OT: New PC
 

Well I broke down and order a PC today.

CyberPower Gamer Infinity 8800 Pro SE

Final Bill $1459.00 + S&H costs.

Re: OT: New PC
 

That's a mighty fine looking computer. I'm not entirely sure what the "Round Cable Upgrade" is, but ok.

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8800GT is a good vid card for the money. Will easily play just about any game now, and that may be in the near future. Its only list of things to buy. Plus it looks like from your Motherboard, you can upgrade to a quad-core down the road if you want.

Round cable upgrade is probably the cable attached to the hard and optical drives. They are usually a flat 'ribbon' cable, and take up alot of space inside a PC. The round cable takes up less space and probably allow more air to circulate and such.

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How do you do a round cable upgrade of a SATA HDD, though? SATA cables are practically the size of round cables already. They probably charged AT $50 for it...

That is one ugly case... It reminds me somewhat of the ugly Apple style of design, but with rails. At least it lacks LED runway strips. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

What's with the second DVD-ROM drive? HDD read rates are orders of magnitude above what discs do, so there is no benefit for copying a disc anyways...

You probably could have saved $2-300 by getting the parts from newegg and slapping it together yourself. Too late for that though, I guess...

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uhhhhh for that much you should have gotten a nice widescreen lcd with it

but that is gonna be one blazing fast computer

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AT , alot of people will have an opinion of what you purchaesed , good and bad , if it's what you wanted just enjoy !

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Good Luck with your Christmas gift to yourself!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Gotta take care of number one!

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I had thought about buying the parts and doing it all myself but then I ran a chance of repeating what had happened with the blue box. Bad experience. (Shudders horribly) Any ways the system I bought, yes it is an ugly case http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif, is almost 80% of what I wanted at about a 15% savings. I didn't get the second video card or HD, and the case is ugly. I opted out of the LCD monitor and went with a reserve power supply and XP pro over Vista. The system comes with a 3yr warranty, (which as we all know is pretty much buyer beware,) but it was also highly recommended by many. So in the end the trade off was build it yourself and live with it, or pay someone else to build if for you and live with it... and save 15%. I opted for the discount... I know, I am a sell out.

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I don't think the case is ugly. It comes in different colours, too - I'd have gone for purple or the brown one.

Only a gig of ram? Given the outrageously fast processor I'd have thought you'd want more ram than that! Especially if you one day want to run Vista on it (which is a possibility, given that this is a gaming rig). That said, by the time Vista becomes bearable Direct X 10 will be available on XP anyway...

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I will call and amend that right now. Thanks Dogscoff, great catch.

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It was my understanding that DX10 was a unique feature of Vista that wouldn't have worked on previous versions of Windows.

I also vote for more RAM, you can never have too much. My next computer will have 4GB minimum given that soon they will crack the 4GB wall and eventually Vista will rule the world.

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If you're happy with what you got, that's all that really matters. Tho at least you didn't fall for Vista's reign of terror.

As a side note I seen an article talking about the new AMD triple core "Phenom" processor. Usually they're Dual or now Quad cores. Even Intel Ceo Otellini joked " We see a distinct advantage in having all the cores on our dies work". I thought that was funny. But for near 30 yrs cores have been an odd number as for all that time we all had 1 core.

Re: OT: New PC
 

Atrocities said:
and the case is ugly.

Oh, c'mon now how ugly can a case be... clicky, clicky, clicky. Ewww...that's not an impressive case at all. It is almost as bad as my Micron case from way back in 1998. Shudder.

... and save 15%. I opted for the discount... I know, I am a sell out.

Makes it all seem worthwhile to me.

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I was going to mention the single gig of RAM you have there, but...someone beat me to it! 2 gigs should be your minimum.

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Officially yes. Unofficially it's already possible to run DX10 on XP. Unfortunately, it involves some serious shenanigans, and DX10b will probably bork it.


[/quote]I also vote for more RAM, you can never have too much. My next computer will have 4GB minimum given that soon they will crack the 4GB wall and eventually Vista will rule the world.

[/quote]
Or you could get a proper operating system and not worry about this silly 4GB 'wall'. As of kernel version 2.4, Linux OSes will handle up to 64GB. And that's good enough for me.

Re: OT: New PC
 

Santiago said:
"As a side note I seen an article talking about the new AMD triple core "Phenom" processor. Usually they're Dual or now Quad cores."

It's all about market segmentation and increasing die yields. Consider that the Xbox 360 has a 3-core processor (for improved die yields); any game codeveloped for it and the PC will probably benefit from the 3rd core of a quad core CPU, but not at all from the 4th core. Some gamers might be interested in the performance gains, but not interested in the full price premium of quad core. Offering an option between dual core and quad core will probably net AMD more profits, due to such consumers willing to spend a little extra, but not a lot.

Then, consider that plenty of quad core CPUs are scrap due to random silicon die issues. Every new CPU (and other chips) starts out with really low die yields, which improve over time as manufacturing techniques are refined. Plenty of those processors can still function if the issues cripple one core, but not 3 others (simply burn the paths connecting the bad core, alter a bit of EEPROM, and voila!). Why not try to sell them as a 3-core CPU instead of throwing them away? Not a bad way to pad the bottom line, if you ask me.

GuyOfDoom said:
"It was my understanding that DX10 was a unique feature of Vista that wouldn't have worked on previous versions of Windows."

DX 10 was engineered around the new kernel driver architecture, but there is nothing in DX 10 that couldn't be done with the older XP model. There is nothing technically preventing MS from back-porting DX 10 to XP; it would just be fairly time consuming and expensive to do it, and marketing decided it would be better to make it Vista-exclusive.

Re: OT: New PC
 

@ Fyron

I agree totally with what you're saying and that seems what AMD is doing altho not Intel. The marketing spin is what's silly imo. In that an even numbered core , Dual/Quad, is the way to go. People forget that 1 core processors are still very much out there and 1 is an odd number.

Even more than the random silicon die issues, is the raw silicon itself. I've had a chance to be at one of the silicon cracking plants that supplies most of the IC and Proc manufacturers and each batch, the quality is slightly different and who gets the purest quality silicon is not always who you think would.

Re: OT: New PC
 

As has already been pointed out, DX10 being Vista-only was a marketing decision, not a technical limitation. I think MS realised that there is no really compelling reason to down^H^H^H^Hupgrade to Vista, so they manufactured one by making DX10 Vista-only.

Unfortunately for them, it has already been demonstrated by third parties that DX10 will work on XP (and maybe other Windows OSes as well?). See here: http://www.technospot.net/blogs/down...-alky-project/

Or, as AZ suggests (i'm surprised it took this long for the thread to switch to Linux advocacy=-) you could get Linux and run your games under Wine. Apparently some Windows games run faster under Wine than under Windows! http://appdb.winehq.org/

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I don't trust an OS called wine. I expect the more it is used the slower it gets.

Disclaimer: yes, I'm a devoted Teetotaller. Last time I had a breath test I broke the machine. I like to think it didn't know what to think when it detected no alcohol at all.

Re: OT: New PC
 

Heh, Wine is not an OS, it's a tool to run Windows software under Linux. Note that it isn't an emulator (it's faster than that.)

Hmmm... Since Wine gets its name from a recursive acronym (Wine Is Not an Emulator), and is it as much not an OS as it is not an emulator, perhaps it would also be legitimate to refer to it as "Wino" (Wine Is Not an OS)..?

Re: OT: New PC
 

Does SE5 work under wine yet?

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Is there an all in one easy installation version of linux?

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Some of the old threads here talk about the differnt versions of Linux. I found Knoppix and Caldara to be pretty easy to deal with when starting out. The expert would be Ed Kolis who was recommending these for getting started. You may just want to PM him to see what you might like.

Re: OT: New PC
 

Ubuntu/Kubuntu is the answer for your easy to use Linux needs...

But really, Linux is an absolutely terrible choice for a gaming machine. You will have about 100 orders of magnitude more hassles trying to game with Wine/Cedega than just doing it on Windows. There are lots of good uses for Linux; gaming just isn't one of them. Advocating it in a thread that is obviously about a gaming PC is doing a great disservice to the poster...

And no, SE5 does not work at all under Wine/Cedega.

Re: OT: New PC
 

What would be a good affordable standard + wireless combined DSL modem to buy? The one I have from qwest keeps taking turds on me. I lost ISP from 5pm to 5am each day for three days now. Qwest says there is no problem yet, I go without service during those hours. My modem says its ok and has full download and upload, *Upload is fine during these hours* but download is worse than 14.4 dial up speeds at @ less than 2kps.

Re: OT: New PC
 

AT, I guess the old saying will apply. You're going to pay more for better quality. Linksys has some good wireless products. I have an old Westell DSL router that I use. I use a USB to DSL input on my router. It's hooked to a USB wireless connection to cable. I can use all three computers on-line with the router OR just connect the USB to any of the computers and go solo. The router has a built in firewall plus I run my own firewall on each computer. You should first try to get your DSL provider to straighten out the problems you are having as it sounds as though they are giving you the runaround. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: OT: New PC
 

Combo modem/router boxes are always garbage. What you want is a good router with a good dedicated modem box. Linksys WRT54GL is a good option (esp. if you want to install a custom firmware like OpenWRT or DDWRT and learn more about Linux http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif). The latest revisions of WRT54G and WRT54GS (5.0 and later) do not add any new features, but instead reduce the amount of on-board memory and use an ugly VXWorks embedded OS instead of Linux; you cannot run the custom firmwares on them. WRT54GL is essentially a rebranded WRT54GS v4.0, complete with the extra memory. Even if you don't want to delve into custom firmware, the WRT54GL is simply a better piece of hardware. You probably won't find it in brick&mortar stores, but places like newegg.com sell it.

Furthermore, don't buy the draft-N junk; its a waste of money for 99% of home networks, on hardware that might not be compatible with the final 802.11N specs to boot.

Re: OT: New PC
 

Who needs new PC? The old PC is bad enough!

(Sorry, bad pun)

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my old PC -
P75
850 meg HD
2mb Video Card
4 megs Ram
SB 16
14.4 modem

Ya its time to update.

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Wow that's got me beat for old.

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Damn thing still runs fine and occasionally I fire her up to play a few levels of Dark Forces and some DOOM.

Re: OT: New PC
 

While I have newer computers, my oldest is a PII 333, 384Meg Ram with an ATI card (the last update on it) with 4meg. Running Win98SE and Caldara in a dual boot setup. It servered me so well that I just have a hard time getting rid of it. It's no longer hooked up to anything, but I still have it here. It's the only one I have that I can still run Starflight on... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: OT: New PC
 

Well I should have known. They promise to have the PC to me by the 21st, but haven't updated their tracking site since ever. So I call them, and am told that even though I paid for the service, and they guaranteed it, I will now not get my computer until "January sometime." WTF! I am just feeling like I just got played like a chump. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif I will cancel my order if it isn't delivered by the date they quoted originally I am going to cancel my order.

Re: OT: New PC
 

Was there an actual guarantee, or just a preliminary ship date listing?

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That's how business's run now. They take your money and THEN tell you that they don't have one!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

I hope you paid by credit card? Then you can tell them to cancel the order and call the card company to expidite your refund... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: OT: New PC
 

It was a guarantee posted on their web site. "Order by Dec 10th and we will Guarantee arrival before Christmas." - I paid for 3 day Fed-X shipping and was given a deliver date of no later than Dec 21st. That has been pushed back do to back order on the video card to "some time in January."

*deep breath* I guess it is that time of year. I did pay with a Credit Card. The only way to pay when ordering things on line or buying them from Fry's Electronics. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif. (If it don't work, you don't pay.)

Re: OT: New PC
 

Well, the 8800GT is as scarce as water in the Sahara right now.. Doesn't surprise me to see it as the reason. :-\

Xrati:
It all depends on what company you are dealing with; some are quite up front about it, and actually tell you its out of stock. In my experience, most brick and mortar stores are good about this, as are places like Newegg et all. Little boutique computer dealers are usually not run as well, and tend to not be as on top of things.

Re: OT: New PC
 

I did some checking and Fyron is correct, they are hard to come by so a having them on back order is viable excuse for a delay. However I wish they would have sent me an email updating me on the situation rather than leaving me to swing in the wind wondering WTF was going on. So I will give them until the 10th of January to make good.

I wonder if I should ask for a rebate of some kind on the system given as how they cannot meet their "guaranteed" dead line?

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Wouldn't hurt to try. They made a guarantee that they can not meet, and you should try to get at least a small amount off the original purchase price. Hell, just tell them to pay for your shipping costs for you and call it even http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Never know, they may go for it.

Re: OT: New PC
 

I suspect it wasn't really a guarantee, just a note about when to place an order so that a certain shipping option should make it before Christmas...

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Fyron, we're not talking about one of those places, are we?

I wouild cancel the order and then place it again after the holidays when the prices come down.

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Well you did make a generalization of "businesses"... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: OT: New PC
 

Yes, But... But... But..., Never mind! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

I'd still cancel!!!