What is Reddit's opinion of
Tom's Hardware?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Sums it up perfectly:
> As an example, imagine a user posts a video clip to the Tom’s Community of a step-by-step guide on how to set up water cooling on an overclocked i7 CPU. Playing in the background behind the voiceover is “Derezzed” by Daft Punk. The studio representing Daft Punk could issue a complaint, without being required to notify us or request a take-down. Tom’s Hardware would be liable and prosecuted solely on a good faith assertion of the copyright owner, without notification, with the site operators subject to possible jail time for not preventing the video from being posted. In short order, the http://www.tomshardware.com/ domain in the United States would no longer resolve to our servers and visitors attempting to come to Tom’s Hardware would be redirected to a “This site under review for piracy/copyright violations” page.
I'm by no stretch of the word a fan of IE, but lately it hasn't been all that bad, at least not from a technical standpoint. It has even won the Web Browser Grand Prix from Tom's Hardware a couple of times
It's a fierce competition, and which one is "best" from a purely technical standpoint changes many times per year. Chrome has won most often, but with the new version 7 release of Firefox they won the most recent WBGP from Tom's Hardware, but the next time it could be any one again.
If you like IE, good for you, it's no longer the ancient thing filled with security holes compared to the competitors it used to be. But if you've never tried another browser, perhaps you should look around and see what features the other browsers can provide you.
How about this article on Tomshardware in which several security researchers say that Windows is has better security than OS X?
There's a difference between "safety" and "security". Imagine you have a bag full of money and you want to minimize the chances of your money being stolen. Which option is better: Storing your bag in a big bank in New York City, or storing the bag in your barn in Nowheresville, Idaho?
The bank has better SECURITY than the barn. It has a vault, guards, cameras, etc. However, your money might actually be SAFER sitting in the barn because the bank is a big target, while nobody might ever think or bother to rob the barn.
In summary, Mac people are usually pretty ignorant about a lot of technology. Security is one of those things. Windows has been focusing on security ever since a famous memo Bill Gates wrote in 2002 to his employees.
There's an exception to every rule. Your build style is your own and so are your experiences. But from a purely statistical stand point, name-brand PSU's stand up and hold out longer and more often than no-name cheap counter parts.
ASUS laptops have been rated well for years:
ASUS #1 in laptop reliability for 2009
ASUS #1 in laptop reliability for 2010
ASUS #2 in laptop reliability for 2011
I've also had several motherboards and graphics cards from them that worked flawlessly. I think most people confuse ASUS and ACER. Both make similar looking laptops but ACER has some of the worst reliable laptops.
If you haven't looked at it for a couple versions, it's interesting to note that Firefox's memory usage is now less than Chrome's in a lot of tests. Here's one and here's another.
So, if you're thinking of FF6 or earlier, you may wanna give it another shot. Of course, it depends on extensions and plugins, too.
Thanks for the tip, but was this automatically translated from a Chinese blog? Rather hard to read.
Tom's Hardware also recently took a look at some cheap power supplies. Results were... explosive.
On their final unit (ostensibly rated at 420 W):
> Further testing was not possible because, during a short test with a 300 W load, the PSU suddenly bode us farewell with several explosions and sparks flying everywhere.
Ah my bad, I feel like I have seen lots of other Chrome UI posts in r/geek in the last year or so. I was referencing those.
Actually, Steam hasn't used Internet Explorer for over a year now; they made the switch to WebKit (same rendering engine as Chrome) in February of 2010.
i think every1 knows what 90% of any1 buys
- i5 2500k or i7 2600k if you have a huge budget
- coolermaster hyper 212+
- asrock extreme3 gen3
- corsair X00 case
- corsair or seasonic PSU
- 128GB non ocz SSD
- 8GB gskill ripjaws
- the rest goes to whatever video card you can afford based on the toms hardware for best video card for the money
The enhancement in security has come from the former One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation security chief Ivan Krstic, who was hired by Apple recently. Krstic designed the OLPC’s Bitfrost system, which he says prevents any program from damaging the computer, stealing files or spying on the user. Instead of blocking specific viruses, Bitfrost isolates every program on the computer in a separate "virtual operating system," preventing any program from damaging the computer, stealing files, or spying on the user. Viruses are left isolated and impotent, unable to execute their code. “This defeats the entire purpose of writing a virus,” says Krstic.
Read more about it on Tom's Hardware.
> but thanks to Nvidia using higher quality chips
This is an elaborate troll. AMD cards switched to reliable technologies long before NVidia was forced too, and started using smaller processes before Nvidia. Or does no one remember this http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-g84-g86-chips-overheating,6121.html
I think Tom's Hardware actually had a better article about the impact of SOPA, because they narrowed the focus to what it would mean for that one site.
He describes how SOPA means that they are no longer safe from a full-site takedown in the event that one of their members uploads an unboxing video set to a copyrighted song. The whole site can be taken down for that one violation.
So that mean's Tom's either has to rigorously screen all user submitted content for potential violations, or they just have to stop accepting those submissions entirely.
The idea of the end of user-submitted content should shock and appall anyone who's spent more than 10 minutes on the internet in the last 5 years.
edit: article
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-870-1156,2482.html
and
http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/511-memory-scaling-ddr3.html
What you're saying isn't true. RAM frequency does make a difference. The percentage increase in performance is just usually less than the percentage increase in price. Average performance gain for a Phenom II DDR3-1066 DDR-1600 is ~ 2%. For Intel's newer CPUs its a bit higher, around 5%. Instead of telling people memory makes no difference (which is wrong) we should refer them to these articles, which will allow them to make an choice about it, which is what this subreddit is about after all.
You are on a laptop so remember that your specs are a bit less than they say. A GT 540M is not a GT 540.
You still have a solid notebook though. I would also make sure the rest of my drivers were up to date so there are no other conflicts messing you up. If you have had the laptop awhile you should clean it out with compressed air as well, this will help prevent overheating and in turn give you better performance.
Edit: Toms Hardware has this great comparison chart a GT 540m is like GT 220.
Tom's Hardware Hierarchy Chart.
Top tier = Good card.
Bottom tier = Worse card.
The chart is updated monthly.
That's just the chipset, there are various flavors of cards from one manufacturer to another using the same chipset. When comparing graphics card with the same chipset look at memory, frequency, bandwidth.
Building a PC is a one-time job. Most of these features are just minor convenience that you don't really need at all.
All you need for cable management and airflow is a little space between your drive bay and your right panel. I've said it several times before, paying anything over $60 for a case is paying for luxuries you don't need.
And the Antec 300 is one of the better cases out there as far as airflow and noise goes (features that actually matter, unlike those you listed). Tom's Hardware review
Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart via Tom's Hardware. You also can also use the current Logical Increments PC Buying Guide and see what the roughly equivalent price/performance cards are per build.
To note a common misconception, RAM capacity has little to do with the frame rate of a game. Clock rate and timings are far more important, and even then are a matter of a couple extra frames. An SSD will also provide negligible performance in the way of gaming.
As far as MBP graphics cards go, the 13" MBP, with Intel integrated graphics, will falter under all but the ugliest of games (Minecraft <3). The low grade 15" has a graphics card that is capable of playing most games on medium graphics. The high grade 15" and the 17" (weighing in at 2200$ and 2500$ respectively) can play most games on high, but not ultra (including SC2, Crysis, Crysis 2, etc.) and medium, but not high (Metro 2033). This graphics card is not bad by any means, but is easily outclassed by offerings in the same price range by other manufacturers.
I actually really wanted this case for the last PC I built, but I talked myself out of it.
I know it seems excessive, and it probably is, but it really is a stunningly well-designed case. Each part is completely modular, so the bay drives, hard disks, power supply, and motherboard are all kept completely separate. The case is designed to maximize airflow through each section without much noise at all, so it's extremely quiet.
If you want to overclock the hell out of your machine without going water cooling, this case is a really good way of doing it. Plus it looks super badass and has outstanding cable management. It really is the case to end all cases, but in the end it really is way too god damn expensive and I got this instead.
Here's a detailed review on Tom's Hardware that I had to stop reading because it makes me want to buy it again.
umm, so you are being a little over critical of a video that is actually pretty good. she doesn't do anything build breaking ( aside from not having a wrist strap on. literally hundreds of BAPC'ers will attest to not using one and grounding by touching a plugged in psu/case) and the use of single channel, though SLIGHTLY less desireable, isn't a big deal either.
>But back to RAM and hard drives. As expected, the performance difference between single channel and dual channel DDR2-800 memory using an up-to-date Core 2 Duo system Compare Prices on Core 2 Duo Processors is little to nil, depending on the benchmark - most tests show differences, but they are really small. For games and enthusiast PCs, we recommend sticking to high-performance dual channel RAM, because the memory is one of those components that you want to perform best for a smooth experience. For regular applications, though, it doesn’t really matter much whether you run single or dual channel. Two 1 GB DIMMs typically are cheaper than a single 2 GB module, but a single DIMM will reduce your power consumption by several watts (which might just be more interesting than it is important).
Samsung marketeers did a 24 SSD Raid 0 benchmark: text: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-ssd-hdd-raid,7224.html video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs
They maxed out at 2GB/s, PCI-E limit.
From HDTune, the ramdrive maxed out at 20 GB/s. So maybe a factor of 10x in terms of speed?
This subreddit does not make PCs for you. Some users may be nice enough to do so, but this is not the intended purpose of BuildaPC.
Read some links in the sidebar to your right. Watch some youtube videos. Newegg has a decent 3-part PC building video.
If you have specific questions, people here would be happy to help. If you compile some parts and want people to give them a look, please post it here! (and tag it properly)
If gaming is a priorty, you'll want a discrete graphics card as opposed to using the built-in graphics capabilities of some motherboards. Tom's Hardware is a great place to learn about graphics cards. You can see reviews, benchmarks, comparisons.
It may seem intimidating at first, but building a PC is much easier than you think!
If you are into serious keyboards, I highly recommend going with mechanical switches. These are much more durable and have that oh so nice 'click' sound to a keypress.
Don't go with any Razer mech keyboards. While the switches are mechanical, the rest of the keyboard is quite flimsy and they break easily. Thats what you get with rushed production.
Having said that, the type of gaming you are doing will definitely influence the type of switches you should get.
My own rule of thumb: RTS - Brown switches FPS - Black switches
Heres a great article if you want to know more about it. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mechanical-switch-keyboard,2955.html
I currently own a Flico Brown. It's the most satisfying buy I have ever made on any electronics.
Good luck.
Epic:"Nah, we're sweet"
I'd imagine that the sort of processing power to do these sort of visuals in a 64 player game might take a couple more years to become cheap. But BF3 will do nicely for now, ohh yes.
apple refuses to repair smokers hardware, it states that somewhere buried in their tos... guess you can't blame them if you see something like that.
edit: Link
Tom's Hardware does a monthly round-up of their best GPUs per x dollars. They don't restrict themselves to AMD GPUs, but it's still pretty useful. Here's the latest edition.
Approx 6 month old article which should give you all the information that is currently available, on SSD reliability.
Problem is, SSDs haven't been around long enough for us to have statistical data about long term reliability. On paper, used with proper wear level algorithms, SSD NAND chips should outlast HDDs by an order of magnitude, but real numbers are highly dependent on controller implementation.
Enterprise class SSDs are extremely reliable but also crazy expensive (thousands of dollars). Of the consumer/desktop class SSDs, Intels are the most reliable, but also slower and more expensive than other market options. The OCZs and Crucials are aiming for speed and reliability is ~~suspect~~ secondary. This seems consistent with the anecdotal evidence that seems to be surfacing.
Losing an OS partition is a minor inconvenience at its worst, reinstall and move on, you don't lose critical data, so your planned configuration should be fine irrespective of SSD reliability. If you have critical media/data, it really isn't safe on the HDD either unless if you have multiple (including an offsite) backups.
Multi-GPU setup is a gimmick. I'm assuming by 190% scaling, you are referring to average Frames per Second. Although AMD cards have higher average FPS than nVIDIA, the minimum FPS scaling is almost identical. Furthermore, AMD drivers are tuned to give more erratic FPS behavior at the expense of producing higher average FPS which produces the infamous microstuttering effect. Source
Comparing a 6970M to a desktop 6970 is just silly. Take $200 off that and you can get a card equivalent to a 6970M for a desktop PC.
EDIT: Essentially a 6970M is equivalent to a desktop 6850 (which is still even slightly faster) Proof: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6970m-mobility-radeon-eurocom-panther,2847-3.html More proof: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4340/27inch-apple-imac-review-2011/4 (scroll halfway down)
Also, the desktop 6850 ($150) costs $200 less than a 6970 ($350). Whether you were trying to be intentionally deceptive or just ignorant of the differences between a desktop and a mobile GPU, your post is misleading, but I doubt you will fix it.
The cracking programs* don't use the CPU, they use the all the parallel processors (GPU) in the video cards. So for a lot of these tasks they're greatly outperforming a multi-CPU setup with just 4 commodity video cards.
*most/some, not sure, john the ripper doesn't
Article here on GPU cracking:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wireless-security-hack,2981.html
This page on basic GPU over CPU:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wireless-security-hack,2981-8.html
Countering your counter points...
- If you buy a Dell or HP or any pre-built computer, it's essentially free. Most people buy computers like this rather than building, so the cost of $119 is hardly the average people spend.
- Everybody likes putting a face on sweatshops and making them sound so horrible, but it only looks that way compared to our standards. Compared to other people in their own country, they live a very high standard of life. I'm not saying that we shouldn't pay them well, but right now this is one of the few ways we have of putting a lot of money into poor countries. It must be again noted that these points do not hold universally. We see terrible abuse of some of the poorest people in the world done by the oil industry all the time. Also, tech factories aren't like the sweatshops you see in the clothing industry.
- I agree, top execs shouldn't get all the money when the employees do all the work. But don't forget that the developers at a company like Microsoft also make $70-80k starting. I think the tech industry does a better job of pay increase up the company tree than other industries. There are a hell of a lot of people who became millionaires working at Microsoft in their early days.
- Again, you are right. Not all billionaires act this way. But can we really enforce a law because some people abuse it? Some people drink and drive, but should we make alcohol illegal?
A government regulation would just make more money poured into expensive lawsuits, not to mention the cost of figuring out who to give it all to. That is not how you should distribute this wealth.
There is a website called Tom's Hardware they give a lot of good reviews on products.
They also do a system builder series every so often, that are good easy to read, and if you like the computer they have links to newegg to buy those parts.
Here is a link to their overall article for the most recent System builder article. They do a 500 dollar, 1000 dollar, and 2000, dollar articles.
And while I'm here: 1 card solutions are way less of a headache than crossfire setups. Try to stick to a single card setup - you can throw in another card for more monitors if two or three (ati displayport) isn't enough.
Then you should probably read up on what a web browser does. One of the Firefox developers blogged about on it here: http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/29/browser-x-is-using-y-mb-of-memory-with-z-tabs-open-is-a-meaningless-observation/
I would also suggest to read the test here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/web-browser-performance-standard-html5,3013-11.html which in their testcase Chrome uses a lot more memory.
Yes, but it will be minor. Your processor/gpu are going to eat up the majority of power, and the wifi/3g/screen/bluetooth will finish the job.
I think you'll see greater gains in battery life by simply not wasting as much time. You may get 4 hours with both drives, but the SSD will boot in 20 seconds and the other in two minutes. You've got to account for these things when you consider the full scope of what you're asking.
At Toms Hardware they have articles called Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: the last page has a Gaming CPU Hierarchy Chart. Might be useful to you.
> There's, IMO, no clear reason to go with a 6xxx series ATI/AMD card.
There's very good reason to go with a 6xxx series card: best price/performance. Read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2964-4.html
> although 6950 is slower than 5850 in many situations...
Based on what? Here are a ton of benchmarks in which the 5850 wins exactly none: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/295?vs=331
> 67xx is entry-level and actually not a big upgrade over the integrated graphics on AMD's new Llano chips
Not true at all. The 67xx are at least twice as fast as the AMD A8-3850 and probably close to three times as fast. You can't find reviews directly comparing the two because the difference is too big. Anandtech compared it to the 5570 which is significantly slower than a 67xx and the 5570 still won by a decent margin: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4448/amd-llano-desktop-performance-preview/4
Come on man, you talk like you are telling facts, the least you could do is look at some actual benchmarks.
As long as it is used with an H67 motherboard the i5-2500k can use the integrated graphics. It would be silly to do that combination since you lose a lot of your overclocking potential though. Also if I recall right, the upcoming Z68 chipset is supposed to allow both use of integrated graphics and overclocking.
You could probably run most of those games on low to medium settings with the integrated graphics, but even a cheap $80 card would be a large improvement. Tom's Hardware puts the 3000 on a level with a geforce 6800. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-game-performance-radeon-hd-6670,2935-7.html
Tom's Hardware puts out an article every month detailing the best cards for each price range. I would take a look at that. As an alternative, you could check out r/hardwareswap And see if you could find someone with a 9800GTX they want to sell. Market price would be around $50, and if I recall correctly, the 9800GTX scales in SLI pretty well. This assumes you have a motherboard that supports SLI, and the necessary connectors available on your PSU. If so, this would breathe new life into your rig for a reasonable amount of cash.
Every month, Tom's Hardware puts out a "Best Graphics Cards for the Money" article. They are incredibly objective in their reviews of individual cards and are usually spot-on with their recommendations.
No, you are wrong in both aspects. The CPU's have different architecture, there is far more to a CPU than clock speed, which is just a measure of how often it does something - but not how much stuff gets done per clock. A Phenom 2 x4 will get smoked by an i5 in everything:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=363
Here's Skyrim. The first chart has an i5 2500k at 3GHz (this i5 2300 will run at 3GHz with turbo in Skyrim) ahead of the Ph2. Also notice in the 2nd chart how they set all CPU's to 3GHz and the i5 gets 54 FPS average (33 minimum) while the Phenom 2 gets 41 average (25 minimum). This shows that just looking at clock speed tells you nothing. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html
The same thing goes for the GPU's. I would have chosen a 6950 but the 560ti's were cheaper (they usually perform SLIGHTLY worse than 6950's) and wanted to keep your total cost low. You could still stick with a 6870, there's one on newegg for $140 after rebate which is a reasonably good deal. It's actually a better value overall (for how much performance you get for the $) and you could upgrade sooner (next-generation cards are coming out next year).
That's beyond 100% true, hit up /r/buildapc for help in that category. And since you're going to be using this same PC for a while, research the fuck out of anything you buy for it, looking up benchmarks, and other things of that nature.
Toms' Hardware is another good resource.
- pre-built are almost always overpriced for the components used, but of course pre-built means that you have support if something does go wrong and you don't have to worry about it
you're probably gonna pay about 200-300 USD more for a system that is pre-built versus you building it yourself
the cool thing about PCs is that you can upgrade almost anything at a whim. graphics card not beefy enough? get another card. hdd, RAM, optical drive and some other items you can just keep if you want to upgrade the main parts. looking at my system, I'd say the parts are circa 2009 and I can still play most games on medium to medium-high settings. I'll add in more RAM in the future (which is like 20 bucks) and if need be a new video card, but that's a long ways off from what I can tell
£500 is roughly 800USD, that's a very good starting price for budget PC gaming
r/buildapc can help you morem, or perhaps http://www.tomshardware.com/
this specifically http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/budget-gaming-pc-phenom-ii-radeon-hd-6850,2903.html is 500 USD, and that is way better than my build
I'm not talking about the number of cores, I'm talking about how fast each individual core is at a particular task. The i7 far outperforms the Core 2 Quad.
That chart shows single-core operations only.
6000 series cards are known as the best scaling cards available. You can expect 80%-95% scaling in most instances with 6000 series dual crossfiring.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865-10.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-memory-upgrade,2778-9.html
DDR 3 1600 is the standard at the moment, and the price is generally only 3-5$ more than 1333. 8 GB will serve you well, and with kits going for 35$ recently, there's no reason to pass that up. cl 9 is just fine. memory timing makes very little difference in performance.
The 7300 is not a gaming card in the least. Of course you won't get decent FPS in one of the worst PC ports of all time. If you are going to get a new card, get a Radeon HD 5570. I got one for $50 USD about 2 months ago for an older PC, and I am very pleased with it. Nothing from nVidia will beat it for the same price. In all honesty, this is the minimum video card you will want to get for gaming. Another comment suggests a G210. The G210 is actually (much) worse than your current card. The 5570 is leaps and bounds better than either. Check out this chart.
Video card number meaning:
#xxx -- # = Series of card. This tells what version of DirectX/OpenGL/Pixel Shader version it supports.
x#xx -- # = Performance of card within the series. This is true for nVidia and AMD/ATi. A Radeon HD 5800 will beat a Radeon HD 6500. A GeForce 6800 will beat a Geforce 7300.
xx#x -- # = further breakdown of performance within the series.
Hope that helps.
Two links:
Tom's hardware and the subreddit devoted to building PCs. These should cover all you need to know and more.
> (should not be above 60$) which is capable of running Battlefield 3 and more upcoming games.
The cheapest card that would run BF3 (maybe in medium settings if you are not in a very high resolution) is the Radeon 5670 which can be found for about $60 according to Google Products.
If you want something more powerful yet staying within that price range, you should consider buying used: check r/hardwareswap
The maker of the card is secondary to the maker of the chipset. There are dozens of card makers but the chipset almost certainly comes from one of three companies; Intel, NVidia, or ATI/AMD.
Game developers don't write programs for a particular chipset. They generally support a graphics API such as DirectX 9, Direct X 11, Open GL, etc. If a game is written for Direct X 9 then any DX9 card will run the game.
But the frame-rate and supported features (eg. anti-aliasing) depend on how powerful the card is. This is where you need benchmarks to evaluate whether a card had enough power to run the game with the settings you want.
For a good shortcut, look at articles like these:
Note that this graph does not represent accurate gaming benchmarks from what I'm seeing.. For instance, the popular Intel 2500K and 2600K processors are neck-and-neck in most games, looking at Anandtech's and Tom's Hardware's benchmarks.
Chrome is definitely a bigger memory hog than Firefox if you're a user of lots of tabs (like most reddit users seem to be). This is a natural side effect of the multi-process model, though there might be other reasons as well (e.g. optimizing for speed over memory efficiency). Citations: (1) (2) I like Chrome but I have to limit myself to 7 tabs or so even on a machine with several gigs of memory or it starts to compete with other big memory users on my machine, while 20+ isn't unusual for me in Firefox (with TreeStyleTabs).
Well, you can look at some budget PCs from Tom's Hardware to get ideas: $500 from September and $600 from December. Use the $500 system as a base, get rid of the dedicated graphics card and swap the processor for an AMD A8-3850 and bump the RAM up to DDR3 1600, and you're at $400 with a system that can deftly outperform any console. It won't play at 1920x1200 with all the fancy gizmos enabled, but at 720p and console-quality graphics settings it'll definitely be smoother than your Xbox360 or PS3. And you'll be able to play any damn thing on Steam, as well as modding to your heart's content.
>you would get a 33% boost in performance
You should note that is a 33% increase in RAM performance, and not a 33% increase in overall gaming performance.
I'd personally list a minimum of 8GB on the Excellent and Outstanding builds, and both 4GB and 8GB options on the Great builds, and possibly the Good and Very Good builds as well. See this article for why I think 8GB of RAM is a near-mandatory investment.
I would also list the i5-2500K as the minimum option for the Enthusiast build, with the i7-2600K as an optional upgrade. I would also consider removing the i7 as an option from the Exceptional build. (Keep in mind that the Falcon Guide is heavily geared towards gaming machines, and the i5 can perform significantly better than the i7 on games that don't support hyperthreading. Even for an Enthusiast build, you want the component that performs the best, not the one that costs the most money.)
This is a little nit-picky, but list 1TB x 2 hard drives as an option, not as a minimum for the Exceptional and Enthusiast builds. People who don't store tons of videos on their machine will probably not end up needing anywhere near 1TB. For them, adding an extra drive they'll never use will just suck up more power and generate more heat in the case.
P.S. This is the first I'd ever heard of the Fractal Arc Midi. I've now completely fallen in love with that case. It's so beautiful! I'm almost certainly picking one up for my build.
Okay, a few things I haven't seen mentioned here.
First off, the 3.0 Gbit/s is really just the SATA II spec, not the actual throughput of the hard drives, and is actually 375MB/s (a byte being 8 bits). There's also 6.0Gbit/s SATA (SATA III), which, as you may imagine, is 750MB/s. The only kind of drives that can actually saturate 3.0Gbit/s are the fastest SSD drives, with a read speed of 550MB/s (they obviously run on the 6.0Gbit/s SATA III). SSDs are rather pricy, and somewhat small, especially for a sample library.
Secondly, the speed of modern mechanical hard drives has been helped most by the increased data density. Yes, this means, overall, that bigger drives will be faster. The speed of a drive still generally goes up the higher the RPM, but compare this 600gb 10k RPM WD Raptor to this 1TB 7.2k RPM Samsung HD. A substantial price difference, and a substantial space difference. Yet looking at the benchmarks, the Samsung is only slightly slower on throughput.
Going to the next page on that review, you'll see that yes, the 10k drives have a rather faster seek time, which is fairly important, but... in my opinion, not nearly enough of a factor to spend over 3.5 times the cost of the larger drive. A modern 1TB+ 7.2k hard drive is still substantially faster than a several year old 10k hard drive.
TL;DR: SATA Speed != drive speed, large (TB+) hard drives at 7.2k are almost as fast, larger and a fraction of the price of 10k hard drives.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-scaling-p67-chipset-gaming-performance,2887-10.html
Certainly it's not as fast as a true x16/x16 setup, but an x16/x4 configuration is definitely faster than a single card in all instances, and the absolute worst case scenario only crops up in a single application tested, while most of the results are within 5%.
Honestly, knowing how to disassemble and reassemble a PC isn't going to help much when you start with a computer science degree. Your first classes will likely be programming, so I would advise you to save your money.
If you want to learn how to build a PC, the Tom's Hardware guide is very thorough.
It's also worth noting that a box from dell or HP is going to be much harder to put back together than building a computer from parts. Those computers aren't designed for easy reassembly.
All that said, it's your money, and if you want to spend $100 so you can tinker without worry, it wouldn't be a total waste. You could even set the machine up as a home server when you're done playing with the hardware.
It is an upgraded die-shrunk version of Sandy Bridge. A bit faster at the same clock speed, and uses less power. Also integrated graphics will be better. If your current comp doesn't drive you crazy I would personally wait.
In general, you're right. However, Skyrim is actually one of the few games where overclocking your CPU will benefit you quite a bit.
That said, there's lots of CPU bottle necking code in skyrim; there are mods out there that replace much of this code and reduce the bottle neck. Skyrim's shadows are also very poorly done and seem to interact oddly with the CPU, but that's a separate story.
In general though, I agree, overclocking won't do much to improve performance in most games as they are GPU-limited rather than CPU limited.
I'd honestly recommend the Corsair, because it has a single 12V rail. This is especially important if you plan to SLI/Xfire cards, as splitting the power up into several rails can lead to "trapped" power that cannot be used. Edit: I've just read a nice post here that pretty much states that modern multi-rail PSUs are less prone to being overloaded on a single rail, but honestly having a single rail completely eliminates any worries about which connectors you can use.
RMA rates could be a more useful proxy for drive failure, although obviously there are other reasons for returning a drive than a drive failure, and not all failed drives will be returned.
This was posted a few days ago on Tomshardware
"Nvidia did not indicate that it would drop CUDA anytime soon, but its participation in this group of companies suggests that Nvidia may be planning for a time beyond CUDA."
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-graphics-card-accelerator-cuda-openaac,14234.html
ಠ_ಠ You know, even if you did that it would most likely work - assuming he made the cuts with at least some degree of accuracy (which the probably shopped picture implies), you would only be removing a few channels, ostensibly turning the 7800 into an x8 rather than x16 card.
I vaguely recall there being an article about somebody doing that legitimately, but if you're going to spend $400-$500 on a video card, I don't know why you'd object to another bit on a proper motherboard.
Tl;dr it would probably still work if done correctly. Also, it's pretty funny.
Edit: I found the article at Tom's Hardware. It's a little old, but whatever.
june says yes, and nothing since then saying otherwise. source still sad
ninja edit.. on release exclusive with origin, but box doesn't require it.. still crappy, I hate buying boxes, but now it's my own fault.
Please note that there have been a large number of concerns with the above testing methods. It has been pointed out that Asus + bulldozer appears to be performing badly, Gigabytes seem ok.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/315775-28-asus-crosshair-giving-biased-results-bulldozer
Insufficient testing has been done still and I'm not ready to make a decision on what to suggest.
What cssplayer is saying is that the GPU won't be fully used. It's not going to make your system worse, on the contrary.
I'd definitely get the GTX560Ti or an 6950 1GB version. Tom's Hardware just did a massive test on the 6950 1GB: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6950-1gb-benchmark,3041.html
So either get a GTX560Ti like you planned or try to get this card: Gigabyte GV-R695OC-1GD (the clear winner of the review above). Then when you have the money update your motherboard/CPU/Ram and keep that awesome new GPU.
I strongly recommend Toms Hardware for their excellent video card reviews, including "best cards for the money". Edit: Here is the best cards for the money article, which is kept up to date monthly.
As a computer tech, I have seen the reverse, in general Nvidia chips tend to draw a lot more power and run a little hotter which in turn does cause more issues with machines. Also, don't even get me started on their laptop chips, for every one ATI/AMD laptop video chip problem I see I probably see 10 Nvidia chips.
Best $500 gamingPC:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/diy-gaming-pc,2970.html
Ready made $479:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227314
Since we didn't specify on the prize of this bet how about more reddit gold!!! hahaha
It may have also been to do with the memory voltage scare in the first gen core i series where Intel didn't design too much leeway in the on-board memory controller, thus some people reportedly burnt out their memory controllers when running over-volted ram. From what I can tell it seems to have been somewhat resolved in Sandy Bridge but people still caution usage of chips that require voltages beyond the JEDEC spec of 1.5V.
AMD's Phenom series were a lot more flexible in that regard.
Incidentally the Intel core i series and all AMD chips since the original A64 have had the memory controllers on-die with the CPU, so the motherboard chipset doesn't matter anymore.
The 295 is a solid video card. Tom's hardware GPU hierarchy chart is pretty good, and it shows that there's not much between the 295 and the top. I'd recommend either picking up another 295 (~$200 on ebay) or waiting for the 600's.
Tom's Hardware has just started doing a regular Best SSD for the Money feature. That might be a good place to start.
Tomshardware does a series on "Best gaming CPU for the money" (not that everything is about gaming of course). AMD processors usually win by a long shot in the under $120 category.
I would strongly suggest a new video card.
What do you have for a CPU ?
EDIT : Here is a good place to start
Crossfire or SLi requires identical cards but not only are yours different models you would also have one AMD and one Nvidia.
It would be possible to use the 560ti as a physx card (with some hacks) but overkill so sell and get the 7970!
Edit: In terms of switching it's easy! Use driver sweeper to completely remove 560ti drivers then remove it and install the 7970, done.
OK, I'll bite. I find this article very convincing. Can you tell me where you disagree and why?
Heres a Tom's hardware post I found http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/298267-30-asus-p8z68-asrock-extreme3-gen3-gigabyte-z68a
Also, if you live in the U.S. you can legally keep it and cannot be forced to return it and still receive your other board. Although you should still contact them, if they are anything like Amazon they will more than likely tell you to keep it and still send you the one you originally ordered. Source: FTC.gov
"Unordered Merchandise
If you receive merchandise you didn’t order, federal law says you can consider it a gift. You can’t be forced to pay for the item or return it.
If you decide to keep the merchandise, you may want to send the seller a letter stating your intention, even though you’re not legally obligated to do so. Your letter may discourage the seller from sending you repeated bills, or it may clear up an error. It’s a good idea to send the letter by certified mail and keep the return receipt and a copy of the letter. These records will help you establish later, if necessary, that you didn’t order the merchandise.
Two types of merchandise may be sent legally without your consent: free samples that are clearly marked as such; and merchandise mailed by charities asking for contributions. In either case, you may keep the shipments."
Depends on resolution, I'd say you can run it on Custom setting bordering High/Ultra.
These links highlight HD6850 and X4 at 3Ghz.. they perform "playable" at 19XX X 10XX on ultra.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-8.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html
I'd say if you customize the setting and use updated drivers, you can get good playable setting bordering high/ultra.
To hell will dual card setups. I ran 2 4850s in crossfire for 2-3 years and the micro stuttering made having the second card practically worthless. It made games feel like they were running at nearly half the reported frame rate. I had to get games running at nearly 100fps for them to feel as smooth as I wanted them to.
Toms Hardware did a nice writeup of this phenomenon earlier this year Apparently, it's less of an issue with higher end cards, but it would probably be pretty bad with two 260s.
So go with the single card. I ditched my CF setup and got a GTX 560 to tide me over until Kepler. I prefer Nvidia at this point for their drivers and the content they put on geforce.com. The 6950 is a great card for the money though especially if you flash it to a 6970.
You should try checking out [/r/buildapc](/r/buildapc), they are pretty good at helping with these questions. I'm sure any budget modern card should be able to run things fine if it's not other parts of your PC bottlenecking the system. You could try checking out Newegg.
Edit: This was linked on the sidebar of [/r/buildapc](/r/buildapc) which would be really helpful. It's a list of best graphic cards for each price range, would be worth taking a look at.
New graphics card, the rest should be enough for a while.
Having said that I thought amd was presenting their 7000 lineup today, http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Radeon-HD7000-GPU-28nm,14121.html
So you might want to hold off a couple of days to see what kind of time line we should expect for the next generation. I'm doubtful waiting will be interesting though.
>Please don't turn this into a fight between ATI fans and nVidia fans
I don't think I've seen any fanboism in this subreddit. We're all pretty mature :)
With that out of the way, my main concern was seeing if either nvidia or amd released a sli/crossfire profile for the game. I tried searching and I'm concerned about that. I'm seeing a lot of posts talking about no improvement, or even a negative impact by running multi-gpu.
Here is one such post from May 2011. This person advises to not use multi-gpu. I also checked the AMD CAP release notes from the past year but didn't see anything about Tera. I didn't check nvidia though.
So, I don't recommend multi-gpu unless you have a source you trust saying it works fine.
As for which gpu? Honestly, in most cases either brand is interchangeable. And from what I see, Tera seems cpu intensive. And if you're doing mass pvp, I'd be more concerned about that.
Decide upon a budget and look at Tom's Hardware "best Video card for the money" article. They update it every month and it's done well.
Good Luck
No, Intel are doing a thing where you buy after-sale vouchers to unlock cores on certain models, nothing to do with HT.
955+cooler = almost price of 2400. Even overclocked to 4 Ghz, which is about as good as you'll get, the phenom won't be able to touch the performance of the i5. This link is to show what you get from the first extra .5 GHz. Extrapolate that how you will to higher speeds. This link and this link show how badly the faster phenoms trail the 2400.
edit: fixed tom's hardware link.
Please try to remain civil and respectful of others. /r/buildapc is a place for all of us to learn more about computers and help others build good computers for their money.
I agree that Subsistence's calling you out in this thread may not have been done in the best way, but you are wrong in claiming that the RAM is a bottleneck. Although done with DDR3, Tom's Hardware has a great article showing that the difference between them was incredibly marginal. Additionally, those differences were shown on a card with 1GB of VRAM. A card with 2GB of VRAM, like the 6950, would eliminate most of those differences.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Vertex 2 series at release. After the drives had been on the market for a while, though, OCZ did a bit of a stealth manufacturing change, and switched out the NAND type in the drives for something cheaper. The NAND in the newer revisions is less reliable, so more of the drive's capacity goes toward block recovery, which equates to about a 4-5% loss in capacity versus the old revision.
Tom's Hardware has a very informative article on the whole situation. Didn't stop me from buying an Agility3 for a new build, though -- thus far, I am not disappointed.
CPU& Memory are built as if this were a Professional office PC. This is a terrible choice for gaming. GPU is hugely lacking for your money. (GPU is the most important part for a gamer!)
URGENT REQUIRED READING:: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-gaming-performance,3007.html AND http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-radeon-geforce,2997.html
--- SO Buy a i5-2500k & a cheap 2x2GB kit instead (ddr3 1300 vs 1600 is what? 8fps? LOW price/performance gain vs better GPU) Lots of expert forum literature on this fact. Google it. Take most of that extra ~170 and buy a decent GPU.
You will probably need to change the power supply too. 40amp 12v is weak if you have a 200-something dollar GPU that wants near 30 12v all by it self. I suggest looking at dropping the MOBO to a p67/z68 in the ~120 dollar range if you need more PSU budget. But better PSUs can be had in the same ~$70 or less range.. Just look for 48amp to 60amp or more 12v & good reliability reviews/recommendations
EDIT::: Read up after HopeThisNameFi's post and agree that 30A was an overstatement. BUT I would still suggest shooting high after reading murf43143's posts because new GPUs tend to be more power hungry.
One more recommendation, though, is to look for a great single GPU over SLI/Crossfire. Between Power bills, huge heat increases, and driver errors/weirdness, SLI/Crossfire just isn't as desirable if you can cost-effectively avoid it (like now, where in building a new system you have all choices open)
An AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB costs around $170.00 - $200.00 at the moment right now and it's a pretty solid choice. Not sure how good it will be in the long run, but it runs pretty much every game right now maxed out. I have a couple in a crossfire configuration and I can play every game in 1080p will all settings on ultra no problem. If you're just using a single desktop monitor then one card would be fine and give you a substantial boost.
If you're more of an Nvidia person then I think the equivalent right now is a 1GB GeForce 560 (non Ti, the Ti cards are a little pricier but better). Either card would be a good choice.
Here's a graphics card hierarchy chart from Tom's Hardware to help you shop around and see if you can get a better card for a lower price. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-radeon-geforce,2997-7.html
It seems that the more I learn about computers and the various parts, the less I think of my skills. Someone who knows how to install a video card might think they know everything there is to know, but when you've started looking at all the different factors in the performance of those cards and the many different models, you realize that you know pretty much nothing.
Look at this guide on Tom's Hardware to guide people in purchasing CPUS. I might be able to pick a good one, but I have no idea what Hypertransport or Process are.
You probably meant to link here:
System Builder Marathon, June 2011: $500 Gaming PC
You certainly wouldn't be disappointed by following that guide. Although they did make some sacrifices to stay under their budget.
It all depends on your budget. If you have a little more flexibility, you would probably want a more feature-rich motherboard. Just be sure to read the whole article and note why they made the decisions they made.
In the time it took you to make that cute picture, you probably could have put together a list of parts yourself. Here's a good starting point: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/toms-hardware-supercombo,2973.html .
You can't crossfire cards with different series. Also, the 4890 is a DX10 card. Even if you got another 4xxx card to xfire with, you would be limited to DX10. I would replace the 4890 with a 68xx or 69xx series card. Wait for good prices on newegg during their 4th of July weekend sale. Might be able to pick up a better card than you planned on.
Edit: Check this out. Tom's Hardware does a graphics card roundup every month. The link is for May, so June should be coming out soon. It shows the 6870 as the best bang-for-the-buck at ≈$200. Honestly, if you're only gaming on one screen, a single 6870 will run any game out there on highest settings or highest with AA turned down a bit.
Tom's Hardware has a much better guide for discovering who makes what PSUs. There's also this list which has a small subset of PSUs by brand and model and who makes it.
Also, bear in mind that just because you know a particular company makes a PSU, it doesn't mean that the PSU is good. Companies like FSP have many great units, but they also have some crappy ones. The same goes for Superflower and many other of the brands that make some great PSUs.
If you're waiting for Skyrim I wouldn't suggest buying the video card right now. You'll get more for your money if you wait until ~1 month before the release.
EDIT: This link isn't a bad place to start as far as video cards go. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6950-1gb-geforce-gtx-560-ti-gaming-graphics-card,2857.html
I remember having a pair of Canopus Pure3D cards running in my computer back when glQuake came out...
Pentium 100Mhz with 32 MB of RAM. Fucking smoking gaming rig.
Here's Tom's Hardware Guide's review: Canopus Pure3D
Exactly.
You can still benefit greatly from a raid setup with your hard drives, and even normal hard drives are getting faster and benefit from larger caches.
Picking the right processor can be confusing as there are many things to consider. More cores will almost always be faster when using multiple programs, and can be faster with a single program as long as it is written in multiple threads (which more and more are).
As far as figuring out how fast a particular component is, benchmarks are the best way to go. Tom's Hardware is a great place to go for benchmarks.