Hardware Is this pc decent enough for playing most games?

[Rydian]

Why 7 Pro over a home version?

 

[Originality]

That kind of PC has its priorities wrong. Sandy Bridge CPUs will outperform the i7-960 easily... any more than 8GB of RAM is a waste... 60GB isn't really enough for the primary drive, and a 2TB HDD can't really make use of SATA III speeds, so it's a waste of money. A GTX 560 is mid-ranged, which is fine for the average gamer (using a screen smaller than 24"), although those wanting to play games at high settings on bigger screens will want to go for a 570, 580 or 590. A BD-burner is only useful for those who are actually going to make BD movies, although blank BDs are still rather expensive.

No PSU has been mentioned, and yet that's important for future upgrades.

 

[overslept]

Why 7 Pro over a home version?

Windows XP mode.

 

[Rydian]

That kind of PC has its priorities wrong.A.K.A. they're just looking for excuses to jack up the price, without actually making it any better at gaming, so you'll want to upgrade sooner.

QUOTE(Rydian @ Apr 18 2011, 08:50 PM) Why 7 Pro over a home version?

Windows XP mode.

Awesome. X3

 

[YayMii]

INTEL QUAD I7 960 Not worth it unless you step out and either get an i7 Extreme or a Sandy Bridge instead.

24G DDR3 RAM way, way, WAAY overkill. My bro has 6GB of RAM, and games a lot. Even with a few modern games (i.e. Metro 2033, Crysis) running in the background, he hasn't been able to max out his 6GB.

60G SSD HARD DRIVE This doesn't seem like very much. It would be more worth it if you got a second one to use in RAID0.

2TB SATAIII HARD DRIVE I didn't know there was a SATA3. I'll just say this is "okay", unless Originality's post above is correct about it being to large to take advantage of SATAIII. You should get a multiple of smaller hard drives and put them in RAID0 for speed.

1G GTX 560 VIDEO CARD Not really worth it IMO. It's a fairly average GPU, and you probably won't want average. You should only get these if you SLI them and have sufficient cooling to maintain them.

BLUERAY BURNER Cut this out completely if you only plan to play games. This is a waste of money.

COOLER MASTER CENTRIO II CASE Pretty good case.

24'' LED SCREEN There's not enough info for me to determine if this is good or not. What's the resolution? Response time?

MS KEYBOARD/MOUSE If this is a wireless KB/M combo, you can forget about gaming. Any wireless KB/M combo has issues with simultaneous keyboard/mouse use. But even if it is wired, you should be thinking about replacing this with a better KB/M (the mouse should be higher priority).

WIN 7 HOME PREMIUM This is good enough. You don't really need a better edition unless you're planning to do business/office-related stuff.Read the bolded. Overall, it's a weird wonky setup.
QUOTE(Arwing789 @ Apr 19 2011, 04:43 PM) Windows XP mode.

Why would you want that? It's just a crappy virtual PC (as in, you can get better ones). It even sucks for gaming since it uses a generic virtual GPU and not your actual GPU.
If you want XP compatibility, what's wrong with dual-booting XP and 7?

 

[Rydian]

Why would you want that? It's just a crappy virtual PC (as in, you can get better ones). It even sucks for gaming since it uses a generic virtual GPU and not your actual GPU.
If you want XP compatibility, what's wrong with dual-booting XP and 7?

It's got integration with the OS, and you don't have to reboot to run a program. Not all old programs are hardware-accelerated games.

 

[Jasper07]

INTEL QUAD I7 960 Not worth it unless you step out and either get an i7 Extreme or a Sandy Bridge instead.

24G DDR3 RAM way, way, WAAY overkill. My bro has 6GB of RAM, and games a lot. Even with a few modern games (i.e. Metro 2033, Crysis) running in the background, he hasn't been able to max out his 6GB.

60G SSD HARD DRIVE This doesn't seem like very much. It would be more worth it if you got a second one to use in RAID0.

2TB SATAIII HARD DRIVE I didn't know there was a SATA3. I'll just say this is "okay", unless Originality's post above is correct about it being to large to take advantage of SATAIII. You should get a multiple of smaller hard drives and put them in RAID0 for speed.

...

25GB? Jezus man, as yaymii said, 6GB is more than enough, 4GB is even good enough for every game. And what are the specs of the ram? Latency? Frequency?
If you plan to put games on your SSD, you're gonna buy way more than that. However, if you're going to put them on your HDD, it's enough. And I believe you can't put SSD's in RAID0 (dunno for sure don't quote me on this)
And he's right you should get a i7 2600k or something with a sandy bridge motherboard.

 

[Originality]

You can put SSDs into RAID, but you can't upgrade the firmware once you do without having to go through a reformatting cycle. Since SSD technology is still growing, firmware updates are still important to get the most out of the drives performance.

The story about SATA III is a bit of a misstart. In terms of HDDs, they don't really saturate SATA II yet, and it's well known that 2TB drives have less performance than 1TB drives. WD are the first to push into SATA III HDDs by increasing the cluster size from 32KB (iirc, it's been a long time since I read up about this) to 6MB. With increased cluster size and data cache, it can gain a little performance from the SATA III speeds, but not nearly enough to make it worth getting over 2 Samsung Spinpoint F3s in RAID. Plus it costs more, so it's not worth it any way you look at it. Likewise, the current generation of SSDs (with Indilix or Sandforce 1000 controllers) can't even make full use of SATA III with the 5Gbs limit placed by motherboards. Only Sandforce 2000 controllers are able to peak ahead of the 5Gbs limit and so require Sandy Bridge motherboards to make use of the full speed (Sandy Bridge motherboards don't take up a PCIe lane for SATA III, and instead route it directly through the CPU). Because of this, buying an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD is very hard - they're out of stock everywhere.

EDIT: I should also add, SATA III is not supposed to be called SATA III, just SATA 6Gbs. It's only through the entire Internet calling it SATA III that the name stuck. And again, even though it's supposed to be SATA 6Gbs, non-Sandy Bridge motherboards use a PCIe lane for the SATA III controllers, which impose a 5Gbs limit because that's how face each
PCIe lane is. That's not mattered until Sandforce 2000 controlled SSDs entered the market (this month).

 

[moose3]

That kind of PC has its priorities wrong.A.K.A. they're just looking for excuses to jack up the price, without actually making it any better at gaming, so you'll want to upgrade sooner.

QUOTE(Rydian @ Apr 18 2011, 08:50 PM) Why 7 Pro over a home version?

Windows XP mode.

Awesome. X3

Unless I'm mistaken, the 'XP mode' is just a virtual desktop environment that uses simulated hardware. Since I'd think the majority here use PC's for gaming, unless it's some really old game, one that didn't really care about what graphics card you had, just that you did have one, it would not run very well.

Dual boot XP/Win7 instead, then you actually have access to the fancy hardware you bought in game playing in XP.

And yes as stated, comp needs to be sandy bridge based, 1/3 the ram, and put that ram costs to a better graphics card, even SLI 2 570's or 580's if you really want to up the experience, but only needed if that monitor is running a resolution over 1920x1080

 

[OmegaVesko]

Dude, 24GB RAM? That'll run most games a DECADE from now.

Just build one yourself, you'll be able to build a much better gaming PC for a lower price. Less RAM, better graphics card.

 

[Jiggah]

XP mode pretty much useless. It just is. The only thing that made me want Pro over Home is that I use RDP (yes, I know there are alternatives...I just like using RDP).

The recommendation of the Sandy Bridge over the old i-Series is pretty ridiculous. It'll still be viable for the next couple of years. You're not going to get some massive improvements like jumping from a old P4 to a i7. The improvement is very minor. If you can get a Sandy Bridge processor for cheap then obviously it'd be a great choice, but ruling out the older series is well...retarded.

24 GB of RAM is overkill. Unless you're doing major multimedia activities, it's not necessary.

The 560 is nice, but at this point it's mid-tier. You might as well drop the RAM to 6 GB and get a far better GPU.

The original computer would play games just fine.

 

[Originality]

The recommendation of the Sandy Bridge over the old i-Series is pretty ridiculous. It'll still be viable for the next couple of years. You're not going to get some massive improvements like jumping from a old P4 to a i7. The improvement is very minor. If you can get a Sandy Bridge processor for cheap then obviously it'd be a great choice, but ruling out the older series is well...retarded.

Consider the cost to performance ratio. Each generation of Intel CPUs has steadily improved in performance by a sizeable step (20-40% with each generation). The Core i7-2600K can beat a Core i7-980X in every test except multitasking (which is to be expected, since the latter can handle 12 threads compared to 8 for the Sandy Bridge CPU) Cinebench and it only costs a third of the price. On newegg, an i7-2600K costs $25 more than an i7-960, whilst the Core i5-2500K costs $90 less than the 2600K. Additionally, the i7-2600K is a much better overclocker (despite being unable to improve its base clock beyond 105Mhz) and does not consume that much more power when overclocked to its air-cooled limits (which in turn means it doesn't produce much more heat). The i5-2500K is just as good at overclocking, however it doesn't have HyperThreading so it won't be as good at multitasking, but for the price it's definitely easier to recommend than the more expensive Core i7-950 (the 2500K performs better too).

If you're building a new computer and performance is the main goal (and the budget is large enough to pick good parts), then Sandy Bridge is an obvious choice that does leave the previous Core i CPUs in the dust.
If you've already got a Core i system, then there's no need to upgrade (unless you really need the full 6Gbps from SATA III).
If you've got a Core 2 system, then the advice is not so clear cut (it's a matter of what you want, what you need, and how much you're willing to pay for it). I've got a Core 2 Duo system, however I'm not feeling any slowness in games so I don't feel need to upgrade. Someone doing animation or graphic rendering might need the extra performance.
EDIT: I shouldn't need to add this, but might aswell: If you've got a P4 system, and you're doing more than just using the internet and watching videos, then it's about time to upgrade.
EDIT2: Correction.

 

[YayMii]

And I believe you can't put SSD's in RAID0 (dunno for sure don't quote me on this)
And he's right you should get a i7 2600k or something with a sandy bridge motherboard.1. I know you were unsure about that, but I just want to clear up that I only suggested SSDs in RAID0 because my bro has 2 OCZ SSDs in RAID0, and it's really fast.
2. i7 2600k is a Sandy Bridge. I meant i7 Extreme as in i7 970/980/990x (the 970x is the least preferable since they're all the same CPU but 980x/990x has 6 cores instead of 4)

It's got integration with the OS, and you don't have to reboot to run a program. Not all old programs are hardware-accelerated games.I was assuming that this PC was to be used mainly for gaming. And again, there are better virtual PCs out there.
QUOTE(moose3 @ Apr 20 2011, 10:31 AM)

Unless I'm mistaken, the 'XP mode' is just a virtual desktop environment that uses simulated hardware. Since I'd think the majority here use PC's for gaming, unless it's some really old game, one that didn't really care about what graphics card you had, just that you did have one, it would not run very well.

This is correct. Except for the part about most people using their PCs for gaming, as many people still have really old PCs (me included, unless you count my brother's previously mentioned gaming PC. I'm still rocking an Athlon 64 from 2004). There are also quite a few people that game on consoles and use their PCs for...erm...more productive things?

EDIT: @Originality (above): The i7 Extreme CPUs overclock fairly easily (it even has a built-in 4.2GHz "rock-solid" setting), so they are able to outperform the current Sandy Bridge CPUs. I think it'd be worth it to wait for Ivy Bridge or AMD Bulldozer before making a statement like that.

 

[Originality]

EDIT: @Originality (above): The i7 Extreme CPUs overclock fairly easily (it even has a built-in 4.2GHz "rock-solid" setting), so they are able to outperform the current Sandy Bridge CPUs. I think it'd be worth it to wait for Ivy Bridge or AMD Bulldozer before making a statement like that.

And to that I give you the bit-tech (CustomPC magazine) Sandy Bridge review. I will also add that I mis-remembered the results, for the 980X didn't win in the multitasking test, just Cinebench. An overclocked Core i7-2600K beat an overclocked Core i7-980X in nearly every test they performed.
EDIT: I should also point out the power consumption chart of the review. 156W (234W OCed) under load for the 2600K, compared to 256W (368W OCed). Also this table shows that lower overvolting is required to get the maximum stable clock compared to the 980X, which means less stress on the CPU and VRMs of the motherboard. Less stress on the parts tends to imply better overclocking potential.

 

[meornot0]

OP, stop making us feel bad by showing us your beast ass gaming pc.