1. #1

    Planning on building a PC

    It'll be for 3D work mainly (Maya) and Adobe packages (PS, Illustrator) along with WoW as my only gaming really. I'm a student so my budget is max. £1000 and this has come up to around £800-ish, would you say this is a suitable build and if not what should I change what kind of performance would I expect, if anyone has a similar spec/knowledge. Haven't built a PC before so looking forward to it, but definitely expecting complications, there always is with tech

    Thanks!

    CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 (4 x 3.0 GHZ) 1333FSB - 12 MB
    Memory: Corsair 8GB XMS3 PC3-12800 1600MHz (4x2GB) - (DDR3)
    Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5770 - 1 GB - DVI/VGA/HDMI (Asus)
    Motherboard: Asus P5P43TD PRO 1600 FSB (Intel P43)
    Sound Card: Creative Audigy SE 7.1 (PCI)
    Power Supply: Corsair Gaming Series 600W PSU - Low Noise
    Hard Drive: 1 TB (1000 GB) SATA-II HDD UDMA 300 7200 32MB
    Monitor: 23" Widescreen TFT
    OS: 64 bit Windows

  2. #2
    Deleted
    An i5-760 would be better.

  3. #3
    If you're really serious about Maya/PS/Illustrator and doing those for schoolwork or (semi)pro hobby work, first of all forget 3 year old Core2 technology, forget soundcards and forget Radeon 5770. Nvidia card because of better OpenGL support and PhysX/CUDA which are partially supported in the more expensive graphics programs.

    For good setup get i7-9xx and 6 (or 12) gigs of RAM and GTX460 (or 470/480) card. It will cost a lot and go over your budget, but it will make big difference in the speed of those programs. If you can't afford it, get i5-7xx series with 3rd party cooler for bit of overclocking and GTX460. In budget setup you can start with 4GB of RAM and see if it's enough for you. If you have a habit of keeping and working with all programs at the same time, then 8GB of RAM would make sense. Also having two monitors in case of heavy multitasking or graphics work is money well spent.

    edit:

    If you're seriously on budget but still want best possible performance for the graphics programs, get PhenomII x6 instead. In price/performance ratio it will be pretty close to even with i5 solution and lot cheaper than i7 but will perform somewhere in between of those in 3d modeling. In WoW it will perform worse than i5.
    Last edited by vesseblah; 2010-09-12 at 12:48 PM.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  4. #4
    Then again you will probaply never even come close to stressing an i5 or a PII x6 in WoW anyhow!

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Martsus View Post
    Then again you will probaply never even come close to stressing an i5 or a PII x6 in WoW anyhow!
    And there you're seriously wrong. WoW's speed in 25-man raids is capped by processor currently. With 4x GTX480 cards in SLI even i7-980X can't run 25-man raids without the game slowing down notably during aoe on 'ultra' graphics. Sure it will remain playable, but it will drop below vsync rate. It's well known flaw of WoW's graphics engine. 1/5/10 people content are playable on shitty $400 supermarket computers, but 25-man raids are not.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  6. #6
    Thanks for the assist vess.

    Looked around for a bit and have come up with an alternative being a Core i7-930 and ASRock X58 mobo.
    At retail price it's pretty similar to that of Q9650 + ASUS MB anyway.

    Core i7-930 + X58 MB = 383 GBP
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-I7-930...4294611&sr=8-1
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asrock-Mothe...4294634&sr=8-1

    Q9650 + ASUS MB = 350 GBP
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-BX8056...4294640&sr=8-1
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-775-P5P...4294658&sr=8-1

    Again, it's small things that are making the cost rise but I will have to look to making cuts in other areas, I think getting 2x4gb and getting more memory in the future would be more suitable rather than filling all slots also.

    Do you have any suggestions on Nvidia cards though? I feel as though ATI cards of recent are more powerful but i'm not too sure.

    Thanks

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by vesseblah View Post
    And there you're seriously wrong. WoW's speed in 25-man raids is capped by processor currently. With 4x GTX480 cards in SLI even i7-980X can't run 25-man raids without the game slowing down notably during aoe on 'ultra' graphics. Sure it will remain playable, but it will drop below vsync rate. It's well known flaw of WoW's graphics engine. 1/5/10 people content are playable on shitty $400 supermarket computers, but 25-man raids are not.
    As I said in the other thread, I was judging WoW from a standard game's point of view, and this guy is 100%ly right.

    (WoW's engine must be really shitty then by the way, as I'm playing a modded BF2 with AIX, with 180 bots along with 6+ choppers, 7-8 tanks, 5-6 APC's and 4 jeeps pretty much fine on a i5-750, with stuff exploding everywhere)

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by deo View Post
    Thanks for the assist vess.

    Looked around for a bit and have come up with an alternative being a Core i7-930 and ASRock X58 mobo.
    At retail price it's pretty similar to that of Q9650 + ASUS MB anyway.

    Core i7-930 + X58 MB = 383 GBP
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-I7-930...4294611&sr=8-1
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asrock-Mothe...4294634&sr=8-1

    Again, it's small things that are making the cost rise but I will have to look to making cuts in other areas, I think getting 2x4gb and getting more memory in the future would be more suitable rather than filling all slots also.

    Do you have any suggestions on Nvidia cards though? I feel as though ATI cards of recent are more powerful but i'm not too sure.

    Thanks
    ASRock is the budget department of Asus. It's not very highly regarded but there's nothing inherently wrong with their motherboards and price can be considerably lower. With i7-930 CPU you should take 3x 2GB of RAM for total of 6GB. Pretty decent compromise between size and price, and will allow you to use the triple channel feature even though it doesn't make big difference. You can add another 3x2GB later if you feel like it's not enough.

    From Nvidia cards 1024MB model of GTX460 is by far the best in price/performance ratio, and beats Radeon cards too. It's slightly more expensive than Radeon 57 series, but better value for money. MSI, Gigabyte and EVGA are all good choices for manufacturer of the video card.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  9. #9
    You mention I can upgrade another "3x2GB" How many slots does this mobo have? :O

  10. #10
    Even though the board is triple channel ATM triple channel is just a fancy word. You can review benchmarks and dual channel memory is faster in some applications. I would just throw a 2x4 in there and if you want you can add another 1x4 at a later date when you get some more cash and it will run in triple channel. Currently there is no reason to run triple channel memory other than the motherboard can do it.

  11. #11
    Triple channel is few percent faster, so if 6GB of RAM is enough, putting in 3x2GB is better idea for 3D modeling and graphics work than 2x4GB for both money and performance.

    And the motherboard has slots for 6 DDR3 sticks.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by vesseblah View Post
    Triple channel is few percent faster, so if 6GB of RAM is enough, putting in 3x2GB is better idea for 3D modeling and graphics work than 2x4GB for both money and performance.

    And the motherboard has slots for 6 DDR3 sticks.
    In many applications it is actually the same or slower. There were few if any instances where is was faster at all.
    Aside from the triple vs. dual channel argument what is the benefit from having 3 sticks as opposed to two?

  13. #13
    In synthetic memory benchmarks triple channel is few percent faster than double channel assuming the memory uses exact same timings in both cases. In real world application tests there is no measurable difference. This means there's potential in triple channel to be slightly faster if the applications are really memory intensive.

    3x2GB better because a) it's triple channel, and b) it costs slightly less than 2x4GB.

    In most cases 6GB of RAM should be enough and 8GB not really needed, unless the OP knows he's going to do heavy multitasking and needs more RAM. In that case going for 3x4GB might be the right thing to do instead. On the other hand if there's great deal on 2x2GB or 2x4GB, then those might be worth it.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by vesseblah View Post
    In most cases 6GB of RAM should be enough and 8GB not really needed, unless the OP knows he's going to do heavy multitasking and needs more RAM. In that case going for 3x4GB might be the right thing to do instead. On the other hand if there's great deal on 2x2GB or 2x4GB, then those might be worth it.
    Thanks for the replies.

    Ok it seems just to get that extra performance triple buffering would be the way to go but because I don't know of how much memory would be demanded, I don't know if 2GB lost would be made up for using this.

    I suppose a possible scenario of applications running whether idle or not would be the following, how would the system cope? I would have these opened and alt-tabbed into as I make use of down-time, raid breaks & chatting to work/hobby. As suggested earlier 2 monitors could prove to be very *very* useful indeed thinking about it, but this itself becomes more demanding I think.

    - Maya (Rendering/Not)
    - zBrush (Rendering/Not)
    - Photoshop
    - Illustrator
    - Web browser, multiple tabs
    - WoW
    - Vent
    - +1 random system hog

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by deo View Post
    Thanks for the replies.

    Ok it seems just to get that extra performance triple buffering would be the way to go but because I don't know of how much memory would be demanded, I don't know if 2GB lost would be made up for using this.

    I suppose a possible scenario of applications running whether idle or not would be the following, how would the system cope? I would have these opened and alt-tabbed into as I make use of down-time, raid breaks & chatting to work/hobby. As suggested earlier 2 monitors could prove to be very *very* useful indeed thinking about it, but this itself becomes more demanding I think.

    - Maya (Rendering/Not)
    - zBrush (Rendering/Not)
    - Photoshop
    - Illustrator
    - Web browser, multiple tabs
    - WoW
    - Vent
    - +1 random system hog
    That seems to be alot of intensive applications running at the same time. I have never used some of them but would imagine they are taxing especially while having WoW open. 8-12 gigs of ram may not be a bad idea.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by deo View Post
    Ok it seems just to get that extra performance triple buffering would be the way to go but because I don't know of how much memory would be demanded, I don't know if 2GB lost would be made up for using this.
    As mentioned above, difference between double and triple channel memory is really tiny in synthetic benchmarks, and too small to measure in real world applications, so don't make it deciding factor unless everything else is at balance.

    Quote Originally Posted by deo View Post
    I suppose a possible scenario of applications running whether idle or not would be the following, how would the system cope? I would have these opened and alt-tabbed into as I make use of down-time, raid breaks & chatting to work/hobby. As suggested earlier 2 monitors could prove to be very *very* useful indeed thinking about it, but this itself becomes more demanding I think.
    You definitely want that 6GB of RAM instead of 4... 8-12GB wouldn't be overdoing it either. Having multiple programs open on two monitors doesnt really show in computer speed at all, unless you are trying to do two things that need a lot of graphics power. Like for example two copies of WoW running at full screen for multiboxing. Running WoW in one monitor and Photoshop on another will not slow you down at all compared to just one monitor, but it's a big improvement for productivity.
    Never going to log into this garbage forum again as long as calling obvious troll obvious troll is the easiest way to get banned.
    Trolling should be.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •