

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Isn't that what they said about Vista?

Vista was the first Microsoft OS since Win 3.11 for Work Groups that I didn't either Beta or have installed on my system day 1..... errr well Windows ME doesn't count as on OS it was more like a big pile of garbage. :loser:

I will wait again this time to see before upgrading although from what I hear they did it right this time. In the mean time XP rules!!

Edit:

I do hope you are correct

What follows is 100% conditional as in I do not believe anything Microsoft says, period. Over the last few years they had demonstrated continuously the willingness to lie.

IF the Windows 7 that goes commercial is equivalent to the Windows 7 RC1 then, yes people will and should upgrade to it. It is clearly a better performance release than XP, both in 32Bit and 64Bit.

I have Windows 7 running on a Celeron 3.22 2GB, 80GB SATA I (150), nVidia 6200LE 256. In every way I have tested it, my guess is it may be in the 25% to 30% better performance. As I said at the Top I will limit this to the Windows 7 RC1.

The other computer, I downgraded one of my other computers to be a Game Computer. It is a Core 2 Quad with 4GB, nVidia GForce 9600 GT with 768MB od DDR3 ram, SATA II 320GB disk drive. I did this to evaluate the XP Mode (Virtual PC) from Microsoft, which I removed from the system 3 hours later as a PoS and will stick with VMWare. This computer runs UO/UOKR/EverQuest at .... well no hesitation, almost instant moongateing, gateing, recalling, zoneing etc. Running around the Luna Shops or through the Luna Commons when things are busy and there is never a pause ... nothing. Runing this system under XP (32 Bit as I do not have a 64 Bit XP) produces nearly the same effect but I do notice .... delay's. Windows 7 32 Bit is just like the 64 Bit I see no delays ever.

The upgrade price for the Windows 7 Professional is $99US and Ultimate (not worth it based on LISTED additions over Professional) is $219US and there is the Home Premium? at some where in $50US. These are from the Microsoft Store Online as well as Amazon, TigerDirect etc. At this time these are the only packages available. There was a rumor that one of the low end products would have a cap of 3 Applications allowed to run at one time.

I am Riding the Windows 7 RC1's until I convinced that MS is NOT pulling a fast one, OR the 6/10/2010 expiration date.

For what it is worth, Microsoft seemingly has altered what it consideres .... "A significant change to your computer, that requires you to re-activate it.". For example, I disabled the onboard NIC and inserted a 1GB NIC on one of the computers and was told this constituted the (above) need to re-activate it. Unless things have changed with them, you only have 5 such occurrences before your required to call in. If your OS came with the Computer, your close to being SOL. If you bought the OS from a Store, then calling and explaining the change will net you a new re-activation code (one time use).

The other computer, under XP, did the same thing to me when I plugged in the SATA II 320GB drive. I added a drive and that constituted a ... cause to reactivate my OS. This is NOT right and may be Microsofts attempt to steer people......

 

[Corpsecrank]

This is really bad advice. If you use an x64 bit OS, it does make a difference. Of all the components to spend extra money one, dollar-for-dollar more ram will get you the biggest boost.

Only to degree. I ran 64bit and I can tell you right now you will never touch even a fraction of the ram installed if you go over 3Gb. Tested and proven over and over again.

The only reason to install such a large amount of ram would be rendering massive images on some high end production project or running really intensive scientific calculations. Even rendering images will rely heavily on your graphics cards before pulling from system memory. That's it period end of story.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Only to degree. I ran 64bit and I can tell you right now you will never touch even a fraction of the ram installed if you go over 3Gb. Tested and proven over and over again.

The only reason to install such a large amount of ram would be rendering massive images on some high end production project or running really intensive scientific calculations. Even rendering images will rely heavily on your graphics cards before pulling from system memory. That's it period end of story.

Like I said, you are just wrong about this. I run a memory monitor in my sidebar just out of curiosity more than anything else. Right now with just Firefox open and all the other processes running in the background, I have 2.6 GB used. Usually just for casual use it is between 2.5 GB and 3.5 GB, and close to 3.5 GB when running UO-KR.

I also work from home and will have Excel, Word and a large PDF open and run between 3.0 and 5 GB, usually closer to 3 GB. Editing the large PDF's and doing low end graphics work with Adobe Elements gets me as high as 6 GB of RAM used.

Now the difference is that if I did not have 8 GB ram installed, it would still leave RAM overhead, but my hard drive would be page swapping. Not having to read-write to the hard drive makes a huge and noticeable difference.

And please stop pouting with your "end of story" nonsense.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

..Not having to read-write to the hard drive makes a huge and noticeable difference...

Amen Brother.

That is one of two prime focus for system performance in my opinion.

Amount of memory and FSB Speed of Memory, MB and CPU.

The higher the effective FSB is (said more simply the lowest number of the 3) the higher the performance of the machine will be.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Sorry, didnt know other specs factored in so heavily:

OS is vista home premium SP1 64-bit

I will only be using the comp for Ultima

I dont have much room for swapping out parts as its a Dell system and the package I am going with can only be configured so far(In price range that fits ofc)

SSD or velociraptor 10k hard drive not available in this package

I dont know much about comps so was really just wondering about that 'gaming' nic card and whether or or not it was kinda a waste without the nicer hard drives that Dell only offers with the more expensive gaming systems.

Ty

 

[Corpsecrank]

Like I said, you are just wrong about this. I run a memory monitor in my sidebar just out of curiosity more than anything else. Right now with just Firefox open and all the other processes running in the background, I have 2.6 GB used. Usually just for casual use it is between 2.5 GB and 3.5 GB, and close to 3.5 GB when running UO-KR.

I also work from home and will have Excel, Word and a large PDF open and run between 3.0 and 5 GB, usually closer to 3 GB. Editing the large PDF's and doing low end graphics work with Adobe Elements gets me as high as 6 GB of RAM used.

Now the difference is that if I did not have 8 GB ram installed, it would still leave RAM overhead, but my hard drive would be page swapping. Not having to read-write to the hard drive makes a huge and noticeable difference.

And please stop pouting with your "end of story" nonsense.

If you are using that much ram you must be using vista which is a garbage OS and is dead already and forgot in a few months when 7 hits the market.

Vista is a resource hog and uses ram the way it does because it is not optimized.

I am sitting here writing this watching my windows 7 gadget for RC1 build 7100 tell me I am only using 863 mb of ram. XP only used 500 so vista is crap and if you are using it you do not have the technical knowledge to tell me I am wrong.

EDIT: just to further buck up what I am saying I wanted to show you exactly what I mean. I launched ALL of the major adobe CS4 apps on my machine all at once and brought up the resource monitor built into win 7 as well as the desktop gadget for monitoring ram and cpu usage. Here are the results:

I was only able to use 50% of 3.3gb of installed ram. I am running 7 different applications that are all high resource demand. Under normal circumstances you would never need all of these apps open at one time. But just to show what little ram it takes to run all of them at once I did.

 

[Old Man of UO]

...
I am sitting here writing this watching my windows 7 gadget for RC1 build 7100 tell me I am only using 863 mb of ram. XP only used 500 so vista is crap and if you are using it you do not have the technical knowledge to tell me I am wrong.
...

Sorry Corpsecrank, but you are trying to compare a 32 bit OS with max of about 3 MB memory address, to a 64 bit OS that can handle up to 128 GB memory, and has nothing to do with optimization of Vista. You aren't comparing apples to apples... the difference is that what you don't have loaded in memory is loading into your swap file. The larger memory available to Vista 64 (or Windows 7 x64) is much more efficient than using a swap file, meaning that the programs are loading into RAM for faster usage than the hard drive swap file. You don't seem to understand that point very well.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

just to further buck up what I am saying I wanted to show you exactly what I mean. I launched ALL of the major adobe CS4 apps on my machine all at once and brought up the resource monitor built into win 7 as well as the desktop gadget for monitoring ram and cpu usage. Here are the results

Just thought I would add that Old Man is right.

Lets put it simply, I have Vista installed, I can open the entire Adobe suite and still only use about 57% of my ram and roughly 14% of my processor. With only 3gbs of installed ram.

The only time I reach higher numbers than this on my ram or processor is when I have the UO client Open but not logged in (for some reason the Client being "idle" uses a lot of resources and processing power...) So, yea....If you get a x64 with more ram it will easily double or triple your ram usage. But what do I know, I have vista installed on 2 computers so I must lack the technical Knowledge to compete with someone like you, or perhaps I just have more knowledge than you and know how to use a computer and realize the OS wont matter if you know what you are doing. >.>

 

[R Traveler]

If you want SSD, don't look at old models without cache. Built-in cache chip helps alot in write performance and device life.

 

[Old Man of UO]

If you want SSD, don't look at old models without cache. Built-in cache chip helps alot in write performance and device life.

HEH... you are right, but just found it funny that a solid state memory drive needed memory cache. The difference of course is that cache memory is a faster dynamic RAM.

There is quite a difference between brands and builds of SSD's. Computer Shopper did a nice article on SSD's comparing speeds. All the prices have changed since the review was published, but it gives you a good comparison of drive performance.

http://computershopper.com/feature/the-fastest-storage-ever-eight-solid-state-drives-tested

 

[R Traveler]

HEH... you are right, but just found it funny that a solid state memory drive needed memory cache. The difference of course is that cache memory is a faster dynamic RAM.

There is quite a difference between brands and builds of SSD's. Computer Shopper did a nice article on SSD's comparing speeds. All the prices have changed since the review was published, but it gives you a good comparison of drive performance.

http://computershopper.com/feature/the-fastest-storage-ever-eight-solid-state-drives-tested

Its old generation drives. Look for new SSD with latest Intel/Samsung/Indilinx controller http://www.anandtech.com/storage/

 

[Stephen_Mythic]

You all have a wealth of knowledge. I enjoyed reading this thread.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Its old generation drives. Look for new SSD with latest Intel/Samsung/Indilinx controller http://www.anandtech.com/storage/

ZOWSA... $314 for 80 GB and $629 for the 160 GB versions at discounters. Of course, these are Intel, premium priced products. The generics should drive it down some day.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

...
I dont know much about comps so was really just wondering about that 'gaming' nic card and whether or or not it was kinda a waste without the nicer hard drives that Dell only offers with the more expensive gaming systems.

Ty

As long as the thread got bumped ....

I saw this, I saw a few of the replies etc.

I see NIC and I think automaticaly of a Wired Network.

I have a hard time NOT doing the above, so when your reffereing to a Gameing NIC are you talking about a Wireless Network Interface Card?

Assuming you are, then is there any chance you can connect your new desktop via a wired interface?

It has been my experience that Wireless Interfaces are just to subject to external interferences to be considered, just my opinion, quality movers of continuous or timely data.

I do NOT consider UO/UOKR as placing a heavy demand on Networks, except when there is a patch involved.

IF you were/are experience packet loss on the wireless, then rather than pay for the "Gaming" cards/routers, I would invest the money (yes more expensive) and get the Ethernet of Power Lines. The newer stuff is, in my opinion, going to give you superior performance to the Wireless Interfaces .... IF your experiencing packet loss now.

If on the other hand you are 15 feet away and line of site to the router, I would seriously ask why your going Wireless with a desktop vs wired Ethernet.

 

[Old Man of UO]

...

I see NIC and I think automaticaly of a Wired Network.

I have a hard time NOT doing the above, so when your reffereing to a Gameing NIC are you talking about a Wireless Network Interface Card?

Assuming you are, then is there any chance you can connect your new desktop via a wired interface?...

A NIC is a Network Interface Card, and is generally hard wired but it could theoretically be wireless. The purpose of this card is to handle all network traffic, removing that burden from the CPU. This was a good idea in the day of the single core processor and 300 MHZ Pentiums. Theoretically the NIC could prioritize the network traffic and give games priority... which never seemed to pan out very well. Gaming modems/routers seem to do a better job to the data prioritization (which is really another type of NIC, isn't it?).

But today, the multi-core processors are often faster than the NIC processors and can easily handle the traffic. In addition, the slow downs and lag you see is really outside the players control and computer. If you have an older computer, the NIC might actually help, but not so much on newer ones.

 

[Old Man of UO]

You all have a wealth of knowledge. I enjoyed reading this thread.

HEH... I built my first computer in 1979, and had to also build a clean power supply to run it, and program the EEPROM. I've been building systems mostly for myself since then, and I still learn a LOT from other people in threads like these.

 

[slaveone]

MOD's can any of you explain why this thread hasn't been moved? This has absolutely nothing to do with UO. You guys constantly move posts that do have legit things to do with UO yet leave this dribble? Get this post outta here! And Goldberg look for a cpu forum if you want to ask computer questions. This forums is about a "game" called Ultima Online.

 

[R Traveler]

ZOWSA... $314 for 80 GB and $629 for the 160 GB versions at discounters. Of course, these are Intel, premium priced products. The generics should drive it down some day.

You may look for OCZ Vertex or Agility. Or other Indilinx clones.

 

[Setnaffa]

Sorry, didnt know other specs factored in so heavily:

OS is vista home premium SP1 64-bit

I will only be using the comp for Ultima

I dont have much room for swapping out parts as its a Dell system and the package I am going with can only be configured so far(In price range that fits ofc)

SSD or velociraptor 10k hard drive not available in this package

I dont know much about comps so was really just wondering about that 'gaming' nic card and whether or or not it was kinda a waste without the nicer hard drives that Dell only offers with the more expensive gaming systems.

Ty

Since you are going with a pre-built system, take the 7200 rpm drive. You'll be satisfied. It's not as fast as the 10K drive or SSD, but you won't miss what you don't have. It really isn't that big of a deal.

I'd still take the extra memory if I were you, but you can always add it later.

 

[Dizzy]

I read the entire thread, but I plan to buy a laptop in November with Win7.

I don't game like I used to, I'm down to UO and Civ4 at the moment. I have an old pre-Dell Alienware that I bought in 2001 that's just too slow.

The Dell Inspiron 17" laptop is 7.9 lbs, and the Alienware is 11.68lbs. Ouch.

Which laptop with Win7 for casual gaming would you recommend?

 

[Old Man of UO]

I read the entire thread, but I plan to buy a laptop in November with Win7.

I don't game like I used to, I'm down to UO and Civ4 at the moment. I have an old pre-Dell Alienware that I bought in 2001 that's just too slow.

The Dell Inspiron 17" laptop is 7.9 lbs, and the Alienware is 11.68lbs. Ouch.

Which laptop with Win7 for casual gaming would you recommend?

If you are waiting just for Windows 7, Microsoft announced that anything purchased now until Win 7 is released will qualify for free upgrade.

Dell is still pretty good and hard to beat price wise. Lenovo (formerly owned by IBM) makes great laptops, but tend to be expensive - and worth it. I've had good luck so far with HP laptops too. I'm usually an AMD fan, but I am really disappointed in their laptop CPU's - slow... I would buy Intel for a laptop.

Other than that, I would recommend a discrete video card with dedicated (not shared) memory, and as much main memory as you can afford. Size or the laptop depends on your primary use... small for portability, or large for the big screen gaming effect.

 

[Corpsecrank]

Sorry Corpsecrank, but you are trying to compare a 32 bit OS with max of about 3 MB memory address, to a 64 bit OS that can handle up to 128 GB memory, and has nothing to do with optimization of Vista. You aren't comparing apples to apples... the difference is that what you don't have loaded in memory is loading into your swap file. The larger memory available to Vista 64 (or Windows 7 x64) is much more efficient than using a swap file, meaning that the programs are loading into RAM for faster usage than the hard drive swap file. You don't seem to understand that point very well.

I am only showing this because I do not have x64 installed on anything at the moment. However what I am saying remains true even in a 64bit OS. You still do not use over 3gb of ram just because the OS can address more memory. Just because something is capable of a certain limit does not mean it will ever reach that limit.

Swap files and ram are also 2 completely different things. One can never and will never replace the other. If your low enough on memory your swap files go into overtime to compensate but that does not mean that it is the same as ram or even accessed or addressed the same as ram. It simply means the swap file is picking up some slack so that the system does not completely lock or crash due to a lack of memory. The swap file is not storing things that would normally be stored in ram it is queuing things that will go to memory once some ram is free. This is why having more memory causes reduced page file usage. Not because the computer is writing things that would have gone to the page file in the ram instead but because the page file does not need to queue as many items at one time before they go to memory and move forward.

 

[Demonous]

I am shopping for a new desktop and think I know what I want except for a couple of details.

Processor(Intel i7-920) and memory(6gb tri-channel) are pretty set.

What I am unsure about are the vid card and Hard drive. Current vid card I am looking at is ATI Radeon HD 4850 512mb. I know there are better ones but it fits in the system package and seems ok?
My main concern though is the hard drive. The 'customized' package only allows for a nice 7200. I know there are 10000 hard drives out there though and I am wondering if it is a big mistake to put together a nice system and not have the 10k?

Lastly, does anyone know for sure if the supposed 'gaming' nic cards that are approx $100 and up really do make a difference?

Ty in advance for any possible SOLID advice

if you're only playing uo, you by far exceed requirements