Splak.net

Hey Y'all,

As the title states, I'm planning to do a few upgrades here and there. The only things I really want to change at the moment is the motherboard, RAM, operating system, and video card.

I want to keep my Conroe (it's still a great chip for me), but I have absolutely no idea if the new boards are 45nm exclusive.

I really don't mind too much if I have to buy a new chip, but my goal is to spend less than a grand - which is why I'll be upgrading instead of getting building a new computer.

This is what I had in mind...


Motherboard: EVGA nForce 790i - $339.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813188025
^Kind of expensive, also heard some pretty negative things about it. However, I really want a mobo that can do a tri-Sli.. I'll get it working one day...

RAM: CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 1333Hz - $194.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145198
or CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 1333MHz - $99.00
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145183

Operating System:
In debate. I hear if you want to move to 64-bit, Vista is the way to go.. but on the other hand, it's Vista. If there really isn't much of a difference, I'll just stick to my 32-bit Windows XP and downgrade the RAM to 2GB instead of 4.

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 260 (I'll doing a SLi setup)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130372

Total: ~$850

Any input?

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Display, WAIT!!!!!!

The 790s have SATA (hard drive) corruption issues, you will get no extra speed out of this "upgrade" besides SLI. SLI is really not worth it, you typically only get a 30% increase in FPS and most of that is at the really high resolutions, but to each his own.

Do this, wait till November. Get a Nehalem. It is 40% faster clock for clock than your conroe (25% faster than penryn).

Intel worked out a deal with Nvidia where Nvidia throws a chip on their (intel) board and you get SLI enabled (even though the intel chipset can do it alone, its a licensing thing).

You should be able to get a sub $300 chip that will be quad 2.66 (like having 2 of your chips at 3.5, memory prices are dropping, and boards will be the same price.

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-- .:Splak|StackableNut --

It's why I asked.


Thanks a bunch

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people keep bitching about vista, i was one of them, but its really not THAT bad. I've run into a few, if any, problems with it. the only thing that is annoying is how it tries to "solve your problems" but you can cancel out of that pretty quickly if you dont care. overall i love the OS and the set up i got, nothing i can complain about.

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Makeshift Patriot

Vista isn't that bad. I had dual boot with xp and vista. For some reason Vista opened programs faster but vista took a lot of resources. Vista almost used 1 gig of memory when no program was open. Either way. Also, they moved too much crap around and you can't find some things liek run, you have to use the crappy search bar. The last thing wrong with vista was those damn pop ups that keep asking if your sure you want to do that. (I heard you can disable it but eh) Vista is pretty good over all though

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.:Splak|Cornholio / Administrator



"He just kept talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt, it was really quite hypnotic..."

After I'm gone your Earth will be free to live out its miserable span of existence as one of my satellites, and that's how it's going to be...

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(ಠ_ృ)

I don't find it that much better than XP.

Therefore, I have no reason to change to a new operating system, from one which I know very well. My uncle has Vista, and I did some work on it over the weekend. Couldn't even find the god damned run shortcut - so I hope that gives you the perspective of mine when it comes from, "I don't want to relearn all this shit."

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I had Vista, went back down to XP and I don't regret it. The user control thing in Vista is annoying as hell, and the defender is just a bunch of b.s.

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.:Splak|VexeD

LOL, my cousin's pc has vista and i wanted to search run but i also couldn't find it. Took me like 10 minutes to find it

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.:Splak|Cornholio / Administrator



"He just kept talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt, it was really quite hypnotic..."

After I'm gone your Earth will be free to live out its miserable span of existence as one of my satellites, and that's how it's going to be...

_██_
(ಠ_ృ)

same thing here.

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.:Splak|VMAN

And Cole, regarding SLI really only being worth it for high resolutions - what do you classify as high?

I run 1920 x 1200, which is my native resolution on my LCD. One of the core reasons why I wanted another card.

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Since we're on the topics of upgrades here already,

Is there any good way to upgrade my laptop's processor? I'd really like to get more ghz out of it, but I don't know if I'll run into too many heating issues... I really don't expect to have bad air space around my laptop though.(Desk, with possible lift options)

Please help me and make reccomendations! (Also, please note if I should buy hardware online or in-store. Also note if I should attempt install or get it done by a pro...)

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.:Splak|AWOL Soldier
Red tank! Rubber Sled! What the box am I doing? I am a Walrus, thru && thru, gimme my bukket oar I'll eat u.

Every time this topic comes up I have to bring up tons of documentation to prove it, but I dont have time for that, so just consider everything I am saying as opinion, not claiming it as fact because I dont have the numbers to back it up.

But.... from everything I have seen, SLI is still not attractive to me because it works like this.... Play a older game, sli is pointless, in fact, you will get lower FPS due to overhead. Play a game like HL2, your fps is going to be the same/maybe 10 more, but who cares 150fps vs 160fps matters none. Play a game like crysis. SLI in the lower settings (low AA and AF) will give you like a 10-20fps jump, just like source. But where SLI shines is when you really crank up the AA and AS to like 16x. The problem with this, is you get a decent jump (from like 15 to 30fps) in Crysis, but 30 is still unplayable imo.

So sli will help using 16xAA but the difference between 8x and 16x is not worth 300 bucks IMO... I would rather buy a gtx260, keep it, then in a year, spend another 300 bucks on a better card, and move my 260 to pure physics.

Nvidia has 3 options for physics right now
1) single card, card does physics and video (you take a 10-20% fps hit when doing physics though, over no physics in game)
2) SLI, both cards do video and physics combined
3) 2 cards, not sli bridged, 1 for video, 1 for physics.

Right now nothing really uses physics enough for me to have a dedicated card, but in the future, like 2 years, my "old" 260 will be perfect for physics.

SLI is great for benchmarks.... not very much real world gain.




Short answer, no...

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-- .:Splak|StackableNut --

No, I trust your word - don't need any proof.

I was just curious - the way they market and advertise SLI, it makes it seem as though dual cards will give you (logically) twice the power of one.


What else I am curious to know though is really what is most important nowadays. Considering that most games don't take advantage of multiple cores, is the CPU still more important in terms of needing the "best" compared to the GPU? Say I did move to Nehalem - would I see an obvious increase in faster processing, +FPS, etc?

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Actually did some reading yesterday that while nehalem will be a faster processor for most applications (has a very fast interconnect like AMD), it has a reduced cache size compared to Penryn, so it will actually not be any faster in (current) games. Once games go to some serious multi threading, then the nehalem will shine, the nehalem is very efficient, 1-1.2x the speed per clock of Penryn of SINGLE threaded apps, 2x the power per clock in multi.

Hope that helps some.

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-- .:Splak|StackableNut --