Video & PC Game Discussion

This isn't really, terribly related to gaming, but I'm upgrading my computer soon.

stonebeard wrote: This isn't really, terribly related to gaming, but I'm upgrading my computer soon. Asus P8H77-M Motherboard: $135 Intel i5 3550 Ivy Bridge 3.3 Ghz Quad-core processor: $210 And If I need a video card (probably do): EVGA GTX 550 Ti: $135 This plus some other stuff: $505 I'm still fine tuning and finding out exactly what I need/should get, but this should make me rather future proof for a few years.

I need to get back up to speed on chips, but it seems odd that you're going for a lower-end video card on a gaming machine. An old 460 is a superior card and can be had for less anyway. Not sure about ATi's... ehrm, I mean AMD's comparable card, but they're usually better price/performance than nVidia in the first place.

Put $600 into a brand-new system (i.e. case, monitor, and all) more than 4 years ago now, and I can still play everything released today, usually with maxed settings. Biding my time until the next wave of consoles pops and I suddenly need a lot more horsepower to run the rushed ports.

Gamemako wrote: stonebeard wrote: This isn't really, terribly related to gaming, but I'm upgrading my computer soon. Asus P8H77-M Motherboard: $135 Intel i5 3550 Ivy Bridge 3.3 Ghz Quad-core processor: $210 And If I need a video card (probably do): EVGA GTX 550 Ti: $135 This plus some other stuff: $505 I'm still fine tuning and finding out exactly what I need/should get, but this should make me rather future proof for a few years. I need to get back up to speed on chips, but it seems odd that you're going for a lower-end video card on a gaming machine. An old 460 is a superior card and can be had for less anyway. Not sure about ATi's... ehrm, I mean AMD's comparable card, but they're usually better price/performance than nVidia in the first place. Put $600 into a brand-new system (i.e. case, monitor, and all) more than 4 years ago now, and I can still play everything released today, usually with maxed settings. Biding my time until the next wave of consoles pops and I suddenly need a lot more horsepower to run the rushed ports.

So I've been playing more Skyrim again, along with Diablo 3.  Skyrim is still fun, some annoying glitches disappeared while I was in BMT.  D3 is as fun as I hoped for, and I've not had any problems with servers dying/etc while I've been on...only with my video card starting to die on me.  I'm beginning to look into building a new PC as well, one which will be fully future-proof for at least another 6 years, and so far it's looking to be at least $1k less than when I built this one.  Exciting times. 

Oh, I'm not going top of the line this time.  Sticking with the 500 series Nvidia, only a quad core processor, no SSDs, etc.  I tend to lean for the upper middle/lower high section of hardware, if that makes any sense. 

Yeah, I bought top end for the comp. I'm now using...it cost me ~$2500, and while it's lasted for a while (6+ years), that's a lot of cash.  

I just realized the first post in this thread is about Shadow of the Colossus...when it first came out. I swear it wasn't that long ago...

SaltyJon wrote: Yeah, I bought top end for the comp. I'm now using...it cost me ~$2500, and while it's lasted for a while (6+ years), that's a lot of cash.

Sweet Jesus, that's a lot. Hah, that's a grand more than my motorcycle cost me!

I would never try to buy that far into the future. I remember when BioShock came out and everyone with cards that didn't support SM3 couldn't play it at all -- that included the likes of the X800-series cards that came out just two-and-a-half years earlier. And by that, I mean that I was one of those people.

stonebeard wrote: For what it's worth, a lot of benchmarks I've seen place Intel quad core processors squarely above 6 and 8-core AMD processors. It seems Intel just makes better processors. For instance: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Honestly, a lot of software doesn't support more than 4 cores in the first place. And while we're at it, you shouldn't look at metrics like clock speed and number of cores at all. Research benchmarks -- not just synthetics, but also real-world tests of things you plan to do -- and compare prices. That's what you really need.

Heh, I remember when nVidia got busted doing some... optimization to inflate 3DMark scores.

//EDIT: Hah, Triceratopsoil beat me to the punch on the cores thing.


Edited by Gamemako - May 20 2012 at 22:42

stonebeard wrote: New CPU/mobo ...lol

Epic win.

My Windows score is limited by my hard drive.