Building a computer...

[Happydude]

So...it's that time of the decade again...i'm building a brand spanking new computer...

just thought i'd let you guys know so you can be jealous and such...

oh and also to get your general opinions :P

CASE: Thermaltake Soprano DX (http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/chassis/midtower/sopranodx/ve7000bws.asp)
MoBo: EVGA 132-CK-NF79-A1 nVidia nForce 790i Ultra Chipset (http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=132-CK-NF79-A1)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 (http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018344&cid=CPU.84)
Video: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB GDDR3 (http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=512-P3-N871-AR)
RAM: 4GB OCZ Dual Channel PC10600 DDR3 (4 x 1024MB) (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3246375&CatId=3433)
Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS*
HDD: 1x 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 SATA*
1x 400GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 SATA*
1x 40GB Samsung 7200 IDE*
Optical Drives: NEC ND-3550A DVD±R DL Drive*
NEC NR-7500A CD±R Drive*

*Note: Parts i already have in my current computer which i'm probably going to transfer to the new one...maybe not the 40GB HDD and the CDRom drive.

I think i got everything...let me know what you guys think...none of the components are purchased yet, so nothing is final...my price range is about $300/part...and so far it looks pretty good.

The case, CPU and Mobo i'm getting from www.canadacomputers.com
and the Ram and Video card i'm getting from www.tigerdirect.ca

let me know if you guys can find any better deals, or if i should change up some of the parts or something.

:)

PS: in case you're wondering...i've been inspired to build one by a couple of things...A) fallout 3 coming out in Q3. and B) Crysis...

[Angrist]

Looks nice. :) Better than mine (mostly the videocard).

But I don't know much about hardware, so I'll leave that to the rest.

[thatmariolover]

Looks solid to me. You've got basically one step up to what I got 6 months ago. Q6600, 8800 GTX 768MB, etc.

[Happydude]

yeah...i want it to last as long as possible.....and there's a 80% chance i'm getting an Ageia PhysX card as well...haven't decided on it yet, but for $80 (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2180959&CatId=697) i don't see a reason not to.

[thatmariolover]

With your processor I just don't see you needing a PhysX card. There are no games that need it now, and any games that need dedicated physics processing in the future should be programmed to designate one of your 4 cores to do the calculations.

I'd honestly suggest a decent sound card, personally. I didn't think there was going to be a big difference since my onboard sound was great, but I was wrong. I have nice speakers and you definitely notice a difference.

[Happydude]

oh...i already have an Audigy2 ZS sound card...i'll put that in.

[Jason1]

I so wish I had the money to do this again, my home computer is going on 5 years old, ive made a few upgrades but its becoming far too slow for modern games, and my laptop of course cant handle most, despite the dedicated video card.

[Happydude]

well, the way i'm doing it...is i'm buying one part a month...kinda like financing a computer :P so i don't blow all the money at once...and since each part is around the $300 mark...it's quite alright for once a month spending...doesn't give that large of a blow.

Next week i'm buying the Case...

[gekko]

Why are you investing in a quad-core setup? Those are pretty much useful for A) rendering farms and B) build machines.

Quad-cores are only useful if you do heavy multi-tasking, so heavy you want a dedicated core for each application. One application can only run from one core, and that's the end of story. You launch an application, it gets one core and never sees any of the others. Despite common belief, multi-threading does not support multiple cores. Having additional threads are still part of the same program and they use the same CPU.

To use multiple-cores for a single application, it requires managing multiple processes. Essentially, if you're appying a filter in Photoshop to a 19,200 x 14,400 image, the program can split the image in half, and use one CPU to render each half of it, then kill the child process and be happy. It doesn't matter which one finishes first, or the order.

Multi-threaded programming is a huge headache in general, and games are really slow to adapt to it. Since games are designed to simulate real-time, everything needs to be done in a certain order to create the suspension of disbelief. It's hard to do multiple tasks simultaneously because you can't handle collision detection until all the objects have moved, and to move the objects you need to do the physics calculations which can't happen until the input has been updated. Everything has a specific order it must be done in, and doing two things at the same time can completely break the game.

Everyone wants to tell you that games in a couple years will all support a zillion cores and your game will hit 300fps. In reality, Xbox 360 sits with 3 cores and Microsoft gives speeches every year on the state of multi-core programming and where we've come since 2005. Almost nowhere. Even the games that will add support for multi-core processors are doing it because there's a million gamers out there that will buy the game just to post their frame rate on a message board somewhere. In reality, you assume supporting dual cores means the game runs twice as fast, when in reality they might've just moved the audio streaming from a second thread to a different processor entirely.

Games won't be supporting multi-cores in full for many years, and while PCs are thought of as the leaders in technology, it'll be the consoles where multi-core will become successful. When they finally figure it out on Xbox 360, you might start seeing it come over to PCs, at least with dual-core support. Until then, don't spend the money.

[Happydude]

Why are you investing in a quad-core setup? Those are pretty much useful for A) rendering farms and B) build machines.

Quad-cores are only useful if you do heavy multi-tasking, so heavy you want a dedicated core for each application. One application can only run from one core, and that's the end of story. You launch an application, it gets one core and never sees any of the others. Despite common belief, multi-threading does not support multiple cores. Having additional threads are still part of the same program and they use the same CPU.

To use multiple-cores for a single application, it requires managing multiple processes. Essentially, if you're appying a filter in Photoshop to a 19,200 x 14,400 image, the program can split the image in half, and use one CPU to render each half of it, then kill the child process and be happy. It doesn't matter which one finishes first, or the order.

Multi-threaded programming is a huge headache in general, and games are really slow to adapt to it. Since games are designed to simulate real-time, everything needs to be done in a certain order to create the suspension of disbelief. It's hard to do multiple tasks simultaneously because you can't handle collision detection until all the objects have moved, and to move the objects you need to do the physics calculations which can't happen until the input has been updated. Everything has a specific order it must be done in, and doing two things at the same time can completely break the game.

Everyone wants to tell you that games in a couple years will all support a zillion cores and your game will hit 300fps. In reality, Xbox 360 sits with 3 cores and Microsoft gives speeches every year on the state of multi-core programming and where we've come since 2005. Almost nowhere. Even the games that will add support for multi-core processors are doing it because there's a million gamers out there that will buy the game just to post their frame rate on a message board somewhere. In reality, you assume supporting dual cores means the game runs twice as fast, when in reality they might've just moved the audio streaming from a second thread to a different processor entirely.

Games won't be supporting multi-cores in full for many years, and while PCs are thought of as the leaders in technology, it'll be the consoles where multi-core will become successful. When they finally figure it out on Xbox 360, you might start seeing it come over to PCs, at least with dual-core support. Until then, don't spend the money.
Wow...haven't seen you post in a while...welcome back? or maybe i just didn't notice you...in any case, the reason I'm investing in quad cores is because i model as a hobby...i use Autodesk Maya and 3D Studio Max...the more cores, the faster the render...so it wouldn't hurt. and especially since the price difference is about $100 i figure, why not...might as well.

Furthermore, it's very frustrating when i have to burn a DVD and i can't do anything because that would take away from the buffers...so i'd like to have a quad-core setup so i can render images, burn DVDs, and play music at the same time.

And finally...even if games don't support it, it still wouldn't hurt.


But thanks for the comments, very informative.

[Happydude]

so i ordered the video card today...can't wait for it to arrive...probably will happen sometime mid next week...next purchase: the case.