Computers: The Technical Thread [!OT]

[mrwiseman]

Since you've got PCI-E, you have a worse intial offer, but you don't have to hurry; wait patiently until Oblivion is released, then test how it runs on your card and then you can decide on a new card to buy according to what you want and more data from other gamers. By the time it's out, these cards will be cheaper.

THG needs to update those charts too, they were done early (which is good), but now there are many more models in the market (especially ATI, which loves to pull 27 editions of the same core so you buy the wrong one), and there are better benchmarks. You can't trust 3DMark 2005 alone (especially with vendors optimizing their drivers for them), and look at the game benchmarks: see how they are so flat in the top 33%?40%, especially on older, less shader-intensive games like UT2004? That means they're not benchmarking the graphics card, and you can ignore them. Out of those the best one seems to be Doom 3 on high detail, the first in the second page I think. I had a quick look at it for you and this is what I saw:

- The best cost-effective option seems to be a 6600 GT. Problem is, most of them come with 128 MB VRAM, and the ones with 256 MB are hella expensive. In your place, I'd be willing to sacrifice VRAM for performance though. I can get a 6600 GT with 128 MB VRAM for 139 ?. This card performs (very) roughly 3.5 times as fast as the X600 Pro, which is what you have I suppose. I'm fairly sure it'll be great for Oblivion. I can only measure it against Doom 3, which is not a good idea, but the performance/price ratio here is 0.316.

- If you're aiming high, next in performance/price would be the 6800 GT with 256 MB RAM, an absolutely brilliant card which will do more than you need for Oblivion. The cheapest I can get it in this store is 259 ?, so ouch, but this card is such a good performer (roughly 6 times a X600 Pro), it's a 0.286 performance/price ratio.

- ATI's best offer within the "sounds-like-Oblivion-runs-pretty-well" area is the Radeon X800, which I can buy with 128 MB for 139 ?, a similar performance/price ratio than the 6800 GT, slightly over half as fast, but with a VRAM sacrifice.

- Careful with the PCI-E standard 6800s, or at least those in that list - they don't seem to be as fast as what I've got (compare 6800 vs 6800 GT in the AGP charts). Maybe they're coming with slower memory. The PCI-E one doesn't look like a good deal at all.

- The standard 6600 right now looks like a quick fix which I don't recommend. It'll only be twice as fast (very roughly), and it actually has a worse performance/price ratio than any of the former, or 0.244.

So this is what I recommend you to do: no need to rush, you'll get a lot of options and they'll be getting cheap. Wait until you have Oblivion to try it, then decide what do you need. Set the game to a detail you're willing to play at, like medium - but something that looks good for you, otherwise you're ruining your game experience. Then see how it does. If it runs crappy, say 10?15 fps, you'll want a card that's at least thrice as fast a performer (you can go for less, but since you're upgrading, you'll want more). If it runs terrible, say 5?10 fps, you'll need to spend more money on a really fast card, like a 6800 GT or at least a 6600 GT, which by the time you have to buy either will be cheaper.

BTW, Oblivion is so popular and awesome (and demanding) you can bet THG will include it in their benchmarks as soon as it's released. This is great for our interests as we'll get more fair data, although Oblivion will be also dependent on your processor, so those with lower end processors, careful with the system THG tests graphics cards on. You (Cata) don't need to worry though, I think anything faster than a Pentium 4 @ 3.0 GHz or an Athlon 64 will be more than enough to run the game. Remember the devs were editing the game with Athlon XP 2500+s, and using Radeon 9800 Pros. While the later is a less reliable source as it's easy to add more effects at late stages of development (though it's easy to turn them off in options), a standard 6600 seems to be slightly faster than a 9800 Pro, so you might still get a surprise with Oblivion, and I'm sure you won't need to get a monster card to play the game.


Come to think of it, we shouldn't be so discouraged by the SpeedTree RT demo performance. There are a few things against us:
- That's not even close to a real game engine, much less one with Havok physics and the amazing AI Oblivion has.
- Even the most crowded area looks pale compared to the astonishing Oblivion forest seen in the 23 minutes video.
But there are also a few things playing on our favour:
- This is a demo, and I'm positive it's unoptimized. I have proof of it.
- The devs said they'll be adding more control over the graphic detail to Oblivion than Morrowind had, so more gamers can play it (Morrowind was also very demanding when it came out).
- The devs have more time to optimize it.

So you're in a comfortable position to wait for the game. I don't want to give any false hopes, but I think there's still a chance you *might* be able to play, on medium-low detail and 800?600 no AA, with your current graphics card. This is just a gross estimation written in terms of probability; what I really mean is we can't know for sure you won't be able to run the game, let's just wait and see. And either way I don't think you'll have to spend too much money.

[Cataferal]

And I suppose since ATI released a whole archive of X1000 series cards recently, their earlier models should go down in price after christmas or so. I'll take your word and wait around for either an Nvidia 6800 GT or a Radeon X800 to drop to around the ?60-70 mark. Of course, after i test out Oblivion with what i got. [img]smile.gif[/img]

With regards to what i already have, i try give it a hard time with Half Life 2 to see what it can stretch to. It runs the game at full graphical quality, 1280x1024 resolution, 2xAA and 8xAF. With this, it chugs along at anything between 20-40fps, just as toms hardware have it listed. Meanwhile, games like AoE3 and Doom 3 force me to put it down to medium settings, or even below to salvage what precious frames i can. It should be able to at least play Oblivion, but im not expecting it to look anything near as beautiful as THG intended. My wallet hope to be surprised though.

<font color="#345E81" size="1">[ November 07, 2005 05:22 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]</font>

[mrwiseman]

My wallet hope to be surprised though.

Lol

[mrwiseman]

Here's a 5 minutes old CPU chart made as I explained in my last post. I've updated it as I'm needing it right now; I've canceled my other order because they were fucking morons and ran out of the stuff I wanted.

I'll explain it a bit:

- Columns: A: Processor; B: Core; C: Socket; D: CPU|FSB clock speeds; E: RAM type; F: Doom 3; G: Unreal Tournament 2004; H: FarCry; I: Normalized average performance; J: Chart of I; K: Processor price in ?; L: Suitable equivalent motherboard price in ?; M: Total price in ?; N: Performance to price ratio; O: Chart of N.

- Row 2 is THG's top processor in their latest lists, for reference. Row 15 is my current processor. Row 16 is the averages row.

- Benchmarks chosen were Doom 3 (OpenGL) * 1, Unreal Tournament 2004 (D3D 8) * 0.5, FarCry (D3D 9) * 2. There were no fully sattisfactory, all-around synthetic benchmarks, video benchmark is not important as any of these processors can play the high-res videos I want, and the application benchmark was too flat so it wasn't a good benchmark, that's why I went for games only. I chose to ponder FarCry heavily as it's most similar to the kind of games I want to play (esp. Oblivion), and threw Doom 3 in even though I don't know if it's really optimized or not, just for the new technology and to have some OpenGL game. I added Unreal Tournament 2004 for balance with an older game (DirectX 8), if we can call that old.

- The formula used to calculate column I (doing the normalization and weighting of columns F?H) is highlighted for 16th row (the averages row). Naturally, I16 will always be 1, and it's calculated as a sanity check.

- Processor prices are approximate; I couldn't find the exact core, but I took the upgraded equivalents for all.

- Fan prices do not count as I want a fan that works on all processors.

- Memory prices do not count as I couldn't find proper equivalents to what THG used; but if I actually added what I think THG used, the performance/price ratio on DDR2-533 machines would be even lower.


So, as you can see, AMD Athlon 64s seem to be offering the best performance to price ratio, plus better features than Pentium 4s (64 bit instruction set, NX bit).

And you can see my current system, even being 4 years old, it's only half as fast as today's processors. Moore's law is no more, and the sole reason why I'm updating now is chipset vendors are evil and they are dropping AGP support to force people to upgrade to PCI-E which cost millions to develop and somebody has to pay for it (regardless of if it's of any practical use ). Since I like my AGP GeForce 6800, I want an AGP motherboard before the morons retire all of them.

[melfice]

I've been wondering... is it normal to have an Athlon XP 2400 at 60? C and the whole system, more or less, at 40?C? because it seems to be the temperature my system runs now (well, it is not my system, it is my sister's but i'm using it now)

the processor seems to work fine, and doesn't overheat at all, or at least, its fan is working, but the hard drives and the optic devices seems to over heat a lot, it didn't happen with my previous system, but happens with this, any idea? is this normal?...

[mrwiseman]

Faster processors and RAM produce a lot of heat. Athlon XPs will be perfectly fine below 65?, but the system is on the limit; anything over 40? is undesirable. Working this hot, everything will last less years and be less reliable, which is a serious issue for hard disks. To decrease the temperature, you can try one or more of the following:

- Make sure your CPU heatsink is very clean. Dust will make it hotter, and sometimes you have to unscrew the fan to clean it with a paint brush.
- Keep your case open.
- Get a case with one or two fans (this really helps).
- Stock or "OEM" CPU fans aren't the bomb; avoid these and go for Zalman's or something like Thermaltake's Golden Orb 2, these work wonders.

Heat is a serious issue, as it may cause your hard drives to last as little as 2 years, and your data is the most expensive part of your computer. That's why I recommend you get a high-end CPU fan and/or a case with fans, if your hard disks break you'll lose things far more valued.

[melfice]

My data is saved, luckyly (i lost a hard drive once, don't wanna repeat). And yes, i believe that the case of my sis's computer is quite bad (i think it has a really small fan, compared to the rest of the case).

Well, i think is much more a matter of keeping the air flowing, but if you're able to fan more air out, and keep the system under reasonable temperatures, is better. Too bad the new systems need so expeditive measures to keep the heat under control, 486, perhaps, didn't need a fan to keep working.

[mrwiseman]

386 processors didn't need a heatsink or fan, 486 DX2 processors and up required a heatsink, Pentium and up processors required a fan. If you really want to get rid of them you can try some huge heatsinks that work without a fan for current processors, but don't count on them really working that good (i.e. not for high-end processors). You can also try VIA's processors, which work without a fan and with a simpler heatsink (some of them even without a heatsink), although they aren't fast.

I think the best you can do is to get a Zalman CNPS7000 Al-Cu or a Thermaltake Golden Orb 2 fan, you won't regret it. They're silent and efficient, albeit hard to install.

[melfice]

I'm not afraid of hard installings, i like challenges XD, but i guess that would have to wait until i get money on my own, until then...

Speaking of... long ago, i heard about a system which was "cooled" with some fluid, maybe this is the future?

[mrwiseman]

It's a waste of money (unless it's a hobby) and something I'd think twice before doing to my computer, and only if I'm overclocking it considerably, otherwise it's no use; a good Zalman will keep any processor way cooler than you need. Water + electronics = ? .

BTW, check this out, it's what you can expect from Tom's Hardware Guide:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/12/...ect/index.html