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Sacred 2 Computer Upgrade... Finally!


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You know, this thread by Tomi, sort of scared me. But in a good way. I was sort of sitting here on my behind forever now, not really thinking too much, always thinking..few more months, few more months till I have to shell out...but then Tomi's topic here, made me realize how close the release really is. And when you're thinking of shelling out about a thousand bucks for something that can play Sacred 2 delightfully, you really need to prioritize, put in order, and commit.

 

So after reading about the games needed specs:

 

Tech Specs

 

Minimum Specs planned:

* 1.6 GHz P4

* 512 MB Ram

* GForce 4 - Min. 128 MB

* DVD

* 4 GB HDD

 

Recommended:

* 2.4 GHz Conroe Duo / 3.6GHz P4D

* 2GB Ram

* GForce 7800GS

* DVD

* 12 GB HDD

* GFX 7900 series or better with 512 MB VRAM*, or equal AMD/ATI Card -- with 512 MB VRAM* maybe SLI/Crossfire

* PhysX Card

* Windows XP

* Vista compliant, additional features planned

* No cards with hyper, power, turbo memory sharing bla

 

 

I finally did.

 

The problem with my current system, is that it's the first real computer system I've ever really had that was good, good and that my parents paid for about five,maybe six years ago, lol....old huh ^^

 

It was a dell 8200 top of the line, and a real hard arsed game player. With it came all the nice peripherals and all, and It's lasted me through 3 video card upgrades (Card on this system is a nvidea 7800gt), and the final jump to ram of a gig. The Bus speed on this baby is great...true bus speed, as one guy said, and so it's manged to cobble it's way through many a game. Course, the time comes when the upgrade it is at hand...and this is where I got stumped. See, Dells, are VERY hard to upgrade. In fact, unless I stuck to Dell components...it just couldn't be done! The Clam shell case the Dell came in, while being very nice and all...is so designed and set up for dell components, that I can't even upgrade to a new mother board or cpu, unless I stuck with Dell.

 

So, this upgrade was sort of costly, because I had to actually shell out for a new case, power supply, AS WELL as new ram, mother board, cpu and card. Even Ram wasn't upgradeable, because it came with such strange ram, which was extremely powerful at the time, but upon which, dedication towards died out, leaving me with having to buy chips at very VERY expensive prices.

 

Just this Thursday, me and Schot ran down in delighted glee to Microbytes...montreal's cool little warehouse depot/store with gadgets galore. We got a good salesman (can't tell you how important that is to me). And he took us through the myriad choices available. Of course, he asked the question...budget?

And I lied.

lol, said 800 bucks, because I know how pricing on this stuff works, and I wanted to have breathing room for myself. He came up a price for the components I needed. I didn't need a hard drive, dvd/burner, mouse, monitor, or keyboard, which kind of helped with the pricing. And so the deed was done. I told the salesman... you made a sale...and now the comp is being built and should be ready all good to go this Tuesday or wednesday. Comes with a two year warranty, for servicing and parts, and...more importantly...they're right down the subway line from me...carting around a comp is heavy work you know ^^

 

Here she is, she's...okay...but, I think she's going to do the job, and...I am excited about her card..it's a babe:

  • Vista Am2
  • Case ATX Alpha 602bk Blackp Nops
  • CPU AMD Athlon64 x2 5200+3.0
  • Two year warranty/parts service
  • mb AM2+ Asus m3a amd770 pcie
  • Power 600w POWER ATX CM Extreme
  • SIMM Kingston KVR 800 mhz ddrf no-ecc 2048mb kit (2 gigs ram)
  • CRDVIDEO Asus PCIE GF9 EN9800GTX 512m ($375.00 owch)

Price: 947.86

 

I came in 150.00 over what I'd asked the Salesman, and I was ready to jump to a thousand.

 

Here's to hoping she'll do the job.

 

And thanks, Tomi for that Topic, and to everyone else for your insight and support.

 

Bring on the game!

 

:D

 

gogo

 

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heh, well regarding cash....I figgered I'd have to take a reduction in food costs to finance this buying. I figgered only a ten pound loss from less food eaten to pay for it.

 

:devil:

 

gogo

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Nice system you got yourself there Gogo :) You'll have fun with that one for quite some time!

*awaits messages of Canadian power failures when gogo turns on his pc* :devil:

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aaaah you finally did it :woot: always nice to see a gamer getting a new comp :)

but I dont see a new hard drive :o are you still using that 120GB ?

 

and a Asus MB :) (think I love that brand) :devil:

 

anyway glad you got a update :gogo:

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lol, what's wrong with that 120 hard drive!... was sent to me by a friend, ya know

 

:woot:

 

gogo

 

p.s. :gogo: @ bhj

 

p.s.s. was either that or use the 30 gig one ... :devil:

 

p.s. Timo, yeah...he really kinda went overboard with the powersource huh... :)

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:bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:

:):gogo::woot::):o:BlobRed:

:woot::woot::woot::woot::woot:

 

Woooot! Grats gogo! Grats grats grats! Hahahahaha! Grats! =) Such a god feeling eh?...

 

I'm jealous! I want a new comp. too. There's a little chance though but Ohh my! Price: 947.86!! I'm happy if I get a 600 one.

 

Grats again! Enjoy your new babe!

 

:devil:

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Huh, Gogo.. you really put lot of money on graphic card, but got really good one. Best single card on the market. Really nice. That power suply is bit overkill in my opinion too, and will be seen in raised electric bill atleast a bit, but better to have some extra if you'r going to update some years later.

 

 

Now that you showed your system, it's better to show my new system too on the same thread.. no point starting a new one for it. Kinda lame after your ûber graphic card, but good enought for me and for the budget I had.

 

Case: Cm Elite 330 (some basic coolmaster case http://www.cpusolutions.com/mm8004744CPU/I...SELITE330CM.jpg

Power: Xilence 420W 12 cm Fan REDWING (I hope it's enought)

CPU: Intel Core 2 duo E8400 6Mb 3,0ghz + Fan

Mobo: ASUS S775 IP965 DDR2 SATA2 R GBL 8CH HDA - P5B

Ram: Kingston 2GB 800MHZ DDR2 NON-ECC CL5 DIMM

HD: Western Digital CAVIAR SE 320GB SATA2 7200RPM 8MB

DVD-drive: some cheap LG dvd-rw

GPU: Club 3d Ati Radeon 3850 PCIE 512M GDDR3 OVERCLOCKED (got it because it had really good value for money rate on tom's harware site)

1 year warranty

 

This is the best part.. full price: 529,65e whit shipping costs. And I think it will do great few years before I need to update anything if that powersupply just is enought to run this system. I hope it is.

 

Old stuff.. win xp pro as OS, Samsung syncmaster 793df 17", Logitech keyboard, green razor copperhead first edition as mouse, logitech 2.1 system for sounds and external 500gb seagate free agent Pro for storage space.

 

When my summer vacation money comes, I am planning to buy LG42" LCD tv and use it as a screen from time to time. And then my gaming experience will be great. :devil:

Edited by Obsession
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Dang, Ob, your sys is great...and what a price! See, I would cheerily have spent less for better value as well. I'm just stuck with having to rebuild from the ground up, and because of that the extra charges for case etc all got lumped in this time. lol, I wanna be where you guys are all at, and just get to stick in new ram, motherboard, cpu etc... so much cheaper! lol, Ob, you got about three times more the drive space than me... you know, I only just lately moved up to a 120 gig drive, and ONLY because someone from this forum sent me on :P I've never been a big user of space, for some reason... believe it or not, my 30 gig drive actually lasted me for 4 and a half years. Course, near the end, there was a lot of decisions I had to make regarding wiping something off, so I could put something new on. But I found it made me careful with choices, and I got to make it last.

 

 

Highlander, thank you! lol, It's fun getting organized, and this one came off pretty good. I'm happy, content, and looking forward to picking up the new wonderbabe in a box.

Review...you betcha!

 

:(

 

gogo

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I'm just stuck with having to rebuild from the ground up, and because of that the extra charges for case etc all got lumped in this time. lol, I wanna be where you guys are all at, and just get to stick in new ram, motherboard, cpu etc... so much cheaper!

Yeah it really would be, but in my case, only things I could save was keyboard, mouse and screen. Old motherboard doesn't support new processors, old graphic card is AGP and new motherboards only supports PCI-E cards, Memory sticks are ddr so in theory they should work on new pc too, but when ddr2 sticks are really cheap, why bother taking memory out of old pc and making it un-usable. And if I remove old case, where'll I put all the old pc's components? and there is lot of cheap cases so again, why bother. So had to buy everything new..

 

lol, Ob, you got about three times more the drive space than me... you know, I only just lately moved up to a 120 gig drive, and ONLY because someone from this forum sent me on :D I've never been a big user of space, for some reason... believe it or not, my 30 gig drive actually lasted me for 4 and a half years. Course, near the end, there was a lot of decisions I had to make regarding wiping something off, so I could put something new on. But I found it made me careful with choices, and I got to make it last.

:twitch: .. eemmh. How do you do it? I mean, I have something like 300gb of stuff in my external hd allready + 50gb programs and games on my PC and more comes all the time. Maybe it's because I tend to keep every game possible on pc even I wouldn't play them.

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oh no.. got my new graphic card and it says 450w power needed and I bought 420w power :) Can't even cancel it anymore.. it's allready send. Oh well, have to buy some 450 or maybe even 500w power from local shop and send the 420w back.

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If it's a good brand, don't worry about it too much. Most gamer pc's don't even use nowhere near 400 Watts, the reference they give is for an OC'd system with all the bells and whistles on it.

 

Assuming it's 80% efficient, you can power a system pulling 336 watts on load without problems. Even high end systems with great videocards and all that, only need high 200's on load or something, check the images below why.

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3 GHz)

Motherboard Asus P5K3 Deluxe

Memory Kingston 2 x 1024 MB setup in DDR-3 800 5-5-5-15-21

Hard Drive Hitachi T7K250 250 GB

DVD-ROM DVD Drive Asus 12x

image006.png

The 2900XT as you can see was very inefficient, lot's of juice needed for that one, but look at the other values.

 

 

More:

·Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (333MHzX9 Dual core) CPU

·Foxconn MARS | EIST and C1E disabled

·GeIL Plus+ DDR2-800 3-3-3-8 2.4V(Run:DDR2-800 4-4-4-12) Memory

·AVC Napoleon Cooler

·Seagate 7200.10 250G HD

·Acbel ATX-550CA-AB8FB 550W PSU

·ASUS BC-1205PT BD COMBO

9800gtxpower.png

More nice low wattages.

 

 

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption.

GTX-61.jpg

Note, this is PEAK power consumption. On typical load, the power consumption will be lower.

The older cards (8800GTX) use more power compared with the new (9800GTX), so designs have become more efficient. Although again, Ati refuses to show that :drunkards:

I don't know what your complete setup will be, but I think you'll do fine.

Edited by Timotheus
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No problem :D it's a myth that you need big PSU's, after realising this I bet my system (before I sold the 8800GTS) would've run on my 350 watt PSU, but just to be sure I bought a 465 Watt PSU. Getting 600 watt psu's for todays normal gaming pc is overkill, and it's expensive because the efficiency is lower, meaning more power loss and higher electrical bills...

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Here she is, she's...okay...but, I think she's going to do the job, and...I am excited about her card..it's a babe:

  • Vista Am2
  • Case ATX Alpha 602bk Blackp Nops
  • CPU AMD Athlon64 x2 5200+3.0
  • Two year warranty/parts service
  • mb AM2+ Asus m3a amd770 pcie
  • Power 600w POWER ATX CM Extreme
  • SIMM Kingston KVR 800 mhz ddrf no-ecc 2048mb kit (2 gigs ram)
  • CRDVIDEO Asus PCIE GF9 EN9800GTX 512m ($375.00 owch)

Price: 947.86

That is a good system :) wish I could have the 9800, the only thing I might suggest is more RAM, you can never have too much :P

Recommended:

* 2.4 GHz Conroe Duo / 3.6GHz P4D

* 2GB Ram

* GForce 7800GS

* DVD

* 12 GB HDD

* GFX 7900 series or better with 512 MB VRAM*, or equal AMD/ATI Card -- with 512 MB VRAM* maybe SLI/Crossfire

* PhysX Card

* Windows XP

* Vista compliant, additional features planned

* No cards with hyper, power, turbo memory sharing bla

It recommends a PhysX card? Odd, and also why, they are rare and performance damaging (apparentely) still I may buy one for sacred :P I wouldnt mind having one anyway to be honest.

 

Gratz on that beast gogo!

:)

~Doom

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If it's a good brand, don't worry about it too much. Most gamer pc's don't even use nowhere near 400 Watts, the reference they give is for an OC'd system with all the bells and whistles on it.

 

Assuming it's 80% efficient, you can power a system pulling 336 watts on load without problems. Even high end systems with great videocards and all that, only need high 200's on load or something, check the images below why.

Allready bought 500w power and sending that 420w back tomorrow, but it's good to know about these things, thanks for the info :P.

 

Also got all the parts and started to assemble my PC, but they forgot to send me one critical component.. CPU fan, so my system is no good before they send me one. Allready put mobo on the case and ram on to mobo + some basic cables. Didn't bother to put power or other components as the are just in the way when installind CPU. If I'm lucky enought, it's fully running before weekend.

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Recommended:

* 2.4 GHz Conroe Duo / 3.6GHz P4D

* 2GB Ram

* GForce 7800GS

* DVD

* 12 GB HDD

* GFX 7900 series or better with 512 MB VRAM*, or equal AMD/ATI Card -- with 512 MB VRAM* maybe SLI/Crossfire

* PhysX Card

* Windows XP

* Vista compliant, additional features planned

* No cards with hyper, power, turbo memory sharing bla

It recommends a PhysX card? Odd, and also why, they are rare and performance damaging (apparentely) still I may buy one for sacred :P I wouldnt mind having one anyway to be honest.

 

Gratz on that beast gogo!

:P

~Doom

 

With Nvidia, I thought they are integrating physx, so I don't think you really need an extra physx card for it. :)

And Doom, there arent many games that support physx...

Edited by Timotheus
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Recommended:

* 2.4 GHz Conroe Duo / 3.6GHz P4D

* 2GB Ram

* GForce 7800GS

* DVD

* 12 GB HDD

* GFX 7900 series or better with 512 MB VRAM*, or equal AMD/ATI Card -- with 512 MB VRAM* maybe SLI/Crossfire

* PhysX Card

* Windows XP

* Vista compliant, additional features planned

* No cards with hyper, power, turbo memory sharing bla

It recommends a PhysX card? Odd, and also why, they are rare and performance damaging (apparentely) still I may buy one for sacred :P I wouldnt mind having one anyway to be honest.

 

Gratz on that beast gogo!

:)

~Doom

 

With Nvidia, I thought they are integrating physx, so I don't think you really need an extra physx card for it. :)

And Doom, there arent many games that support physx...

I know there aren't many games that support it hence its rarity, but still for sacred....

:P

~Doom

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Timo, the info on the powersource you wrote up is fantastic. I'd never have even thought of going through the thinking that a higher powered byt more ineffecient power source, could actually cost me more money in the long run by having me run up bigger power bills!

:P

 

And thanks, Tim...the new wonderbabe is scheduelled for pick up tomorrow or day after tomorrow

 

 

:P

 

gogo

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