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Gaming Pc Change Of Plan, Still Need Help Though

DrDoom

By DrDoom
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Extreme_biker0 Trials King

Extreme_biker0

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Posted

The components you've listed there will be hard to beat without throwing a lot more money at it. In other words that will be one very fast PC. Cheapest way to improve would be to double up with identical HDDs and stripe a dynamic partition for your swapfile and program files. This will speed up disk access, which is the bottleneck your system will encounter loading up games (esp FSX).

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Extreme_biker0 Trials King

Extreme_biker0

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so if i can chuck in another hdd of the same type then create a partition it will speed it up a lot, does the hdd have to be of the same capacity?

Striping - read up on it.

Basically, yes. The partition is spanned across the 2 disks so that when the computer needs a file off the partition (or 'drive' in windows) the file is fed simultaneously off the 2 disks rather than off 1.

Best results are gotten when the disks are identical, for reasons I'm not 100% on.

I can vouch for it working though. It is worth it.

EDIT:

In more detail: the windows directory cannot reside on a dynamic partition (ie one striped across 2 disks). So the ideal solution would be 3 disks:

1. Windows disk

2. Striped partition*

3. Striped partition*

*together forming one striped partition in windows for your programs/page file.

However with just 2 disks you will still notice an improvement, setup as follows:

1. First say 40gb windows, rest of disk striped partition*

2. used as striped partition*

*together forming one striped partition in windows for your programs/page file.

This configuration wont show as much improvement becasue the first disk head will have to jump between the physical positions on the disk of the 2 separate partitions when simultaneously wanting to access windows files and the game files or page files or whatever.

Edited by Extreme_biker0
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Sonny Clarke Trials Master

Sonny Clarke

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Posted (edited)

COD4 Requirements:

Operating System Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista

CPU Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 2800+ processor 2.4 GHz dual-core

Memory 512 MB (768 MB for Vista) 1024 MB RAM (2048 MB for Vista)

Hard Drive Space 8 GB of free space

Graphics Hardware Nvidia GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Nvidia GeForce 7800 or ATI Radeon X1800:[20]

Sound Hardware 100% DirectX 9.0c compliant card Sound Blaster X-Fi (Optimized for EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0/5.0 compatible cards)

So yeah that will do fine

Edited by Sonny Clarke
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Krisboats Thats Enough Now Tart

Krisboats

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Posted

Am i missing the price of this thing?

Also for a gaming pc that graphics card won't suffice, 1gb of ram on a card as not-powerful as that one will be more of a hinderance than a help. I've seen a fair few benchmarks where people have had stupid amounts of ram on slow cards and the lower ram'd ones usually end up faster. You'd be much better off with a 512mb 8800gt (which can be had new for around £70-80 now). For a general banter at low-medium settings it'll be alright though. f**k knows what that power supply is doing in a system so out of spec for it though, if you chose it yourself... may i ask why?

Ditch the power supply, get 4gb of ram not 3, use vista 64 not 32 and change the graphics card.

Depending on the price of the thing i think it'd be cheaper to order the parts yourself and then pay me or mark £50 to build it :P

COD4 Requirements:

So yeah that will do fine

N00b, he wants to aim for the second lot of requirements you've jumbled in there. His graphics card is slower than both :P

The components you've listed there will be hard to beat without throwing a lot more money at it. In other words that will be one very fast PC. Cheapest way to improve would be to double up with identical HDDs and stripe a dynamic partition for your swapfile and program files. This will speed up disk access, which is the bottleneck your system will encounter loading up games (esp FSX).

Cheapest way would be to ditch the 8600gt and get an 8800gt instead. About the same price as a new hard drive... MASSIVE difference in favour of the gfx card.

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Si-man Thats Enough Now Tart

Si-man

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Cheapest way would be to ditch the 8600gt and get an 8800gt instead. About the same price as a new hard drive... MASSIVE difference in favour of the gfx card.

Do this. I have the Gainward 1gb 8800GT. Its bloody quick I know that. Clocked to:

Core clock @ 680MHz

Memory clock @ 963MHz

Shader clock @ 1700MHz

Get yourself a Coolermaster 700W SLI modular power supply.

Water cooling next year for me :D

Edited by Si-man
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Haz Thats Enough Now Tart

Haz

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Posted
Its already a push for me to afford this, i didnt choose the power supply.

I may not even get it like this, i was using this as an example of what might be ok, so different power supply and graphics card, maybe even another hard drive.

i dunno, its already at just below £1000

anybody else know where to get a custom build within the uk??

That is costing you just below a grand? I wouldn't expect that to cost more than £600.

My only recommendation would be that that card just isn't powerful enough. I have a 1960 Pro and it would probably still hold it's own agains that card, and I only get around 40fps on COD4, and the 25 I get on Crysis with medium settings is just no fun.

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NicP Trials King

NicP

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Arbico are f**king mint, got the PC im using at the moment from them,

I'm a willy and I'm fairly picky, but was very satisfied with them.

EDIT: Also looking at the GFX Card, go to the 8800GTS 320mb (I have it) or if they have the 640 mb version It plays Crysis (Which is alot harder to run graphicaly than COD4 ;))

If you want add me on MSN for my specs as if yours is costing a grand and mine plays all the games you want just aswell and only cost £400

googleismyfriend@hotmail.co.uk

NicP

Edited by NicP
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Krisboats Thats Enough Now Tart

Krisboats

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Posted
Arbico are f**king mint, got the PC im using at the moment from them,

I'm a willy and I'm fairly picky, but was very satisfied with them.

EDIT: Also looking at the GFX Card, go to the 8800GTS 320mb (I have it) or if they have the 640 mb version It plays Crysis (Which is alot harder to run graphicaly than COD4 ;))

If you want add me on MSN for my specs as if yours is costing a grand and mine plays all the games you want just aswell and only cost £400

googleismyfriend@hotmail.co.uk

NicP

Go to a card that got replaced by another model and discontinued because it was so shit?

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anzo Thats Enough Now Tart

anzo

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Im still getting this, next febuary.

I'd hang on right there. February is 6 months away...a lot of advances will happen and most of the components you're looking at will be half the price - sure, it'll still be a good system, but with the money you're 'saving' on cheaper components, you could buy the newer stuff.

But then, even in 6 months time it'll still be a respectable system.

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