Ordered a new Desktop Gaming computer...

[BlueThunder]

As I said in an earlier post in this forum, I was eventually gonna have to upgrade the wife's desktop, seeing as she was all jealous of my new Alienware laptop. Well, her Dell Dimension dual-core e520 desktop finally took a crap after 4 years, so the time came. She made it clear that she wanted gaming capabilities similar to my laptop, so I did an extensive search, looking for the best performance to price ratio. I found a company, Cyberpowerpc, that had excellent customability for the price, and was well reviewed. I went into this purchase trying to balance price against what I considered minimum requirements for a satisfying gaming experience. Here's what I ordered, and I should have it in 8 days. I also seperately ordered an ASUS 27" HD Monitor, Razer mouse and gaming pad. She doesn't know about those goodies. That's my little extra surprise for her! Should be good for a blow.... Oh oops!, this ain't the shack! Anyhoo, here are some pics of the cool case (they offer many options!), plus the specs that we both agreed on. It's kind of a starter system, but the case will accomodate any future upgrades I can throw at it.... Like dual GPU's in the near future. I think she'll be happy with this little beast for awhile though.... Here's the pics and specs:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/images/cs/chaser/04_400.jpg

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/images/cs/chaser/03_400.jpg

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/images/cs/chaser/02_400.jpg

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/images/cs/chaser/05_400.jpg

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/images/cs/chaser/09_400.jpg



CASE: Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 Full Tower Gaming Case W/ Side Panel Window

CARE1: Professional Wiring for All WIRING Inside The System Chassis - Minimize Cable Exposure, Maximize Airflow in Your System

CS_FAN: Default case fans

NOISEREDUCE1: Sound Absorbing Foam on Side, Top And Bottom panels

NOISEREDUCE2: Power Supply Gasket

NOISEREDUCE3: Anti-Vibration Fan Mounts

MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte G1.Sniper Intel X58 SLI/CrossFireX Triple-Channel DDR3 E-ATX w/ 7.1 Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity/Dolby Digital Live Audio, Bigfoot Killer E2100 GbLAN, eSATA, USB3, 2x SATA3 RAID, 3 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-980 3.33 GHz Six Cores 12M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366

OVERCLOCK: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more)

FAN: CoolIT ECO II-240 Extreme Performance Liquid Cooling System 240MM Radiator & Dual Fans

COOLANT: Standard Coolant

MEMORY: 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory

VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 2GB 16X PCIe Video Card

HDD: 2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Drive)

CD: Sony 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)

POWERSUPPLY: 850 Watts - Thermaltake Toughpower Grand TPG-850M Gold Modular 80 Plus Power Supply

SOUND: High Definition 7.1 Onboard Audio

NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network

FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)

FREEBIE_VC1: FREE Game Coupon Batman: Arkham City

OS: None - FORMAT HARD DRIVE ONLY

SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT

 

[RolandDeschain]

Nice. When you add more GPU power, though, you'll want to go triple-SLI not double. Micro-stutter really sucks, lol. (Read about it here.)

 

[BlueThunder]

That was an interesting read. I suddenly feel much more educated on GPU's. After reading it, I feel that maybe it's better to just shell out the cash on a single top-end card than mess with the multi-card configs. I was annoyed to read that both companies purposely limit their lesser cards for multi-card setups to steer you to their more profitable high-end cards. Typical corporate bs. If you remember, my laptop is running dual 2-gig GTX 580's in SLI, and I haven't noticed any micro-stuttering. Of course they did say it was less noticable the faster your cards are, and those are top-end. That, or I'm just not as nitpicky as those testers. Or maybe I'm just too old to notice! :les: Thanks for the link.

 

[RolandDeschain]

It is undoubtedly better to buy as much GPU as you can in one card, but you can go 3-way to not have the problem. However, the one thing that article lacks is a good explanation on what micro-stutter really is. A LOT of people think it's stutter you can actually see, i.e., random hitches/pauses/hiccups, and that's not what it is.

Micro-stutter is basically this: 90 FPS feels more like 50-60 FPS, and 60 FPS feels more like 45, and 45 FPS feels more like 35 FPS. Some people aren't bugged by it, but I sure was until I added a 3rd 5870 and the problem pretty much went entirely away.

 

[BlueThunder]

A LOT of people think it's stutter you can actually see, i.e., random hitches/pauses/hiccups, and that's not what it is.

Yeah, that's what I thought it was. They should have explained that better. I've got a question for you... Right now, generally, how much graphics memory is actually required to run pretty much every game out there at max settings? I mean, where's the point to where you're just showin' off, and not really getting any benifit from all those extra gigs of graphics memory? 2 gigs? 3? 6? Let's assume the rest of the system is up to snuff, like i5 or i7 processor, and 8 gigs or more of Ram. What's your opinion on this?

 

[RolandDeschain]

BF3 and SWTOR pretty much use all of the 3GB I have from running 3 5870s. I really think the new 7970 cards from AMD should have come with 4GB of RAM instead of 3, since modern games seem to already max them out. 2986MB used as of right now while in SWTOR, lol...

Now, Windows will actually use your system RAM for overage but it's not as effective/fast.

3GB *SEEMS* fine for now, but since I can't test it with more, I honestly don't know. Would SWTOR go to 3.5GB, or bump up to like 5GB? No clue. The more there is, the more a game can stick in the RAM and leave there, so less hard drive swapping and such; depends on how much effort the game's developers put into it, honestly.

 

[BlueThunder]

Hey Roland, I found this recent post at a computer tech forum and found it interesting. Alot of it is about what we've been discussing here. Seems like the guy knows his stuff. It has to do with building an "enthusiasts" gaming computer with lots of GPU stuff. Wanted to see what you thought of the OP and the responses. I'm gonna bookmark this site for references. Looks pretty good.

For me, this link goes to the middle of the page. You may have to scroll back to the top to see the post I'm talking about. I don't know why it does that. Maybe it's just my computer.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1038291778

 

[RolandDeschain]

HardOCP's forum has plenty of good discussion on it, it's one of a number of sites I've been going to for a decade, if not more. I actually read that thread the day it was posted. He's more or less right, but his statement about AMD's Crossfire drivers sucking isn't very accurate anymore, as the latest beta driver brings support for custom Crossfire profiles, which is/was one of the biggest knocks against AMD versus Nvidia in regards to multi-GPU stuff. Even so, SLI seems to be a little more robust than Crossfire overall as far as performance scaling goes, but most direct comparisons are pretty marginal, so it's a moot point in reality, in my opinion.

His point about non-reference PCBs is also not always accurate. Sometimes custom designs are worse than the reference ones. More often than not it's the opposite, a hardware manu customizes it to improve it and sell it at a higher cost, but that also carries its own problems sometimes.

His "Nvidia outperforms AMD by 15% historically" thing isn't very accurate, either. Sometimes AMD leads for a generation (the 5870) and sometimes Nvidia leads for a generation. (The 580 GTX) They've had a history of swapping and being very competitive. Also, the driver thing is very misleading. I point you to this as evidence: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvid ... hes-in-20/

Yes, that's a bit of an outdated article coming from 2008, but look at the discrepancy between AMD (ATI at the time, before AMD bought them) and Nvidia for the cause of Windows Vista crashes. The market shares between Nvidia and ATI/AMD have varied one way or the other, but neither company has ever really had a huge lead in market share over the other in the past 5 years; so even if you had, say, a 60-40 split with Nvidia having more of a market share, that doesn't explain a discrepancy of having more than 3X the number of O/S crashes because of your driver.

Nvidia tends to release drivers a bit more often, but they sure aren't as stable sometimes.

I wholeheartedly agree that if you can swing it and it suits your needs, 1 "all-powerful" GPU is a better option than ANY two-GPU solution, though. Three seems to be pretty good, at least, it's working well for me; but that is also a lot of power and heat, as he points out. I have to crank up my GPU fans manually and they are rather noisy.

 

[RolandDeschain]

BTW, one thing I'd point out in regards to Nvidia...

http://consumerist.com/2006/02/did-nvid ... ducts.html

 

[BlueThunder]

This is just a quick response before I hit the hay. I admit that I've been pretty much an Nvidia fanboy for several years now. It just kinda seems like I've had less problems when I've had an Nvidia card installed rather than AMD (ATI), and though more expensive than AMD, you got what ya paid for. That's kinda where I went to the Nvidia side. You seem to be an AMD guy. How do you know that AMD doesn't do the same thing and pay people to infiltrate message boards and blogs besmirching Nvidia cards? I do see that, people ranking on Nvidia. Both are fine companies, but of course I believe both companies, being in such fierce competion with one another, would go to great lengths to gain market share. I think this competitive market benifits us greatly, the end consumers with awesome products, but only if we get accurate information on the end stats of these products. That's where independant testers come in, to get the real nuts and bolts results. I appreciate AMD keeping their price to performance ratio below Nvidia, but I'm the type that will pay the difference for the best. And right now, I believe the EVGA GeForce GTX 590 Classified 3072 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 (my current dream card) would probably take any AMD offering (not counting uber-expensive professional cards) at this time. What do you think?

 

[RolandDeschain]

I'm not an AMD/ATI guy, actually. I go with what's best when I'm looking to buy. What I had before my 5870s was an Nvidia 9800 GX2, and before that, an Nvidia 8800 GTX. I don't know that AMD/ATI don't do that, I just know they've never been caught at it, or accused that I've seen. Not to mention, when this first broke 5 or 6 years ago a lot of Nvidia fanboys tried to find evidence of ATI doing it, lol.

Plus...there is other evidence of Nvidia not being...as ethical as they could be. Purposely gimping the efficiency of Physx when it's run by CPUs instead of GPUs, for instance: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/nvid ... e-cpu/8852

I certainly view ATI/AMD as a more ethical company than Nvidia, and there are a number of things that support that assertion that don't exist as far as anyone knows on ATI/AMD's end.

The 590 GTX is a supremely powerful card, (two GPUs in it) but the 6990 is actually a bit more powerful by most measured standards. Both are the best cards currently offered by either company, and each contains two GPUs. Look here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rad ... ,3104.html

I'm not saying go with one or the other, but perceived opinions don't always match facts.

 

[BlueThunder]

The 590 GTX is a supremely powerful card, (two GPUs in it) but the 6990 is actually a bit more powerful by most measured standards. Both are the best cards currently offered by either company, and each contains two GPUs.

So, with each of these single cards having two GPU's, does micro-stuttering rear its ugly head?

 

[RolandDeschain]

Nope, they don't use the typical SLI/Crossfire technology, so you don't get micro-stuttering with those.

 

[BlueThunder]

This in-depth comparison seems to give the nod to Nvidia, although the AMD card wins with the 2560 X 1600 res. They are pretty damn close though.

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx_590_review/all/1

I drool at the prospect of installing two GTX 590's for 6 gigs of quad-SLI insanity! MUWAAHAHAHA! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: (rubbing hands together with crazed look in eyes). I don't know if I'll be able to resist the temptation...

 

[RolandDeschain]

Now, with two 590s or 6990s, you would have micro-stutter, lol. (Most likely, anyways; I'm not sure anyone has ever tried using two of the dual-GPU cards before, that I've seen.)

 

[BlueThunder]

Ok, another question. When customizing the new rig, when it came to RAM it offered several different brands. I just went with the 12 gigs of "major brand" DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel RAM. It was considerably more if you ordered Kingston or other recognizable names. Is there a real difference? Or is it all just DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory?

 

[BlueThunder]

Now, with two 590s or 6990s, you would have micro-stutter, lol. (Most likely, anyways; I'm not sure anyone has ever tried using two of the dual-GPU cards before, that I've seen.)

So 3 good, 4 bad? At the end of the review, it mentioned 2 in SLI would have supreme performance for things like 3d and such. No?

Here's a cut and paste under the pro's and con's and the end of the review, under "pro": "•Quad-SLI is possible with two of these cards; ultimate performance for 3D Vision."

 

[RolandDeschain]

It seems like anything above 2 physical cards more or less eliminates micro-stutter, though it's possible going with 4 was just so much GPU power that it didn't matter much anymore; Tom's Hardware wasn't sure on that part of it. 3 has none, though. Also, with any SLI/Crossfire cards right next to each other inside a computer case, the cooling suffers dramatically. You will need to have some good case cooling, and even then, you'll likely have to manually raise your fan speeds to louder-than-preferred speeds. With 3 5870s, to keep my GPU temps below 95 degrees celsius when gaming, I have to have my fan speeds set to 75% or so. That is rather loud. I use headphones so it doesn't really bug me, but that's a lot of noise if you're using speakers.

 

[BlueThunder]

The cooling on the 590 was one thing that impressed the testers. It utilizes dual vapor chambers that dramatically reduce the noise. Also, if the motherboard has lots of pci-e slots, you could probably skip a slot in-between the cards to further improve the cooling? This case I'm getting has fans galore, plus it's a full tower, and it's supposed to have great cooling. I also paid extra for sound insulation and sound dampening. I don't like noisy computers because most of the time I like to use the external speakers. I use my headset when I'm going to immerse myself in some intense, dark-room gaming. Here's a pic showing the layout of the 590.



And did you catch my question about the RAM above?

 

[RolandDeschain]

The 590 has better noise levels under load than the 6990, that much is known; however, that wouldn't really be the case if you run 2-3 of them in one computer. Heat levels rise TREMENDOUSLY which will keep the fans running at much higher speeds consistently.

When I had one 5870 in my case, it idled around 30 degrees celsius and went to the upper 50s under load. When I put a second one in right next to it, the IDLE temp went to 57-60 and under load, 100-107 if I left the fans on auto.

When I separated them and put the main 5870 in the top, left the middle open, and put the second 5870 on the bottom, it helped a bit, but not a whole lot. Top card had 93-98 temps under load with fan on auto. Having 3 cards (I have a 3-slot motherboard for PCI-Xpress x16 slots) all right next to each other, it's brutal. I'd burn out my cards if I left the fans on auto. I was curious and decided to test it, and the temp was still rising as it hit 110 and I turned the fans on manual and set to 80%, and the temps dropped back into the lower 90s/upper 80s on load.

Dual-GPU cards like the 590 and 6990 are considerably hotter than single-GPU cards like my 5870s, just so you know. If you're planning on running two or three 590s, I'd highly recommend getting ones that come with the best cooling you can find on them; or prepare yourself to have very loud fan noise constantly, or put up the dough to install good water cooling on your GPUs. Those are your only options; and even with the best fan cooling you can find on 590s, you're still going to have loud fan noise.