PC upgrade advice

going to work in 1.5h and wanted some emergency advice from some one who knows what they are doing with pc`s

i`m 1 click away from ordering this trough a webshop so i can pick it up after work:

2x MSI N260GTX OC (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260) for SLI
1x P7N2 Diamond (NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI)
2x 1 GB DDR3-2000 Kit (2048 MB)
1x Core™ 2 Quad Q9550 (4x 2833 MHz)

running with xp fully updated
620W corsair

disregarding case cooling as i need to ask in the shop wth goes on the motherboard that does a good job

any comments regarding this setup if it fits or not or run decent?
low budget system so yea, i know the 280 does a better job but it`s twice expensive and read that the MSI 260 OC SLI does a nice job for some time to come for a good price

Thanks

I say "Go For It!!"

Just from the specs I'm finding it'd be a decent running system. Overkill for SL I'd think.

My only issues: #1- DDR3: I'm not familiar with it (have yet to encounter it). But from the specs I've seen the timings are way higher than DDR2. Not sure what makes it "special" as opposed to DDR2 or DDR?

and #2: Video Card. From what I'm reading it's a mixed bag. Most are in favor of the 9800XXX series (from website TomsHardware) and a decent test of it here: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-260-review/1

Really tough call. I say go for it!! If all else fails, RMA the stuff & chose something else! And if they wont take it unless its damaged- run a strong magnet over it!!

thing is, the overclocked MSI 260GTX is pretty much the best decent priced card they have in stock (looking at their website) and the 9800GTX OC has an unknown delivery date (wich in dutch terms is soon™)

edit2: with the site you gave, i better plugin a giant fan in the case directly onto the cards
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-comparison,2007-8.html

the card itself:
https://www.alternate.nl/html/product/Grafische_kaarten_nVidia_PCIe_-/MSI/N260GTX_OC/-1070568/?
full info at the bottom (informatie->meer details)

this isn`t exactly for sl alone, just want something better in general and be able to run the newer games at max settings while planning to get the samsung 27inch next month

the ddr3 i have no idea, but with getting a speed mobo, SLI and a quad, might aswell get some of the better ram while at it 4gig would be better but still waiting for next month`s paycheck to arrive)

doubt they`ll take back hardware tho, but the magnet is a good suggestion


edit: everything here is expensive, just glad i found a store that actually sells MSI stuff here, can`t even find a store that sells BFG-tech stuff

edit3: off to work with no internet

True!




www.newegg.com

Ummm... Errr... GTX260 is affected by http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7957 and you cannot downgrade the drivers to version 175 cause they don't support GTX260 -- running SL on it will be a major pain until this is fixed.

It's a decent machine for everything else, but I'd add one more gig of RAM.

To get the full benefit of stuffing 4 gig of ram into a win xp 32 bit machine you are going to have to enable PAE(physical address extension) in boot.ini. It is not as difficult as it sounds. See section 2.4:

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm#2_4

thanks for the replies

checked at work just to be sure and what i thought was a salary correction was a salary (skipped a few hours) so just going to buy the gear but stick with 1 BFG 8800GTS OC2 320mb and see if that nvidia overclock can squeeze abit more out of it

good note with the jira issue on the 260, guess i have to wait 3 more weeks so can get 2 better cards or pre-order them




*no comment*



allready 771 euro without the cards and 2gig, think i`ll skip the other 2 till next paycheck
good to know tho instead of being suprised why it doesn`t see the extra ram, thanks

A couple of thoughts: SLI is useless for SL in my experience. Does nothing. Second, get 4gig. How much your 32bit OS sees seems to vary by chipset, but I see close to 3gig on mine. Last thought: good choice in power supply. It's what I use on a 790i dual graphics card system, and I have no stability problems.

the desire to use SLI is just to have 2 relative good priced graphic cards boost performance alot compared to a single bit more expensive card as the benchmarks came out good compared to a single bit more expensive card

if games run heavier and heavier, then would just need to ditch the cards for a better version while the rest of the system will manage for some time to come or throw in a dual cpu motherboard while keeping this chip and memory

would be overkill if only using it for sl, but i have a few other games i`d love to hit the max setting button without it crawling to a halt
just wanted a real gaming machine for a change while having the proccessing power for some heavier apps

still have this on my wishlist with the abouve system:
http://www.alternate.nl/html/product/Monitoren_LCD_24_inch_en_groter_-/Samsung/SyncMaster_275T_plus/-1070173/?

windows:
http://www.alternate.nl/html/product/Solid_State_Disk_2,5_inch_SATA_-/OCZ/Solid-State_Disk_2,5/-1071048/?tn=HARDWARE&l1=Harddisks&l2=Solid-State+Disk

apps + games (+SL cache ffs)
http://www.alternate.nl/html/product/Solid_State_Disk_2,5_inch_SATA_-/OCZ/Solid-State_Disk_2,5/-1072500/?tn=HARDWARE&l1=Harddisks&l2=Solid-State+Disk


/has found a new hobby, drooling for upgrade money

I just realized I lied slightly. I have a 780i Asus mb, for posterity.

I have dual 8800gt cards (which have heatsinks instead of fans), and there's no lack of graphics power (except ironically, for SL).

even the latest supercomputer will lack by SL, heck, i`ll bet any alien with 100,000 years advanced in computers will lack with sl

I tried to visit that sim, but I crashed on TP.

May be an idea to get a 64 bit operating system for that so you can use all your ram.

Dont forget too, with the 4 gig limit you include your Video cards, modern cards map directly to your system memory and will reserve part of it for themselves, and with 2 cards in there they will be taking big chunks out of your ram.

I would avoid the /pae hack, it will work but its buggy.. and will lead to lots more crash's from memory errors.

Also as an alternative to SLI maybe look at some of the duel GPU cards that are coming out now...or if you really want to get freaky, SLI Duel GPU cards

if i had that money, i`d put in 2x 2gig OC cards

vista or 64bit hmm
just happy xp finally runs crash free and that i can use all programs

FWIW, I have dual boot between XP 32bit and Vista 64bit. I've only booted into Vista once in the past 3 or 4 months, and that was an accident. But people that like Vista tend to really like Vista. Enough people that there's clearly merit to it. I think the only way you'll find out if it's for you is to try it, to be honest.

true

think i`ll finish building this pc first befor spending money on an os i might never use while it could finance better hardware

got the motherboard, quad core and ddr3 to play with now atleast
/me runs to install it

oh god i love Vista. I got my first PC in 1999 (lifetime mac user) and hated Windows 98, hated windows 2000, was happy with XP, but now I am thoroughly satisfied with Vista - and yes i turned off that weird thing that asked me to confirm everything i wanted to do including flush the toilet.

Vista is dreamy.

You hear that NINA? VISTA IS THE HAWTNESS YOU SL DOS USER!

finished the install, not even adding xp updates to login to sl and allready got about 22 fps increase when zoomed out on my island compared

Those GPUs will need water cooling forget fans they are dang HOT cards!! Go for swiftech water cooling fans will really suck on those gpus in a big way!

back from the dead

1x P7N2 Diamond (NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI)
2x 1 GB DDR3-2000 Kit (2048 MB)
1x Core™ 2 Quad Q9550 (4x 2833 MHz)
620W corsair

another 2x 1 GB DDR3-2000 Kit (2048 MB) (4 total now)
XFX GTX280 XXX gfx card


but the main thing to revive this thread, with the current hardware, the LATEST nvidia drivers (178.24_geforce_winxp_32bit_english_whql.exe) actually WORK!?

Welcome back, Alicia. Sweet system. You must be loving it. I'm glad to hear the driver you've got is working.

I notice what might be a slight issue, though. You stated you've got a total of 5GB of memory in your system (4GB system RAM, and 1GB video RAM), but then you said you're using a 32-bit driver. In case you didn't know, if you want to use all 4 GB of system RAM, you'll need to use a 64-bit OS, which in turn means you'll need 64-bit versions of your drivers.


The reason is that all 32-bit operating systems are limited to a total of 4GB of memory. So with a gig of video memory in place, you'll only be able to use 3GB of system RAM, not all 4. That's not necessarily the end of the world, but you should be aware.



I know it's a little late to respond to this, but I didn't notice it earlier. I have to disagree with you, Tristin, on the need for (and even the benefits of) water cooling. I used to have an expensive liquid cooling system in my PC. It eventually leaked, so I replaced it with a Zaalman 9500 CPU fan, and a series of case fans. The whole machine now runs an average of 10 degrees cooler than it ever did with the water.

Liquid cooling is neat, in a "go to a LAN party and impress everyone with your plumbing skills" kind of way, but it doesn't necessarily cool anything any better than air does. The important things are to have a good, spacious case, with plenty of ventilation, and be careful with your wiring so as not to restrict air flow. As long as you've got that, a good air-cool system will always be at least as good, if not way better, than any liquid system (not to mention far less expensive, to boot).

yep about the memory, but it`s set as dual channel so 3gig as far xp concerns

kinda agree on the cooling, put 3 extra fans in it, 2 for blowing air into the case and the strongest for blowing it out in the path of the power, hdd`s and fresh air for the gfc card
also have a giant cooler for the cpu to help airflow

couldn`t fit another gfx card in this case even if i`d want, let alone water cooling lol

and i love it, it runs dead space on max settings (you can feel it slightly lag) but turn it down a notch (fog etc) and it runs like a dream