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Gamers, Upgrade your Systems
jbischof writes "Looking to upgrade your aging PC? Ace's Hardware has a new upgrade guide tailored specifically to gamers. The data shows exactly which upgrades - processor, motherboard, gfx card, or combination of the three - will give the best performance boost on all the latest and most popular games (according to their recent poll)."
Cool now I know which order to get the components of my CowboyNeal(tm) doll updated!
I only upgrade my computer to increase benchmark scores.
The solution that has worked best for me...is to avoid public discussion. -- CmdrTaco
Yeah, but how many times can you play Photoshop? I mean, the final map is pretty weak and that last boss is a major disapointment.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
well if car performace was ranked by the opinions of their drivers, the honda prelude would beat a ferrari and Neons everywhere would outdo porsche.
useless
..is that the guys who are willing to drop a metric buttload of coin for upgrading their gaming computer, are probably the same ones who were bitching about the $20 download of x86 Solaris.
I really don't like their guides. I find the best one is the sharky gamers guide to system building (at different budgets.) Check it out @ www.sharkyextreme.com
I played Unreal 2 for a few hours last night on my wont-work obsolete need-an-upgrade Radeon 7200. Guess what? My obsolete out-of-date SB Live! card - not even 5.1 sound, mind you, a paltry 4 channels - worked just fine too. I've recently upgraded my mobo and CPU and bought a new HD. And I didnt spring for the absolutely necessary 8meg cache version either.
How did the tech industry manage to convince everyone that they absolutely need the latest and greatest bullshit? The machine they were 'upgrading' from is perfectly adequate to play every game they benchmarked.
1600x1200 with FSAA and AF is nice, but it doesnt make the games any funner.
Here's my upgrade guide. I wait until I want to play a particular game, and if I absolutely cant, I upgrade. And I double my current specs.
Unreal 2 is a bore, BTW, for those looking for a review.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Windows is the gamers platform of choice. When I buy a new game, i sure as heck dont want to spend 8 hours configuring WineX to run it at a 25%-50% loss of power (my friend tried StarCraft on WineX on a 500 mhz with 256 ram, and it ran like ass... on windows, perfectly fine). I want to play my game. If you want to configure your system so that it runs Windows games, by all means, but dont bitch because "linux gamers are left out".
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
For a $119 system that's small and has a great library fo games ($20-30 each), I cant go wrong with the Cube.
Most PC's cost nearly $2x10^3 for a real gaming strenth system ---- plus the games cost $59 each and that's at a cheap place like circuit city.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
I know, I know, I'm a troll. Moderate away. But, geez, does tech really matter any more. You can't buy a system, console or PC, that doesn't draw millions of texture mapped triangles per second, doesn't have awesome sound, and so on. It's all so pointless. If money is not an issue, as it certainly wouldn't be to someone who constantly upgrades video cards and such, $160 will get you a nice Game Cube and Mario Sunshine. Or get an X-Box with Splinter Cell. Or whatever.
The bottom line is that the PC tech race has lost all purpose, except to stroke the ego of hardware fanboys. And, man, do those guys need the ego stroking.
Ah, I thought that read Ace hardware. That's where I get all my upgrades.
Could I interest anyone in some toast?
How is this really news? There are many many sites that have system guides updated once a month... is this site that much better of a system guide?
The first priority for a gamer, especially a FPS gamer, should be a good video card. However, their first suggestion listed is a Geforce 4 MX 440 over a TI 200, then they don't even provide benchmarks for the Geforce 4 MX? And for that matter, why would any self respecting FPS gamer buy a MX card of any type from Nvidia when the TIs are so much better?
lets see, i'm going to break this down 2 ways.
[quote]
Theres more to gaming than just Windows-only games like Couterstrike or Quake III.
[/quote]
old games, yes, this article is about the cutting edge of games (doom 3, etc)
[quote]
Many Linux people enjoy the same kind of fun on their platforms. Railroad Tycoon II and Quake II work just fine, thanks.
[/quote]
OLDER GAMES.... THATS PROBABLY WHY THEY DIDN"T MENTION LINUX.
how long has NWN been out for win? linux?
don't get me wrong, i love linux, its just that these blanket "WHY NOT LINUX?!" statements are getting on my nerves.
I'm waiting till the 1337 h4x0rs are done with linux, and when the 1337 h4x0rs can stop being so 1337, and start being more productive.
I'm thinking of switching to BE.... so i can be more productive. Its a joke.... laugh....
honestly, though, i did the whole deb thing for a couple years, and i just got kind of bored with it. I don't use a computer for fun anymore, so that kind of puts a dampner on things.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
...you see this screenshot:
3 ...and know not only what track you're on, but that the car is in a position (in the braking area leading up to the chicane, on the wrong side of the track, with a couple of degrees of steering lock in the wrong direction) to crash in the next heartbeat.
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=5000036
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I thought Quake III was available on Linux as well as Windows.
Murphy was an optimist.
New motherboard: CAN$119.
Athlon 2100+: CAN$206.
512MB RAM: CAN$115.
Realizing you have no cash left to replace your 16MB NVidia TNT2: Priceless.
OK, so I'm only vaguely impressed with Ace's gaming system... Seems to me like they're splitting hairs over upgrades of off-the-shelf equipment. Here's my question for all of you slashdotters:
Given the above article, and the premise that slashdotters have a wider range of experience than Ace, what would be the ideal configuration for a stereo-video enabled gaming system? Say I want something that can run Stereo-Quake or Stereo-Descent... Also assume that cost isn't really a factor (wish that were true, but I'm just pipe dreaming here...).
Besides the CPU and motherboard, there's also things like monitors (stereo projection monitors?), controllers (throttles, immersion gloves, goggles), stereo audio systems (THX?), and even room design. What would slashdotters put together with a beefy $50K to $100K budget, eh? Assume that the project is to put together the ultimate stereo-Quake VR simulator, and that you have access to the code of the game...
Seems like the console's a no brainer. When you need a new box for other reasons, you'll get one that's up-to-date for the latest titles... but why go through this cost and hassle when you can get a pop-it-in-it-plays system for $200 and no labor?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I've noticed most of the hardware freaks spend 99% of their time posting benchmarks in forums, and rarely play anything.
They run 3DMarks and try to outdo (outspend) each other. But they cant tell you how to get past the 3rd boss of $GAME because they havent played it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You can get a 2100XP, ECS K7S5A mobo with sound and LAN that can handle ddr/sdr, and a 440MX card for under $200. Sacrificing CPU or GFX card to improve the other will cost you too much performance, and having done this exact setup for some "cash flow impaired" friends I can tell you firsthand that it's plenty fast to game on, especially when you are upgrading from a P2 400 and a TNT 2 32mb card.
The 440MX has it's place, depending on what you are looking to do.
Murphy was an optimist.
tetris is what i play,
and with 1.2 GHz AMD Athlon, 512 MBRam and ATI A-I-W Ultra Pro AGP 32 MB RAM , it kicks some butt.
I play tetris in Vim, in xemacs, so there
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Except there never was any such card. To the best of my knowledge, anyway. This would be fine except they mention this imaginary product twice. Perhaps they mean a GTS, GTS Pro, MX, or Geforce 3 Ti 200?
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
The paren post has a valid point. Like a lot of people I know, I am getting sick of the hell that is the constant Upgrade Cycle. I'm tired of upgrading my system to play the latest and greatest only to find that my favorite games no longer work. Upgraded your video card? Oops. All those old 3DFX-specific games no longer work. New processor? Too bad it's too fast and a whole batch of games (thanks a pantload, Origin) run too damned fast. Opps! Looks like that new soundcard killed off a few games. New version of Windows? Guess what? Yep. More games died.
Three years worth of upgrades (and often less) seems to kill most of the games I have. (Save Quake and it's kin.)
Compare that to the consoles. All of my old Playstation games still work (save the one I ran over with my chair, but that's my fault). Some of those games were made in 1996/1997. Most games for the PC from those days no longer work.
Is that a "So what? Thems is old games!" I hear? Bite me. I spent money on those games and it annoys the hell out of me that this sad state of affairs has come to pass.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Shit, man, you may as well ask why they didnt benchmark Mac. It always amuses me how the biggest seller for Mac games is always something so old no PC gamers are even playing it anymore.
Dont get me wrong, this isnt a slam against Linux. But Linux isnt the be-all and end-all of computing that most people make it out to be. Most developers make software for Windows because they have the biggest market share, developers know how to program for it, and- the biggest factor- companies know they can make money selling software for the PC. Hell, if you are too cheap/poor to pay for an OS, how willing will that market be to pay for your software?
id makes so much money they can afford to play around with money-losing propositions like making a linux port of Quake 2 or 3. But except for the dedicated server component, it really isnt cost (or time) effective to make a second-tier OS port. You dont delay a product for two months so you can concurrently release the Linux/Mac client which accounts for 1% of your sales base. Most companies that actually do release an alternate client mainly do so because the programmers are fans of that OS and work on it in their own time.
The developers may get burned by Slashdot for not making a port, but so what? It's only complaints from a very loud and vocal minority: think Simpson's Comic Book Geek here. Worst... Game... Ever...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I think you are misusing the term stereo a bit here. If you want a simple solution for 3d with stereo glassess, get a deceantly fast nVidia card, like a GF 3 200 or better and get the stereo glassess for it. You also need a monitor that can pull a deceant refresh rate. The card will the work with the shutters on the glassess to do 3d. Works well for the price.
As for sound I haven't seen a non-stereo Pc in years. In sound terminology stereo means 2-channel, left and right. You are thinking surround sound. Also, THX isn't a surround sound spec, Doubly Pro Logic, Doubly Digital, Digital Theatre System, and Sound Dynamic Digital Sound are. THX is a spec that involves listener experneice and deals with noise and distortion levels, volume calibration, crossovers and a whole bunch of other things. the idea is if you buy a THX system and calibrate it right, you'll get a movie theatre sound experience form DVD.
However, it really won't do much good as Quake doesn't support 3d positional sound. It just does normal stereo sound.
I've scrimped up engouh money for one of the now cheapish 23" HD Cinema displays (1920x1200 of rock-steady pixel lovin') from Apple. Unfortunately, I'll have to upgrade my ATI AIW Radeon because it puts out a max of 1280x1024 to DVI. I'll need a DVI->ADC converter to drive the monitor, which runs about $100. I now have VERY cach little left for the video card.
Can anyone suggest a video card with good Linux support, able to put out DVI at the above res, and able to scale DVD video to that size? I don't ever use 3d, so performance is less of an issue. Price and linux support are tho. I notice apple's website suggests that the HD display hates matrox, loves ATI or nvidia. Any idea why?
Best of all woudl be if you actually have such a setup running, and can confirm it works
"Specifically, many games now feature several levels of detail, enabling those with faster video cards to enable extra shadowing, higher levels of geometry, higher resolution textures, and so forth."
I thought Ace were normally pretty knowledgeable. This has been going on for years. I remember playing F19 Stealth Fighter and MSFT Flight Sim back in the 80's (CGA graphics - yeah!), and they had these options then. I'm sure they weren't the first either.
Actually, the article has a suprising (at least for me) conclusion: strategy / RPG games may benifit by upgrading your video card (they're really starting to take advantage of that stuff) whereas first person shooters require more CPU (due to increased AI). The FPS games used were Battlefield 1942 and Ghost Recon.
This is fairly contrary to what I've heard in the past, which was always the opposite.
Here's my little rule for upgrading my system.
Replace every three generations, or when things are three times as fast as your current device.
Simple, isn't it? For the past 10 (or so) I've worked on that little rule and it's lead me exactly where I want to go.
My 486 became a Pentium II 266 became a Pentium III 800 became an Athlon 2400+.
My something rather (I think it was an S3 Virge, but this was in the days when no one cared anyway) became a Voodoo 2 became a Geforce 256 became a Radeon 8500 (Which I bought budget at $100 canadian).
My Gravis Ultrasound became a Sound blaster Live became a Hercules Game Theater XP became Nforce2 Dolby Digital output.
It's strange how well this system worked out. Just as my machine became almost unbearable for games (About a 30FPS average for most games) I've upgraded because of this 3x rule. Sure, it means that you won't be at the bleeding edge for very long but the edge is too easy to fall off anyway. Only idiots would skip from a Radeon 8500 to a 9700, just as it would be stupid to ditch a 2400+ Athlon for a 2.8ghz P4. At the same time, people who tell that a 500mhz and a Voodoo 3 is enough for anyone are obviously not playing any modern games. The trick is to get caught in between the two extremes.
GF4 MX is good as long as you don't mind upgrading again when the next generation of games are released (which won't be long now)...
John Carmack: "Don't Buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom 3"
Regardless, if I'm not in the mood to build a box I think I'd trust Alienware for a gaming machine over anyone else out there.
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
What components should I get to maximize Photoshop and such?
Just click that widget in the upper left corner, dude. You don't need any tools or "components" for that.
Any sites that offer such advice?
Ok, you're insisting:
HOWTO: Maximize Button
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
WHy did this come out the DAY AFTER i blow 150 bucks on a video card? I mean, im happy with it and all, but the comparison would have been nice. ;)
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Currently, I'm running an ancient 1GHz Thunderbird Athlon, with 768MB of PC-133 SDRAM, a GeForce4 TI4200, and 2 HDDs - 27GB Maxtor and 80GB Maxtor, 2MB cache. I've been running this rig for almost 2 years now, and it still runs strong & stable. Only upgrades I did were the 80GB HDD after a 20GB Maxtor that died a horrid, clicking & spinning death during an FDISK (after having it cause countless crashes & ATA failures), and the GeForce4 (which offered me a surprising performance increase in games over the GeForce2 GTS 32MB it replaced).
This rig still runs all my favorites plus some of the newer games (UT2K3 runs fine at my LCD flat panel's native res (1280x1024) with normal options turned on). The upgrade guide on Ace's (which I haven't read) simply wouldn't offer me any compelling reason to upgrade for today's games.
Doom 3, OTOH, would probably provide my system a major challenge (according to reports on its functionality, anyway). When Doom 3 comes out, that'll be my new benchmark & prompt me to upgrade. Not sooner.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Perhaps someone needs to make a Linux for Gamers distribution. Include all the free games, all the demo games, and make it stupid easy. Include a stupid easy email client and Mozilla ... and XMMS. It needs nothing else. Sell the idea to people like Blizzard, Sierra, and EA. It could be like console systems, with upgradable hardware. It could have software that checks for driver updates for their hardware, and has an overclocker app.
Shit, you could even do the hardware route. I bet AlienWare would pick it up if it were good enough. They're doing the MS Media Center thing as it is.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
With the possible exception of the last point, yes, all of this is possible with a PC.
controllers There are some great dual-shock clones available, such as the Thrustmaster FireStorm Dual Power, the Logitech RumblePad, and the Gravis Eliminator AfterShock. Plug in as many as you like, depending on game support.
living room A modest gaming system can fit in an attractive micro ATX case. Flex ATX is pushing it, unless you can find a motherboard with a decent 3D chip.
screen Get a video card with TV out. At 640x480, you'll be able to crank up the detail, anti aliasing, and anisotropic filtering. Of course, you always have the option of higher resolution with HDTV, monitor, LCD projector, etc.
noise You can build a quiet PC, so long as you don't use fire-breathing parts like a GeForce FX. If you don't want to build, it can be difficult to tell how loud a store-bought system will be.
no keyboard Well, I see the lack of keyboard as the biggest weakness of consoles. I suppose you could map some macros with the game-pad drivers to launch your favorite games.
Clearly, a console is a more efficient way to get couch-potato gaming. If you don't have a decent PC to start with, it's also cheaper. I just love the depth and breadth of PC games. Grand Theft Auto and Madden are great, but I can't give up WarCraft, NASCAR Racing, Falcon, and first-person shooters.
DVD-R - Lite On 16x DVD, 48x CD-ROM 34.50
(snip)
Course these prices are a couple days old.
I had no idea DVD-R prices were that volatile.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I upgrade when my family starts bitching about how slow their second-hand computers are. They get the old for cheap, and I get a decent hand at paying for the new.
... and too many hard drives to plug in at once, dammit! All in my lovely aluminum Lian-Li PC-65.
My dad says "The slowest part of this computer is me. Can you upgrade me instead?"
Surprisingly, this works out about the same. P1 133 to P2 350 to P3 1000 to a shiny new P4 2400 just two days ago! I tried to find the perfect Asus board (Always Asus! Always!) for an AMD this time, but I'm too damned picky....I wanted the new 533 bus speed and some 333 ram. I was also so disgusted with my Creative Audigy MP3 and its many driver issues that I wanted a built in sound card just to get rid of the headache.
Asus p4s533-E
P4 2.4 533
512MB of PC2700 DDR Ram (there's room to grow!)
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (highly recommended!)
I named it "Thor".
I'm still disappointed to see a lack of comparisons between SDRAM and DDR. I have an XP1800 on KT133a and really don't want to have to change the motherboard, RAM etc. If I drop a faster video card on it (currently running a o/ced GF3 ti200), will it go to waste? If I drop a faster CPU on it, will it starve for bandwidth?
Really I guess it boils down to what Doom3 needs to go properly, and whether or not I give a shit about PC gaming once it finally comes out. The price/performance of my PS2 looks pretty good right now.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
What hardware is supported 100% by the manufacturer for Linux. Building a gaming system is cool and all, but when you install Linux on it and find out you can't use TV-out or about half the features of your video card. It makes me feel like I've been ripped off.
I don't want to buy any more hardware unless I know I won't run into NDA/IP walls that restrict me from getting good drivers. My money is worth more than a useless hunk of silicon.
How do we build a Linux gaming system with analog video In and Out. Better yet I would like to build a small, possibly portable, video streaming box out of a cheap mini PC using Linux. I can totally customize the interface, but finding good quality supported hardware is a bitch and a half. The last thing I want to do is buy something, install Linux on it and find out the manufacturer is like Trident and doesn't want to release documentation for their ultra secret super technical dirt-cheap video card to the community.
There can be a lot of difference from system to system with the only difference being the chipset. Two Athlon's, one in a VIA chipset, and one in an nForce2 chipset, will have very different performance. And, if you don't want to trade performance for price, fine, but I don't see how that stops you from using AMD. Instead of the the 1800+ he has, you could've gotten a 2100+ or 2400+, or more memory, or a better video card, etc.
Dont be concerned with pagefile size as much as with page faults. Run the performance monitor, select Process (and choose your game process), then select page faults/sec to look at the rate of page faults as you play.
"Page Faults/sec is the rate Page Faults occur in the threads executing in this process. A page fault occurs when a thread refers to a virtual memory page that is not in its working set in main memory. This will not cause the page to be fetched from disk if it is on the standby list and hence already in main memory, or if it is in use by another process with whom the page is shared."... these page faults are costly reads from disk
I picked up this tip from the February 03 issues of Computer Power User (CPU) magazine:
Use msconfig to edit your System.ini file. "In the System.ini tab, highlight [386enh] and click New to add a new line beneath this branch. Type
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
in the empty box that appears, then click Apply and restart your PC. We found that this helped clean up game jerkiness because it reduces the background file swapping that causes video hiccups and pauses."
This tip was for XP, by the way. I tried this on my machine (512MB), and the swapping that started during UT2K3 sessions has stopped. Maybe it will work for you.
Happy Tweaking!
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
Switch monitors and try again.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions