Looking for a new system - how big do I need

[Cottonbaler]

I've about given up trying to get my older system (AMD 64, 3 G RAM, AGP video) to run Win 7, let alone the game.

Looking at a Intel i7-920 processor, min 6 G Ram.

There is one option that offers SSD for the boot drive vs a SATA 3 7200 type drive.

Video card - Radeon 5870? 2x (Crossfire)? How much video power do I need to run the game with high FPS, low latency, and the video settings in the game mid to high?

What seems to be working for you Uber gamers?

Thank you,

CB/BP

[Shadowwolf]

I dont know Intel processors too well these days because I dislike the company, plus since they changed their processor versioning to fool the market as to what people are buying and try to more easily stack side by side with AMD, I kinda gave up on them.

For a gaming machine, the majority of your computer load is going to fall on the hard drives, memory and video. Lag (latency) is dependent on your network and ISP, so you can have a screaming fast machine but if your ISP sucks, it wont help.

Id say without going too far overkill, you want a high end video card, at the very least 4GB of Ram, if you can go 6-8GB the better, and a fast hard drive.

Video

If you are building specifically for WoW, I would go with an NVidia video card because Blizzard works tighter with NVidia than they do ATI. Plus, SLI has been around longer than Crossfire technology, so its a bit more stable. ATI also has a lot of driver related issues with a lot of games so it becomes frustrating sometimes.

Look at the card reviews before you pick one out. My suggestion is go with something that will last you a while so you dont need to play the upgrade game. Lots of sites have performance reviews on cards, Toms Hardware is a good one:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-cards-charts-2009-high-quality-update-3/3DMark06-v1.1.0-3DMark-Score,1697.html

In WoW 60FPS is a good solid number for everything to be fluid and realistic, so higher than that is not "wasted" because different things can bring that number down in combat within WoW (AOE, NPC's, Texture quality). Going too far into overkill is going to just be excess expense you really dont "need" to spend but the higher FPS the more realistic game play you'll feel and less sluggishness of combat.

Hard Drives

Hard drives, for primary you want to stay in the middle for size. The bigger the drive, the slower the seek time, so even if its spinning at 7200, its seek time can be crap if its a 1TB drive compared to something like a 500GB drive. You also want to go with a hard drive with a good amount of cache memory on it for better read/write performance as well. Average seek times you want to keep between 8.5 and 9.5 ms which is about the tops you'll usually find with SATA 7200, you only get faster with SCSI or 10k SATA which...well arent cheap and are notably smaller drives to keep the speed up.

Heres a 10k RPM SATA drive from WD, its fast as hell, but not exactly cost effective at almost $1 per GB. Yes you get the performance, but its not utterly important to be this fast unless you are going for a competition gaming machine.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=459

Processors

Like I said, im a die hard AMD gal, have been, probably always will be. I have a multitude of reasons I dislike Intel, primarily because of their marketing practices, but you should go with a good deal plus what works best for what you want. Again, in those areas, its probably a good idea to look at review sites to see what the best bang for your buck is on them because top of the line latest processors will cost you a lot and arent necessarily the "best" all the time.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts-update-1/3DMark-Vantage-1.0.2,1396.html

To make sense of the whole "Dual Core" and "Quad Core" stuff if you arent a computer savvy person, basically more than one "core" is like another processor. So a "Dual Core" processor is like having 2 separate processors on 1 chip. It basically increases your processing power without increasing the size of your computer to accommodate more chips. This is where speed versus architecture versus type come into play. A faster Ghz rated processor isnt always the best, and as a good example, older Pentium 4 chips could hit the 3.0Ghz range back when, but if you compare one of those to a Dual Core 2.66Ghz, it cant even compete. Thats because youre basically running 2 processors at 2.66Ghz instead of 1 at 3.0. Most of the processors on the market today have leveled off at around 3Ghz or so, the focus has since become making them multi-core and 64bit etc.

From an upgrade standpoint, you want a 64bit chip, a 32bit chip at this point is a waste of money. Granted the large majority of your everyday software, including WoW only runs at 32 bit, but the backend, if you run a 64bit OS is where the benefit is seen, plus moving forward, a lot of software companies are starting to optimize for 64 bit so its a good sense upgrade choice.

The architecture on which the processor runs is also a high factor in its performance, so things like the motherboard its being used on, the chipset that motherboard runs, etc all play key roles in how "fast" it is.

[Docsamson]

Video card - Radeon 5870? 2x (Crossfire)? How much video power do I need to run the game with high FPS, low latency, and the video settings in the game mid to high?

What seems to be working for you Uber gamers?

From personal experience, I've got an ATI Radeon 4850 running WoW at near-Ultra settings, the only things I've got turned down/off are the full-screen glow effect which mostly just looks weird, and a few shadow/water effects (the big drainers, and absolutely nuke video cards in 25 man raids/Wintergrasp).  Crossfire is completely and totally excessive for WoW, as the game currently does not support *any* multi-GPU platforms.  For other games, it's anywhere between a 15-95% speed increase, depending on how video dependant the card is, the other bottlenecks in your system, and the ability of the game itself to support multi-threaded graphics.   As someone who's kept up as best they could with game graphics on the high-end in general, I'm still not quite sold on Crossfire/SLi for your average non-competition gamer, as the money spent on getting a multi-GPU system vs. getting a single "top of the line" graphics card is comparable at the same dollar value, so the only time it's a pure benefit is with 2x high-end graphics cards, which may be prohibitively expensive.  General reckoning is that a card in the 2-300 dollar range is capable of running all currently released games at reasonably pretty settings with little to no performance lag, and will be able to play the newest games for approx. 2 years at the same video quality.  This does not mean the same settings, it means the games will look the "same".

Any money beyond this will give a marginal current effect and a marginal increase in longevity, something like 100 bucks per 3-4 months of increased playability.  The only exception is when you get to the ultra-high-end of computers, where you're looking at 3k for a base system, no speakers/monitor/keyboard/mouse, or high-end overclocking, where the benefits begin to marginalize even further.

As far as choosing parts goes, this guide has proven me well for the last 2 computers I've gone through, has multiple price/performance ranges, and is updated with each major generation of hardware.  The general rule I've heard, and follow, is "spend little, upgrade often".  A 4000 dollar PC you bought 4 years ago would be outperformed today by the Tech Report's "sweet spot" system for 800 bucks.  In the same time, for the same cost, you could have gotten 4 PCs over the years, continually marginally updating your system as a whole to use the newest technology, and be ahead of the game every single time.  Price/performance ratio is huge, and anyone who says otherwise has boatloads of money to burn or is lying.

[Cottonbaler]

WOW - thank you.

I play currently on a mac mini when at home, since I have been having issues with my older home built PC. Had AMD and liked it, was looking at the i7 Intel based on all the comments in Maximum PC, etc.

On the video side they show the Radeon as being the better ones, then again may not impact for what I want to do with it. When I buy I try to go as high into the tech as I can afford, knowing it will be surpassed quickly. (My wife points out that some people own boats and they throw their money into always upgrading - for me its the computer ;-) )

Given the time I have and tired of screwing with it I was thinking of a system from IBUYPOWER or someplace like that. Getting the base from them (MB, Proc, boot drive, Video, etc.) and adding additional data drives, sound card, etc. from what I already have.

So maybe I don't need the i7, maybe the AMD Phenom II X4 will suffice with either a single Radeon 5870 or NvideaGTX 285?

[dharq]

I went with IBUYPOWER for my new comp last year for one big reason... price. Even on peripherals, I was able to get them cheaper through IBP than ordering directly through various vendors. It's the first time I've bought instead of building in over 8 years. Add in the parts/labor warranty, and it was a no-brainer for me.

The only item I bought separately was Windows 7 Ultimate, but that's cause I get a kickass employee discount on it for being an educator.

The only downside is that I'm running a 4850 video card just like Doc.. :S

I also went with a Phenom II X2 550 BE--specifically 'cause it's wicked easy to overclock with certain mobos, and I unlocked the two extra cores on it with almost no effort. Gave me a reliable quad-core CPU for over $100 less than the X4:D

[Zario]

Another thing I'd toss out there is that if you do buy an SLI capable mobo, you can always buy a second card to match your first at a later date. 

I agree with the spend litte, upgrade often approach.

[Docsamson]

Another thing I'd toss out there is that if you do buy an SLI capable mobo, you can always buy a second card to match your first at a later date. 

I agree with the spend litte, upgrade often approach.

Generally speaking, this kind of upgrading isn't really fruitful.  The second card, 1 year later or so, will be about half the cost you originally paid.  However, it will already be outperformed by a new generation card of the same cost as your first card.  So, it's basically a wash, and isn't a really viable cost/benefit upgrade path.  Your standard upgrade cycle for a new PC is approximately 2 years, and 2 years later your card will be nearly impossible to find and be outperformed by the lower-end new cards, even in SLi.

[dharq]

But really, SLI and Crossfire are both overkill for WoW.

I'd save the money and buy 3-4 more games with it and take the minor performance hit... If you can really call 25-30 fps and ~100 ms latency in primetime Dalaran on Ultra settings a performance hit.

[Cottonbaler]

Argh - looking at all the options is making my hair hurt lol.

MB - although not fully supported yet, how important is SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0? Worth having on the MB or add via a pci card later?

[Zario]

I may be way off base, but I've always bought a mobo with the newer features and with a socket thats also newer.  This has helped me be able to upgrade for a longer period. 

[Shadowwolf]

USB 3.0 and SATA III arent major considerations atm, if you arent planning to hold onto this machine a while and are going the upgrade often path Doc suggested its not worth it. SATA III will severely limit your hard drive options and drive up costs because there arent a whole lot of drives out there yet for it. Its also going to limit your motherboard options which in turn will limit your processor options and so on.

USB 3.0 just got finalized this month and honestly, by the time you start seeing devices that benefit from it, you can probably buy a PCI card for USB 3.0 ports which would be cheaper than trying to find a motherboard that supports it now.

Same thing with SATA III, you can likely buy a PCI card down the road once it becomes more mainstream instead of trying to find a good board with it built in.

[Cottonbaler]

Thank you!

Now I just need to decide on i7 vs AMD Phenom II X4 and  Radeon 5870 vs NvideaGTX 285. Although the video card is a simple upgrade as time goes on, the CPU won't be since each new iteration seems to require a different socket.

As far as the MB goes - I could probably spends months researching all the different combinations of north/south/whatever bridges, etc. So I'll probably just go with what is recommended by the PC builder.

CB

[Simmon]

putting the finishing touches on my new system which includes

i5 core processor with a Corsair H50 water cooling system
EVGA P55 LE motherboard
hd5770 video card
WD 300g Raptor HD
8gig of 1600 DDR3 ram (windows 7 64bit)
750 watt modular power supply
24" Acer HD monitor
all mounted on a really cool case made by Chieftec

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811160030

just waiting on some special cables to make all the internal contections before i lite it off
fingers crossed

[Cottonbaler]

Waiting on delivery of the new PC - with the exception of the RAM, I couldn't buy the components for less than the system.

Case(NZXT Gamma Mid Tower Gaming Case - Black)
Processor(Intel® Core™ i7 930 Processor (4x 2.8GHz/8MB L3 Cache))
Processor Cooling([Free Upgrade] Liquid CPU Cooling System w/ 120mm Radiator [SOCKET-1366])
Memory(6 GB [2 GB X3] DDR3-1600 - Corsair Dominator)
Video Card(ATI Radeon HD 5870 - 1GB - Single Card)
Motherboard([3-Way SLI] ASUS P6T)
Motherboard Add-on(ASUS U3S6 True USB 3.0 & SATA 3.0 PCI-E x4 Expansion card) (Free after Rebate)
Power Supply(1000 Watt -- Corsair CMPSU-1000HX Power Supply - Quad SLI Ready)
Primary Hard Drive(30 GB Kingston SSDNow V Series MLC SSD)
Optical Drive(24X Sony Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Black)

With this I will be rapidly running out of excuses for my performance

Thanks again for all of the advice.

CB/BP