The "I know a new PC will cost too much but I'll look anyway" thread.

[frogbeastegg]

As per title I know I'm not in the position to do anything with my PC now but it's becoming increasingly evident I am will have to soon. I'm on the bleeding edge of what I consider playable for Shogun 2, cryostasis and civ 5, and now I see that I'm a gnat's breath away from being the minimum spec for Witcher 2. My PC has gone from being froggy's beast to froggy's arthritic old cat; I'm heartbroken as I have loved this machine since the day I first hit the on button, it's been such a good match for me. ~:mecry:

I want to get an idea of what's out there suitable for my preferences, and get an idea of how much it may cost overall. I absolutely can't do anything now. Yes, I know prices and parts change all the time so by the time I come to build it will be different; like I say I want to get an idea. I'm entirely out of touch with the tech market, I've basically ignored it for most of the last 4 years.

Here's the score:

I would be looking at partially building myself unless there is an amazing prebuilt system which offers what I want, which is unlikely. While I am happy to add RAM, video card, hard drives and so on, I refuse to do CPUs or motherboards; I would be starting with a pre-built barebones bundle.

What I have now. Core2duo E6600 @ 2.4ghz, BFG geforce 8800GTS 640MB, 6GB DDR2 RAM, windows 7 64bit. I can re-use the hard drives from this machine as they are very good, and the version of windows 7 is a full one which can be installed on new systems.

Yes, I have considered overclocking as a short term fix. It doesn't work. No matter what I try the PC locks up within minutes every single time, and I was attempting it under the guidance of an expert friend. The RAM is overclocked; the GPU comes out of the box overclocked.

Yes, I have considered upgrading. I'd need to do a CPU upgrade and I'm not happy about fitting them. I'd also then need to do a GPU upgrade, and at that point I'm most of the way to a new PC anyway but without the bonuses of a new motherboard and BIOS.

What I demand from my PC:

*Future proof. I dislike rebuilding or upgrading every year or two. This machine lasted me 3 years without change, and is now 4 years old with only a single RAM boost. That's how I like them. It's often false economy to make a PC that's OK for a year or two and then needs upgrading, and it's definitely a lot of bother I don't want. I'm not going to build something that will be strong for 6 months and then start needing options turning down, but nor am I wanting to go ultra bleeding edge.

*Grunt power. I throw a lot of large text files and so on around; that takes more oomph than you'd expect. I do a lot of multitasking. The games I play tend to be CPU oriented strategy games. Strong CPU is important. I want intel; I do not want the alternatives. Too many known problems for older games which I still want to play.

*Graphics. My eyes are very picky and there are a lot of things on PCs which upset them. Combination of contact lenses and bad eye sight I guess. Jaggy edges. Anything at all which is blurry, however slightly. Low frame rates. Certain types of crap water textures. Low res textures displayed in certain fashions. Lots more. Once my hardware reaches the point where it can't run things on max I have to begin balancing performance versus eye ache, not performance versus pretty like most people. You'd think modern games would be better at running tolerably on low settings but they're not, they're actually proving worse than ones 10 years old! Too much blurring as you turn textures down. Shogun 2's fuzzy unit sprites are giving me ocular unhappiness in battles.

So assume a good large amount of grunt power is required as that will keep my eyes happy for a few years ahead.

I've had cards by both nvidea and ATI and liked them. I have had more nvidea cards though, and in some areas I know nvidea comes out ahead for compatibility on older games which I own. If nothing else I know that all my games except STW and MTW work with current nvidea drivers, whereas I remember seeing people with ATI cards having problems with some of them; that makes me look in nvidea's direction again now.

*RAM. Minimum of 6GB, maybe 8GB since it's cheap and always useful.

*Sound. I am happy to use onboard sound provided it is decent as I only have desktop stereo speakers.

*Monitor. I need a new one as my current one appears to be slowly dying. I do not get on with big monitors, yet more eye strain problems. My current is 17 inch and I don't want much bigger than that although I do think I would go widescreen if I got a new one, so say around 19 inch.

*Quiet. Due to my setup I have to sit right next to the PC tower. I have good hearing. I hate noise. It needs to be a quiet machine.

*I'd prefer it if the machine didn't kill my electricity bill. Efficient parts are good parts.

So gurus, what sort of things are out there for a modern day froggy's beast? :prepares to be horrified:

[Veho Nex]

You're in luck. I just built a computer for a buddy of mine for only $840.90 after taxes and shipping. It didnt come with a monitor, case, or accessories because I had spare stuff that i gave him. But here is the link to the wishlist.

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=16102145

He's only had it for a couple days and I reckon it will stay reliable/modern for at least 3 or 4 years. Anything can be changed on it but if you guys know something that will break its budget without breaking the bank let me know.

[frogbeastegg]

It wants me to log in. Any chance you can copy and paste the list here?

[Veho Nex]

Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131402) x1
Video Card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130625) x1
PSU (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006) x1
Ram (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277) 2 packs each with 2 2gig sticks
Hard Drives 500gb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073) x3
CPU Quad core (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727) x1
BluRay (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106325) x1
DVD Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204) x1

[Lemur]

Core2duo E6600 @ 2.4ghz, BFG geforce 8800GTS 640MB, 6GB DDR2 RAM, windows 7 64bit.
I'm using almost the exact same machine, except I have a higher-end videocard (http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-4870-review--asus/). I'm running Civ5 and TW:S2 without problems. Honestly, I think you could milk another year out of that system by simply upgrading the video.

As I've said elsewhere, at the moment the AMD cards are a better deal if you're not using GPU compute (http://www.mathworks.com/discovery/matlab-gpu.html) functions or 3D (http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-3d-games.html). Less power draw, less heat, less noise for similar speeds. No-brainer for this lemur.

[frogbeastegg]

Veho Nex, thanks. When I get chance I shall see how those parts price on a UK site. It's handy to have a starting point.

Lemur, thanks for the advice. It's an unhappy PC situation and I have been attempting to feel my way to a solution since around October. For some modern games (and at some points in games which do make me think an upgrade would be nice) it's fine. More than fine, it seems like a midrange PC with plenty of leg left. Then I meet something which makes it look like it's barely scraping by on the bottom end.

Civ 5 chugs, loads, waits, sits, thinks, hitches and generally acts as if the CPU is about to have a hernia. It looks fine. Adding RAM helped but not enough for me to feel happy. That's pretty typical of most games where I feel like my beast is long in the tooth. Shogun 2 is one of the few where I'm thinking both CPU and GPU need more oomph, and I wonder how much real effect a better GPU will give considering it will demand a bit more from the rest of the machine in order to load those textures etc. I'm concerned about forthcoming games like Witcher 2 where both CPU and GPU are fractions away from being the minimum.

What kind of options are there for a proper directx11 card for this machine? Or is that getting too far ahead of the rest so the card is reduced by the rest of the system acting as a bottleneck? I'm preferring nvidea as that will be a swap and go job, and I know everything I have installed will work with the drivers. Unless there's a huge great gaping chasm in price and performance in ATI's favour.

[Lemur]

Hmm, you're going to have to re-download and re-install drivers no matter what. The driver package may be a single piece of software, but it installs the stuff appropriate to your card. Unless you were to buy the exact same card, you will need to do an uninstall/reinstall. So embrace the suck, as soldiers say.

Yes, I also have moments where I can tell my CPU is getting overwhelmed, but then I price out a mobo-CPU-RAM switch, and I get over it. I also sourced out the highest-end CPU that would be compatible with my (and your) motherboard (LGA775) and RAM. Here's the selection (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671%20600005851&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Order=PRICED&PageSize=20). Just expensive enough to make me go, "Meh, I'll limp along until I'm ready to do a complete rebuild.'

Here's the bottom line: I think your GPU is slowing you down. That said, I don't know if removing that bottleneck is going to give you the sorts of speed gains you would like. You will see a speedup, however.

I have no religious opinions about Nvidia or AMD, although some people get very serious about that. Like I said, at the moment you should go with AMD for quiet and low power, or go with Nvidia for GPU compute and 3D effects. It's that simple.

DirectX hardware launched well over a year ago, so almost any gaming-oriented graphics card should support the API. Here's a list (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%204017%20600083901&IsNodeId=1&name=Radeon%20HD%206000%20series) of cards that should work with your current rig and support DX11.

[Tellos Athenaios]

@frogbeastegg: may be different in the UK, but here the barebones bundles typically don't come with the CPU fitted in.

As Lemur already mentioned you can get a very good graphics upgrade for not too much money by buying a reasonably priced ATI (or nvidia) card now, and a CPU upgrade is going to entail a new motherboard and new RAM (DDR3) as well for the upgrade to be worth it (the Q range of processors really is not Intel's finest, and say an E8600 is still more expensive than an i3 or i5). Depending on how much disk trashing you do, a nice SSD might be worth considering instead. You could set it up with two partitions one for the OS+apps, and one for data, and use your other disks for the archival capacity/rarely accessed stuff.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I have the same video card as Lemur and the S2 demo ran fine for me, but I have a faster cpu than your computer. I actually have the parts listed here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?104987-Summer-s-here-along-with-a-Computer-parts-list&p=1982258&viewfull=1#post1982258).

It's getting on three years old, and I'll probably upgrade near the three year mark, for The Witcher 2, Battlefield 3, and Dirt 3.

It may be better to go for the whole upgrade. The 4870 is nice, but when the time comes when you want to upgrade further, you'll probably want a newer video card as well.

When I built that I leaned on the Ars Technica System guides (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2011/03/ars-system-guide-march-2011-edition.ars) for a lot of good info about the state of hardware on the market. They also publish build lists set to different price points.

A how to build your own computer guide as well. (http://arstechnica.com/ask-ars/2011/04/how-to-build-your-own-computer-ask-ars-diy-series-part-i.ars)

For me, putting the CPU into the motherboard wasn't difficult, and I had never done it before.

CR

[HopAlongBunny]

A GPU upgrade might extend the life of your computer by quite a bit. If you buy a card that will survive your eventual full upgrade nothing is lost...but then you have probably extended your system to the "next big thing!" and will really want to trash the card anyhow:dizzy2:

What's your timeline on this? Are you going to wait for year end/Christmas sales?

[Andres]

I have the ATI Radeon 4850 and S2 runs very smooth.

[naut]

Here's the bottom line: I think your GPU is slowing you down. That said, I don't know if removing that bottleneck is going to give you the sorts of speed gains you would like. You will see a speedup, however.

I have no religious opinions about Nvidia or AMD, although some people get very serious about that. Like I said, at the moment you should go with AMD for quiet and low power, or go with Nvidia for GPU compute and 3D effects. It's that simple.
Another thing, you can always get a new card. Install (easy to do provided your power supply has enough juice), see if there is an improvement. If so, put off a complete rebuild, if not then order the other components.

[frogbeastegg]

In the hopes of keeping some order to this post, I shall start with my short answers and then move on to the longer ones. A lot of the longer ones cover points my one or more people so quotes aren't as handy for that.


easy to do provided your power supply has enough juice
I have no idea. That aspect has always been doubledutch to me. Fortunately I haven't yet run into the limit with my random additions. One would assume that provided I don't go for something which is energy hungry I should be ok, since the 8800 isn't likely to be a lightweight in its consumption.


DirectX hardware launched well over a year ago, so almost any gaming-oriented graphics card should support the API.
I'm wary after my DX10 experiences and want to be sure any card I get is going to take full advantage of DX11. Technically speaking my 8800 is a DX10 card; I've not been able to use it as such because performance is always dreadful. Good to know I don't need to worry about the same happening again.


What's your timeline on this? Are you going to wait for year end/Christmas sales?
If it comes to a new machine and there are parts which I like at a price I find acceptable, then as soon as I can afford it. If not I'll wait longer to find something I'm happy with. I'm in the middle of a temporary spare income crunch, and on top of that I had to pay out the best part of £500 for a boiler repair, so it's a couple of months at the very soonest and maybe a lot longer depending on how long it takes before my income goes back up.

If, as some are suggesting, I can manage to keep the beast going for another year then I'll do that instead. I'm not hell-bent on a new machine. There's a single option for upgrade parts which might allow me to do something sooner provided there's something suitable on the site and their prices aren't a rip off compared to the specialist shops: play.com. I have some credit built up there due to selling my old games. If I transfer the money to my bank account I lose 5% so if I have to buy PC parts and they are reasonable it's 'cheaper' for me to do so there.


@frogbeastegg: may be different in the UK, but here the barebones bundles typically don't come with the CPU fitted in.
Here you get the case, motherboard, power supply, CPU and some RAM all set up, tested and under a year's warranty. I used one when building the beast and it was fantastic, saved me all of the tricky work and cost only a little more than buying the parts individually.


Depending on how much disk trashing you do, a nice SSD might be worth considering instead.
I would love to go SSD but I don't think they are advanced to where I need them to be yet. I don't mind my PC taking 30 seconds to boot up because I wander off to do something else. I do mind shogun 2 taking over a minute to launch, and then taking forever and a day to load large battles. They don't make SSD drives big enough to house my games collection yet, and the large drives are way too expensive.


For me, putting the CPU into the motherboard wasn't difficult, and I had never done it before.
If you don't quite get RAM, video cards or whatever plugged in correctly nothing happens and you know to try fitting the part again. It's safe and clean, like lego. The CPU is more complex; thermal paste, all those little pins to accidentally bend, fans to add, and they can burn out, blow up, and otherwise kill themselves and the motherboard if you get it wrong. I saw someone get it wrong with a pentium 3 and it left a lasting impression. :sweatdrop:


New GPU now
If I were to buy a new GPU now I'd expect to be using it for years to come. If I built a new PC I'd want it all to be nicely matched in terms of power and lifespan. Ergo, any card purchased now needs to be good enough to port to a new machine and match that machine's power. If I get a £100 card now and a £200 card in 9 months I've still spent £300 on graphics cards.

So a new GPU now needs to be suitable for that move.


Upgrades of any sort to the current machine
The case is getting pretty packed. If video cards have become longer they will not fit - my 8800 is close to my HDs and anything longer will hit against the cables to such a degree that I will not be able to fit it in. I already have the cables bend at right angles as soon as they become flexible so there's no space to win. I had the devil of a job getting my 3rd HD to fit. Heck, I had some difficulties getting the 8800 to fit when it was brand new and the first thing going into the case. Stupid bulky double bay design!


current cards
On the face of it the ars technica recommendations are useful. In reality it's proving tough. Some of the specific versions of cards they mention aren't listed on the sites I'm checking, which makes a difference as the manufacturers are tweaking the hardware. They're selecting some cards over others based on rebates we're never allowed in the UK.

Seems like it's variations on the Radeon HD 6850 / Geforce GTX 460 for budget, and Radeon 6950 / Geforce GTX 560 Ti for midrange? Have I missed anything or got that wrong? There's a (loosely average) £70 difference between the budget and midrange cards. Enough of a performance difference to be worth that, or is it a lot of money for little gain?

[naut]

I have no idea. That aspect has always been doubledutch to me. Fortunately I haven't yet run into the limit with my random additions. One would assume that provided I don't go for something which is energy hungry I should be ok, since the 8800 isn't likely to be a lightweight in its consumption.
Next time you're having a poke round the ole chassis have a look for the wattage, should be listed on the side of the PSU. Anything above 600 Watts should perform admirably, anything below that electrical threshold should be replaced.

[xploring]

Some tips and recommendations on choosing PSU: http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/PSU_Recommendations
Prices are in $AUD btw.

[frogbeastegg]

I opened the case up and it looks like 400w. Was that considered a lot back in 2007? Because I remember that the power supply was considered to have a lot of oomph when I was building; TosaInu and I spent a lot of time investigating every single part. To be honest I've always thought it was probably 600w.

I tried my Witcher 2 preorder this morning. Being so close to the minimum spec I knew it was a faint hope; I mainly purchased it because I want to support the production of this type of game and I really liked Witcher 1. Oh dear. If I put everything on the lowest possible setting the frame rate is passable but certain textures are so blurry my eyes complain. The in-game text is close to being unreadable; blurry and tiny. If I bump the textures up a bit then I don't get eye ache and can almost read the text ... and the frame rate drops to the point where there are second long hitches as I rotate the camera in semi busy areas. That gives me nausea.

Brennius said on the conquest of Rome, "Woe unto those with minimum spec!", or as Livy would have it "Vae victis!"

[Lemur]

Sounds like you're going to need a substantial rebuild, then, if the Core2Duo is the stumbling block (of which I'm not entirely convinced). New CPU, mobo, RAM, PSU and GPU at the very least. You can re-use the HD(s), DVD drive, case and whatever oddments you may have (http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SIL-CIGCUP-BAY).

As CR said above, the Ars Technica system guides (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2011/03/ars-system-guide-march-2011-edition.ars) are very good, and should give you at least a baseline.

[frogbeastegg]

With Witcher 2 it seems like a combo of both CPU and GPU. I'd get better textures and so on with a better GPU and yet it's stated to be a CPU heavy game and a lot of the video performance options are tagged as adding substantial load to the CPU. GPU would buy me some breathing space and I wouldn't burn my eyes out after 10 minutes like I do now ...

I keep checking video cards with an eye to upgrade (which can then carry over to a new machine in say a year) the beast. I can't find one which I like. There's always something missing, wrong, impossible or inadequate. I've been looking at the 6850, 6870, 6950 and 6970 ranges. I found one which sounded like everything I needed if only I could saw an inch off its length! I've found a few which I'd be happy to try on a new machine, one with an emptier case. I will have to start including the nvidea equivalents in my search; I'm not hopeful of finding a love match there either.

If I build a new PC the beast will be left in operational order; there's someone who could make use of it. I'd remove 2 out of the 3 hard drives and install my old copy of XP on it. Other than those 2 drives I'd be starting from scratch. Not so bad if I begin with a barebones unit.

That link has a case mounted cup holder! Gah! What a nightmare, disaster waiting to happen with my clumsiness.

[Lemur]

I found one which sounded like everything I needed if only I could saw an inch off its length!
Faced the same problem with my last GPU upgrade; solved it by moving my HDs to a different part of the case and removing the disk cage. Your mileage may vary.


That link has a case mounted cup holder! Gah! What a nightmare, disaster waiting to happen with my clumsiness.
And a cigarette lighter, don't forget. If there's one thing electronics love, it's liquids and smoke! I have long considered the cig lighter/cupholder (http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SIL-CIGCUP-BAY) to be the silliest case mod ever. Obviously I had to buy one for my brother. He got the joke, even though his coworkers were horrified.

[frogbeastegg]

Pah, it's nothing. I saw a case mod which turned an empty part of the tower case into a mini beer fridge. The PC was one of those showy hyper cooled custom builds. You opened a little side door and pulled the can out when you wanted a sip. Because we all know you never happen to lose your grip or jolt a container when reaching into an enclosed space filled with electronics ...

Moving the HDs is sadly impossible. The case is nicely designed so all the various cradles clip into place and remove easily. Makes it easy to work on any given spot; downside is each cradle only fits where it is supposed to. If I remove the HD cradle then there's nothing which will accept the HDs. It's a tsunami dream case, very nice and if my 8800 were only 1/2 an inch shorter I would never have any trouble at all. I cut my hands to mincemeat adding that third hard drive :mutters about the evils of scratchy cable ties and bits of PC innards designed like razor blades:

[Tellos Athenaios]

And a cigarette lighter, don't forget. If there's one thing electronics love, it's liquids and smoke! I have long considered the cig lighter/cupholder (http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SIL-CIGCUP-BAY) to be the silliest case mod ever. Obviously I had to buy one for my brother. He got the joke, even though his coworkers were horrified.

I think you got that wrong. That is actually a tool holder with a convenient way to charge your laptop through the PSU of your main machine (using a car adapter) thereby conserving one valuable mains socket for other peripherals! ~;)

[frogbeastegg]

Anyone know if a PCI-e 2.0 geforce 560 ti will work with a PCI-e 1.0a motherboard? I tried google but found nothing useful, just pages saying it depends on the device.

This is the first card I've found which may fit if I pick the right version ... although I'm not really sold on it. I need to know if it will work before I dig too deeply into reviews.

[Lemur]

Any PCIe 2.0 card will be compatible (http://www.ask.com/faqcentral/PCI-2.html#1) with your PCIe mobo. However, the card will be receiving half the bandwidth it wants. Should still be a big speed jump from what you have, though.