Your/My Dream System???!!!

[exponent]

Hi everyone.

I'm thinking of selling my current setup (see sig) and getting a new rig to build myself.

Its gotta be the dogs b*****ks because I dont wanna upgrade for at least another year. (i'm a pure gamer and nothin else)

I would appreciate people's comments on what your dream set up would be (from MOBO to CASE) bear in mind its got to be able to run the best games on the highest settings!

Is VISTA any good?? DX10 cards a must?? or should I just stick to my curent set up and forget about it for a while.

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly apreciated.

Thanks, Mike.

 

[rockyjohn]

A lot of people - games especially - are reporting problems with VISTA. I am not sure it will be faster than XP - at least not till after a lot of tweaking is done by various component manufacturers.
I think you should wait for several months to see how fast improvements are made - and also to wait for the next round of video cards - at least from ATI.

 

[exponent]

You may be right but its catch 22.
If I sell my system now I will get a good price but only be able to get the stuff that isnt really optimized for DX10 and VISTA.
But if I wait until everything is DX10 and VISTA optimized my system will be out of date and nobody will want it!!!!
Cant win!!
Certainly can't do without my games for that long!!!!

 

[RJ]

You may be right but its catch 22.
If I sell my system now I will get a good price but only be able to get the stuff that isnt really optimized for DX10 and VISTA.
But if I wait until everything is DX10 and VISTA optimized my system will be out of date and nobody will want it!!!!
Cant win!!
Certainly can't do without my games for that long!!!!

The 8800 GTX card is DX10. You can buy Win XP from www.newegg.com and get a free($12 shipping) upgrade to Vista. While you are time limited to apply for Vista upgrade, no one says you have to install it immediately. Sit on the disc until the dust settles. Are you going SLI? 680i board is your choice. Single vid card, P965 boards are pretty damn impressive. DFI has a new mobo that uses ATI chipset, but you have to be a rocket scientist to get it to overclock to it's fullest potential. I might go with one of the quad cores, but who knows how soon it'll be optimized in games? WD Raptors are a must in RAID 0 for serious speed. 6 Raptors on a p965 board with ICH8R in RAID 0 would be sick! That many drives, I might just go for smaller 7200 RPM drives instead for some budget constraint.

I absolutely love the layout in my Thermaltake Armor case. I think I've used it for 4 or 5 setups already....don't want to part with it.

 

[exponent]

You make some very good points!!
Your system looks sick! probably beat mine in a bench test??!!??
I was thinkin of a quad core myself (they are gettin all the top scores on 3Dmark 2006)!!
The 8800GTX (i would have 'em in SLI or get a Dual GPU board)
sound great but am hearing about bad teething problems with VISTA at the moment.
The RAID 0 set-up sounds great but doesnt give me the back-up in case of a fault (but its great for speed though).
Youve made some helpful comments mate.

Thanks.

 

[jitpublisher]

Wait for ATI's version of the DX10 cards to come out, just to see how they stack up.
Replace your your SLI'd cards with 1 of the new DX10 cards.
Forget Vista ever even happened, and *poof* you are good for another year.

 

[angry_ducky]

First of all, if you try to sell your entire PC, you won't get anywhere near what you originally spent on it.

Second of all, it's still a really nice PC. 4GB of RAM should do well for next-gen games running under Vista.

If you want an upgrade, sell your 7800GTX's on eBay and buy an 8800 or R600 when it comes out.

 

[reaper87]

Hi everyone.
I would appreciate people's comments on what your dream set up would be (from MOBO to CASE) bear in mind its got to be able to run the best games on the highest settings!

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly apreciated.

Thanks, Mike.

See below: with a Lian Li PC-201B and a Dell 24' monitor.

This is MY dream setup.

 

[KingGreatYat]

Being philosphical here...

The dream system is an unattainable ideal. Components are constantly being updated and there is always something that is beyond your price range (at least for most people!)

Not being philosophical, my dream system will propably just be a grabbag of the most expensive parts that I can find on the web.

Being realistic, I would say that it is best to wait until there are a good number of games that are specifically designed for DX10/Vista - i.e more or less guarenteed to work, and also past the point where your old XP games are spending more time on the shelf.

That is probably what I should have done, but saying that I have left myself room to upgrade to Core 2 Quad, 4Gb ram and a better GFX card, so i'll be happy for some time yet. Prob won't make total plunge to vista until the app/driver support is acceptable for me. Will prob dual boot for a while first.

 

[exponent]

Sounds juicy!!! (reaper)

Ive noticed a lot of people are either nvidia or ATi or intel or AMD.
Its mad! I like my FX-60 but am being swayed by the intel crowd who are praising the next gen core duo and quad processors!!
The stats are impressive for intel and make me wish I hadent spent the best part of £800 for my AMD!!
The suggestion to sell my 7800GTX's is a very good possibility but im sort of attatched to nvidia at the moment, ATI will have to pull something BIG out the bag to get me to sell my SLI cards!!!!

P.S - can I still have an ATI card even though my board is Nforce??? or does it not matter??? (i feel a bit thick askin that by the way)!!!

 

[siggsy]

Yeah you can use an ATi card in an nforce board, just not a crossfire setup.

I think the majority of your specs are great, but it might be worth getting rid of your SLi setup and going for a single 8800GTX, as this will smoke your current dual setup ( advice given to me a while back )

This will keep you going until we all see what's happening in the Vista/dx10 department and also ATi's next gen card the R600. The reason to wait is that your decision to go either crossfire or SLi will depend on the new R600 (you sound like a guy who wants the best)

 

[RJ]

The 8800GTX (i would have 'em in SLI or get a Dual GPU board)
sound great but am hearing about bad teething problems with VISTA at the moment.

...which is why you WAIT to install your upgrade to VISTA

The RAID 0 set-up sounds great but doesnt give me the back-up in case of a fault (but its great for speed though).

That's why I've got 2 additional hard drives in this setup. I've only got the OS on the RAID 0 array. My data sits safely on either my 500 or my 320 gigger. If, and I doubt it will, I have a catastrophic OS crash, it takes less time to reload because of the RAID 0. 8)


P.S. Super Pi [1M] in 13 sec, for starters...

 

[exponent]

Hi siggsy.

Youre right about me wanting the best!!!!
Dont see the point of buying cheapo crap for a cheapo experience, might as well spend a few quid extra for a smoother ride!! (if you get my meaning)??!!?? ha ha. (ended up talkin about the ladies as usual)

I'm curious about the 8800GTX?? will it really smoke my current set-up?? if so, i'm gettin it!!!!

I take it the 8800GTX is a dual GPU???

 

[exponent]

To be honest RJ, I have never really understood RAID although i'm aware of performance gains is it REALLY that much better than just a standard SATA set-up??

 

[siggsy]

Hi siggsy.

Youre right about me wanting the best!!!!
Dont see the point of buying cheapo crap for a cheapo experience, might as well spend a few quid extra for a smoother ride!! (if you get my meaning)??!!?? ha ha. (ended up talkin about the ladies as usual)

I'm curious about the 8800GTX?? will it really smoke my current set-up?? if so, i'm gettin it!!!!

I take it the 8800GTX is a dual GPU???

Yes, it'll piss all over your current setup. This is what I've been told. There are only a few games at the moment that you'll really see the benefit from an SLi setup anyway.

I was in 2 minds whether to get another 7800gtx for my setup (had a thread a couple of months back) and was advised that it really wasn't worth the search and I should just get an 8800gts or gtx instead.

The 8800gtx is a single gpu but with its 768mb of ram and it's blisterring clock speeds, it's no slouch

If I had the money I'd buy one now and then wait to see how the ati r600 compares when it's released. I'd then decide if I would get another 8800gtx for SLi or sell the card and buy new motherboard and go r600 crossfire.

At the moment, it's so "wishy washy" coz we're at that time when a new operating system is here and potential hardware/software conflicts could be an issue. Also there are the quad core processors to think about.

To be honest, I'm going to wait till the summer now to see how vista settles and then decide on what hardware to get for my next build. Sure I'm itching to get the best also but I really think waiting is going to give me better options. I know with hardware there is always going to be something new and better on the horizon but I want to limit the damage on resale of the kit that I'll buy.

 

[siggsy]

To be honest RJ, I have never really understood RAID although i'm aware of performance gains is it REALLY that much better than just a standard SATA set-up??

Ok, small definition of raid using 2 hdd's;

Raid 0: Basically you use 2 drives as one, with data being spread over the both of them (striped). Problem that could arise is that if you get a knackered drive, you've lost all the data (Backups needed very often just in case)

Raid 1: Data is kept on one drive but it's mirrored on the other drive. Benefit of this is that if one drive fails then just replace it and the raid will rebuild without any loss in data.

There benifit from both of these raid setups are that access times are greatly reduced, although writing data takes about as long as it would to a normal one drive setup.

Hope this helps your understanding.

 

[exponent]

Thanks siggsy.

I should have set up RAID when I recently re-installed windows I would go for the RAID 1 set up for the safety aspect.

Your input has been invaluable mate!!!

Really appreciate it!!

Cheers.

 

[azyreangel]

RAID5 is the best raid setup, except it will lag your system on slower machines when doing heavy editing, sine it takes a bit of processing to make the *recovery bits*. Speed benefits of RAID0 witht he saftery of RAID1. Mind, some mobo's dont support. make sure you research.

My dream system?

Silverstone TJ07 Black
C2D X6800 Overlocked to ~4.5Ghz
4Gb of CM2X1024-10000C5D (PC10000 - 1250Mhz) Overlocked to ~1400Mhz
2 74Gb Raptors in RAID0
2 750Gb Storage Drives in RAID1
Asus P5W64
2 8800GTX's in SLI Overlocked (Not sure what's possible)
Insane Triple Loop Water Cooling (one for CPU and RAM, one for Gfx and one for rest of system)
X-Fi Fatality Sound Card
Windows XP Pro
Enermax Aurora Black
Logitech G5 Mouse
30" Dell Screen (2560*1600...i think)
Dual Enermax Aurora 1kW PSU's (To split the load and make sure it was super stable)

and some nice games.

What do you think that would get in PCMark06? ^^
and the cost....proabbly around £7-8k

if only i had that in front of me now....I'd proably need a vent going directly outside for the heat produced.

 

[exponent]

That really is the ultimate system!!

You would have to employ some air conditioning installers to put a massive extract fan from your p.c to the north pole!!! ha ha

The funny thing is, is that the set-up you have just posted will be the standard on an x-box or sumthing in 10 years!!!

Mad huh??!!

 

[RJ]

To be honest RJ, I have never really understood RAID although i'm aware of performance gains is it REALLY that much better than just a standard SATA set-up??

If a SATA drive has 60ish mb/s transfer rate, having 3 drives in RAID 0 array triples that performance or at least close to triple. I do see over 180 mb/s transfers out of my setup. Hard drives have a set ceiling as to how much data they can work with in a set time, it's a physical barrier. Raid 0 takes your data and stores it across 3 drives, like puzzle pieces. That's why it's a problem if you lose one drive, you can't reacquire the data because pieces of the puzzle are missing. I accept that scenario by only running my operating system on the RAID array, and any data I want to keep, music, video, word docs, etc., on a single drive. I also back up the really important stuff on an external drive, but that's getting off topic. If I lose a drive, or it gets corrupted, all I have to do is reinstall the OS and whatever progs I've previously loaded. The sweet part is it takes less time to load the OS because it's in RAID 0. I would have to call MS because I'm over what they stipulate to be the max # of times I can load my system. I tell them I changed my mobo, or it crashed, or something like that and that it's only loaded on one comp. I've haven't been denied yet.