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On November 09 2011 22:05 Womwomwom wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2011 21:45 Alryk wrote:
Out of curiosity what is the difference between a 560 and a 560 ti? I know the ti is better, but what is different about it? Its basically a broken GTX560 Ti that has some things (shaders in particular) disabled so it works properly. nVidia and AMD both do this to salvage potentially workable silicon from ending up inside a dumpster.
I don't know if we can even say this anymore. With technology regularly possessing billions of transistors a perfect card is just an impossibility. You can't even blame manufacturers for marketing defective tech anymore!
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On November 09 2011 22:05 Womwomwom wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2011 21:45 Alryk wrote:
Out of curiosity what is the difference between a 560 and a 560 ti? I know the ti is better, but what is different about it? Its basically a broken GTX560 Ti that has some things (shaders in particular) disabled so it works properly. nVidia and AMD both do this to salvage potentially workable silicon from ending up inside a dumpster. Show nested quote +On November 09 2011 21:48 aendi wrote:
cool, thanks.
any particular reason I should use the more expensive µATX version of this board when I easily have the space to use the ATX one? No, there isn't, Getting the standard ATX version is probably the better idea. That being said, it would benefit you if you ever wanted to swap out your case. There are quite a number of extremely slick and effective mATX cases being released these days with less people caring about stupidly huge gaming PCs. With Silverstone's mini-towers like the PS07 and TJ08-E,there isn't a lot of reason to go ATX these days.
Meh rather than a broken 560 Ti, it's more like an overclocked 460.
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Wow I don't know how you found that 2500k since I couldn't find it with their regular search but thanks! And I might as well get a P67 now just in case I plan to OC in the future. I can always buy another heatsink if I plan to do that.
I'll be buying that 2500k and 450W PSU today like you suggested. : )
*EDIT: Just bought!
What's a good P67 mobo? And for me, reliability >> a few bucks in price.
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On November 09 2011 22:50 beefhamburger wrote:Wow I don't know how you found that 2500k since I couldn't find it with their regular search but thanks! And I might as well get a P67 now just in case I plan to OC in the future. I can always buy another heatsink if I plan to do that. I'll be buying that 2500k and 450W PSU today like you suggested. : ) *EDIT: Just bought! What's a good P67 mobo? And for me, reliability >> a few bucks in price.
2500k + 450W is cutting it a little bit close tbh... If your planning on overclocking your gpu then you definitely need a 500W +
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Hey, My name's Jacob Strong and I was hoping you guys would be able to help me out.
I have a gateway FX laptop, model number P7815u and it has the following stats:
2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor
4GB DDR3 Ram
500GB Hard Drive
Nvidia Gts 9800 Mobile Graphics Card
Windows 7 (Home)
17" Screen (with decent resolution; can't remember the exact number off the top of my head.)
This allows me to normally play Starcraft at normal/low settings with a decent framerate...
My question is, is there an uber cheap build that allows me to make a desktop that is Starcraft2 exclusive, and plays the game on High Graphics with a decent resolution.
Would it be better worth my time upgrading my laptop and then buying a monitor for it and treat it as a desktop? Which would you personally do and why?
I feel that because Starcraft doesn't utilize both cores maybe the 2.0 clock speed on my CPU is killing me... Would I be right in assuming this? If so what do I upgrade to without switching out my laptops mother board (in other words, what Core 2 Duo processor will let me run on higher options and play more smoothly?
tl;dr
I have a decent laptop that plays SCII on low/medium and want to either...
A.) get a desktop that plays SCII really well (High graphics) for extremely cheap or,
B.) upgrade my laptop to be a "mobile desktop" and get a large monitor for it.
Thanks in advance!
Jacob
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On November 10 2011 00:15 SacredSoul wrote:
Would it be better worth my time upgrading my laptop and then buying a monitor for it and treat it as a desktop? Which would you personally do and why?
I feel that because Starcraft doesn't utilize both cores maybe the 2.0 clock speed on my CPU is killing me... Would I be right in assuming this? If so what do I upgrade to without switching out my laptops mother board (in other words, what Core 2 Duo processor will let me run on higher options and play more smoothly?
First of all, Shikyo's advice is solid. And I agree with him - I would definitely go for a desktop. It's far cheaper and more upgradeable.
SC2 runs on exactly 2 threads (EDIT: at the same time) and no more (clarification: the program may have many threads in its life-cycle but only 2 max will run in parallel). You are partially correct that the CPU is limiting - partially because it's not just the 2GHz clock speed, but also the fact that it's an older architecture (that does less work per clock cycle). There's lots of little details that go into that, but basically a Sandy Bridge Pentium G840 at 2.8GHz isn't only 2.8/2.0 = 40% better, but much more than that because Sandy Bridge architecture is far superior to old Core 2 duo's.
Also the mobile 9800GTS is terrible, (Edit: maybe not so terrible) somewhat better than my old mobile HD4570 which overheated to 100*C+ when playing SC2 on medium GPU settings so I had to play on low.
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On November 10 2011 01:03 Wabbit wrote: You are partially correct that the CPU is limiting - partially because it's not just the 2GHz clock speed, but also the fact that it's an older architecture (that does less work per clock cycle). There's lots of little details that go into that, but basically a Sandy Bridge Pentium G840 at 2.8GHz isn't only 2.8/2.0 = 40% better, but much more than that because Sandy Bridge architecture is far superior to old Core 2 duo's.
Also here's a bench to give an idea:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/405?vs=57
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On November 10 2011 01:10 Shikyo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2011 01:03 Wabbit wrote: You are partially correct that the CPU is limiting - partially because it's not just the 2GHz clock speed, but also the fact that it's an older architecture (that does less work per clock cycle). There's lots of little details that go into that, but basically a Sandy Bridge Pentium G840 at 2.8GHz isn't only 2.8/2.0 = 40% better, but much more than that because Sandy Bridge architecture is far superior to old Core 2 duo's. Also here's a bench to give an idea: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/405?vs=57
I actually didn't want to use that bench compare a C2D at the same clock to the G840 because the C2D's at the same clocks have higher L2 Cache which skews the comparison, since his C2D P7350 has 3MB L3 Cache. (edit: also that E8300 has a faster FSB)
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On November 10 2011 01:14 Wabbit wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2011 01:10 Shikyo wrote:On November 10 2011 01:03 Wabbit wrote: You are partially correct that the CPU is limiting - partially because it's not just the 2GHz clock speed, but also the fact that it's an older architecture (that does less work per clock cycle). There's lots of little details that go into that, but basically a Sandy Bridge Pentium G840 at 2.8GHz isn't only 2.8/2.0 = 40% better, but much more than that because Sandy Bridge architecture is far superior to old Core 2 duo's. Also here's a bench to give an idea: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/405?vs=57 I actually didn't want to use that bench compare a C2D at the same clock to the G840 because the C2D's at the same clocks have higher L2 Cache which skews the comparison, since his C2D P7350 has 3MB L3 Cache. (edit: also that E8300 has a faster FSB)
Well yeah that's true. Not to mention E8300 in fact is a much higher-end card in comparison to the lineup. But even so it's a significant upgrade.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/404?vs=87
This might be more accurate..
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On November 10 2011 01:03 Wabbit wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2011 00:15 SacredSoul wrote:
Would it be better worth my time upgrading my laptop and then buying a monitor for it and treat it as a desktop? Which would you personally do and why?
I feel that because Starcraft doesn't utilize both cores maybe the 2.0 clock speed on my CPU is killing me... Would I be right in assuming this? If so what do I upgrade to without switching out my laptops mother board (in other words, what Core 2 Duo processor will let me run on higher options and play more smoothly?
First of all, Shikyo's advice is solid. And I agree with him - I would definitely go for a desktop. It's far cheaper and more upgradeable. SC2 runs on exactly 2 threads and no more. You are partially correct that the CPU is limiting - partially because it's not just the 2GHz clock speed, but also the fact that it's an older architecture (that does less work per clock cycle). There's lots of little details that go into that, but basically a Sandy Bridge Pentium G840 at 2.8GHz isn't only 2.8/2.0 = 40% better, but much more than that because Sandy Bridge architecture is far superior to old Core 2 duo's. Also the mobile 9800GTS is terrible, (Edit: maybe not so terrible) somewhat better than my old mobile HD4570 which overheated to 100*C+ when playing SC2 on medium GPU settings so I had to play on low.
How come when i check processes, and under the thread category it says "59" for SC2.
That always bugs me.
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On November 10 2011 01:28 Medrea wrote:
How come when i check processes, and under the thread category it says "59" for SC2.
That always bugs me.
Multi-threaded programming is not easy.. I suspect that throughout the life-cycle of SC2, there are a total of 59 threads - but only 2 run in parallel at most. A thread's life cycle can be very short.
EDIT: More theorycrafting.
You'll see 1 Core is usually almost maxed while the other is at about 50% usage. That core is running the main thread of the program which will start a 2nd thread every so often to do some work in parallel.
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On my quadcore work is usually fairly evenly spread across all the cores. 2 cores are indeed higher than the third though.
Something to realize is that threads are jimmied around to various cores really fast. Which gives the appearance that an operation is on more cores than it actually is. In other words, the performance readout of task manager doesnt have a high enough resolution for you to analyze it in such a manner.
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On November 10 2011 03:13 Medrea wrote:
On my quadcore work is usually fairly evenly spread across all the cores. 2 cores are indeed higher than the third though.
Something to realize is that threads are jimmied around to various cores really fast. Which gives the appearance that an operation is on more cores than it actually is. In other words, the performance readout of task manager doesnt have a high enough resolution for you to analyze it in such a manner.
Yup, you are correct. The windows scheduler probably takes that periodic 2nd thread (which could be a different thread each time) and schedules it to whichever core the algorithm it uses fancies. Benchmarks have shown, though, that 2 vs 4 core CPU's that are otherwise identical perform the same.
If, indeed, the task manager showed measurements of CPU core activity as an average? of every few hundred/thousand/whatever clock cycles instead of once per second (which would be 3 billion clock cycles for 3GHz right... or more.. ) then we'd see a more clear picture.
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So What would be the optimal super cheap-o build that I could pull off with like ~$300 that would play SCII on like medium or high? Its like impossible isn't it? I mean 40 for a case, 100 for cpu 100 for gpu, 60 for ram and then I wouldn't have a psu...
It seems that it would be remarkably rare for this to work for me compared to simply getting a new mobile processor, maybe add some ram, and go from there... Am I wrong on this?
I also want people to understand that I already own the laptop, its in my posession right now... its not like Im asking to buy either a laptop or desktop... Im asking whether I should upgrade said laptop or build a 300-350 dollar computer instead...
Just wanted everyone on the same page here.
Thanks for the information so far though, very interesting...
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On November 10 2011 05:42 SacredSoul wrote:+ Show Spoiler +So What would be the optimal super cheap-o build that I could pull off with like ~$300 that would play SCII on like medium or high? Its like impossible isn't it? I mean 40 for a case, 100 for cpu 100 for gpu, 60 for ram and then I wouldn't have a psu...
It seems that it would be remarkably rare for this to work for me compared to simply getting a new mobile processor, maybe add some ram, and go from there... Am I wrong on this?
I also want people to understand that I already own the laptop, its in my posession right now... its not like Im asking to buy either a laptop or desktop... Im asking whether I should upgrade said laptop or build a 300-350 dollar computer instead...
Just wanted everyone on the same page here.
Thanks for the information so far though, very interesting...
You're overestimating some components. Though it is quite hard to build it right now for around $300 simply because of the HDD prices have skyrocketed due to the flooding in Thailand.
- $30 for case or $0 for case if you can salvage it from somewhere or just don't use a case at all.
- $70 for a G620
- $50 for a H61 motherboard
- $20 for 4gb of memory
- $90 for GPU
- $30 for PSU
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You don't even need a full 90 bucks on a graphics card if all you want to do is play SC2 or Diablo 3.
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Can someone with knowledge of this make a theoretical build for me that has links... I don't know what websites are good for what parts and what not...
Would be greatly appreciated!
As long as it runs normal/high really well I don't care how good the gpu is!
I only play Blizz games anyway...
Love you TL!
Jake
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EPT
