2009-12-01, 19:04 | Link #61 |
blinded by blood
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Yeah, but most integrated sound chips' analog stage are cheap jellybean-based amplifiers with terrible components. The DC filtering capacitors are likely going to be electrolytics (which is bad period) and probably undersized. Corner frequency is going to be somewhere in the midbass and you'll get some pretty awfull roll-off as a result. It's never a good idea to have electrolytic caps in the signal path.
If you're serious about your audio, you really don't want your analog stage anywhere near the PSU. A computer's PSU is switching and throws off all kinds of yucky EFI. The point of external USB DACs or audio interfaces is to get them away from the interference of the PSU. There's a lot of good bang-for-the-buck USB DACs and pro-audio interfaces out there that'll ruin you for junky AC'97 integrated for life.
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2009-12-03, 01:01 | Link #62 |
Juanita/Kiteless
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: New England
Age: 40
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If I decided to get a built computer and it comes with DDR 2 RAM, can I put DDR 3 RAM in the motherboard in the future? Does it depend on the motherboard? Do DDR 3 motherboards take DDR 2 RAM?
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2009-12-03, 11:53 | Link #66 | |
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Join Date: Mar 2009
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2009-12-03, 16:29 | Link #67 | ||
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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Mobo: Gigabyte GA-M770T, $80 CPU: Athlon II X4 620, $100 RAM: 4GB (2X2GB) OCZ Obsidian DDR3-1600, $94 Graphics: XFX Radeon HD5750, $145 Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black, $75 Optical Drive: Samsung SH-223C, $27 Two options for case/psu: option one: Antec Sonata III, includes Antec's own Earthwatts 500 watt power supply. Option two, Antec Three Hundred case ($55) and a 600 or 700 watt OCZ unit for $80 - $90. The Sonata's III's cooling and power supply are definitely good enough for the rig (I've built a number of Sonata II and III based computers), but the second combo provides you with some headroom if you ever decide to upgrade to a really power hungry CPU/GPU. Anyway, looking at $631 for the Sonata III based config and $25 more for the THree Hundred/OCZ 600 watt combo. You could also consider upping the CPU to a Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition for $66, which would get you another 600 mhz plus a 6MB l3 cache (which boosts performance in a lot of situations). Just remember you'll need a copy of Windows to run on it too. Also, depending on the backup strategy you plan to use, you might want more than one hard drive. You might be able to run backup software like Acronis True Image with only one drive but I'm not sure. (For those unfamiliar with True Image, it basically can take an "image" of your Windows install, compress it, and then store it. You can then restore your PC to that exact state captured in the image using a rescue disk if necessary. I use it so that I can restore my PC in minutes if it goes down, although this takes some planning (keeping files on a separate partition from the OS, etc.) Quote:
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2009-12-03, 19:56 | Link #69 | ||
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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(Admtitadely, some people mentioned being able to run Assassin's Creed (one of the first dual core required games) on a single core Pentium 4 with hyperthreading... but I don't know if this would work for other dual core games and even if it does... for an i7 to take advantage of it, you'd need a game that needs more than four threads...)
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2009-12-03, 20:31 | Link #70 |
blinded by blood
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Thanks for the info on the i5.
Regarding the case, I'm just disgusted and horrified at the aesthetics of all things computer these days, especially anything labeled "gaming." Why does it all have to look so garish with all that glossy plastic and stuff? Man I'd kill to have a 15 or 16" laptop with a matte, clean, minimalist Thinkpad or Sony design but with the same Core i7-720QM and nvidia GTX 260M as the Asus G51J. (No the HP Envy 15 does not count, it's a POS that costs too much, the trackpad is terribad and it has no bluray drive, what a waste).
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Last edited by synaesthetic; 2009-12-03 at 20:45. |
2009-12-03, 21:36 | Link #71 |
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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Okay, I messed up, there's a few other differences too in terms of l3 cache speed, memory speed, and how turbo mood works:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17545/2 I'd be interested in knowing how much of i5s advantage vs. AMD in a lot of gaming benchmarks is due to turbo mode, since technically that will disappear when games start using more cores.
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2009-12-03, 22:50 | Link #73 | |
ひきこもりアイドル
IT Support
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Pennsylvania , United States
Age: 34
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AMD may be cheaper, but Intel already destroyed them with performance... a i5 and i7 can easily outperform a AMD... sadly...
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2009-12-04, 14:08 | Link #74 |
Hollow
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I'm going to bother you one more time. My buddy wants to buy a computer, not so super powerful but it looks alright. My country is not so well equipped with good stuff so this will have to suffice.
MB ASUS P5QL Pro Intel P43 Glan CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2,8GHz Memory DDR II Kingston 2GB 2X Asus EN9800GT 512MB Tower ThermalTake Soprano RS101 Codegen Power Supply 500W I recommended for him to get 4580 but he says that the guys in the shop said to him that 9800GT works better on Asus MB. Is that true? If the components above are bad or won't work well, please say so. I'm little suspicious on Codegen power supply... Thanks in advance P.S. Thanks to TCman and chikorita157 for previous help.
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2009-12-05, 00:34 | Link #75 |
Juanita/Kiteless
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: New England
Age: 40
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What is a good budget graphics card? I might go with a cheap card and upgrade later. The games I want to play on PC the most (that are the most graphic intensive) are Oblivion and MW 1 and 2, and both have obsolete cards for recommended cards. What is a good cheap card? I'm thinking of getting a Geforce 9800 GT. Does it have a large power draw? Does it heat up too much? Or is that stuff not a problem?
And I'm gonna get at least a 600 watt power supply. Might go with a 700 watt power supply. And processors...AMD processors; AM 3. I could get a dual core Phenom II and then go quad core one day if I wanted to save money. Could I go intel and get a dual core CPU and then go quad core in the future? Or do i5/i7 CPUs have different socket types that they are compatible with?
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2009-12-05, 00:39 | Link #76 |
ô_ô
Join Date: Nov 2003
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http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1472785
You can get a 250 GTS for about 60 bucks total, which is a pretty damn good deal for one. Faster than a 9800 GT as well. |
2009-12-05, 02:48 | Link #77 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2008
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2009-12-05, 03:50 | Link #78 | |
Photomancy Experiments
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Balanga City, Bataan, Philippines
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2009-12-05, 04:54 | Link #79 | ||
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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THe 9800GT can be either a rebranded 8800GT or a die shrunk version (55nm vs. 65nm). Quote:
-The Phenom II X2 550 (dual core) is $102 compared to $166 for it's quad core counterpart, the Phenom II X4 955. If you have the cash just grab the quad now instead of waiting to upgrade... I think it'll be a while til you see a CPU as good as the 955 for $64. -On graphics cards... making a recommendation here is hard. You have the 9800GT 512MB for like $100, the GTS 250 1GB for $125, and the HD 5750 1GB for $145. The GTS 250 and HD 5750 are a nice speed bump over the 9800GT from what I've seen although not one I would consider a necessity. The HD 5750 support Direct X 11 features, which Nvidia's boards don't, while nVidia's boards support nVidia's PhysX stuff in select games. You can look at some benchmarks here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3658&p=1
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2009-12-05, 18:49 | Link #80 |
Photomancy Experiments
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Balanga City, Bataan, Philippines
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I think when it comes to a versatile platform, I'd pick AMD over intel, easily... there are just too many sockets that intel supports, 1156, 1366, 775, and whatever they come up with the i3 compared to just the AM3+ socket..
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