Mid level gaming pc

[Jun aka Pekto]

Yeah here in RP its still hard to find DDR3 memory and if you do its pricey. I might go the Intel route na nga lang... AMD is just weak in this country, its an Intel country (they use to have a plant here)...

You could wait til next year when DDR3 is more established over there. After all, the i7 is coming to RP eventually. That platform will need DDR3 as well.

Me, the only reason I'm buying parts now is because the motherboard of my once mighty X2 4200+ pc fell victim to the bulged and leaky capacitor problem. I was planning to soldier on with it until next year or even later. It was working great with Windows 7 RC until bad capacitors put an abrupt end to it. It seems all the Socket 939 motherboards have disappeared both retail and online. So, time for newer stuff.

[Jun aka Pekto]

The parts came in today. It took me a couple hours to assemble the pc because I examined each part carefully. The good thing is, it booted fine right on the first try. And to the guy who recommended Gigabyte.....Thanks. It's been totally problem free so far. It's a nice if compact board. Well laid out and labeled pins. Got everything right the first time. Plus, both the video card and cpu run relatively cool.



I of course tested FSX first. Consistent 30+ fps(maxxing out at 80+ fps) with at least double the detail compared to my previous pc. That's what I want to see..... I'm happy now.


A quick check of the Windows 7 Experience:
Processor: 6.7
Memory*: 7.5
Graphics: 6.9
Gaming Graphics: 6.9
Hard Disk: 5.9

Not bad for a "repair" job.

* I think I have my DDR3 1600 RAM underclocked in the bios. It's running as DDR3 1333.

[rion]

nice rig!...

it is not a happy time to buy rams today. nagmamahal na yung DDR2 kasi na-pha-phase out na daw sila. yung DDR3 are getting cheaper, but still not cheap enough.

cheapest is geil 1GB DDR2-800 - 1,150.00. I think this ram is about 650 pesos a few months ago.

one choice for Intel builders, probably i5. i7 boards and procie are still expensive. i5=10k for board and 10k for procie

looking forward for a i9 builds this 2010, once they release a lower i9 variant... by that time mura na yung DDR3 din...(I hope) and the i7 board are still compatible with i9

cheapest DDR2+DDR3 board for Amd is the Emaxx Emx-Amd785G-FXN at around 3.9k though hanggang 1333 lang max niya.

[Jun aka Pekto]

nice rig!...

it is not a happy time to buy rams today. nagmamahal na yung DDR2 kasi na-pha-phase out na daw sila. yung DDR3 are getting cheaper, but still not cheap enough.

cheapest is geil 1GB DDR2-800 - 1,150.00. I think this ram is about 650 pesos a few months ago.

one choice for Intel builders, probably i5. i7 boards and procie are still expensive. i5=10k for board and 10k for procie

looking forward for a i9 builds this 2010, once they release a lower i9 variant... by that time mura na yung DDR3 din...(I hope) and the i7 board are still compatible with i9

cheapest DDR2+DDR3 board for Amd is the Emaxx Emx-Amd785G-FXN at around 3.9k though hanggang 1333 lang max niya.

The i7 and i9 will make much better use of DDR3 than the AMD Phenom II's.

DDR3 is really overkill for my rig. But, I wanted a hassle-free assemble. So I went with AM3/DDR3. Plus, the DDR3 will come in handy once I start overclocking the Phenom II X3 (to 3.2ghz). I think this Gigabyte board is also defaulting to 1333. But, it'll do 1600 and 1800 overclocked.

[Negus]

Modern Man's Kama Sutra




can't help posting this image.

[rion]

love the pic. thanks!

[Horsepower]

*Jun, since your HDD is the bottleneck, maybe you can try RAID 0 / 1 / 1+0.

[Jun aka Pekto]

*Jun, since your HDD is the bottleneck, maybe you can try RAID 0 / 1 / 1+0.

That's ok. It's only bad if I'm short on ram. But usually, once the app loads into memory, hard drive access should be minimal. I've already seen a huge improvement in load times with Flight Simulator X on my current rig with 8gb ram compared to the 2gb of my previous pc. Add to that going from a 512mb video card to one with 1gb.

[Horsepower]

How does 8gb feel like?

[Jun aka Pekto]

How does 8gb feel like?

It's like having 8 toilets in the bathroom.

It seems so overkill right now. But, you know how short overkill lasts.

[Jun aka Pekto]

Some other things with the new rig:

Video
I thought the Windows Experience score of 6.9 for graphics/gaming was way too high. That was using the drivers on the Sapphire cd. I then downloaded and used the latest ATI Catalyst drivers. The score dropped to a more realistic 6.0. But frame rates increased by at least 1/3 on all games.

ex: Doom 3 1152x864 at Ultra settings (everything including shadows enabled). FPS went from 95 to 157

Memory
I used Everest Home Edition to test the ram. It's DDR3 1600 running at a motherboard default of DDR 1333.
CPU: 2.8ghz
Read Speed: 11462 MB/s
Write Speed: 4116 MB/s
Latency: 17.7 ns


Temperatures:
I ran 3D Mark 05 not 06 because I'm currently using a 19" monitor with a res of 1440x900. At a testing res of 1024x768....
HD 5770 GPU max temp with fan at 50%: 50 Celsius
CPU Temp in BIOS during reboot: 46 Celsius

Noise
Much quieter than my previous build. On the older system, I can hear the cpu fan over the cooling fans which were pretty loud on their own. With this new build, all I hear are the cooling fans. Once I disconnected the noisiest fan (80mm side fan inward to cpu), I could barely hear the cpu fan while the video card fan is silent.

I should be finishing the 72-hr reliability testing soon.

[Jun aka Pekto]

I'm starting to optimize the pc. First thing is setting the DDR3 1600 ram to run at its rated speed. It had been running as DDR3 1333.

I then ran Windows Experience again and got this. I'm not sure how believable this is. The HD 5770 is a mid-range card. I still think it's closer to 6.0 than 7.4

[Jun aka Pekto]

I attempted another reinstall of Homeworld 2 and C&C: Generals. What do you know, they installed fine this time!

Lessons learned...... Run RAM at rated speed. I know running them above their rated speed can be bad. But, I didn't know running them below their rated speed can also be bad especially since I've done it before with no apparent ill effects.

[Horsepower]

*Jun, my buddy who is an AMD fanatic told me that you have the Phenom II Black Edition.

1.) you can overclock it +1Ghz.

2.) You can unlock the 4th core by going to the BIOS and turning on ACC and Hybrid. It is due to the SB710 chip.

[Jun aka Pekto]

*Jun, my buddy who is an AMD fanatic told me that you have the Phenom II Black Edition.

1.) you can overclock it +1Ghz.

2.) You can unlock the 4th core by going to the BIOS and turning on ACC and Hybrid. It is due to the SB710 chip.

Yup. I read up on it. I don't really want to change my heatsink. So, that would limit me to 3.7ghz with some voltage adjustments. That would put it in the range of a Q9550.

If I leave the voltage alone, it's an easy 3.2ghz. For now, that's what I'm going with. I like taking small steps at a time with overclocking.

As for the 4th core, it's hit and miss. Basically, it's pure luck if I get one with a usable 4th core.

I figured I'd get back into overclocking. My nephews have already jumped into it big time. I prefer to hear them talk about overclocking rather than their trash talk whenever they kicked my butt gaming online

[Jun aka Pekto]

I guess I am one of the lucky ones where the 4th core of a Phenom II X3 works.

Muwa ha ha ha

[Jun aka Pekto]

Running Windows Experience again with the 4th core enabled:
Cool!

[Jun aka Pekto]

Some other stuff needing adjustments.....

For SATA: Enabled AHCI (from IDE mode) first in the Windows 7 registry and then in the BIOS.

Then, I turned off write-caching because I have a number of external hard drives. I didn't want to be bothered with asking permission before unplugging/turning them off.

[Horsepower]

I guess I am one of the lucky ones where the 4th core of a Phenom II X3 works.

Muwa ha ha ha

hahaha! Cheers!

[Jun aka Pekto]

hahaha! Cheers!

Now, I have to figure out if that 4th core is really a bad core or a good one that was simply turned off. I want this cpu to last at least a couple of years. If it's a bad core, I may have to revert back to 3 cores.