November 23 Hotfixes, Setup of the Month, Atlasloot v6

[Takamuri]

Using Left for Dead as a metric IS inventing numbers. Games are built using different compilers, some of which use command sets that give a decided advantage to Intel based architecture.

Even if that wasn't the case, you are using a CPU and comparing it to a GPU putting out FPS... that is hardly a fair metric.

[Chux]

chaud gonna defend this one to the grave. It all comes down to mmo-c using this as a way to generate extra profit from amazon through referral links, regardless of how bad the advice is.

[chaud]

My question would be why my config that ran me a total of $1200 barely gets outperformed by your lower priced high-end build. I have:

Intel Core2QuadExtreme QX6850
6gb PC8000 Mushkin Red
Gigabyte P40 motherboard
Arctic Cool 7 Heat Sink
JBL 2.1 Speakers
Logitech G5
Logitech G110
Antec 900 Case
Thermaltake Black Widow 850W PS
XFX ATI Radeon 4890 1GB DDR5
Samsung SATA Dual Layer DVD burner
WD Caviar Black 750/640 and Caviar Blue 320
Gateway 22" 1680x1050 HDMI/DVI/VGA/Component Hookups

This rig ran me probably less than the stated $1200 3 years ago.

The QX6850 was ~$1,000 3 years ago. The 4890 was ~$250 when it came out. You sure must have had some amazing deals to get all the rest of that for $50!

It defeats both of your beginning builds and you favored Intel in your higher end builds? I'm lost as to whether or not you realize the potential of an AMD Black series processor with Vision technology. These processors give you ridiculous out of the box performance paired with just ONE ATI card. AMD also has the only true 6 core processor. Intel's i7 series is quad cores with hyper threading simulating octacores. Something tells me you need to do some more research on the computer hardware scene cause I could go by a BBY and buy a $630 AMD Quad core HP desktop, put in a new power supply, a new graphics card, and beat your first 3 options. The solid state hard drive is nice but Intel is one of the best to go with right now in the market of SSD. There's also no need for more than 1 SSD for those of you reading some of these setups, you should get 1 decent size SSD and put your Windows and your MOST USED/FAVORITE programs on it. All media and other programs and objects should be stored on a good ol' SATA.

Ignoring your fabricated price, and your AMD marketing speak, let's take a look at your claim that Intel has no 6 core processors. Taking a quick trip to any tech related website, you may learn that Intel does in fact produce 6 core CPUs. You can read a review of the first one here. They are an awful value, which is why they were not used in any build.

Moving on, let's take a look at your claim that Intel is in fact the king of the SSD market! Surely they will be good at reading large seq files!


Oh well, middle of the pack is better than last! Let's go ahead and take a look at writes...



Well, at least they didn't fall off of the chart. Although the 80gb almost lost to a hybrid mechanical drive. Looking at writes again...



Middle of the pack, yay! Let's go ahead and look at the price. The 80gb Intel G2 costs...$205! $2.56/GB. The Corsair Force 120GB costs...$230! $1.91/GB.

Not sure why you would buy both SSDs listed, hopefully you can figure out there are two options to select from.

You appear to be uninformed and spouting AMD marketing. Please read up on the current offerings instead of inventing numbers and prices for your old box.

Just for fun, let's take a look at your Best Buy claims. I went ahead and found a $680 HP Desktop on BestBuy.com

Let's go ahead and add the 650TX at $55, your choice of GPU at $200, and we are at $935. Comparing this to the $1,050 build, you have a smaller monitor, weaker CPU, generic mobo, smaller hard drive, a cheap keyboard/mouse, no speakers, and a one year warranty.

What a deal!

Using Left for Dead as a metric IS inventing numbers. Games are built using different compilers, some of which use command sets that give a decided advantage to Intel based architecture.

Even if that wasn't the case, you are using a CPU and comparing it to a GPU putting out FPS... that is hardly a fair metric.

What benchmark would you consider fair? I was unable to find any World of Warcraft benchmark that included this CPU.

[Kraszmyl]

I agree with basicly everyone else on these pages. Your parts choices are terrible beyond belief. Even the parts you do choose that are decent can be found cheaper elsewhere on average.

You can easily build a computer that could run wow maxed out in nearly all situations on that moniter you picked on your so called low end build for considerably less.

Prime example would be my spare laptop.

It runs a i7 1.6gz quad and a 5730. It manages to run wow maxed minus AA at 1366x786 at about 35-60fps. In the desktop world my 5730 is about onpar with 4650 or even a ddr5 5550 if i recall correctly and the reason the cpu does so well is since wow doesnt use more than two cores it just uses turbo boost to kill two cores and jump the remaining two to about 2.6ghz.

So thats near 50$ you can knock off the cpu right there by droping to a dual core and 70$ or more you can ditch on the video card even moving to a 5670 without even going over the rest of the setup.

For your high end build lets use my desktop which should make a good example.

i7-870 , 16 gigs of ram, dual 6850s and four 28inch 1920x1200 displays setup in eyefinity.

Ive yet to ever see it move from the 60fps its capped at and thats also running multiple instances of wow full on and windowed.

Infact my old gtx460 never reported more than 30 percent gpu utilization with wow maxed running windowed on a single 1920x1200 display , granted it did eat like 700 megs of vram.

So discounting my extra displays and my piles of hard drives my rig comes in cheaper than your high end and is more power efficent with less heat output and yours would would eat its dust in gaming.

Actualy youre poor suggestions got me curious and i loaded wow on my ancient dual socket p4 workstation and shoved a 8800gts640 in it and hmmmm actualy it runs wow ratherwell on high settings with AA and shadows off.....then i got even more curious and put the orriginal quadro fx1300 card back in and sitting in dal it was getting 27fps with everything on low and that quadro card is worse than the amd igps at this point. Actualy id get you the numbers for a 4200igp except my roommate is using that computer.

Said roommates comp i built out of spare crap, phenom 2 dual core (i wanted to try and play with core unlocking, i was sadly unlucky) with a 4870 and he can run wow almost maxed and its very playable on a 1920x1080 lcd, he just has to drop shadows as far as im aware.

Anyway point of it is. Terrible terrible choices on your part for parts selection and where youre getting them for prices.

[chaud]

You may want to look at whatever is bottlenecking your 460. I can easily push GPU utilization upwards of 90% without maxing settings on my 4870.

Yes you can build a $2 toaster that can run WoW, these builds are for general gaming. Would another really cheap build satisfy you?

[talonp]

Can I suggest that before you post the next "build of the month" or whatever, that you come over to OCN (overclock.net) and post the build in the appropriate forum (Intel General vs AMD General)?

Simply name the budget and what you want to do with it (gaming). There will be plenty of people who, including myself, will happily chime in, find the weak points, and offer suitable alternatives. I appreciate that you are trying to help people come up with components; however, the titles of each set are very misleading. Now, you clearly are not a dumbass. I apologize if my post on the first page sounded harsh, but when it comes to people dropping serious amount of real money, they need to first be sufficiently informed. I felt that the builds in the news post had some serious flaws, and there was tons of improvements to be made. This includes components that could be upgraded for a little more money and for a lot more performance gain, and also, alternative pieces that are even cheaper and perform even better.

I spend hours on OCN every day (my company wouldn't be very enthused to know ) participating in discussions with hundreds of some very hardcore enthusiasts. It's a tremendously awesome community, and we would be more than happy to collaborate with you guys before you go giving tens of thousands of people the green light to drop thousands of dollars. While I know you're competent (chaud), it can never hurt to have more than a few people collaborate on something like this.

[Kraszmyl]

you seriously didnt just compared a gtx460 to a 4870, they are worlds apart.

Also a 5670 is more than capable of playing just about anything at 1680x1050 on highish settings at 30-50fps average except metro 2033 and avp in dx11 modes. So ya its fine for a general build too. Very few games use more than two cores and unless youre doing some sort of simulations, vm work and other equivelent things youre not going to miss those extra two cores outside of gaming either.

So ya even for general gaming your builds are terrible and perhaps you should listen to the rest of us who own these products if youre still stuck with that 4870. You did a poor job, just accept the flak with abit of grace and be done with it.

[Tsimp]

I don't understand why the "Lowest" build costs $700 still. I just build a computer that runs wow on med settings: $400 for everything...

[Jilor]

To be honest, I think everything on here is overpriced for the most part. Now, I won't even begin to pretend my computer is some amazing super computer...but I would say he's a little off the mark on pricing. An average computer for over $1400? I have a Gateway DX-4200-09 that I bought like in January of 2009 for just over $600 (including a 19 inch LG monitor). The only upgrade I've done to it is I spent about $150 to upgrade the power supply to a 500W and added an Nvidia 450 GTS. (I also paid about $35 for a more capable mouse). You could do very comparable for under $800 as well and I can run WoW at ultra and at 60 fps everywhere (Dal, org, raids, everywhere). But yet, somehow, price wise, my computer ranks below his "lower-end" computer. I know some people want more, and that's nice, but I'm very certain my computer, as is, is above the average player's computer. I'm not saying you should buy a stock model, I just wasn't in to do it yourself computer stuff last year and I've moved more towards it this year. My next computer will be build it yourself. But if you're seriously gonna spend $1400 for a gaming pc, you can basically cut that in half and still run nearly any game at it's highest level.

[theturn]

The QX6850 was ~$1,000 3 years ago. The 4890 was ~$250 when it came out. You sure must have had some amazing deals to get all the rest of that for $50!


Ignoring your fabricated price, and your AMD marketing speak, let's take a look at your claim that Intel has no 6 core processors. Taking a quick trip to any tech related website, you may learn that Intel does in fact produce 6 core CPUs. You can read a review of the first one here. They are an awful value, which is why they were not used in any build.

Moving on, let's take a look at your claim that Intel is in fact the king of the SSD market! Surely they will be good at reading large seq files!


Oh well, middle of the pack is better than last! Let's go ahead and take a look at writes...



Well, at least they didn't fall off of the chart. Although the 80gb almost lost to a hybrid mechanical drive. Looking at writes again...



Middle of the pack, yay! Let's go ahead and look at the price. The 80gb Intel G2 costs...$205! $2.56/GB. The Corsair Force 120GB costs...$230! $1.91/GB.

Not sure why you would buy both SSDs listed, hopefully you can figure out there are two options to select from.

You appear to be uninformed and spouting AMD marketing. Please read up on the current offerings instead of inventing numbers and prices for your old box.

Just for fun, let's take a look at your Best Buy claims. I went ahead and found a $680 HP Desktop on BestBuy.com

Let's go ahead and add the 650TX at $55, your choice of GPU at $200, and we are at $935. Comparing this to the $1,050 build, you have a smaller monitor, weaker CPU, generic mobo, smaller hard drive, a cheap keyboard/mouse, no speakers, and a one year warranty.

What a deal!



What benchmark would you consider fair? I was unable to find any World of Warcraft benchmark that included this CPU.

You're missing the point. Right now your list looks like you went to amazon did a search for most expensive then went down the line. Its not about price, its about performance vs price. We could all blow a ton of cash and build a unit or we could build a great pc for 1/3 the cost.

Also you listings make no sense. Low end should be super cheap but can run wow. And your top end should be the best of the best. I honestly have no idea what "average" means with your lists.

[nwo]

Any idea where people is fishing cataclysm fishes already?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-CATA-FISH-NOW!!

[Deleted]

Ok, i used amazon prices for a fair comparison, even though their prices are pretty high.
Here you go, a system that _vastly_ outperforms the highend build you've posted, for 200 dollar less:

Case LIAN LI LANCOOL PC-K58W $89
PSU Corsair HX750W $139
CPU Intel Core i7 950 $279
Cooler Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B $47
Motherboard Asus P6X58D-E $234
RAM Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3K3/6GX $117
GPU Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 PCIE (x 2) $398
SSD OCZ Vertex 2 SATA II 3.5" SSD 90GB $184
HDD Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ, 1TB $65
Monitor Samsung Syncmaster 2443BW $299
Keyboard Logitech G110 Gaming Keyboard $64
Mouse Logitech MX518 Optical Gaming Mouse $24
Headset Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset $44
Optical Sony Optiarc AD-7260S Black $27

TOTAL $2010

[Kayydee]

Whoever this "chaud" is, he made some very bad choices on the top-end build. Granted, this is the only build I looked at, I'm sure the other three are equally as bad.

Allow me to elaborate for you, Boub:

Case: is fine.
PSU: is overkill, but is relatively fine.
CPU: The 930 is out-dated. The 950 can be had for the same (or lower) price, and is better,
Cooling: I will give chaud credit here. He single-handedly picked the worst air cooling solution you could possibly get at that price point. If you don't want water, you have many other (much, much better) choices. Noctua NH-D14, Thermalright Silver Arrow, etc. Or if you want a low profile closed-loop system for simple CPU cooling, something like a Corsair H50 or H70 would be perfect.
Mobo: This one is debatable, but I'd much rather have an ASUS Rampage III Formula or something, many more features targeted to the gamer population, better board overall.
Memory: That memory is absolute trash. 9 cas latency? Really? Those timings are horrendous. You can get kits for the same price or cheaper that have much, MUCH tighter timings-- like 6 or 7 CL.
Video: This "high-end" build and you pick a HD 5870? What is the point of that? Drop another $150 and get a MUCH better card, a GTX 580.
HDD: The Caviar Greens are alright but the Caviar Blacks are a couple dollars more and much better. This is a "high-end" rig afterall, isn't it?
SSD: Wow, two decent SSDs. Got something right.

I just hope someone with some money to blow doesn't see the system in the news post and goes out to Amazon and wastes their money on a sub-par system. If anyone here wants to actually get the best mileage out of their dollar and have much better performance, you can PM me here. Give me your budget and I'll walk you through a good build-- just please don't build anything you see on this news post.

I agree with this, and pretty much most of the earlier posts made in this thread.

While, when building a custom gaming system, it comes down to preference between manufacture. In all honesty you shouldn't recommend any high-end gaming builds unless you got your facts straight and with some hard benchmarking results to back up your choice, seriously the "Chaud" guy just seem like he was given a budget for each build, and just randomly picked out parts from a website.

But all that aside, I seriously think if you were going to recommend a build, keep it at ONE build that meets the criteria of "AFFORDABILITY and being able to run World of Warcraft on moderate - high settings for the AVERAGE players" and honestly don't recommend things like Keyboard/Mices/Monitor, most of those thing contributes very little to the gameplay of WoW to the AVERAGE user, and they are based highly on personal preference anyways. Don't get me wrong, I know some KB/Mices does change/improve your gameplay, but its a very small factor people think about when building their system. I say this because, most people who are on a budget, would willingly sacrifice these components to be able to afford a more expensive part inside the system.

And seriously? $500 for a 24" monitor? You might as well sacrifice some specs/features of the monitor and get a 27", or a triple display set up.

Why do I say average users? 'cause lets me honest, most people who are willing to throw out a few thousands of dollars to build a custom high-end PC are people who are tech savvy and MOST LIKELY ISN'T going to go on a website like MMO-Champion for a wishlist. They would most likely be doing there own research anyways.

anyways in short, keep to what you guys do best, providing information about World of Warcraft and Blizzard and leave the computer building to enthusiast who actually knows what they are doing.

[Deleted]

Or try the Tech Report's system guide; they only do about four a year, but they're very well put together, and offer options and alternatives.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/19868

[chaud]

You're missing the point. Right now your list looks like you went to amazon did a search for most expensive then went down the line. Its not about price, its about performance vs price. We could all blow a ton of cash and build a unit or we could build a great pc for 1/3 the cost.

Also you listings make no sense. Low end should be super cheap but can run wow. And your top end should be the best of the best. I honestly have no idea what "average" means with your lists.

You want a lower build, other people want a higher build, some people want one build. I can't make everyone happy!

[Crawnick]

The QX6850 was ~$1,000 3 years ago. The 4890 was ~$250 when it came out. You sure must have had some amazing deals to get all the rest of that for $50!


Ignoring your fabricated price, and your AMD marketing speak, let's take a look at your claim that Intel has no 6 core processors. Taking a quick trip to any tech related website, you may learn that Intel does in fact produce 6 core CPUs. You can read a review of the first one here. They are an awful value, which is why they were not used in any build.

Moving on, let's take a look at your claim that Intel is in fact the king of the SSD market! Surely they will be good at reading large seq files!


Oh well, middle of the pack is better than last! Let's go ahead and take a look at writes...



Well, at least they didn't fall off of the chart. Although the 80gb almost lost to a hybrid mechanical drive. Looking at writes again...



Middle of the pack, yay! Let's go ahead and look at the price. The 80gb Intel G2 costs...$205! $2.56/GB. The Corsair Force 120GB costs...$230! $1.91/GB.

Not sure why you would buy both SSDs listed, hopefully you can figure out there are two options to select from.

You appear to be uninformed and spouting AMD marketing. Please read up on the current offerings instead of inventing numbers and prices for your old box.

Just for fun, let's take a look at your Best Buy claims. I went ahead and found a $680 HP Desktop on BestBuy.com

Let's go ahead and add the 650TX at $55, your choice of GPU at $200, and we are at $935. Comparing this to the $1,050 build, you have a smaller monitor, weaker CPU, generic mobo, smaller hard drive, a cheap keyboard/mouse, no speakers, and a one year warranty.

What a deal!



What benchmark would you consider fair? I was unable to find any World of Warcraft benchmark that included this CPU.

Um sorry Chaud but look up the Intel Retail Edge that QX6850 was a FRACTION of that price =) Pays to be involved in the computer community. NONE THE LESS MY OBJECTIVE was to point out your options you've chosen do not have the customer in mind. If a customer wants the highest end PC without being 5k they'd go for a i7 950 and as of my 4890 that was $70 less at a local store thnx. My point was to state you didn't shop like a hardware savy person shops. We do massive research into each part and consider the gains and losses and you didn't really do the best bang for the buck for any of your first 3 options. The 4th build you listed is way overboard and should have been an AMD black so that the customer didn't have to consider future dual graphics cards cause of the Vision.

And as of your BBY config, it wins. It beats your first 2 options, which neither had SSD hard drives on your argument point(Guess you didn't look at your own build configurations?) which you lose 250 compared to your 1tb but I guess all those people that multi-install WoW fully understand the need for ALLLLL that storage. Oh and that's right you've dodged that $200 Operating System bullet this whole time(Can't be a big deal right? Customer's problem.) I work with helping people get the right hardware for the cheapest price all the time and as of your generic HP mobo, that's the only thing you'd beat and that's cause you're that 1/5 people that realize Asus is a big name even though Gigabyte has taken the market for quality. All of my argument was about what the average human being would want(the best most reliable deal for the money). And btw it would pair up with the ATI card and outperform any nvidia/ati combo with an intel processor for that price range. Also as of listing processor benchmarks? Did you not realize that if 1/1000000000 people can step out of a void zone within 4 seconds, why is it you assume they'd have an interest in future overclocking? They'd want performance out of the box. Monitor wise...You REALLY think Asus is gonna be any better at monitors than HP's relisted sony/lg/samsung HP doesn't make that screen and look at one in person, it's sick quality. You could get a 23" for like $80 more. If you wanted to pair GOOD monitors with your builds, consider the LG/Samsung line of new LEDs. Or if you're a sick perfectionist we all know ViewSonic is where the money is.

---------- Post added 2010-11-26 at 11:37 AM ----------

The only backsass I've gotten is from you, seems the community agrees on my outlook.

[chaud]

Um sorry Chaud but look up the Intel Retail Edge that QX6850 was a FRACTION of that price =) Pays to be involved in the computer community.

My apologies for not assuming you or someone you know is a retail sales professional edge case.

[Kraszmyl]

You want a lower build, other people want a higher build, some people want one build. I can't make everyone happy!

No we arnt asking for any specific builds, we are asking that you a smidgen of research before you go wasting peoples money.

[Kayydee]

You want a lower build, other people want a higher build, some people want one build. I can't make everyone happy!

Lol wow... you completely missed the point again. The post you quoted isn't asking for a lower build (In fact, no one in this entire thread has asked for any kind of build from you).

The post that you quoted, is pointing out that your list makes no sense, and that your definition of a "Lowest-End" up towards "High-End" is completely off the mark, as most of the components you picked for each corresponding builds, were poorly chosen and doesn't fit into those "build" criteria, other than the price.

Your "Lowest-End" build is overpriced. Your best "High-End" build is again.. overpriced and no where near the mark of what most people would consider a "High-End" system.

... I can't make everyone happy!

NO ONE is happy with ANY of your builds... next time at least show you put a bit of effort into researching your builds, and the definition of the build, before you (as someone has said) go wasting peoples money with your advices. Or.. don't give any at all.

[Tgd]

Find a computer store that specialises in computers, not some overpriced retailer, and you'll pick up a good rig- if your buying from a retailer, forget it.... imo

p.s I prefer Nvidia, just sayin...