need opinions:)

[gstanabay]

hi team

Any ideas if this system will run PR/ ARMA? I have the chance to maybe buy it cheap.
Im pretty braindead when it comes to stuff like this so any help is appreciated

Motherboard:
XFX nForce 680i SLI INTEL SOCKET 775 DDR2

Processor:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (4MB L2 Cache, 2.40 GHz, 1066MHz FSB)

Motherboard:
XFX nForce 680i SLI INTEL SOCKET 775 DDR2

Memory:
2x1GB Geil DDR2 PC2-5400 Ultra CL3 Dual
1xKingston DDR2 PC2-5400 Value RAM

Graphics:
XFX GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB GDDR3 SDRAM

hard disk:
2x 1TB Barracuda ES.2 SATA 3.0-Gb / s 1-TB Hard Drive
Model ST31000340NS SATA 3Gb / s 7200rpm 1TB


regards,

kiwi_styer

[Mad-Mike]

2 Motherboards?

[gstanabay]

opps my bad....yea one

[JohnnyPissoff]

What's up with the ram?

Memory:
2x1GB Geil DDR2 PC2-5400 Ultra CL3 Dual
1xKingston DDR2 PC2-5400 Value RAM

You do realize that the Kingston ram has a Cas latency of CL5 opposed to the Geil ram's latency of CL3*. This means that your high dollar Geil will at best resort to the slower CL5 timing. At worse they may be incompatible.

*The lower the number the faster.

[gstanabay]

no..i did not know that lol

as i said i have very poor knowledge with that kind of stuff..thanks for telling me though

easy to get ram replaced though yea? if so, is it still going to run PR farily good?

at the moment im using a laptop, 1.66GHz, 2gb ram, mobile intel "graphics accelerator" lol

low settings on everything and still shocking FPS

[Sir.Grossi]

PR should run fine but not on High!

ArmA 2 will be a problem.

[JohnnyPissoff]

no..i did not know that lol

as i said i have very poor knowledge with that kind of stuff..thanks for telling me though

easy to get ram replaced though yea? if so, is it still going to run PR farily good?

at the moment im using a laptop, 1.66GHz, 2gb ram, mobile intel "graphics accelerator" lol

low settings on everything and still shocking FPS

Well gstanabay you're in the process of learning. I'm sure that soon you'll be a pro. And yea Ram's the least of anyone's problem as far as replacing. Those two sticks of Geil should work nicely as far as your criteria of fairly good goes. Like Sir.Grossi say's; "not on high though".

Hey here's an idea to help "pump up" your resources for gaming. Don't use your on-board software sound card. Get an inexpensive hardware sound card. Seems trivial but will really help you a great deal. You ask what's a sound card got to do with FPS? memory resources as well as CPU cycles saved.

[Johncro]

Well gstanabay you're in the process of learning. I'm sure that soon you'll be a pro.

Take his word and mine.
I used to be a tool up until last summer.

Now I can work my way around RAM, CPU, Video Cards.

Still learning on
Hard Drives
Motherboards
Optical Drives


But on topic,
if you building this from scratch and you are willing to for kover a little bit more money,

I suggest a motherboard with an AM3 socket with DDR3 RAM capabilities(DDR3 is latest)
(AM3 is basically the socket the CPU goes into, you can fit in AMD's new CPU's[Phenom II, Athlon II, etc)

I suggest sticking with AMD(personal preference) because they are imo more user friendly

I suggest a Quad Core, merely because newer games these days are starting to get dependent on Super fast Dual Cores or Quad Cores(if you want a blazing fast PC taht can play latest games maxed, this would be a very useful purchase)

Your Graphics, to be honest get newer stuff man, 8800GTX may seem good, but if you wanna run Arma2 maxed, don' bother, look for something along the lines of

ATI 5***
Nvidia 260 and up

go for one 1TB hardrive, its really not nessesary to have 2 if you only want to play games,
but on the other hand if you wanna put pictures, videos, music and other stuff the the 2 would be good to have)

If you don't have a Operating System already then for a 64bit OS(64bit doesn't cap on your RAM[32bit systems stop at around 3.2-4GB])

Don't worry about the other stuff until you get there, like your case etc etc.

I'm actually sorry for writing this much, it may be a ***** to read but hey

And trust me, i used to play in the spectrum of shitty graphics on PR...it isn;t fun, but boy once you get to max it out, it feels great.

Remember Stay positive, and good luck with learning and your computer

[Sir.Grossi]

Just to add to the valid comments already.

IMO there is no such thing as a cheap computer! Meaning that you get what you pay for!
If you have a limited budget then actually specifiying your own system or even
building your own can be the best way. That way you can 'future proof' or plan for
future upgrades by buying a decent Mobo and CPU whilst saving on the things like GFX
and RAM until you save a little more cash.

There are some really great websites and forums out there for research.

I personally like 'Tom's Hardware' and found it very useful when specifying my PC

One thing to remember is that you don't HAVE to have the most powerful components
but you must ensure that they work effectively together. This is where the research comes in!
Ensuring that you get 'Bang for Buck' is IMO most important.

Good Luck!

BTW way when you say cheap, how much are they asking for?

[SnipingCoward]

Good stuff Johncro!

Just some remarks from my end...

I suggest sticking with AMD(personal preference) because they are imo more user friendly

I used to go with AMD but now I prefere Intel. Since i3 those things have "Hyper Threading" which I am very fond of, as my main game (PR:BF2 obviously :roll is a single core application. HT will still have it use multiple cores instead of just one. I have not found a similar thing on AMDs.
Other than that, I think Intel vs AMD... is always a bit about the season since I think they alternate in terms of best price/value and performance. Right now I am inclined to say its a draw with AMD taking over soon.

go for one 1TB hardrive, its really not nessesary to have 2 if you only want to play games,
but on the other hand if you wanna put pictures, videos, music and other stuff the the 2 would be good to have)

This is really a matter of preference. Even if you have pictures etc. you can still use on HDD and simply partition it appropriately. The only real advantage of having 2 HDDs over 1 is that it is unlikely that both HDDs will die at the same time, thus you lose only one part of your Data - a second drive is the way to go if you want to be using backups. Another thing is reusability. It is possible to seperate the OS and applications (only to some extend) into different partitions or hdds. So you could back up your System seperately, decreasing the effective size of the system backup.

If you don't have a Operating System already then for a 64bit OS(64bit doesn't cap on your RAM[32bit systems stop at around 3.2-4GB])

This is not 100% precise but still a good advice. (Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows))


And yes, give us the price so maybe someone can tell you if its a rip off or not.

[Johncro]

Good stuff Johncro!

Thanks man, muchly appreciated, I'm here to learn

[whatshisname55]

SnipingCoward;1503319']This is not 100% precise but still a good advice. (Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows))

As far as I know those stats are for before the system takes a bit of memory for itself, so, on a 32 bit version, after the system takes what it needs the actual amount available to be used is usually around 3.6 gigs (depending on the system).

[SnipingCoward]

As far as I know those stats are for before the system takes a bit of memory for itself, so, on a 32 bit version, after the system takes what it needs the actual amount available to be used is usually around 3.6 gigs (depending on the system).

You are correct those are very optimistic values. Infact for Win 32bit it states 4GB which is not what will be available as free RAM the actual maximum is 3.25GB. The system does not actually take it for itself but rather windows reserves adress space (in Win7's Resource Monitor: "Hardware Reserved") for system hardware like USB devices, sound card, gfx card etc. which equals those .75GB of RAM. The worst thing though is that the more RAM your GFX card has the more actual RAM will be lost as well, if windows decides that those .75GB worth of address space is not enough.

[whatshisname55]

Very informative, thanks.
The graphics cards dedicated memory (on non-integrated cards) is counted with the system memory so you will lose that as well on a 32 bit OS right?

[gstanabay]

wow!! Thanks for your help guys REALLY appreciate it

yea im beggining the long road of learning how a computer acctully works an how i can improve it..looooooooong road lol

anyway some of u guts asked for price = 3,500.00 NOK = 584.827 USD

good? bad? remember norways an expencive place

[SnipingCoward]

The graphics cards dedicated memory (on non-integrated cards) is counted with the system memory so you will lose that as well on a 32 bit OS right?

Yes, if Windows decides that the already reserved adress space is not enough. This will show up as "System Reserved" (Grey area, shouldn't be more than 10MB) in the "Resource Monitor".

Note: RAM for integrated GFX cards will physically use the real RAM. Thus still reducing it even when you are using a 64bit OS.

looooooooong road lol

sry! xD

good? bad? remember norways an expencive place

But computers and parts can easily be shipped in, no?
Check out this thread, hes getting something in that price range: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f329-h ... ter-d.html
I am thinking hes getting a better price/value. Esp. since its not a used PC.

[Johncro]

Yeah, I suggest you buy your parts, and get someone to help you put it together