Spyder

I agree with everything Tybalt has put up there. If you buy a cheap powersupply and it goes out on you, it will take the Mobo and everything on it. I've seen it happen more times than I can count. It'd be the equivilent of buying a fully pimped sports car and then throwing some V6 from the junk yard in it to try and run it all. You're just not goingto get everything out of your parts on a lesser PSU. And don't get hung up in their wattage readings, as there is no standardized measurement that all companies use, so they can make those numbers move around quite a bit to say what they want. Look at buying from any of the well-known reputable PSU companies. All of the ones Tybalt lsited fall in that category.

Also, SLI is a waste of money IMO. More for your e-penis status (omg look at my rig!) than for any actual appreciable performance increase.

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FatCobra

I need my e-penis to compensate for something else.....

But yeah, I'm dropping the second graphics card for now until I really need it down the road.

I got another two questions believe it or not, even after all the wonderfull help you guys have been giving me in the past 45 minutes.

What is PHYSICS PROCESSING UNIT and a DATA HARD DRIVE? And Do I Need Them?

If a MotherBoard has "8-Channels" does that mean it supports 7.1 surrond sound?


**** There's an Update on my First Post

=Sarc=

I'm late to the thread but I'd suggest 2 harddrives instead of one big drive. I'm not sure what the prices are like in the US but in Canada, it's cheaper per GB to buy 2x320GB drives. You'll get the advantage of running the OS on one drive and games on the other.

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FatCobra

Where I am buying it from, it is more expensive to buy two seperate 320Gigs then just one 500Gig. But I could have two 250Gig hard drives for about $25 Less. Would my PC Performance Increase if I did that instead of having one big one?

I assume when you say Two Hard -Drives, you mean

1 Hard Drive &
1 Data Hard Drive

right?

See here http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/infsligtc2d.asp?v=d to see what I mean, look under hard drives.

Spyder

It's a new card that some company whose name I forgot has put out. It is what it says it is, a card devoted to calculating/rendering physics (which usually takes up a huge chunk of the CPU otherwise)
However, it is very new technology, and not much uses it yet, so it is neither required nor necissary.

Data HDD just seems to be a naming thing that company uses for secondary HDD's.

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a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

FatCobra

Thanks

Black_V!per

You might wana watch the drivers for the 8800 and Windows Vista... nVidia has yet to release a stable driver for vista (The 100.XX series drivers support Vista and the 8800's but arent 100% in the clear yet).


Just my $0.02

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Hambergler

I also have to agree with everything xTYBALTx said.

As far as sound cards go.
EAX, which is included as an option in most newer games has the ability to create an Immersive 360 degree soundstage for a discrete 5 speaker set up. Eax is only supported by Creative sound cards as far as I know. All other sound cards including onboard sound will give you a half assed processed surround simulation(non-discrete). If you want the speakers to play sound the way it was recorded by the developers in all it's glory, you'll consider a creative sound card. Not to mention the sound quality is 10x better and it takes pressure off the processor.
The other 2 channels in a "7.1 system" are redundant rear channels. There really is no 7.1 native content.
The .1 subwoofer channel is handled on the speaker side of computer speakers, on something called a crossover. The crossover sends all the lower frequencies to the subwoofer. EAX does not natively support a lfb subwoofer channel, even though they claim it does.

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Tempus

If you really are interested in high-end, I'd wait about 1 more month for the ATI DX10 cards to be out. They are expected to offer a bit higher performance than the current nvidia ones.

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FROM THE TACTICAL GAMER PRIMER.
3) Support game play in a near-simulation environment. Where the focus of play would not be solely on doing what it takes to win, but doing so utilizing real-world combat strategy and tactics rather than leveraging exploits provided to players by the design of the game engine.

Grunt 70

who says you can't build your own? It's not as hard as you think. There are plenty of sites out there where you can find a tutorial including this one from crucial that I used when I did my first build three years ago.

http://tools.corsairmemory.com/syste...eport_id=12472

The downside of course is you aren't getting any support if your machine goes down. The upside is you aren't paying for support. I havent had one problem yet I haven't been able to figure out on my own. If you can wire up a stereo system I bet you could build your own system.

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Spyder

Most of the problems with building your own rig is during pre-build.

That is, figuring out what is compatable with what else. The actual assembly stage could be done by a grade-schooler. The only thing to watch for is static damage.

__________________
a.k.a. NinjaPirateAssassin
Celibacy is not Hereditary.
Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Happiness is like wetting your pants, everyone can see it but only you can feel the warmth.
Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!

=Sarc=

Oh, you're getting your PC built. After checking at Newegg, it seems it is cheaper to get a 500GB HD. Go for the single drive. I don't think the performance difference is going to be that big. There might be some difference in load times but I don't think it'll matter much.

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Acreo Aeneas

I would swap out the Apevia PSU with a known brand one, like Antec, SeaSonic, Corsair, or Thermaltake.

Erm, becareful, Cyberpower might swap parts they don't have in stock with another brand (sometimes a not so trust worthy brand). They swapped out a eVGA mobo I ordered with a pre-built with a ECS one. I was not happy, but didn't feel like going through the hassle of getting it returned. I would call them about a day after you place your order to make sure they are building your system with the parts you picked out and not substituting with another brand's parts.

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Former 9th Member

ednos

I won't troll for AMD here; I tried out a Core 2 Duo machine, and it is slightly faster than the AMD FX-62 I used (although a bit too much more expensive for the speed, but that's just me). What I really recommend is that you do NOT, under ANY circumstances, buy Windows Vista. Stay away from it. Stick with Windows XP, because it plays all your games just fine, isn't vaporware, doesn't include any dangerous Trusted Computing or Digital Rights Management, and costs a lot less. Furthermore, a few games made only a little while ago (Battlefield 2 and Counter-Strike: Source are the ones I played) are unstable on Vista. This could be due to the drivers or Microsoft-style poor resource management; I can't tell. But, until Microsoft spends some time patching the major flaws in the first version of the new OS and some third party utilities to get around the TC come out, I'd definitely stay away.

jonan_

Take a look at newegg.com they have the best prices I have seen.

Good choice on processor. That is what I have and love it. Don't forget to change mother boards since you had an AMD processor picked out before.