Finally have that new computer

[sweener2001]

I must have come here for advice about a new computer at least three separate times in the last many years. but a couple months ago, it finally happened.

components were chosen mostly because of price. i would have loved an i7, but i couldn't afford it. my wife let me build something with some beef, but i had to keep it as low as possible.

future upgrades will include a card reader and doubled RAM. might get fancier with things like a blu-ray drive and extra HDD's, but it'll be awhile.

the motherboard is actually pretty well featured, including usb 3.0 and pretty good overclocking tools. which reminds me that i still need to do bios and firmware upgrades on the motherboard and dvd drive.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2 ... 07b57e64d1

i'm pleased as punch with this.

[odditude]

^5

any internal pics post-tidy?

also, what heatsink is that? and how noisy is the "egg" cooler on the 5750?

[sweener2001]

post-tidy isn't super awesome. the case has an area for wires with zip ties, and i cleared the motherboard as best i could. i'll try and get a picture up in a few days, though.

here's the heatsink link at newegg. Link

while gaming, i don't notice the tower getting any noisier. i haven't had a lengthy, intense gaming session in a few weeks, though.

[adventure_of_link]

Nice rig.

[kick]

Nice unlock+overclock. Now you have a full-featured Phenom II X4 955 for dirt-cheap.

Solid case and monstrous cooler. I really like that ASUS mobo - it's the only motherboard still equipped with *TWO* PS/2 ports.

4GB RAM is more than enough, even with a 64-bit OS. You don't need more than that, unless you want to increase that meaningless Windows Experience Index score.

[kick]

Now we need some benchmarks:

- Everest Ultimate memory speed & latency scores
- Cinebench R11.5 single-threaded and multi-threaded CPU score
- 3DMark '06 CPU score
- bsnes v0.68 "CPU stress test edition" : http://byuu.org/bsnes/

[sweener2001]

i'll give those a go during the next week and edit them into this post.

d/l'ing borderlands from steam right now. 66% off! 22 bucks for the game and all three DLC packs.

[dfreer]

i'll give those a go during the next week and edit them into this post.

d/l'ing borderlands from steam right now. 66% off! 22 bucks for the game and all three DLC packs.

Good luck with that. I have the ATi 5770 and although in theory it *should* be able to handle borderlands flawlessly, it runs with very low framerate and just doesn't look as nice as the same game running on my roommate's GeForce 260. Been running drivers 10.1 thru 10.6, seems to be the problem as I'm finally back above 40 FPS with 10.7. It could be that it uses the CPU a lot more than most games, as I have a very low end core duo.

Counter-Strike: Source FPS has been rather disappointing as well in some particularly large/HDR Bloom maps like militia. Other games like DiRT 2 and Modern Warfare 2 max out no problem.

[kick]

Good luck with that. I have the ATi 5770 and although in theory it *should* be able to handle borderlands flawlessly, it runs with very low framerate and just doesn't look as nice as the same game running on my roommate's GeForce 260. Been running drivers 10.1 thru 10.6, seems to be the problem as I'm finally back above 40 FPS with 10.7. It could be that it uses the CPU a lot more than most games, as I have a very low end core duo.

Counter-Strike: Source FPS has been rather disappointing as well in some particularly large/HDR Bloom maps like militia. Other games like DiRT 2 and Modern Warfare 2 max out no problem.

Just don't use Anti-Aliasing. Problem solved. A higher resolution without AA looks much better and uses less resources. Having a high DPI screen also helps a lot. Anti-aliasing kills performance. I never use AA, unless when running a game in a ridiculously low resolution (640x480 or 800x600).

[kick]

Does that monstrous AC Freezer heatsink perform better than the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus?
http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product ... ct_id=2923
(that one is also a monstrosity)

EDIT: Removed the Frostytech links. Cooler Master has even better pics on their official site

[kode54]

Just don't use Anti-Aliasing.

Or equip the fastest video card available from your preferred vendor. A lot of those are designed to run games from the past year or so with max resolution and max anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, at acceptable frame rates.

Also, AA/AF are acceptable for running ancient games where setting the resolution to your display's maximum isn't really much of an improvement.

Also, be glad that FrostyTech.com doesn't care too much about your hotlinking their images.

[I.S.T.]

i'll give those a go during the next week and edit them into this post.

d/l'ing borderlands from steam right now. 66% off! 22 bucks for the game and all three DLC packs.

Good luck with that. I have the ATi 5770 and although in theory it *should* be able to handle borderlands flawlessly, it runs with very low framerate and just doesn't look as nice as the same game running on my roommate's GeForce 260. Been running drivers 10.1 thru 10.6, seems to be the problem as I'm finally back above 40 FPS with 10.7. It could be that it uses the CPU a lot more than most games, as I have a very low end core duo.

Counter-Strike: Source FPS has been rather disappointing as well in some particularly large/HDR Bloom maps like militia. Other games like DiRT 2 and Modern Warfare 2 max out no problem.

Borderlands is very sensitive to CPU and GPU speed. VERY.

Also, the reason it doesn't look as nice is ATI cards have worse texture filtering.

[kick]

Borderlands is very sensitive to CPU and GPU speed. VERY.

Also, the reason it doesn't look as nice is ATI cards have worse texture filtering.

Or maybe it's because it's another one of those "The Way It's Meant To Be Bribed" games

[kode54]

GTX 460 is probably the best deal right now anyway. Plus, you don't have to deal with the godawful Catalust Control Center.

[Deathlike2]

I don't have an issue with CCC, as long as it's not loaded on a computer that's primarily used for non-game purposes.

[kode54]

Even with 4GB of memory, I wouldn't want that piece of crap running in the background 24/7. Which it does, because it takes a note from the ancient book of Netscape, where loading the entire program in the background on system startup speeds up regular launching by a few seconds.

Well, no. Now that I have 4GB, and will have at least that much in future systems, I might not mind it so much. Back when I had only 1GB, and was running Vista, it mattered a bit more.

Also, their shell extension registering a global "Launch the Catalyst Control Center" shortcut to the context menu of any Explorer window, even Open File dialogs in any application that uses the shell dialogs, is still annoying regardless. And I always used to forget the filename of the .dll file that needed to be unregistered to remove that crap, so I'd go searching Google every time I upgraded my drivers.

[kick]

Here's a very easy way to stop all that CCC crap loading on every startup:

Install the driver (complete with the CCC), set everything in CCC to your preferences and then disable the startup entry with CCleaner. Log off or reboot the system.
No more crap loaded on bootup

You can always run CCC manually (on demand) if you want to make any changes to your video card settings. Or even better, don't run CCC at all - use the much better 3rd party app called 'ATI Tray Tools'.

NOTE: The AMD External Events Utility (ATI Hotkey Poller) service [atieclxx.exe/atiesrxx.exe] is not bloatware. Disabling this service is not recommended (it will reduce performance or disable the power saving features of your ATI card)

[I.S.T.]

Even with 4GB of memory, I wouldn't want that piece of crap running in the background 24/7. Which it does, because it takes a note from the ancient book of Netscape, where loading the entire program in the background on system startup speeds up regular launching by a few seconds.

Well, no. Now that I have 4GB, and will have at least that much in future systems, I might not mind it so much. Back when I had only 1GB, and was running Vista, it mattered a bit more.

Also, their shell extension registering a global "Launch the Catalyst Control Center" shortcut to the context menu of any Explorer window, even Open File dialogs in any application that uses the shell dialogs, is still annoying regardless. And I always used to forget the filename of the .dll file that needed to be unregistered to remove that crap, so I'd go searching Google every time I upgraded my drivers.

One gig and Vista?! you poor, poor bastard.

Also, to kick: That's not it in the least. Seriously, ATI has worse texture filtering. This has been proven. Why this is, nobody is certain. It might be a driver thing, it might be due to how they made the TMUs...

All that's really known is turning off Cat AI does not fix the problem. It makes the problem slightly better, but the filtering is still that dreaded brillinear.

[Deathlike2]

I'd have to see the ATI texture filtering in action. It's been a while since my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro went into hiatus.

BTW, every MS OS has had RAM requirements that realistically demand 4x what they tell ya. 1GB on Vista sounds like 8 or 16MB on Win95. You might as well wait some more.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Borderlands is very sensitive to CPU and GPU speed. VERY.

Also, the reason it doesn't look as nice is ATI cards have worse texture filtering.

Or maybe it's because it's another one of those "The Way It's Meant To Be Bribed" games

I doubt it, since the had so much trouble with water and shadows on select nVidia cards.
They fixed it right before my GeForce 8600 literally exploded.

[dfreer]

Lot's of new posts to respond to:

@Sweener2001 - Let me know how borderlands runs for you. I really do suspect it's my CPU bogging me down in that game, Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2 Ghz. If your 5750 handles it way better than my 5770 than I should know it's my CPU then.

Just don't use Anti-Aliasing. Problem solved. A higher resolution without AA looks much better and uses less resources.

I had just hoped that by buying the 5770 I would be able to run it maxxed out. It's already at the highest resolution for my screen, 1440x900. IIRC, when playing multiplayer (which drops my fps by 10 almost consistantly), I ran everything at lowest settings/turned off except for resolution and was still struggling with 40 fps. Newer drivers have improved things since I last played borderlands though.

Borderlands is very sensitive to CPU and GPU speed. VERY.

Also, the reason it doesn't look as nice is ATI cards have worse texture filtering.

Good to know! My roommate does have a nicer/larger screen than me (mine is VGA using a DVI -> VGA adapter lol), a bit slower clock speed on his processor but it has a larger cache (not sure his model number but it's an Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.0 Ghz I believe). He's rocking NVIDIA and I'm going ATi, so it's interesting to compare which games look better on which machine.

@ CCC Haterz - I have it not set to launch on startup, cuz either way it still takes forever to launch but this way it doesn't slow down my boot time. But beyond that it doesn't seem too terrible, really doesn't seem much different from NVIDIA's control panel.

[kode54]

But beyond that it doesn't seem too terrible, really doesn't seem much different from NVIDIA's control panel.

Nvidia control panel: Native code, native dialogs, doesn't start up with the system.
ATI control panel: .NET code, skinned dialogs, Flash animation intro, starts up with the system.

[sweener2001]

haven't run the benchmark tests yet, but borderlands at 1920x1200 anisotropic at 2x, everything else high, and it runs perfectly.

this is even with the 10.5 drivers. 10.7 specifically ups performance in borderlands.

i'll probably even try upping that AAF and seeing how it goes.

[sweener2001]

double poster.

the thread picked up a bit, so i'll post the benchmark scores here.

3dmark 06: 15153
cinebench cpu (64-bit): 3.75

i don't really feel like running any more benchmarks. i don't get a huge kick out of it.

[kick]

You should've posted the CPU subscore, not the final 3dmark score

Here are some scores for reference (Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.2 GHz with 4GB of cheap DDR3-1333 running Windows 7 64-bit):
-----------------------------------------------------------------

3DMark '06:
**********
CPU subscore: 4508 points

Cinebench R11.5 (64-bit) scores:
**************************
CPU: 3.87
Single Core CPU: 0.97

bsnes 0.68 performance profile:
*************************
http://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?p=18496#p18496

Everest Ultimate Memory tests:
*************************
Read: 8095 MB/sec.
Write: 6782 MB/sec.
Copy: 10783 MB/sec.
Latency: 54.4 ns