Computer to run Fallout 3

[danao1234]

heey, friends

 

im going to buy a computer wich the details is:

 

amd II x4 2.8

geforce 9500gt 1gb

HD 500gb samsung

4 gb kingston

...

 

I want to know if this computer will have a maximum quality on fallout 3 and oblivion? Is any one know?

 

thx!

 

**sorry for the bad english

[Fonger]

decent - yes

 

maximum - no

 

9500gt is a good vid card, but not the best

 

and to fully estimate we need to know the resolution that you plan to use - larger resolution drains performance exponentially.

[danao1234]

the resolution will be 1440 x 900

[mechine]

For the money, I'd built the computer one piece at a time or have someone build it for me.

 

I would probably use 9000 series cards, or the new 200 if you had the money. But keep in mind SLI is only going to be more noticable on the lower cards SLI 6800 GT's would be dramatic, SLI 8000 or SLI 9000 it wouldn't make that much difference. Two 8800 GT's in SLI make one 9000 series cards, but two or four 9000 series cards won't make a 200 series. The only key thing that you would pay focus on with the grapics card is the brand, is it a good one, will it last for a good while, then how much RAM does it have 1Gb would be the rule of thumb, because that's about how much fallout uses, bear in mind though that two 512Mb cards don't make 1Gb, it's still going to be 512Mb.

 

Then it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a somewhat nice CPU like a Twin core around 3.5Mhz, an then 1333Mhz FSB or 1600Mhz FSB, if you could aford that. I use a very old Pentium 4 550 HT (simulated duel core) @ 800Mhz FSB, and it runs fine on max, however the upgrade to go from what I have to say a wolfdale core2 duo at around 3.4Mhz with 1333Mhz FSB while also having two physical cores rather than simulated twin streams across a single CPU (HyperThreading) Would make fallout 3 run much smoother durring times of mass chaos (thanks to MMM) Without all the mods the old P4 runs fine on max though, but it's not like I can't tweek it so that it's balanced, because a new CPU would be a few hundred dollars. You wouldn't need to spend more than $300 or $400 on a CPU, an could realisticly get by on a $100 to $200 CPU. Quad cores cause freezing, but you can limit the number of streams fallout will use to 2, which restricts it to no more than that, which ends the freezing problem.

 

Motherboards you would have to shop for an find what it is you wanted. I use a Nvida 750i chipset, which is built in a cheap ASUS P5N-D SLI board, basicly a entry level board. I could have used something even cheaper if I wanted. The big fancy boards are probably worth it, but you know you don't really need it. Read a gamer mag an see what folks are ranting an raving about. Read the comments about motherboards an tech specs at a website like new-egg.

 

Harddrives you would want to get two identical performance drives then set them up in a Gamer RAID, install all your games on these two, then have some huge non-performance drive as the system drive where you put your windows an other stuff. The RAID just makes the data on both identical, so that the system can access two copies of the same data at the same time (while also providing a backup copy of any data, redudancy) However the RAID isn't just for Redundancy or whatever. Durring games you get what's called hard drive thrashing, the drives going back an forth trying to display information, where in a RAID configuration the system could be loading two things at once, avoiding most thrashing.

The raptors are $$$ but worth it, but just plain old cheap identical hard drives in a RAID would be better than one drive or even one raptor, cache size figures into the performance as well, like hard-drive RAM (but not virtual ram) I"m just guessing but a 500Gb harddrive as the only drive for the computer is going to thrash quite a bit running the system an the game. While I don't have a RAID set up, I do run the system on Drive C:/ which is a normal drive, an then install games on D:/ which is a raptor. I'd pee pee my pants if I had the money to set up a RAID with 4 raptor drives.

 

You don't really need overclocked RAM, High quality RAM is high quality RAM. DDR2 is about as cheap as dirt these days. You should shoot for whatever matches the CPU's FSB, along with what the motherboard will support. The only real benifit of Overclocked RAM would be that it has heat spreaders, so that it will deal with heat issues better. While I don't overclock the CPU, I do overclock the RAM timmings, just because it was factory tested at that rate, an I adjust the voltages to spec on the whole system.

 

Display is probalby something you should focus on, I use 1600X1200 for games, which is native to the LCD I use. Which offers 96 pixels per inch. You wouldn't want to go much more than 1600X1200 for games, because it gets really expensive an still runs poorly, but you might could just shoot for 96 pixels per inch or higher which would yeild very high res.

 

Audio is up to you, the argument is that Onboard audio (build into the mother board) puts tax on the CPU, however, the onboard audio is still using the PCI bus just like a sound card would. The only real difference would be the PCI sound card having more hardware to deal with sound than the onboard. The newer audio cards run on PCI-E but it's not PCI-E 16X16 like what grapics cards use. So that suggests that one would need to see what the bandwidth those smaller PCI-E plugs run as bus speeds, the onboard sound might have a faster speed. Rumor has it though that creative sound cards avoid some of the stutter problems when fallout is playing MP3's, however it's not like there isn't a way around any stutter problem you might have. I use a Creative Gigaworks 7.1 surround speaker system. I've used a Creative 7.1 sound card for this, but last week I switched back to Onboard sound, which offers 8 seperate channels rather than 7, so that the sub is seperate. So the quality in on-board sound these days is way better, back in the day it was a problem though.

 

Besdies that go ahead an get a good comfortable Gamer mouse, an also a pro mouse pad, which most are made out of metal with coatings. Don't use a wireless keyboard or mouse, A normal keyboard or a Ergo version is your best bet. Rather than fancy gamer keyboards. I use a cheap ergo, because it fits my hands better. Besides if you wanted something more custom you could just get a gamer pad, a small secondary keyboard which is set up around the WASD keys, but with extra buttons for FPS games.

 

Overclocking works, but most games don't like it, an glitch, so they say. You know if it's going to cause extra wear an tear on the machine, why bother with it. Short of you going for 2500X1600 max res I don't think you would even need it anyway for what you are planing on doing with the rig. At any rate not overclocking would make the computer parts last longer while also working better with some video games. An they say fallout doesn't like overclocking.

 

You would deffinatly save money an get more of exactly what you wanted by building your own, besides it being really fun to build. You buy a kit computer or something already made to run games on, you're going to have to buy another computer in 3 years. Say you buy a kit for $2000 then three years later it dies. Which is the average lifespan of a computer. At that point you actually have to build your own because it would be silly to waste $2000 again. To each his own though I guess. Just because it's fun I'll always build my own.

 

Fallout 3 was designed to run at high settings with 8000 series cards. But I've found I can run max using mostly old parts with a 8800GT. Vanilla fallout is about 6Gb at the most, then when you add mods to it you can get up to 20Gb in size depending on how crazy you are. Which at that point really all you are doing is tweeking things for times of mass chaos. There's so many options the a single 8000 series card or 9000 series with 512Mb to 1Gb of video card RAM is totally able to max out the settings. Any card you get on any system is going to have problems with the mass chaos created in fallout 3. So as long as it looks good an runs smooth is what you should shoot for rather than attempting to run max settings with 80 different fights going on at the same time, bulletz going everywhere, stuff exploding, heads rolling. It's the same thing as wanting to use the 2500X1600 max res for grapics cards. Costly $$$ an even then it runs poorly Short of spending $10,000 on a computer, which is pretty stupid when you could get games in HD 1080p for about 1/10 of the cost via Xbox an PS3.