[Guideline] SC2 Computers - Page 30

StayFrosty

Canada743 Posts

March 26 2010 02:01 GMT

#581

Sorry guys I need help again with deciding:

http://www.amazon.ca/N61JQ-A1-16-Inch-Versatile-Entertainment-Laptop/dp/B0034GXNYM/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1269568786&sr=1-14

or

http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00361G0ZO/ref=asc_df_B00361G0ZO1068865/?tag=pricecanadaco-20&creative=380353&creativeASIN=B00361G0ZO&linkCode=asn

FragKrag

United States11552 Posts

March 26 2010 02:05 GMT

#582

http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00361G0ZO/ref=asc_df_B00361G0ZO1068865/?tag=pricecanadaco-20&creative=380353&creativeASIN=B00361G0ZO&linkCode=asn

Go for that one.

StayFrosty

Canada743 Posts

March 26 2010 02:58 GMT

#583

any particular reasoning?

FragKrag

United States11552 Posts

March 26 2010 03:12 GMT

#584

The graphics card is a lot better, and the processor is decent.

Both however, are good computers.

Floydian

United Kingdom374 Posts

March 27 2010 22:31 GMT

#585

So I skim read a review of the latest Nvidia offerings coming out in a couple weeks, and just wondered what the general opinion of the people in the know was?

To me the ATI offerings still seem to be the better choice? I realise that the nvidia cards seem to perform slightly better, but from what I understand their price will be disproportionately higher kinda negating that. Plus there's also the heat issues and higher power consumption. Is it likely that the ATI cards may change in price when the new nvidia cards are released?

Anyway, as per my previous post, working on trying to build a comp for the first time.

This is the build I have atm, bear in mind the prices are in pounds, and general prices seem to be higher then the US. I have to get everything, the OS, keyboard, mouse, the lot.
+ Show Spoiler +

Link to motherboard: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173451

How does that look? Anything missing? Everything compatible? (wanna make absolutely sure ¬¬) I want a pretty high end gaming machine, not just for starcraft 2.
What kinda power supply would I need for that? I've no idea how much juice I'd need. Also, is it a good idea to buy a separate CPU cooler? I realise it's pretty much a must if you plan on doing some overclocking, but I can't really see me doing that...so will the cooler that comes with the 860 be sufficient?

Another question, I've been reading that with the Intel i5/i7 1.65v is the voltage limit with RAM, any higher and it could lead to problems...But the RAM I had been thinking of: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173107 Is at that very limit. Is that safe? The description says it's designed for 1156 motherboards low voltage requirements but not sure if it's safe being on the very limit. :/

Thanks!

KOFgokuon

United States14893 Posts

March 28 2010 04:12 GMT

#586

CPU cooler only needed if you're gonna OC, which you probably should do, it isn't that hard. Power supply, Antec/corsair make really high quality ones, Antec runs cheaper, for your build something like 600W is probably good.

FragKrag

United States11552 Posts

March 28 2010 04:23 GMT

#587

Yes, that RAM is going to be absolutely fine

. When they say low voltage RAM, they mean compared to the older DDR2, DDR, and AM3 optimized DDR3 modules which can go up above 1.8V!

The cooler is absolutely fine for a non overclocker or small overclocks. (anything around 3.2ghz should be fine!). Any higher, and you will need a higher end cooler. It definitely is not a must.

As for power supplies, I would go with an Antec/Corsair/Seasonic. Antec is cheaper, and uses mostly the multi 12V rail design while Corsair and Seasonic both use the single 12V rail design. Not sure if there is any real difference though. Seasonic is probably the best manufacturer of power supplies (most expensive as well), and they actually make OEMs for some Corsair power supplies. I remember that the 650TX, 620HX, 650HX, and the 750HX are all Seasonic made. Corsair in general is a high quality, higher price product that usually comes with an awesome warranty.

If you do not plan on buying another graphics card, I would suggest either the 650W Antec EarthWatts, 550W Antec TruePower, or the 550W/650W Corsair TX series.

If you do plan on buying another GPU, I would go for a Corsair 650W/750W HX, Corsair 750W TX, Antec 650W/750W TruePower, Antec 750W EarthWatts, or Seasonic X650.

edit: Corsair HX models are usually more power efficient than their TX counterparts, and also use modular cables, which allow better cable management. The Antec 300 isn't a very large case, so I would suggest a modular PSU design.

edit2: oh, as for Nvidia designs, they produce a lot more heat, and suck up a lot more power than the HD 5850 you are currently considering, but the GTX 470 does outperform the 5850 (sometimes by quite a bit, and almost catches up/exceeds the HD 5870) in like every benchmark other than BFBC2. I like the GTX 470, but it does run far too hot and consume far too much power for me to recommend it over the 5850. If by the launch of the GTX 470 (assuming it costs $350), the HD 5850 is still around $300-320, go for the GTX 470 imho.

The 4xx series has already proven that it is far better in tessellation, and I can only assume that tessellation will become more popular in newer games.

oBlade

United States5558 Posts

March 29 2010 20:49 GMT

#588

I tried to play with

OPERATING SYSTEM:WINDOWS 2.5.1.2600 (SP 3)
CPU TYPE:INTEL(R) CORE(TM)2 DUO CPU T8300 @ 2.40GHZ
CPU SPEED (GHZ):2.413
SYSTEM MEMORY (GB):1.966
GRAPHICS CARD MODEL:MOBILE INTEL(R) 965 EXPRESS CHIPSET FAMILY

It runs, but not really. 1024x768 (also desktop resolution) with everything turned down as low as possible gets 20-25 FPS with busy drops to 10 and below.

I plan to build:
AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Processor
ECS IC780M-A2 (V1.0A) AM3 AMD 770 ATX
Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066
Radeon HD 4670 512MB 128-bit DDR3

for uninterrupted play at low/medium. Have I missed anything? Great work, FragKrag!

fabiano

Brazil4644 Posts

March 29 2010 22:40 GMT

#589

Hi!

I've a question regarding my desktop system.

Specs of my desktop:

Mainboard : ECS GeForce 8000 series
Chipset : nVidia GeForce 8200
Processor : AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition @ 1300 MHz
Physical Memory : 6144 MB (3 x 2048 DDR2-SDRAM )
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce 8200 (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM v1.1)
Hard Disk : SAMSUNG (500 GB)
DVD-Rom Drive : TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223C ATA Device
Monitor Type : Samsung SyncMaster - 20 inches
Network Card : RTL8168/8111 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
Operating System : Windows 7 Ultimate Professional 6.01.7600 (x64)
DirectX : Version 11.00

Is the video card the bottleneck of my current system?

Also, what would be the best the video card for this system? I mean not the most powerful, but one that is balanced (price/performance/energy consume) and fits perfectly the system?

Thanks!

FragKrag

United States11552 Posts

March 29 2010 22:54 GMT

#590

Fabiano: It could either be your CPU or your GPU. A 1.3GHz quadcore probably won't run SC2 well at all

. That said, if your GPU is a Nvidia 8200, it could also be the bottleneck.

Try the ATi HD 4670 or ATi HD 5570. Both power efficient, fairly powerful, and fairly cheap at around $70-90. If you want some extra power, the HD 4850 is at $100-110. At the top of what I would buy for your system is the ATi HD 5770 which is around $150-160. If you need to upgrade your CPU, hopefully you have the AM2+ socket!

oBlade: If all you are doing is adding new mobo/cpu/ram/gpu into an old case then you aren't missing anything. Just make sure your power supply can pump out like 300W.

fabiano

Brazil4644 Posts

March 30 2010 00:22 GMT

#591

wow, thanks for the prompt answer FragKrag!

I've installed SC2 to view replays and test the system, but to no avail. So I went dirty and installed the cracked version. I tweaked the Graphics in game, setting everything that relies on the CPU power to ultra and everything that relies on GPU to low and the result was that the game runs smoothly. Eventually I did the opposite and it was unplayable...

I'm gonna wait the game to be released to upgrade my video card, and the CPU if needed, so I can gather enough money (you know, college students are always low on money).

Thank you very much!

FragKrag

United States11552 Posts

March 30 2010 00:31 GMT

#592

Haha, I think your reporting utility reported the speed of the CPU wrongly. The AMD Phenom 9950 is a 2.6GHz processor which is more than enough

Yakota

Australia112 Posts

March 30 2010 12:06 GMT

#593

On March 19 2010 23:47 FragKrag wrote:
It should be able to run SC2 fine at low, maybe medium

# Operating system:Windows 2.5.1.2600 (SP 2)
# CPU type: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.40GHz
# CPU Speed (GHz):3.436
# System memory (GB):2.999
# Graphics card model:ATI Radeon HD 4350
# Graphics card driver:ati2dvag.dll
# Desktop resolution:1152x864
# Hard disk size (GB):135.221
# Hard disk free space (GB):103.317

So if i want to push it up for medium, want am i looking to upgrade?

KOFgokuon

United States14893 Posts

March 30 2010 13:54 GMT

#594

video card

RaiZ

2813 Posts

March 30 2010 14:08 GMT

#595

Obviously the graphic card. I've exactly the same as yours that is integrated on the cpu. Now i bought a radeon 5750 and it performs WAY better. It was ridiculous.

> Fragkrag finally got my graphic card !
AMD Phenom II x2 550 BE
Ati Radeon 5750 Connect 3D 1GB
2x2GB ram Gskill
Resolution 1280x1024

Averaging about 60 fps with everything maxed out on zerg creep against a cpu (if not 70+ actually but we need to be more realistic)

More important though : dual view with everything maxed out : avg is 55~60 with zerg creep
Pretty happy so far !

RaiZ

2813 Posts

March 30 2010 14:46 GMT

#596

Don't really see much differences betwen medium and ultra tbh. And medium does like 130+ fps. Even on windowed dual view.
I think i'll go back to low shader since there is too much details on medium which is not really for competitive players lol x)
We'll see ~

snowbird

Germany2044 Posts

March 30 2010 14:59 GMT

#597

SC2 does NOT run playable on my Acer 1810TZ subnotebook.
I expected this, but I wanted to try out anyway.

Just an info for people wondering if an integrated Intel GMA4500 chip is enough (the processor is way to weak too obv.)

# CPU: Intel Pentium Prozessor SU4100, (2MB L2 Cache, 1,30GHz (two cores), 800MHz FSB)
# GPU: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500MHD
# RAM: 4GB

Prozen

United States338 Posts

March 30 2010 17:40 GMT

#598

On March 07 2010 12:39 FragKrag wrote:
The PSU limits you to GPUs that get their power directly from the motherboard (as opposed to the PSU through a 6pin connector). The ATi HD 5670, 5570, 4670, and 4650 are all viable options.

5670 has the best performance at around $100, 5570 has around the performance of the 4670 but is at $85ish while the 4670 is at $70ish, and the 4650 is the lowest performer at around $50-60 (better performing DDR3 models of the 4650 occupy the higher price areas). I would recommend the 5570 or the 4670 based on price, since the 5670 doesn't improve very much over the other two. Notable about the 5570 and the 5670 however is that they support DX11 and ATi Eyefinity (Eyefinity is running extra monitors off of one card).

With Nvidia, I think the only card they have down there is the GT 240, which is actually a good card at its $80 price point. If you don't care about Eyefinity or DX11 (neither of which should matter on a low end card anyways), then you should go with the GT240 instead of the 5670 or 5570.

All of the cards should fit on the larger case, but I'm not sure about the smaller case. I think the 4650 should fit because it is a low profile case.

So I took a look at some of the cards you recommended, FragKrag. I forgot to ask, but could you specify whether each card you recommended could run the game at ultra settings with 6GB of RAM + an i3 Processor? If these cards can't run at ultra, what's the highest setting that they could run Starcraft 2? Also, you mentioned that this particular card http://www.powercolor.com/Global/products_features.asp?id=214#Specification can run at a lower PSU than 300 watts, but it says on the specifications that it needs a minimum of 500 Watts to power the card. Could you clarify this? Thanks.

FragKrag

United States11552 Posts

March 30 2010 22:35 GMT

#599

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_5750_Go_Green/27.html

It will only take off 62W of power at around max load so it should be safe IMO. The Powercolor Green 5750 is the only card capable of running the game at ultra at higher resolutions, but the 5670 can probably run at high on most resolutions (maybe ultra at lower resolutions).

StayFrosty

Canada743 Posts

March 30 2010 23:35 GMT

#600

Will I be able to play SC2 at the highest settings with this laptop?

http://www.bestdirect.ca/products/226519/ASUS/G51JX_A1/

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[Guideline] SC2 Computers - Page 30

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