PC Discussion Thread - All PC related in here.

[echo1 0]

Just a point about the two fans - the reference design for the HD4870 only has one fan. Often companies make these ridiculous dual fan coolers to look cool (pun unintended) that are often not as good as a well designed single fan model.

[Lauxman 10]

Hey all. I'm building a PC on Dell right now, and I'm wondering how well this rig would run Arma 2 or other upcoming games. Right now it is costing $1100 (this is including a monitor). If anyone has any recommendations on other builds, please give me the advice, my PC knowledge was good back when Radeon 9800s were the rage.

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor Q9650 (12MB L2, 3.00GHz, 1333FSB)

Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit

6GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4DIMMs

21.5 inch Dell S2209W Full HD Widescreen Monitor

nVidia GeForce 9800GT

640GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cacheâ„¢

16X DVD+/-RW Drive

Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

Dell 1505 Wireless-N PCIe Card

[Leopardi 0]

@Leopardi: No idea where you got that one. Try reading the ArmA troubleshooting section,

I had three 8800 GTS cards, and all of them crashed/froze the game/made textures go weird (flush helped a bit), and made textures flicker onto each other in many games. With HD4870 all of these were gone forever.

Very many people even on this forums reported exactly the same. And around the net people are reporting the same problems as well.

[echo1 0]

When you say three cards, did you mean you had SLI?

[MehMan 0]

I think the second fan is there to cool...one thing or other. I remember browsing a ton of forums just after I got it and many resorted to disconnecting the smaller fan and overclocking the large fan to have the same cooling effect. Gainward said that this is dangerous, bleh bleh, dunno what exactly.

[von_paulus 0]

You know, I doubt either the E8500 or Q9400 would make your system that much faster. I'd say the chip you have would run ArmA 2 fine. If it doesn't, I'd say a more substantial upgrade is called for,

Thanks for answering.

I'm not expecting miracles, I'd be satisfied with an extra 10fps. I believe that most of the stress will be in the GPU. But I've a chance to sell my CPU and in the process do a little CPU upgrade. So the question persists. Should I buy a E8500 or a Q9400? Mhz or multicore?

[Leopardi 0]

When you say three cards, did you mean you had SLI?

No I mean I have tried 3 new different cards and all of them had the same problem.

[echo1 0]

That's pretty weird. Well Im going by the troublshooting section - it's quite a well known fact that HD4000 cards don't get on well with ArmA, and I don't think it's been fixed by latest patch. On the other hand, nVidia seems to work better in general. Maybe you just good unlucky.

Either way it's irrelevant because the OP needed to run Linux, and ATI's linux drivers are pretty crap.

@Von Paulus:

For gaming the E8500 might be a better choice. For future proofing the Quad core may be a better idea. Your call really.

@Lauxman:

6GB is a rather odd amount of RAM to buy. I'd get 4GB or 8GB instead. Otherwise, looks like a good system. I'd splash out more on a faster graphics card though... next step up from the 9800GT would be the GTS250... then up to something like the GTX 275 or HD4890.

Edited May 5, 2009 by echo1

[Supernova 0]

Hey all. I'm building a PC on Dell right now, and I'm wondering how well this rig would run Arma 2 or other upcoming games. Right now it is costing $1100 (this is including a monitor). If anyone has any recommendations on other builds, please give me the advice, my PC knowledge was good back when Radeon 9800s were the rage.

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor Q9650 (12MB L2, 3.00GHz, 1333FSB)

Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit

6GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4DIMMs

21.5 inch Dell S2209W Full HD Widescreen Monitor

nVidia GeForce 9800GT

640GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cacheâ„¢

16X DVD+/-RW Drive

Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

Dell 1505 Wireless-N PCIe Card

Are you joking right ? You want to build a PC with Dell ?. Do you simply have money to throw away or you cannot assemble a system by yourself ?

[Leopardi 0]

6GB is a rather odd amount of RAM to buy. I'd get 4GB or 8GB instead.

Tri-Channel?

[Supernova 0]

Tri-Channel?

I hope that wasn't a serious response. You cannot have tri-channel on any other socket or chipset than LGA1366/X58.

[XS09 10]

Thanks for answering.

I'm not expecting miracles, I'd be satisfied with an extra 10fps. I believe that most of the stress will be in the GPU. But I've a chance to sell my CPU and in the process do a little CPU upgrade. So the question persists. Should I buy a E8500 or a Q9400? Mhz or multicore?

Hey.I have a similar set up as you.

Mobo: Asus P5N-MX NVIDIA GeForce 7050 / nForce 610i-chipset

Processor: Intel CORE 2 Extreme QUAD q9400@ 2.66 ghz

RAM: 3 GB 1x Corsair value 2gb + 1x 1gb corsair value

HDD:Western Digital Caviar 1TB ATA

PSU: Aopen output 350w(PEAK 400watts)

GPU: Still have to buy one.

I've read on the Arma 2 wiki page that the recommended requirements are a 2.8 ghz quad or duo core processor and i think you can consider that to be the minimum system requirements.You want this game to run smooth.I just downloaded the arma 1 demo yesterday and had to play it on the lowest settings and it was still laggy.So that wasnt very promising.Maybe because i dont have a good video card yet but still.I found a good website where the q9400 is compared to a high end duo core.You should read the conclusion.I'd say the quad is a little bit faster or equally as good.Alot of people say a duo core is better tho but i don't kow.Check the statistics.

http://xtreview.com/review233.htm

I think it is frustrating what you have to do to be able to play a game on the pc.so much work,reading and upgrading.Pain in the ass and unfortunately i dont have any money to expand.

I have a 360 aswell but i know this game is much better on a pc with all the add ons and mods and community etc.

I hope it will run.I'm thinking of buying a 9600gt.I'm limited to a low/mid range Graphics card cause of my PSU.It has an output of only 350w but hopefully it will work.I play on a 17 inch monitor anyway.Good luck!

[echo1 0]

I just downloaded the arma 1 demo yesterday and had to play it on the lowest settings and it was still laggy.

The demo is based on a really early version of the game that is widely considered to be unusable. If you ran a retail copy on your machine it would run fine.

BTW: I also have a 9600GT, and it runs the game great on a 20" monitor at 1600x1200, so I'd say you should have no problems with it on a 17" screen.

[Lauxman 10]

I've been to sites like ecollegepc and tried putting all the parts in at newegg, but the price is always a couple hundred more compared to Dell. Dell is annoying, I agree, since I only have the option for 6GB or 8GB. I might look into upgrading the graphics card later on and, if necessary, the PSU.

[echo1 0]

Dell don't really offer PSU upgrades. However, the ones they use tend to be quite good (in my experience at least) and they'll generally have one that adequately covers your PC, and gives some headroom for upgrades.

[Litos 10]

Hey guys. I am new to the forum, and was first waiting for OPF2 but then found this, and I think this game is much more promising. Even if not, I think it suits me much better.

I wanted to ask how well the game will run on Windows 7 64 bit. I am currently using the 32 bit version of the beta, but I have just downloaded the 64 bit version of the RC and will be installing that soon. I am using windows 7 as my main O.S. on my main PC, I'm fine with it. I really love this O.S., but if something will be wrong with ArmA I need to be warned in advance, because the rest of my games work ok, but the games that I'm buying soon for PC is Arma2 and another game that's also not out yet, so these two have to decide for me whether I should run Windows 7 or not.

So can anybody describe if there may be any issues with Windows 7? Remember it's also the 32 bit version.

[echo1 0]

I've been running ArmA + Windows 7 64 bit for over four months without issues. And if the 64bit version (64 bit versions of operating systems tend to be the ones that cause the most headaches) will work, the 32bit shouldn't have any problems.

Edited May 5, 2009 by echo1

[MehMan 0]

@The HD4870, yep the refrence card has only one fan, but mine is a nonrefrence card. It's got double bios and a few other bits and pieces I don't know about. It's also got two fans, one for the important bits and one for the power components or whatever. It's nice and all, supposedly much cooler than regular HD4870s, but the 512 model just blows it with the smaller noiser fan. I've written an email to gainward and they said they'll send me an adapter cable to make the noise go away, basicly just makes the fan run at less RPM. Hopefully it'll arrive soon, as I've done what many have, disconnected the smaller fan in order to gain peace. And now i've got three 120mm fans in my case, antec ones and it's still quiet. When I get some money I might try experimenting with some new 120mm fans(somebody recommend noctua fans and they sure look sleek and are supposedly very silent, but are also expensive, 20€ a piece, eek!). Until then, these antec ones are more than enough and silent enough. As long as my rig stays this silent I'm happy. It's much more laptop like which was my original intent with the setup.

However as expected the temperature has risen. Quite a lot. If I don't overclock the idle temperature goes from the previous 47-48 to 58-60. If I put the fan overclock to 56% which is very silent and still cool the idle is at 52-54. If I put it at a relatively noisy 60% it's already at 50 and underload it's around 52, so good job there. It's a temporary solution until I get my cable.

Does anybody have a clue what's a good idle temperature for these cards? And underload?

[Litos 10]

I've been running ArmA + Windows 7 64 bit for over four months without issues. And if the 64bit version (64 bit versions of operating systems tend to be the ones that cause the most headaches) will work, the 32bit shouldn't have any problems.

strange... I downloaded the ArmA demo yesterday and it ran but it was all weird. I could see some kind of a menu but I couldn't see any text... I tried to click the buttons and they led me to different pages, but I never managed to get in game. I guess I was supposed to select things in the squares or something. I even tried running it in compatibility mode. Though I never tried running it in Vista compatibility mode, I tried using the XP one.

[Pyronick 21]

strange... I downloaded the ArmA demo yesterday and it ran but it was all weird. I could see some kind of a menu but I couldn't see any text... I tried to click the buttons and they led me to different pages, but I never managed to get in game. I guess I was supposed to select things in the squares or something. I even tried running it in compatibility mode. Though I never tried running it in Vista compatibility mode, I tried using the XP one.

The same here.

[echo1 0]

strange... I downloaded the ArmA demo yesterday and it ran but it was all weird. I could see some kind of a menu but I couldn't see any text... I tried to click the buttons and they led me to different pages, but I never managed to get in game. I guess I was supposed to select things in the squares or something. I even tried running it in compatibility mode. Though I never tried running it in Vista compatibility mode, I tried using the XP one.

I had posted this already on the previous page...

The demo is based on a really early version of the game that is widely considered to be unusable. If you ran a retail copy on your machine it would run fine.

Placebo had said that he has tested the ArmA II beta on Windows 7 too without issues.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

I, being the lollerskatorkx that I am, will be spending around ~$8000 AUD on my next upgrade, which is essentially a system remake (think 4 OCZ Vortex 120GB SSDs in RAID 0, for example ;) ) in my old case, which still kicks arse.

What I'm curious about is this: watercooling.

I want to know basically the best watercooling system that can fit, and here's the catch, totally inside a PC. Price isn't really an issue.

Second thing is this - I don't exactly know how the whole watercooling thangy works, since I've been an airhead up until this stage, but I'm fairly sure one can't watercool their GPU and their CPU at the same time, no?

EDIT - For the last point I will add "...with the separate watercooling systems living in harmony inside the case? I suppose I'd probably need 2 cases to pull that off. :P"

Edited May 6, 2009 by CameronMcDonald
Further clarification

[Litos 10]

I had posted this already on the previous page...

Placebo had said that he has tested the ArmA II beta on Windows 7 too without issues.

Oh ok, sorry that I missed that.

Great! So that means I don't need to go back to XP. Thanks.

[von_paulus 0]

http://xtreview.com/review233.htm

Thanks for the link review.

@ch_123 Thanks for giving me your opinion

[MehMan 0]

I, being the lollerskatorkx that I am, will be spending around ~$8000 AUD on my next upgrade, which is essentially a system remake (think 4 OCZ Vortex 120GB SSDs in RAID 0, for example ;) ) in my old case, which still kicks arse.

What I'm curious about is this: watercooling.

I want to know basically the best watercooling system that can fit, and here's the catch, totally inside a PC. Price isn't really an issue.

Second thing is this - I don't exactly know how the whole watercooling thangy works, since I've been an airhead up until this stage, but I'm fairly sure one can't watercool their GPU and their CPU at the same time, no?

EDIT - For the last point I will add "...with the separate watercooling systems living in harmony inside the case? I suppose I'd probably need 2 cases to pull that off. :P"

http://www.youtube.com/user/ModMyMachine

These guys are doing it. they've also got the ultra thin watercoolers. IIRC it's all inside the box and it's also very cool. And I think you can cool both GPU and CPU at the same time.