Enigma if get these would i need a bigger power supply? motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.20GHz AM3 BOX Black RAM: CORSAIR 8192MB XMS3 DDR3 1333MHz CL9 KIT (quad kit)
I am using the AMD Phenom 2 965, and its a great proc. You may want to look at the 1100: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103913
Na, you would only be pushing 20-40 more watts of power draw. Intel's TDP has been found to be closer to its average power draw and the CPUs actually draw more than TDP at times. AMD's TDP is its actual max power draw and not its average. So although the 955 is rated as a higher power part, it isnt going to draw that much more than the Intel. But you should try and get some faster RAM, DDR-1600 or so. That 1333 stuff is probably a bit slower than what you currently have. Although it is offset by higher bandwidth and more capacity. RAM doesn't really draw a lot of power, I have always heard it is around 5-10w per stick. So adding two additional sticks into the system will only increase power draw by 20w at most from the RAM. processing wise you should see a boost. The Phenom II is about equal in performance per clock as the Wolfdale's from Intel (E8500), so you are equal there but at a slightly higher clock speed, an additional 2 cores, and a much faster and more advanced interconnect system than the old FSB that the E8500 uses. The motherboard is decent enough, and the integrated graphics will even be able to play things on lower settings if you ever need a backup graphics card.
well the mobos datasheet shows this: 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory (Note 1) Dual channel memory architecture Support for DDR3 2000(OC)/1333/1066 MHz memory modules that's why i didnt chose a 1600 ram and these 3 parts will cost me 391 USD
im with my corsair.. i got 8 gigs now.. about to pick up another 8 to get to 16.. why you ask.. no idea.. just because i want 16.. even tho i wont need it.. lolz.
Motherboard has nothing to do with memory speed support. Ya I guess a MB maker could disable an option for a certain speed, but the memory controller and speeds supported are all in the CPU. And if any board says it supports 2000+ then it most definitely has an option to select any standard speed below that, which is 1866 and 1600. 16GB is a good number to have. That's what I have, and a couple other people here do too. At work I use all 16GB in the server, and at home I *can* use all 16GB if I have both of the Minecraft servers up and running and am playing another game. What is also fun is to make an 8GB ramdisk and install a game completely into RAM I used to do that with the Minecraft servers, all I/O was done entirely in RAM and not on a disk which was nice, and the server was 100% loaded into RAM while being run so it was nice and quick.
then id get this: http://www.corsair.com/cmx8gx3m4a1600c9.html it dosent cost much more then the 1333 one
That would be perfectly fine to use. Just be sure to set your mem voltage to 1.65v when you install it or it wont run at the rated speeds because it defaults to 1.5v which is the JEDEC standard.
In the bio you set the voltage, speed, and timings for the memory. If you dont set the speed, it defaults to 1333. If you dont set the voltage, it defaults to 1.5v. If you dont set the timings, they default to 9's. This is because things need to comply at one level with JEDEC specifications, and since there is no real specification for anything higher than DDR-1333 w/ 1.5v @ 9-9-9-24-2T timings, then everything defaults to that. This is so that when you first install RAM, the computer will boot. Otherwise you would need to have a second stick of RAM that is actually supposed to run at JEDEC specs just so you could put it in, set the voltage and speed to your real RAM specs, and then save and turn off, take the cheap stick out and put in your real RAM. That is entirely too complicated and expensive so all RAM is just designed to perform at default with JEDEC specs and you must manually set it at the speed it is really rated for.
I have my games and OS loaded on a SSD, its fast and fun. Probably close to the speed of loading a game in memory. Although, I have 8gb of memory and never go above 15% memory usage, DDR3 1600 corsair Dominator.
From a human perception stand point yes it is not much faster having something entirely done in RAM compared to a good SSD. But from a technical stand point the best SSD is still MUCH slower than RAM. Sustained read speed: RAM is an average of 66x faster in read over the best SSD sustained write speed: RAM is an average of 74x faster in write over the best SSD random 4k read: RAM is an average of 160x faster in read over the best SSD random 4k write: RAM is an average of 106x faster in write over the best SSD latency: With a 2600k (or any Sandy Bridge) and DDR-1600 RAM, your round-trip latency is somewhere between 25-35 ns. With the best SSD your average seek time is 0.8 ms This translates to RAM being 26,666x faster in latency/seek times for data But as I said, the speed at which a human perceives something happening we are not likely to see RAM as much faster. For a server or something like that though, this can be a large increase in performance due to thousands more files able to be transferred each second.
I stand corrected. I love rebooting Windows in like 10 seconds tho. I have noticed speed decreases since my SSD is over a year old now. It's definetly not as crisp as it once was. I did some speed tests and it is still seeking/writing at the proper speeds. I'll probably get a bigger SSD once i break down and upgrade other things on my computer, for now it's fine.
Necroing this thread since I still haven't been able to get a new PC as of yet. Are the components Enigma listed still suitable? I've had a quick look through and some seem to be unavailable now :S I'm trying to sort out my machine so I can run BF3 a bit better than I am currently due to having the minimum specs :/ If anyone could draw up a up to date list with a decent motherboard, CPU, GFX card, HDD, PSU I would be really grateful. I don't have much to spend - Maybe £700-800 (but as its my birthday in a couple of weeks I can ask for money towards a few things ;p) I would look to try and keep what I can if possible but I don't think thats going to happen. If the case can be kept that would be great as it's another thing I don't have to worry about just yet. If I cant go all out and buy a completely new rig right now, what would be the best ATI graphics card to go for currently and would be fine in my old machine and yet still be good for when I finally upgrade in the new year? If I upgrade a few bits now and the rest in the new year then that works too. www.ebuyer.com www.scan.co.uk These are the 2 sites I would probably use unless you have better ones in the UK. Current spec: Processor: Q6600 Quad Core 2.4GHz w/ Artic Cooling Aftermarket heatsink and fan. RAM: 4Gb DDR2 OCZ Platinum GFX: GeForce 8800GT 512Mb Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI Chipset: nVIDIA nForce 650i SLI Soundcard: Currently none - use onboard Realtek sound. Case: Antec 900 PSU: Hiper 580W Also have a cheap PCI network card. Windows 7 32-bit (Yes i know i should have got 64-bit but the 32-bit was free at the time...) HHDs: 2x Maxtor 80Gb IDE (Roughly 8-9 years old - And possibly on their last legs now... Will keep them but only for storage of stuff rarely accessed) 1x Maxtor 500Gb SATA - 3-4 years old - And maybe running out of puff but It could just need a nice wipe and full format as there is a lot of rubbish on it :/ Cheers guys.
Ill do that all for you, but while I look at everything again I just wanted to say a little something about the onboard network port. It is much better than an old PCI network card. This is due to a few things but the most basic of which is this: Modern chipsets have no native support for PCI any more, it is too old. To get PCI it runs through a PCI chip that is on the motherboard. This chip converts PCI data (adding latency to your network) to PCI-E language and send the data to the southbridge. The SB then sends it over PCI-E to the processor (adding a tiny bit more latency). In contrast, the built in network port either does one of two things. It either connects to a chip that is already native PCI-E and this goes straight to the processor, or the network port is actually build in to the northbridge of the processor and goes directly from the port to the processor itself over PCI-E. While the difference may not necessarily be noticeable, it is still a 1-2ms difference in ping. Also the more modern NIC's just run faster so they would do better than an old card anyway.
Cheers Enigma. Most of the stuff you picked out before still seems to be available but its a tad on the expensive side at the moment >.< The PCI card is sometimes used to connect my PS3 up to the PC (Or was when I was at Uni due to being unable to connect it directly to the network...) I use the onboard connection as my main wired connection to my router Just thought it was worth mentioning with regards to a new motherboard that has a PCI slot although its never really used now, its handy to have. Still if modern motherboards dont have PCI im not fussed
Alright Eskara, you can keep the case and DVD drive. So that will save you £80 or so. I was able to get an entire build in for you under your price range that would be a significant upgrade for you. Are you sure you want an AMD/ATI graphics card? Thats fine, as they have great price/performance right now, I was just wondering. If you prefer to get another Nvidia then I can change the GPU to one of those. This build comes in at around £730, so if you have extra money then you should upgrade to a 6-core 1090T processor. And if you still have more money to spend after that then upgrade to an additional 8GB of RAM. Those two additions would bring the price up a bit past £800 These also come with two coupons for BF3, and since you already own the game you could sell these free game coupons to someone for a few extra bucks. http://www.ebuyer.com/246651-antec-...u-80plus-bronze-13-5cm-fan-3x-0761345-06209-1 http://www.ebuyer.com/270698-asus-m...m3-8-channel-audio-atx-motherboard-m5a99x-evo http://www.ebuyer.com/190673-amd-phenom-ii-x4-955-black-edition-socket-am3-3-2-ghz-6mb-hdz955fbgmbox http://www.ebuyer.com/272174-kingst...rx-xmp-memory-kit-cl9-1-65v-khx1866c9d3k2-8gx http://www.ebuyer.com/254950-powerc...playport-pci-e-graphics-card-ax6950-2gbd5-2dh http://www.ebuyer.com/261753-intel-...-5-sata-ii-read-270mb-s-write-ssdsa2cw120g3k5 http://www.ebuyer.com/264011-corsair-hydro-series-h60-high-performance-liquid-cpu-cooler-cwch60 You will see I tossed in a SSD. Since you want to use your current 500GB hard drive, you can either do one of two things. Use the SSD as your OS drive and get great all around performance, but game load times will still be slower and the hard drive may actually hold back your gaming by making things have odd stuttering problems (not guaranteed but I have seen it happen when a newer game is run on a quite old HDD). Or you can use the 500GB drive for your OS and have less all around performance for Windows and stuff, but game load times will be great and you wont ever run into loading related stutter problems in games. Either way has its advantages and disadvantages so its up to you. It also has a high performance CPU cooler, this will allow you to overclock 500MHz easily while still being nice and cool to gain some extra performance. The RAM speed is pretty good and will be plenty fast for the computers life. If you can afford to get 16GB then it will last you a nice long time without ever having to worry about your memory. The power supply is good, and will power everything nicely for the computers life. However it does not have enough PCI-E connections for Crossfire/SLI so you wont be able to do that down the road. IMO that isnt a big deal as I never plan on running crossfire, but IDK if you would want to or not. The motherboard also is a good one with lots of features, but is not meant for crossfire/sli so you will only be able to run 1 graphics card in it. I chose this route because of the significant cost savings over XF/SLI capable motherboards and since the PSU doesnt support those things anyway it doesnt matter.