Time to get a new computer! In need for advise.

[Xenno]

To be honest i dunno, never heard for that brand of PSU.

 

But that doesnt matter there are so many Company in Hardware.

 

If you buy new PSU my recomendation is defenetly Seasonic S 12 2 series.

 

620W model is more than fine for any single Gfx solution.

 

As for some benchmarks check this link , sorry no Oblivion or F3 benched but you can see some general performace against 5870.

Hey if it can do 60 FPS in Far Cry 2 max details with AA on full hd than u know how good it is :thumbsup: .

 

EDIT: i forgot to post link :) http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-review/16

Edited November 25, 2010 by Xenno

[evildead789]

My thought on this matter.

 

First of all I've should have said the hd 5870 is the fastest single ati gpu available, my mistake but with the failure of the gtx 480 (which is way too loud and way too power hungry) I tended to forget about nvidia, I didn't knew the gtx 580 was already out yet. Seems like it's payback time for nvidia , allthough a little late and hopefully for nvidia the cayman gpu doesn't beat the crap out of them. As long as the battle stays on , the better for us. The gtx 580 cost 500€ by the way tinylampe which is too much money for a videocard :wink:

 

About that hd 6870. I wouldn't buy that card tinylampe. It is a good card don't get me wrong but it is just out yet. You could have driver issues and have to wait for driver updates and driver info for some things. Normally you won't have any problems at all but I wouldn't take the risk since you want a plug & play pc and no hassle.

Besides the hd 5870 is still noticeably faster. It shows when your running gpu intense games like aliens vs predator. Just to set things straight the hd 6870 has 1120 shader processors, the hd 5870 has 1600. Core speed and clock speed are a tad higher of the hd 5870 (about 15 %) . Thrust me in the future the difference will show.

Ok the hd 6870 will deliver exeptional performance in games that matter today but the hd 5870 is more future proof.

That's why at its current price the hd 5870 still has a good price/performance rating. Also the hd 5870 made a good name for itself. All good reasons to buy this card.

 

If you still want to buy the hd6870 to save some money. Don't worry it's also a good buy.

If you are wondering about oblivion, you can do whatever you want with oblivion, this card won't have a problem with it.

but if you're thinking to go crossfire to futureproof this card you're thinking wrong.

By the time you want to go crossifre with the hd6870 because it doesn't suffice anymore this card won't be available anymore (not in retail anyway).

 

About that board that is a very good board for it's price. Better than that asrock, it has triple channel memory (while the asrock only had dual) and it supports crossfire and sli. The asus board has actually the same features as a deluxe board, which means well deluxe lol.. more goodies that you don't need but still are nice (like crossfire or sli support for three cards)

 

Ok that just leaves the power supply

Your 700 W power supply will be more than sufficent (i said 650 w minimum). I don't know the brand though but i managed to find a review about it in spanish. http://www.hard-h2o.com/review/fuentes/nox-urano-600.html. It's about the 600W but that will mostly be the same only your's stronger and will be less stressed under load (and more durable and less noisy). According to this review (which i translated with google complete) the 600 W is not noisy and has durable components and the 700W is better!

So i think you're pretty good with that power supply.

 

That's about it i guess have fun with the new system

Edited November 26, 2010 by evildead789

[tinylampe]

That's about it i guess have fun with the new system

 

I will! (as soon as Christmas comes)

I think this weekend I'll go home and deal with the last details (monitor, mouse and the like)

 

By the way, I just realized that the guys from the computer store never talked about the sound card. I assume they will plug something average unless I have some specific request (which wouldn't be the case normally) but, you know, playing oblivion last summer I noticed that my game suffered from serious stuttering when 4-legged animals like horses, wolves etc were moving around me. Then I learnt that this was caused by the sounds these animals make when walking, sounds that -it seems- were too much for my card.

 

I know that there are mods to deal with this problem (quiet feet for example) but now that I'm getting a good computer, I think it would be a shame not to get a similarly good sound card. Do you have any suggestion/minimum that should be satisfied?

[evildead789]

I'm not an expert on sound cards but the days a seperate sound card was needed is long gone. At least if you're not trying to doing something professionally or maybe some exeptional quality. Nowadays sound cards are mostly onboard and integrated into the motherboard. Yours is a realtek chipset ALC 1200 which support 8 channels. It's a high definition audio chipset that supports 5.1 audio. I have an older version of this chipset and i didn't had any problems with sound in oblivion or any game for that matter.

 

It is the first thing i heard about this that a sound card isn't 'strong enough'. I think you're referring to something else. Actually if your system isn't strong enough then your cpu get's maxed out . That means you cpur is working at 100 procent but still can't handle all the data that it has to compute. So what happens things tend to slow down and this you can notice the best with your sound. Your video and gameplay will slowdown but your sound too. The sound is the first thing you will notice.

This is only when your cpu is maxed out (processor) not when your gpu (videocard) is maxed out. Because games are so graphically intensive nowadays that if your system can't handle the game it's mostly your videocard that can't handle the game. so it's something i didn't hear off the last years.

With oblivion it could be if you're running this on a single core processor and a videocard like a 7900gtx (which can handle oblivion, but won't run it like your hd 5870 :wink: ) that the single core processor can't handle everything that's on screen and so the sound is starting to stutter. It could be the same case with a lower end dual core processor like 1,66 ghz or 1,80 ghz

 

You have an i7 processor that has 4 cores and 8 threads (that means it works like an 8 core processor) running @ 2.8 ghz (and able to turbo boost above 3 ghz) and heaps of cache memory.

I don't think your cpu will ever have to work at full capacity. So no worries there :D

Edited November 28, 2010 by evildead789

[tinylampe]

It is the first thing i heard about this that a sound card isn't 'strong enough'. I think you're referring to something else.

 

Can you please check out this link? My link

 

It's the mod I was referring to in my previous post and the description page explains the whole issue better than me. If I understood it correctly (and judging by the comments left by some users) the quality of your sound card does matter.

 

On the other hand, if you never experienced such a problem and your audio card is older than the one I'll have, the realtek ALC 1200, then I suppose I really don't have to worry. Still, I just wanted to make sure that you understand where my worries come from ;)

 

And yes, if your veredict is the same after reading the link I'll shut up :sweat:

[Qwaxalot]

Your best bet is buying a soundcard supporting hardware acceleration (i.e. Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer) and using that together with Creative ALchemy to restore hardware acceleration.

[evildead789]

Ok havin a quality sound card does matter

 

but the cpu processes the sound also, havin a stronger sound card helps processing the sound. So if your cpu is already running at 100 procent, a good sound card will relieve some work for the cpu. And you will have a performance gain (allthough small)

The fact is your i7 processor is so strong , you won't be able to let it run at 100 procent even if you wanted to. So a better sound card to improve performance in your setup is useless.

 

A better sound card also has more features like the one posted above Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer can create 3d surround sound in your headphones. The quality of the sound will be better too also I presume otherwise I really can't see a market for this thing(not to play games anyway)

You have to know that your audio chipset is already 8 channel high defenition which is in my opinion good quality.

But that's just my opinion. This thingie cost a 100€.

 

I wouldn't buy it to avoid problems with sound because you won't have any problems. It can actually give you problems (but that's open for debate lol)

Edited November 28, 2010 by evildead789