Could someone find my system weakness please?

J

jordan12

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 29, 2000
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I have an MSI p67a-GD65 Motherboard
2600K running at 4.2 GHZ
16 Gig of DDR3 RAM
28" Hanns-G 1920X1200 monitor
One ATI 6870 running at MSI Lightning speeds

Is there something that needs to be done? Or do you guys feel like I am ok for the moment?
 
If there is any weak point, it's your graphics card. However, this depends entirely on what you're trying to do.
 
Theres nothing better unless youre going into dual hex cores.

What hard drives do you have? Are you on the stock hsf?
 
Looks like a pretty solid build. Maybe an SSD, but that isn't really necessary (more a nice to have).
 
Forceman said:
Looks like a pretty solid build. Maybe an SSD, but that isn't really necessary (more a nice to have).
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Wait what? If a guy dump $$$ into 2600k, 16G of memory and 28" desktop monitor, an SSD is not really necessary?

SSD improves the performance of a rig in all use cases. But not 16G of memory and let along the huge useless 28" monitor.
 
vitaminc said:
Wait what? If a guy dump $$$ into 2600k, 16G of memory and 28" desktop monitor, an SSD is not really necessary?

SSD improves the performance of a rig in all use cases. But not 16G of memory and let along the huge useless 28" monitor.
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No matter what the price of the rig, it still isn't necessary - and the improvement can vary depending on the use of the machine, gaming improvements are not nearly as significant as video encoding/editing performance increases, for instance.
 
For gaming, that 6870 is kinda on the weak side for 1920x1200. Dont get me wrong, its still a good card and will max out the majority of games at that resolution but games like Crysis 1 and 2, Stalker and Metro will be more than it can handle at max settings.

So from a gaming perspective, Id upgrade to something like a 6970 or GTX570 to get the most out of that resolution. But if youre not a gamer or dont play all that seriously then it might not be worth it to you.

Im not that big on solid state drives. Yes theyre faster and thats always good but their price is still too high for the space you get to make it worth the investment in my opinion.
 
Forceman said:
No matter what the price of the rig, it still isn't necessary - and the improvement can vary depending on the use of the machine, gaming improvements are not nearly as significant as video encoding/editing performance increases, for instance.
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I don't know about your experience, but the improved load times is pretty big. besides, 64G mlc junks only costs around $100. Much cheaper than the gap between i5k and i7k.
 
Get a ssd. Honestly my 5 year old 939 feels faster than an i3 2100 if you give it a ssd, it is the single best upgrade I have ever done. Depending on the games though it might or might not help, in wc3 I went from 21 second load time to 3 seconds, in sc2 the difference was like 2 seconds. But for overall general computing it helps quite a bit.
 
Ok so it sounds like I really don't need to do anything to my machine.


I use a 1 TB WDC Black for my boot drive. I have never seen a huge difference with an SSD.


SO I guess Ill leave my machine as is. I appreciate the feedback though.
 
What do you do with the machine? Have you installed Linux yet <-- Joke
 
Since you dont give any information on the memory that might be a problem. With the 2nd generation Intel® Core&#8482; processor you want to be using memory rated at 1.5v or lower. If you are using memory at 1.65v it can damage the processor and void your warranty on your processor.
 
jordan12 said:
I use a 1 TB WDC Black for my boot drive. I have never seen a huge difference with an SSD.
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In your dreams...1TB Black VS. OCZ Vertex 2 Sata 2

(17 months ago) http://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips#p/search/0/MhYYx9ckR4Y (There's sata 3 ssd's these days and MAX IOPS OCZ drives:eek:) Looks to me you can boot your system in half the time on sata2 versus your drive and load maps in steam games in half the time or load your browser in half the time etc. I want one myself :D
 
German Muscle said:
Id love to see any 15 inch LCD with higher quality picture at the same res as a 30 inch.
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1920x1200x15inch is 150ppi, 1920x1200x30inch is 75ppi. if response time, brightness, contrast ratio, and color bits are all the same, then you'd have a pretty good laptop screen.


though 1920x1200 15inch displays would be great and all, i'd much rather see high resolution 30inch displays, say 3840x2400 (150ppi).

the fact that pc displays sort of stopped at standard 1920x1080 television resolution mystifies me. used to be tv's were 720x480i at between 27-32inches (32ppi for 27") and pc's were either 1024x768p or 1600x1200p at 17-19inches. (105ppi for 19") thats a huge difference.
 
jordan12 said:
I have an MSI p67a-GD65 Motherboard
2600K running at 4.2 GHZ
16 Gig of DDR3 RAM
28" Hanns-G 1920X1200 monitor
One ATI 6870 running at MSI Lightning speeds

Is there something that needs to be done? Or do you guys feel like I am ok for the moment?
Click to expand...

Your weakest piece is easily your video card. Your 6870 will definitely hold you back in some games. You should look into ditching that and getting a 6950 2gb at the minimum. Then you can always add a second one down the road and crossfire them. This is of course dependent on what power supply your using.
 
What I mean with the SSD thing is that I had one about 6 months ago. I saw some difference with the booting up and I was able to do things as soon as I got to windows.

But I didnt see a BIG enough difference to be happy with only having a 60 gig boot drive..
 
For anyone who said that a SSD is unecessary, I think you guys are wrong.

I was a firm fan of WD Black drives in RAID0 for their cheap alternative to costly SSD but that's was beforce I actually tried a descent SSD first-hand.

It feels like I was blind before, it's as phenomenal as that. So an i7 rig that well equipped WITHOUT any SSD is a huge bottleneck right there. At the very least, a 32-64GB SSD for the OS and small apps is a no brainer for the price today.
 
Ctek said:
For anyone who said that a SSD is unecessary, I think you guys are wrong.

I was a firm fan of WD Black drives in RAID0 for their cheap alternative to costly SSD but that's was beforce I actually tried a descent SSD first-hand.

It feels like I was blind before, it's as phenomenal as that. So an i7 rig that well equipped WITHOUT any SSD is a huge bottleneck right there. At the very least, a 32-64GB SSD for the OS and small apps is a no brainer for the price today.
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Maybe I simply had an older SSD....Do you feel that an SSD would be a larger jump than me getting a better VC?
 
jordan12 said:
Maybe I simply had an older SSD....Do you feel that an SSD would be a larger jump than me getting a better VC?
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Not if you are primarily a gamer. The VC will give you an improvement at all points in the game, through higher settings and higher frame rates, while an SSD is only going to improve loading times with perhaps a small impact on framerates (via fewer minimum spikes). An SSD is nice, but for games a better video card is the better answer.
 
jordan12 said:
Maybe I simply had an older SSD....Do you feel that an SSD would be a larger jump than me getting a better VC?
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graphics quality, no. everything else, yes.

improvements in graphics quality mostly come from a video card.

but its interesting tho. my SLC SSD from 2007 gave me a huge boost over my U320 SCSI RAID 0 array spinning at 15k RPM. And the current breed of MLC SSD are much much faster than the SLC ones.
 
vitaminc said:
graphics quality, no. everything else, yes.

improvements in graphics quality mostly come from a video card.

but its interesting tho. my SLC SSD from 2007 gave me a huge boost over my U320 SCSI RAID 0 array spinning at 15k RPM. And the current breed of MLC SSD are much much faster than the SLC ones.
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"Everything else" being only load times. In games, visual quality is everything, and only a better graphics card would improve that.
 
Tsumi said:
"Everything else" being only load times. In games, visual quality is everything, and only a better graphics card would improve that.
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Everything else as everything else than visual qualities. From load times to boot times. Transitioning from HDD to SSD is as much of an improvement compare to the transition from DSL to fiber.
 
vitaminc said:
Everything else as everything else than visual qualities. From load times to boot times. Transitioning from HDD to SSD is as much of an improvement compare to the transition from DSL to fiber.
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Which doesn't matter in game. And you just repeat what I said. The only thing it affects is load times. Getting a better graphics card versus getting an SSD (if he had to pick between the two, which is what he is asking) would be the better choice of the two because gaming is primarily focused on good visuals and the feeling of being in the game, not the extra few seconds you have to wait for the game to load.

SSD vs better graphics card for gaming is like getting a different transmission vs getting a more powerful engine for trying to get more speed out of your car. The engine provides more of a noticeable improvement than the transmission.
 
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vitaminc said:
Everything else as everything else than visual qualities. From load times to boot times. Transitioning from HDD to SSD is as much of an improvement compare to the transition from DSL to fiber.
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I think it really comes down to personal preference. I dabbled in the SSD realm twice (the first was an older SSD the second try was with a newer one) and didn't notice/feel like the performance justified the added expense. Was it a bit quicker, sure, but it was a very small difference. The big difference that I noticed was in boot up time, but since my computer runs 24/7 most of the time anyway I didn't even get to enjoy that.
 
Tsumi said:
Which doesn't matter in game. And you just repeat what I said. The only thing it affects is load times. Getting a better graphics card versus getting an SSD (if he had to pick between the two, which is what he is asking) would be the better choice of the two because gaming is primarily focused on good visuals and the feeling of being in the game, not the extra few seconds you have to wait for the game to load.

SSD vs better graphics card for gaming is like getting a different transmission vs getting a more powerful engine for trying to get more speed out of your car.
Click to expand...

I'd say it depends on the game, wow for example benefits massively from a ssd, you don't have textures popping in all over the place for 30 seconds after you already loaded for 30 seconds, wow has tons off little loads like this and a ssd makes them near instant. Sc2 has almost no improvement with a ssd on the other hand.
 
The OP is his system's weakness since he still hasn't told us what he's using it for.
 
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