Curse

Undead Cheese · Sep 07, 2010, 12:30 AM // 00:30

Edit: I would definitely go for a new system. That CPU would bottleneck a card like a GTX 460, and your Motherboard is kind of a dead end and not really that upgradable, nor is it very overclockable if at all.

Waldir · Sep 07, 2010, 12:44 AM // 00:44

Thats what i thought aswell, i would still use this to run a second account of guild wars or as a server or something, i am checking the ram usage at the moment is it is using 1.42 GB and all i have opened is firefox.

Lord Sojar · Sep 07, 2010, 07:05 AM // 07:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waldir

Thats what i thought aswell, i would still use this to run a second account of guild wars or as a server or something, i am checking the ram usage at the moment is it is using 1.42 GB and all i have opened is firefox.

Windows uses a base amount of RAM based on available RAM, but I have yet to see a game that uses more than 1.5GB of system RAM. Windows will typically consume ~15-20% of your available RAM; Windows 7 leans towards the 15% number for often, and it's very efficient at recovering memory when needed. My Windows7 barely uses any pagefile, and system wide my programs + Windows are currently consuming 35% of my RAM. I can push it to about 75-80% if I go out of my way to try....

Here's the great thing about owning an nVidia card though! CUDA applications for CPU and RAM intensive applications are becoming ever more popular these days. For example, for playing HD movies on my PC, I use CoreAVC Pro (which has CUDA acceleration and vRAM offloading) with Media Player Classic. It's flawless, period.

For encoding video (FRAPS, etc) you can use a program like Badaboom or Nero MoveIt! which are both CUDA accelerated encoders and are insanely fast at 720p and 1080p encodes. You sacrifice a bit of quality with Badaboom, but for things like YouTube uploads, it's ungodly fast. I encoded a video for a friend the other day using my workstation (GTX 285 paired with dual Quadro 5000s) on Nero MoveIt! in under 10 minutes, where the CPU alone would have taken over 2 hours!

Almost all modern games are designed with a system memory clamp, and then rely on vRAM for graphics. Poorly coded games are the exception to this rule, but then... why play those

4GBs is more than enough, and compared to your current system, you will see a massive performance increase with the new system.

Waldir · Sep 07, 2010, 04:22 PM // 16:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Sojar

Windows uses a base amount of RAM based on available RAM, but I have yet to see a game that uses more than 1.5GB of system RAM. Windows will typically consume ~15-20% of your available RAM; Windows 7 leans towards the 15% number for often, and it's very efficient at recovering memory when needed. My Windows7 barely uses any pagefile, and system wide my programs + Windows are currently consuming 35% of my RAM. I can push it to about 75-80% if I go out of my way to try....
Here's the great thing about owning an nVidia card though! CUDA applications for CPU and RAM intensive applications are becoming ever more popular these days. For example, for playing HD movies on my PC, I use CoreAVC Pro (which has CUDA acceleration and vRAM offloading) with Media Player Classic. It's flawless, period.

For encoding video (FRAPS, etc) you can use a program like Badaboom or Nero MoveIt! which are both CUDA accelerated encoders and are insanely fast at 720p and 1080p encodes. You sacrifice a bit of quality with Badaboom, but for things like YouTube uploads, it's ungodly fast. I encoded a video for a friend the other day using my workstation (GTX 285 paired with dual Quadro 5000s) on Nero MoveIt! in under 10 minutes, where the CPU alone would have taken over 2 hours!

Almost all modern games are designed with a system memory clamp, and then rely on vRAM for graphics. Poorly coded games are the exception to this rule, but then... why play those

4GBs is more than enough, and compared to your current system, you will see a massive performance increase with the new system.

So I should go with the new rig and keep it @ 4gb for now?

Quaker · Sep 07, 2010, 04:26 PM // 16:26

In my last post, I was sort of guessing that your current system was a Core 2 Quad like a Q6600, but it's not.

The Phenom 9600 is in about the same performance range as the average Core 2 Duo (even though it has 4 cores). That's not all that bad, and you could probably boost your system performance by doing a fresh install of Windows 7.
However, I think, overall, you will be happiest by doing a full upgrade. Overall, I would suggest an i5-760 (and appropriate motherboard), 4 gigs of DDR3-1333 value RAM, a GTX 460 or HD 5850, and a new power supply (if needed).

Speaking of RAM usage btw, it's worth noting that CPUs keep including more and more internal cache RAM and that, therefore, more of the software can run in the cache without needing to access the main RAM as often. That is the main reason why going to faster RAM has only a small affect on overall system performance.

Waldir · Sep 07, 2010, 08:31 PM // 20:31

Whats a good HD 5850 brand? What will give me the most bang for the buck.

Undead Cheese · Sep 07, 2010, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Just stick with the GTX 460 1GB.

Lord Sojar · Sep 08, 2010, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undead Cheese

Just stick with the GTX 460 1GB.

Agreed. Or, if you feel like spending more, take advantage of the US deal of the month, this monster:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.455049

^ That's $299.99 for a GTX 470, which is already a great deal. But... add to it that you get THREE (3) FREE games (Resident Evil 5, Mafia 2, and Just Cause 2) and a $20 mail-in-rebate... it's unbeatable at that price.

So, basically, for another 40 bucks, you get a lot more GPU power, and three $40-$50 dollar games for absolutely free. Yeh...

Elder III · Sep 08, 2010, 01:06 AM // 01:06

Yeah, that is a heck of a deal there, I've looked at it myself and thought about pulling the trigger on it. :s

Waldir · Sep 08, 2010, 03:07 AM // 03:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Sojar

Agreed. Or, if you feel like spending more, take advantage of the US deal of the month, this monster:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.455049

^ That's $299.99 for a GTX 470, which is already a great deal. But... add to it that you get THREE (3) FREE games (Resident Evil 5, Mafia 2, and Just Cause 2) and a $20 mail-in-rebate... it's unbeatable at that price.

So, basically, for another 40 bucks, you get a lot more GPU power, and three $40-$50 dollar games for absolutely free. Yeh...

Cool i will be getting that, just one last thing, should i be getting any cables or does everything pretty much come ready to be assembled?

Undead Cheese · Sep 08, 2010, 03:08 AM // 03:08

It will come with everything that is required for you to build it and make it work, yes.

Waldir · Sep 08, 2010, 03:23 AM // 03:23

Awesome well its been ordered, thanks again for all the help guys

Lord Sojar · Sep 08, 2010, 04:07 AM // 04:07

No problem, let us know how it all turns out!

Waldir · Sep 13, 2010, 01:30 AM // 01:30

Hey guys just letting you know that i built my rig and it works amazingly, a couple things are bothering me tho, seems like when i plug in the reset cable into the motherboard (from the front panel of the case) the computer gets stuck in a never ending rebooting loop; the only way i found around this was not plugging that one part in, why is this happening?

The other thing that is bugging me is when i go into the computer basic information (by right clicking on my computer and going to properties) My system rating is 5.9 (i think 7.9 is max) because it is taking the lowest rating and using that, my question is: why is
the disk data transfer so low? everything else is 7.5-7.6 and what can i do to bring it up? here is an image to help you understand.

Lord Sojar · Sep 13, 2010, 04:15 AM // 04:15

Almost all mechanical HDDs score a 5.4-5.9 in Windows. Only the Velociraptor drives from Western Digital can break into the 6.0+ territory for mechanical HDDs, and only good SSDs can hit 7.0+.

Looks like everything else is screaming! Glad you got it working, and I certainly hope it provides some amazing performance for the next 3-4 years.

Undead Cheese · Sep 16, 2010, 05:21 AM // 05:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waldir

Hey guys just letting you know that i built my rig and it works amazingly, a couple things are bothering me tho, seems like when i plug in the reset cable into the motherboard (from the front panel of the case) the computer gets stuck in a never ending rebooting loop; the only way i found around this was not plugging that one part in, why is this happening?

The other thing that is bugging me is when i go into the computer basic information (by right clicking on my computer and going to properties) My system rating is 5.9 (i think 7.9 is max) because it is taking the lowest rating and using that, my question is: why is
the disk data transfer so low? everything else is 7.5-7.6 and what can i do to bring it up? here is an image to help you understand.

Looks good, congratulations on the build.