Building a New PC

[UK47]

Primary Choice: ATI Radeon HD 5970 (possibly 2 in crossfire mode)

:

 

Oblivion or Fallout don't benefit from Crossfire or SLI and it can sometimes cause issues.

 

Of course you will get better FPS with some games, but not with Oblivion :(

[Thor.]

Ah yes you would benefit from sli in Oblivion, it may not be supported by default but it works, trust me.

 

check out the render info and see for yourself, here's mine.

 

Renderer Device Information:

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+

nvd3dum.dll

RenderPath : BSSM_SV_2_A

PSversion : 300

VSversion : 300

VStarget : vs_2_0

PStarget : ps_2_a

PS2xtarget : ps_2_a

maxPS20inst : 512

3.0 Shaders : yes

Image space effects : yes

Nonpowerof2textures : yes

FP16ARGB blending : yes

FP16ARGB filtering : yes

High dynamic range : no

Bloom lighting : yes

Refraction : yes

2.0 hair : yes

SLI mode : yes

Water shader : yes

Water reflections : yes

Water displacement : yes

Water high res : yes

Multisample Type : 8

Shader Package : 4

[LHammonds]

Rather than place a large amount of smaller hard drives in my computer (which cranks up watt-count), I decided to purchase two 1TB hard drives.

 

I was going to remove the 40GB drive I installed the OS on but after some thinking, I am going to keep the OS there.

 

I will add these drives as data drives and when I finally get my hands on the SATA 3.0 interface SSD drives (6 gb/s), I will replace the 40 GB drive then with the new SSD (will probably use DriveImageXML to simply move the OS)

 

I tried to update the 1st post but since the forum move, I cannot edit any posts made before the move so here is what I would have modified in the 1st post:

 

STEP 5 - Order Items (COMPLETE)

 

• $349.99 - Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 motherboard
  
• $574.99 - Intel Core i7-960 3.2 GHz
  
• $339.99 - Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM (12 GB)
  
• $77.89 - Corsair H50 CPU Water Cooler
  
• $429.00 - XFX Radeon HD 5870 Video Card
  
• $159.99 - Antec 1200 Case
  
• $109.99 - Corsair 750TX Power Supply
  
• $79.99 - Carcharias Gaming Headset
  
• $189.99 - Samsung 2343BWX 23" Monitor #1
  
• $189.99 - Samsung 2343BWX 23" Monitor #2
  
• $99.99 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
  
• $99.99 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
  
• $0.00 - Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (purchased by boss)
  
• $0.00 - APC Back-UPS RS 1500 (purchased by father-in-law)
  

$2,699.30 - Grand Total

 

LHammonds

[Retribution]

I'm not going to pretend to know more about PC hardware than you, LHammonds, but I'm pretty sure that it would have been a better choice to get an i7 920, and use the extra money to get a 5970 instead of a 4870. It's just going to bottleneck you.

[LHammonds]

It is a typo. I bought the 5870, not the 4870. The URL goes to the correct place but I fat fingered the number. I did try to buy a 5970 but it was nowhere to be found for 3 weeks that I searched. I had to spend the money before 2010 so I went with the card just below it which was available.

 

The ONLY bottleneck in my system right now is the hard drives but that will be fixed when I acquire an SSD with SATA 3.0 interface which will render the mechanical hard drive obsolete.

 

I will correct the typo when I get back to my PC but I cannot update the 1st post.

 

LHammonds

[Thor.]

Edit never mind this post

 

you took the words out of my mouth lol.

 

Nice to here you using the tb drives as secondary drives, good choice.

[UK47]

It is a typo.

When I bought a Radeon HD 4870 video card, a cardboard paper was inside with a CDKey printed on it saying that I can have this game called Dirt2 if I signed up on Steam and downloaded it.

 

I don't really like Steam and if it wasn't for my wife's interest in playing it (after seeing a YouTube video), I would have just chunked the card in the trash.

 

Anyone interested in how well the HD 4870 does based on a range of game, a range of CPUs and whether or not it is in crossfire mode with another card will find this article VERY interesting.

 

Radeon HD 4870 CPU Scaling

 

Anyone have suggestions for LCD monitors that work well for gaming?

 

The ideal situation would be one where I can get 3 of them (e.g. < $400 each) that work well with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 video card (e.g. DisplayPort technology)

 

You made the same typos in other threads too :P

[LHammonds]

You made the same typos in other threads too :P

Yes, I fat-fingered the 2nd or 3rd reference for that card which also had the URL to the 5870 which I simply copy and pasted later on. :whistling:

[Thor.]

Lol off topic-hey LHammonds do you ever feel real cold being near the Antec case while the fans are moving brr. i dont know maybe its just me :P

 

I wonder what its going to be like in the summer yay.

 

It sits near my desk and man it sure blows out a lot of cool air 8) .

[LHammonds]

The only thing hot in my system is the video card...thanks to the water-cooling of the CPU. All of my case fans are set to their lowest settings which means I simply do not hear them (awesome). I will be curious when summer comes round though...the Texas heat can be a real killer!

 

LHammonds