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My knowledge of computers is very bad considering how much I'm on one.
Right now I have a pretty solid PC, but I am looking to upgrade. I go to PC websites and there is a few things I am comparing, however I don't really know what I'm comparing, as in what do all those numbers mean!?
Here are some things I need to be learnt on.
AMD vs Intel
What is the better processor?
Intel i7, i5? Quad core? GHz? theres an i5 with more GHz then an i7? I don't understand these things
What the hell does anything mean with AMD processors? Six Core? Quad Core? 970? 965? What?
Video Cards OMG!
I seriously don't get whats better, more GB? or dual cards?
Radeon vs GeForce????
Motherboards, Power supply, Cooling systems
How important are these things money wise?
I want a beast computer that can run any game cranked all the way up with no problems. I want my sound system and very expensive headphones to sound great coming out of my PC. Money isn't really an issue within reason of course, I don't want the fuckin $5,000 beast machine. If it's like $2,000 or a little higher that's fine.
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I need the special education breakdown of these things. Layman terms!
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Well, you have some more reading to do if you want a better understanding of why one part is better than another. The above thread is good for getting advice as for what to get based on what you want to do with your computer, so others who have a better understanding can just tell you an exact list of parts to get (by themselves or assembled) based on those needs. By the way, with $2000 you can get the total beast machine. Past about $1000 is where you start paying more money and getting much more diminishing returns. There's not really a way to spend past $2000 without going crazy and throwing moneys away.
Out of curiosity, what's your sound system and very expensive headphones? Monitor screen resolution is also an important concern--the higher, the better your graphics card(s) has to be.
It would take a lot of explaining just to give a rudimentary overview of why one particular part is better than another or what is important. Could you ask a more specific question?
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Can you explain GHz to me in a simple manner? Or is that pretty drawn out?
What does the GHz do? what are those 2.66, 3.00 numbers I see?
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Suffice to say, there are a lot of details in the design of CPUs, GPUs, etc. that cannot be explained easily. A lot of these details are responsible for a lot of the performance differences.
CPU clock speed, GPU video RAM, etc. are advertised, but they are just small parts of determining the performance of the devices.'
The clock speed is measured in GHz (billions of Hz). That's how many cycles per second the part is running. If you have a hypothetical processor that can do 3 instructions per cycle and it's at 3.1 GHz, it can do 9.3 billion instructions per second.
What is better for CPUs is a more efficient, faster design that can (on average) execute more instructions in a given time. How one CPU design does this better than another is way beyond the scope of a forum post. CPU clock speed, number of cores, amount of cache, and other features are also important. Intel and AMD spend a lot of money to come up with new CPU designs; then, they release a new generation of products with different configurations of clock speed, number of cores, amount of cache, features, and then ship them with confusing brand names like i5 and i7. The feature size (size of the transistors) on which the chips are manufactured is another important aspect for CPUs and GPUs.
The most recent Radeons actually have a slightly different overall design than Radeons a few months further back. They're quite different from current GeForces, which are a decent leap away from what they had a couple years back. But comparing GPUs of the same generation and design, you can look at the number of shaders, texture mapping units, and render output units. They're responsible for the graphics computations, so having more is better. Also look for memory bandwidth.
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if you are choosing between nvidia and ati, be aware that ati has been churning out more gfx cards lately. however, their driver support is not something i've been happy with. on the other hand, nvidia doesn't make as many but their driver support is much better overall. i'd go with an i7 processor if i were you, or wait for future cpu's and gpu's. i'm sure more will come out this coming summer. also, dual gpu set ups like sli and crossfire are really neat because you can combine two of the same gpu's to do more work together. i currently have 2 275 gtx that are sli'ed and watercooled so i can overclock them. if you are having trouble understanding GHz, CPU, GPU, PSU, and other terms, you ought to do your research before going out and purchasing things.
It's good to get a good Power supply unit because it powers everything. You definitely don't want going down on you. A good one is Silverstone.
With Mobos, since ur range is 2k, i'd go with the new mobo's from evga.
for cooling, stick with air for now. once you get more experienced, go with watercooling. it's a godsend.. i get a 60-70% better reduction in heat with 90% decrease in noise. however, it does cost an arm and a leg because you have to purchase water blocks, radiators, hoses, clamps, reservoirs, etc.
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You are the master blaster man. One more question, how much power supply do I need to run stronger headphones out of like Denon AHD2000's?
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umm. any psu out on the market can tackle the headphones.
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On March 23 2011 12:13 Zeller wrote:
You are the master blaster man. One more question, how much power supply do I need to run stronger headphones out of like Denon AHD2000's?
AH-D2000 I wouldn't call really expensive, but all things are relative I guess. The power supply isn't really a factor in terms of having enough power for headphones. Power supplies for desktop computers can do like 200-1500 W depending on the model. The AH-D2000 takes 1 mW (0.001 W) to output at 106 dB. The relatively high sensitivity of 106 dB / 1 mW and relatively low impedance of 22 25 ohms (both nominal figures) actually makes the AH-D2000 relatively easy to drive to high volumes. That's different from driving with good sound quality, for which there's a lot of debate over what you really need.
You're looking for a decent sound card with a decent amplified headphone output or an external device(s) that similarly converts your audio signal from digital to analog and outputs to your headphones.
The budget sound card of choice for headphones is the ~$25 Asus Xonar DG. For more features, better specs, better sound quality (as always, YMMV), etc., try the ~$200 Asus Xonar ST or STX. The difference between those two is mainly that one uses a PCI slot, while the other plugs into PCI-Express.
There are a lot of external DACs, amplifiers, and DAC/amplifier combos too.
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EPT
