Old school / melancholy gaming build

R

Rorschach

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 24, 2014
Messages
194
So, yeah, i needed a 2nd physical pc in another room.
My main rig is 2700k + 760 GTX, so like i said this one is for the good ol' times.

Bought some stuff from ebay dirt cheap, combined with what i had laying around and voila.
But melancholy struck and wanted to have some fun with stuff that i could never afford at that time, like the legendary 8800 GTX.

What i have so far.

E5300
Foxconn G31MXP-K
1x NVIDA 8800 GTX
1 GB ram Crucial 667 Mhz ( for now, i will put 4 gb ddr2 800 mhz if i can find them in my house)
19" Monitor @ 720p

(long story short, i've bought all the above with just 25 $ :D )

The rest i had like:
Seasonic S12II 500W 34 A, HDD WD 640 GB AAKS, Silverstone case, vents etc.


I ran Assassin's Creed 4 on high on 720p and saw that i've got 25-30 fps, i couldn't believe it.
Pretty smooth most of the times.
GPU load was 80 % and CPU at 100 % both cores.


What i want to try:

- Get another 8800 GTX for SLI
- Another SLI ready motherboard of course.


If i may ask for some 'old' knowledge.
So these are my questions:


1. If i get an E8400 (Stock) will i see better results (like is it worth it) vs the E5300 (stock) for 720p gaming with 1x 8800 GTX ?

2. If i get a Q6600 (Stock) will i see better results than the E5300/e8400 (stock) for 720p gaming with 1x 8800 GTX ?

3. Q9450 (stock) will i see better results than the Q6600 (stock) at 720 gaming with 1x 8800 GTX ?

4. Will a Q6600 (stock 2.4 Ghz) suffice for 2x 8800 GTX SLI at 720p and 1080p ?


Any input is of great help.
Thank you.
 
The Q6600 at 3.2-4GHZ will be better then the E8400/E5300 @ 4GHZ + on mildly older games from around the same circa as the CPU's that benefit a bit from the quad.

On older games around early Core 2 Duo release where speed > core count then a E5300/E8400 is going to be faster then the Q6600 by up to 40% extreme cases.

The Wolfdale-3M E5300 is a cut down version of the E8400 Wolfdale's, about 15% slower clock for clock on benchmarks. The E5300 can easily do 4.2GHZ+ on a G31 chipset with little voltage boost, but that all depends on the settings you have in your Foxconn bios. The E8400 overclock like butter too.

The Q9450 when overclocked to 3.4GHZ+ is faster then all of the above mentioned CPU's.

If you're playing modern games on the system, a Q6600 at minimum 3.2GHZ will prevent CPU bottleneck scaling with higher end GPU's. But at 3.2 with an 8800GTX it should be fine.

A stock Q6600 will severely hold back 2 8800GTX in SLI at 1080P gaming. 2 8800GTX in SLI won't be fully utilized at a low 720P res. Nominal res back then for 2 x 8800GTX or so was 1680x1050. 1152x720 is much lower and a single 8800GTX would be fine.
 
Perfect thank you for the info.

So yeah, if get older games, the dual cores are better suited for that but i think i want to go the quad core route, i already have a dual core, never had a quad from that period and since the idea was to get 'new' stuff.

But if i want to try some new ones that are optimized for more cores, a stock (for now) Q6600 + 8800 GTX should be fine at 720p, right?
I mean the cpu at stock won't limit the GPU from performing 100% at 720p ?
 
By older games that were used for benchmarks such as F.E.A.R, S.T.A.L.K.E.R SHOC etc, 2006-2008 stuff.

You would get a nice boost in performance with a mild overclock from 2.6 to 3.0 or 3.2 with the Q6600.

The old school 775 quads are fairly cheap on ebay except the high end QX9x50 cpu's. You can drop in a 771 Xeon with a tab and pin mod and overclock that.
 
Ok.
I have on the way a q6600 g0 cpu + a xfx nforce 680i motherboard.
Found another identical 8800 gtx and i hope all goes well.

one more thing, is my Seasonic S12II 500W 34A enough to run everything even the sli?

8800 gtx has 145w tdp, so x2
cpu is 95 w
1x hdd and some fans.

Thank you.
 
Rorschach said:
Ok.
I have on the way a q6600 g0 cpu + a xfx nforce 680i motherboard.
Found another identical 8800 gtx and i hope all goes well.

one more thing, is my Seasonic S12II 500W 34A enough to run everything even the sli?

8800 gtx has 145w tdp, so x2
cpu is 95 w
1x hdd and some fans.

Thank you.
Click to expand...

I think you should buy one of those outlet power load meters if cutting it that close...just off the top of my head i would think it might be a bit much for a 500 watt power supply...sli 8800gtx has to be close to 500 watts when at max usage but you also mentioned its not a huge investment either.....still i would hate to overload it
 
I came in here expecting real "old school", not only 8 year old hardware :p.
 
No doubt, if you have more then one physical core then you ain't doin it right! Hell my wifes rig is not much better then that and we're just now talking about upgrading it.
 
My parents are still using my old overclocked s939 3800 x2 with a 7800 gtx.

It needs to be upgraded, but...

this isn't really old school by performance or platform standards I don't think. e5*00 series is fine. Lots of businesses are still on core 2 machines.
 
Forgot to update.

Yeah, old school in mind, so everything is relative. :)

Completed my build.

Q6600 G0 + Prolimatech Megahalems
XFX 680i SLI
2x 2 GB Mushkin DDR2 800 Mhz
2x NVIDIA Reference 8800 GTX
Corsair CX600W (to play it safe)

Everything at stock settings.

The rest i had.
Used a 17" 720p monitor and started to game.

Got very interesting results. (For example some games didn't start on SLI, will look into it further and on some games i've got ridiculous fps)

GFL9oM7.jpg


The build http://i.imgur.com/azyKoFk.jpg

Idle/Load Wattage http://i.imgur.com/X5RrjYM.jpg

1x 8800 GTX @ 720p @ Max settings w/ no AA http://i.imgur.com/sj0vLiR.png

2x 8800 GTX @ 720p @ Max settings w/ no AA http://i.imgur.com/YLUETAt.png

So not shabby, for an 8 years old video card ! :D (on the 8th of November it celebrated exactly 8 years)

The game stats http://i.imgur.com/OOZDdwr.jpg

And before completion vs my main build @ the M1 http://i.imgur.com/OIERVGq.jpg

So yeah, very happy with the results from my old tech spare 'just for heck of it' pc.
Maybe i will throw in another GTX for a menage a trois :), hope the new PSU can handle it just for testing purposes.

They weren't that loud even at 90 % speed fan.
Average temperature was at 70 C with a 3-4 C margin between them, with the case opened.

And in most of the games both GPUs went over 90% usage, so the q6600 even at stock is doing a good job.

LE: What do i have to write in the link image so that the it will automatically resize and not display the full 'big' picture? Thank you.
 
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2k3eblade said:
I felt the same way... I was hoping to see a Voodoo 3 build with a T-Bird, 128mb ram and SB live sound card.. lol
Click to expand...

Everything but Voodoo......Nvidia MX400 and I believe 512mb ram.
1st build, about 15 years old and it still works

x1dm3r.jpg
 
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Nice to see this idea in action and the pics.

I actually had thought of doing the same thing in the past couple of years , but even more way back. My all time favorite PC gaming era is still mid-late 90's with EQ , Myth The Fallen Lords , original Tribes etc.

I've considered at times putting together a 98-99 era'ish PC again with a PIII 500 and a couple Voodoo 2's in SLI just for the nostalgia factor and being able to fire up glide games like Myth without any issues.
 
680i chipset, you could be pretty happy running a modded 771 Quad Xeon. I have one, if you're interested, from my 730i build from ages ago.
 
8800GTX was a beast for a long time.........tears in my eyes.....I still remember the day it moved out to a new home.....not for love ...but for Money.:(
 
Boards like the Intel DP45SG are still available new in wrapper with backplate from Ebay...if you do your research. The P45 chipset is much better than a G31 chipset and more feature laden. There are other motherboard options. I went the DP45SG route, my only limitation is the ram compatibility...limits me to 4Gb instead of 8Gb with current ram I have.

BlackDragon
 
My nephew still has my old computer that I used for a while (Q9650EX with the 8800GTX in SLI) with a 16x9 monitor. He also has my old 680's that I ran in SLI. He said that he didn't need to swap them out. I could of sold them for some change already, LOL.

Your system should be fine!!!!
 
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