Techno-geeky babble about computer crap.

[xyzzysqrl]

*stomps foot down hard, raises arms to sky*

INTERNET! I CALL UPON THY TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE! I offer you GBA roms and beef jerky, pocky and dumb Youtube clips! Come to my aid and answer my questions!

*ahem* Now that the invocation is finished, I wish to ask about a few things related to getting a new PC.

1. Vista. Windows Vista. Nobody I've ever talked to has kind words for or about Vista. It makes Gametap cry, and Gametap is a huge bit of my life. Emulation doesn't work quite right. Old DOS games? Not so workable. And so on. Is anyone out there USING Vista, and able to go "Yeah, this thing is fricking AWESOME!" or should I stick with XP?

2. Nvidia video card VS ATI video card. I've always leaned Nvidia, but lately their drivers have been roughly as reliable and useful as a frat boy study group. Will that get better with a newer card, or should I look at ATI stuff? (I'm running a 6600 right now. The site I was looking at advised a video card upgrade if it was "at least three brackets higher on this scale..." ...where the only ones -sold- by the site I'm looking at are at least -ten- brackets higher than my current.)

3. Speaking of the site I'm looking at: this, Cyber Power PC, is where I'm looking. My current PC is by them. It's lasted like six years, maybe seven or so. I love these guys. If you're... y'know. "Into". Slapping together PCs for other people, maybe eyeball what they have available and give me some advice? I'm -strongly- looking at a sub-$700, possibly sub-$600 price limit right now, but that may change as we talk with the boyfriend's parents and my parents and see what we can scavenge and save and the like. What's good in that range?

...thank you for reading.

Comments

[glashund.livejournal.com]

1. Vista's probably fairly important if one plans to play a lot of upcoming, high-end PC games, due to DirectX 9 being as high as MS will allow WinXP to go. Otherwise, though, I do prefer XP.

2. Interesting...my experiences have been exactly the opposite. Every instance of video-driver heartache I've ever experienced has involved an ATI chipset, so I neither use nor recommend them whenever I can help it. Apparently, mileage may vary, though.

3. Hmm! I do have a miniscule, pretty-much-a-hobby operation I keep up for metaphorical beer money, which does involve a fair amount system building. If you'd have any interest, I could see what I could come up with in your $600-700 range and shoot you a quote. Hope it's not excessively shillish of me to offer...I prefer to work for friends, and can't afford to advertise properly. ;)

[xyzzysqrl]

1. I too prefer XP vastly... it's my favorite Microsoft OS -ever-, and I love it to bits. I did intend to prod at upcoming high-end PC games, but I'm not sure if it'll be -required- that I leap at Vista or if XP will be good enough for the next several years.

2. Hmmm. This is duly noted. Part of it is that I've -always- used Nvidia stuff, so I'm curious about the "other half", so to speak... as well, ATI has sexy looking numbers and I'm intrigued by that. Mileage -does- vary, though... the BF and I have identical video cards but non-identical setups elsewhere. New video drivers wreck his system to hell and back, and make mine sit up and dance.

3. This is noted. Given the choice, I admit I'd lean towards someone I'm friendly with and know Internet-wise over "I've used this corp before and like them", but I admit I -am- mostly waiting for the "okay" to see what sort of cash will be available to work with... not to mention the BF would get final okay, and suchlike. If you'd like to draw something up and waggle it about seductively, mind, I can hardly protest! I warn you, I may or may not go with your services, but it would be interesting to see what someone who -knows what they're doing- would come up with.

[phoenixtril.livejournal.com]

For 700 dollars, the components you'll be getting will probably not be able to handle high-end DX10 games anyway.

[xyzzysqrl]

That depends. I imagine it -would- be able to handle DX10 games... if I dipped the resolution and graphical settings down a couple of notches. I'm angling an eye towards the Sacred 2 and STALKER: Clear Sky system specs, with an eye towards being able to eventually run Fallout 3 -respectably-, if not -perfectly-.

Also, I have this dream of being able to emulate PSX games at high resolution fullscreen at full speed. *sigh*

[phoenixtril.livejournal.com]

I tried running Clear Skies on my machine, in Dx10, and my video card is an x1800xt 512. Card's about three years old. But it ended up as a slideshow. I'm actually in the market for a new machine currently, and I'm just starting to get back into the swing of researching components.

[xyzzysqrl]

... *scratches -that- off the list of future ideas...* Perhaps I shall look into running that in DX9.

[phoenixtril.livejournal.com]

Running it in DX9 wasn't so bad. I could turn on Sun Shadows, but everything else had to be turned off. I'll see how it runs when I get the new boxeh together.

[glashund.livejournal.com]

I warn you, I may or may not go with your services...

Absolutely not to worry. One thing I always try to make clear about this kinda thing is that I don't hold any such expectations, or consider anyone obligated to give me special consideration for personal reasons; if one can find a better deal or is more comfortable going elsewhere, I am totally cool with that.

[glashund.livejournal.com]

OK, I did some fiddling with parts combinations,, and it looks like what I could do with $700 would be about the same as the Ultra 8000 suggested below by Phoenix, for the record!

[xyzzysqrl]

It's actually quite nice to have that confirmed. *pleased*

[relee.livejournal.com]

While supposedly true, I've yet to hear of a single game that requires DirectX 10, and since Vista came around I've been hearing more and more major games depending on OpenGL instead. I'm not sure, but I think Vista is killing DirectX. o.o;;

Certainly I've noticed that they make sure it's clear that games run on XP and only require DirectX 9c, which is neccesary to appeal to a broad audience.

[phoenixtril.livejournal.com]

All games have backwards compat. for DX9, but DX10-exclusive games don't exist yet. Whether they support DX10 over and above DX9 is the trick; many games do that. Stalker: Clear Sky, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Crysis, Far Cry 2... it goes on. It's usually an added sheen of shininess, better puddles and nicer trees.

[phoenixtril.livejournal.com]

1. XP. Wait for Windows 7, just like Maine.

2. I've been a fan of ATI since forever, and not just because they're Canadian-based. I've never had a single problem with an ATI card, like, -ever-. Except for when the 9800 pro's memory controller went bad, but that was due to age. The thing was easily five years old. They run cool, rather quiet, and price-performance wise, they're really excellent pieces of equipment. The new 4870 and 4870 x2 are great in that respect. ATI drivers have also been rock-solid, the vast majority of the time, I don't even bother upgrading because the performance is just fine on even the newer games.

3. You're lucky you live in the States. Computer prices down there are easily half what they are up here. You have the advantage of getting a system that would be $1000 for sub-700 down there. AMD makes great stock cooling, and ATI cards also tend to have excellent stock cooling. Sapphire-rebranded cards are a wee bit better, if you can get them. Reconfiguring their "Gamer Ultra 8000" system with an ATI Sapphire 3870 gives a respectable 667 dollar price. The 3870 can still hold it's own against most of the newer cards like the 4850. The system uses the same motherboard I currently own, which is quite good, dual-channel Corsair RAM, and a single optical is really all you need. I imagine you can even salvage that from your old one, they tend to be pretty universal.

Of course, your mileage may vary; I tend to get things a wee bit cheaper because I buy components as they come on sale over a span of weeks, or even months, and assemble the machine myself.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I just built a new computer and quite intentionally did not buy a copy of vista. My copy of XP is actually the win 98 upgrade to xp, so I dug around in piles of olde CDs and installed 98 on this thing first and then the windows xp upgrade, and I'd do it that way again.

I hear MS is already working on another OS slated to come out sometime in 09, essentially throwing Vista overboard as a lost cause. I do not recommend it.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

1. XP Pro will love you like you've never been loved.* In good ways. Not walking funny for days and feeling hollow inside ways. Vista still seems to have some driver issues when it comes to games and video cards.
2. Either way, it'll be obsolete in weeks. I'd suggest you buy a reference build model, instead of one of the AIW/zillion extra toys. A lot of the problems I used to have with my ATI AIW was the addons.
3. Too.. much.. choice! Ugh. Narrow down the options and I'll look again. :)


* (XP Home will, too, but it snores and can't remember where it put the car keys.)

[relee.livejournal.com]

Hey Moment, I've got a question, and it might help the G-sqrl too. What's the real difference between XP Home and XP Pro?

I use XP Pro Buccaneer Edition, and it's hard to imagine anybody actually paying for... Okay it's hard to imagine people paying for any version of XP, but especially Pro. Home is $200, and Pro is $500. So what's the big deal?

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

My copy of XP Pro is OEM, and substantially cheaper than that. (ahem)
Pro handles joining windows domains properly: Home only does workgroups. That's really about it.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Anyplace I've seen with a copy of the OS listed it was at those prices. ^.^;;

And my goodness, I don't know what either of those things are. Windows domains? Workgroups? A difference of three hundred dollars?

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

XP Pro OEM, Tiger Direct, 139.99

And since you can still get Home, sure, for a game machine it's fine. For MCSE training, not so much.

XP Home Retail, Tiger Direct, 89.99

[relee.livejournal.com]

Oooh. How come they're so cheap now? It was only a year ago the last time I looked.

[kiruppert.livejournal.com]

I have not had serious problems with Vista, which came with the computer I bought last year. That said, I hear that Vista is fussier somehow with scratch-built systems.

[xyzzysqrl]

I'm getting a lot of "I hear", "I prefer", "It seems". I've heard good things about Vista from another friend. He's the sole -actually used it- source I have on record, besides you. So I dunno.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

From my experience Veista isn't any better or worse than other MS operating systems if you turn off UAC. They really dropped the ball by not breaking everything at once and only selling 64bit Vista by having the 32 bit version be the default there was no push for anyone to create 64 bit drivers. Vista also has a larger memory footprint than XP 2GB of RAM is a practical minimum.

On the other hand Vista is the first version since windows 3.1 that was easier to install than Linux.

[foxish.livejournal.com]

1. I have no opinion on Vista at this time; I'm very curmudgeonly about my routines (yay ob-comp!) so the concept of changing over hasn't struck me as sound. There's also the cost involved, something I'm unwilling to swallow.

It's mostly an asthetic choice, so I'm noticing at this point, until DX10 dominates the market.

2. I am a firmly entreanched nVidia fan--four of my last six cards have been one of theirs, and that's going back as far as 3Dfx card in 2000. Right now I'm using a 8600GT and it's super-fine for my needs, and you know in a general sense what I do with my computer. If you have more money, move up--the Ultra8800 is a bleeding awesome card if you've the cash.

3. I build my own boxes, but I'm a fan of Ars Technica's BYOB Guides; http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200809.ars is the September 2008 revision. They're not always perfect, but in most cases I find that their pricing is sound and their ideas are good, especially in terms of cases if you require purchasing your own.

The box I'm on now is largely based on the Budget Box recommendations from August of 2007, I believe, and it's sound (minus the defective video card I got from Woot).