troopys new system maybe

awful lot to spend on a pc, looks like your going top of the line and i wonder if all that is actually necessary for the the next gen of games, i reckon you can put together a pretty decent system for 2K

I'm with Turkey on that one. You may want to consider the next generation of games and if they're even going to be worthwhile for spending so much on a computer. Personally I'd be reluctant to spend that much until I knew they were games, i.e. MOH and Black Ops that were going to maintain my interest. PC gaming is changing and I'm not sure I'm liking the direction I'm see it take.

I spent around $1800 in March and came up with this computer which is plenty fine. I can run BC2 at 1900x1200 with everything turned up and still get good frame rates. I usually run at 1600x1200 though.

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 Motherboard
Intel i7 920
ATI - ASUS 5870 Graphics Card
CoolerMaster HAF 932 Full Tower Case
Corsair 1000W Power Supply
6GB of G.Skill Memory
CoGage Tru Spirit Heatsink
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB HD. (not included in $1800)
Windows 7 Professional

Also keep in mind that the GTX 480 runs very hot and consumes a shit load of power. The performance gain over the 5870 is minimal and IMO not worth the extra cost, power consumption and heat issues. You may also want to add up all the watts that your computer will consume and do the math. In doing so you'll see that when turned on, you'll be consuming enough electricity to power roughly 10 standard 75W light bulbs in your house. Over the course of a month that starts adding up on your electric bill.

If I was you and had my sites set on nVidia, then I would wait for the next generation of 480 cards to come out. They should be putting out a 485 that will solve some heat and power consumption issues. If you don't know much about these particular issues, I would highly recommend that you visit some forums like Tom's Hardware and read/talk to some people actually running these cards to see what they're overall experience is, in particular with the amount of heat they generate. Just my $.02

You can get a very decent PC for under 2k. Seriously do some more research.

Mine

MB Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
i7 930
ati 5850
antec nine hundred two case
6 GB triple channel ddr 3
thermaltake lite 700 w psu

I put the above together for $1348

running around 100fps on 1920 x 1080 in bc2

havent looked at overclocking yet

The biggest mistake people make in spending a lot of money on computers is not doing the basic math in terms of dollars spent vs. performance gain. In other words, what increase in FPS will I receive for spending an additional $250 on a processor? Chances are the extra $250 spent will return approximately a 5% return in additional frame rates. Is it really worth it? Not really. You could end up spending an additional $500 on a computer and get back maybe 15% or a little more in FPS gain.

So looking at it this way, if you achieve Turkey's performance of an average of 100 FPS by spending $1350 on a computer, but chose to spend an additional $500 and achieved at most, an additional 15% more in FPS, what does that really equate out to? 115 FPS? There isn't much difference in gaming at 100 FPS and 115 FPS. Its not worth the money in terms of dollars spent vs. performance gained. As Turkey mentioned, he hasn't even OC'd yet either, which he could probably pick up at least that additional 15 FPS gain by doing.

One other quick note, try and buy/build a computer that will provide upgrade paths for at least two years, in particular at the CPU level. You can always upgrade video cards, however you have to have a strong enough CPU to maximize the cards potential. That or it will bottleneck. Make sure the CPU socket type isn't being phased out as we currently speak.

Antares wrote:The biggest mistake people make in spending a lot of money on computers is not doing the basic math in terms of dollars spent vs. performance gain. In other words, what increase in FPS will I receive for spending an additional $250 on a processor? Chances are the extra $250 spent will return approximately a 5% return in additional frame rates. Is it really worth it? Not really. You could end up spending an additional $500 on a computer and get back maybe 15% or a little more in FPS gain.

So looking at it this way, if you achieve Turkey's performance of an average of 100 FPS by spending $1350 on a computer, but chose to spend an additional $500 and achieved at most, an additional 15% more in FPS, what does that really equate out to? 115 FPS? There isn't much difference in gaming at 100 FPS and 115 FPS. Its not worth the money in terms of dollars spent vs. performance gained. As Turkey mentioned, he hasn't even OC'd yet either, which he could probably pick up at least that additional 15 FPS gain by doing.

One other quick note, try and buy/build a computer that will provide upgrade paths for at least two years, in particular at the CPU level. You can always upgrade video cards, however you have to have a strong enough CPU to maximize the cards potential. That or it will bottleneck. Make sure the CPU socket type isn't being phased out as we currently speak.

He raises a perfectly valid point there Troop...

+1

Ooops, I accidentally edited your post Azz *DOH!*

Troop,
I have the Asus 5870 and If I had it to do over again I would have gone Nvidia. Driver support from ati/amd is horrible, they break 10 things to fix 1.

So when is this bad boy being built?

I also have the ASUS 5870. The only gripe I have with it is the fan gets really loud when you turn it up. However I didn't really see an alternative because the GTX480's run REALLY hot and consumes a lot of power. Didn't want heat issues for a 5% gain in performance over the 5870, plus the higher price.

I haven't noticed any issues with my 5870 due to drivers. MistahT, can you elaborate on the issues you've had? Maybe I'm just not noticing them on my card *shrug*

On another note, I've moved my rig out to the living room and hooked it up to my 50" plasma and surround sound. Totally sweet! Nothing like sitting 5' in front of a 50" screen

Please elaborate on the ATI driver issue(s). I have a 5750 and never have had a problem.

me either

I haven't had any driver problems to date. I do know that historically, ATI does not have a good track record for drivers. I think they have been improving in that fact lately.

Hows the system bulding going Troopy?