Luthier, anyone; which ram is which?

[Flyby]

With the release of Oleg's new sim just around the corner, I look forward to streaking low over London (either in pursuit or being pursued). I'm thinking of finally building a new gaming rig, and have a question about those scenes being rendered fluidly: which ram (spec) will that be most impacted by? System ram, or video ram? Or am I way off base as to what will help render smooth frame rates low over London?
thanks for the advice/technical sharing,
Flyby out

[speculum jockey]

With the release of Oleg's new sim just around the corner, I look forward to streaking low over London (either in pursuit or being pursued). I'm thinking of finally building a new gaming rig, and have a question about those scenes being rendered fluidly: which ram (spec) will that be most impacted by? System ram, or video ram? Or am I way off base as to what will help render smooth frame rates low over London?
thanks for the advice/technical sharing,
Flyby out

During the expo there was pronounced stuttering over land and towns/cities. They said that the machines provided had only 2GB of RAM. I'm thinking that you're going to want 4GB minimum. A huge amount of Video RAM is usually more helpful when rendering massive textures or resolutions (most of the time).

I'd probably say, "buy what you can afford".

BTW: What is your monitor's native resolution? This will help dictate your decision.

[CharveL]

For low over cities you're gonna need as much raw MHz from your CPU as is humanly possible. Multi-core will help and all that but sims like this are very CPU dependent, especially with all the polygons in those buildings, AI, FM, DM, etc.

Go for fast low-latency ram and hey, if you can afford it, it wouldn't hurt to install the game (and OS) on a RAM-drive either.

[Baron]

Unless you are running muliple monitors 2 gb video memory is a waste of money. (not completly true today though since for ex. 6950 1gb/2gb costs almost the same)

[Oldschool61]

For low over cities you're gonna need as much raw MHz from your CPU as is humanly possible. Multi-core will help and all that but sims like this are very CPU dependent, especially with all the polygons in those buildings, AI, FM, DM, etc.

Go for fast low-latency ram and hey, if you can afford it, it wouldn't hurt to install the game (and OS) on a RAM-drive either.

More ram would be better than faster ram. Lower latency is good but not at the expence of total ram. You be better with 4GB of average speed DDR2 than 2GB of fast DDR3.

[Flyby]

Thank you all for the replies. My intent is to buy a 27 inch monitor, but with only 19x10 or 19x12 resolution. I already have an i7-920 (for over a year, and it's never been installed in a mobo! DO stepping, btw; it's been hard times up to late). My wife's pc has a nice 24 inch Asus monitor with 2ms gtg. I like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236103
Since I intend to OC the 920, I'll select at least 6gigs of some good ram. The rest is just picking an OS, mobo, power supply (in case I want to go either X-Fire or SLI) HDD, and peripherals. I have a Cougar setup and some Elite Rudder pedals ( I even have an extra Cougar, NIB).

I've been without a gaming PC for several years, and now I can afford one, finally. So I want to get as much video card as I can. The GTX570 and the AMD?ATi 6970 look to be in my price range. Can't have too much GPU ram, imo (near term future-proofing). Plus, when the time comes, I can buy another card when prices drop, and double up.
Now to just remember how all this stuff goes together! :D
thanks again!
Flyby out

[speculum jockey]

Try and put off the new system as long as possible since components are only going to get cheaper. You never know when Intel/AMD or Nvidia/ATI will decide to cut prices to move more product before the next big release or something to that effect.

[CharveL]

More ram would be better than faster ram. Lower latency is good but not at the expence of total ram. You be better with 4GB of average speed DDR2 than 2GB of fast DDR3.

Up to a point, but yes, go for 4GB over 2GB for sure but not 8GB over 4GB. Ram's cheap enough anyway so it's best to get a good reliable brand, maybe with some overclocking room.

[Heliocon]

Just dont go under 4gb of ram whatever you do.
Try to get 6gb if possible, that seems the current sweet spot for mid range PCs.

[swiss]

EDIT: Just noticed you have an Intel 920 I7, perfect, now get a good motherboard and 6 GB tri channel :) I

He could as well wait and see what AMD offers, they are due in Q2 with the bulldozer(i7 920 is enough for CoD)
If the Bulldozer sux he can still invest a crapload for a mobo - if it doesn't; he could sell off the intel stuff and switch the whole system.

Furthermore it remains a mystery to me why ppl buy a GPU in January when they need it no earlier than end of March.
Gpu prices only go one way, but hey, whatever makes you tick.

[Koyan]

Does CoD come in 64 bit version, like DCS A-10C? I hope so because it makes a big difference (no stutters) on my system.

[WTE_Galway]

Go for fast low-latency ram and hey, if you can afford it, it wouldn't hurt to install the game (and OS) on a RAM-drive either.

High latency numbers are not so big an issue with the newer fast DDR3.

You will often see 2133 DDR3 with latencies of CAS 8 or CAS 9.

Remember CAS is measured in clock cycles so CAS 8 at 2133 Mhz is about the same latency in milliseconds as CAS 4 or so at 1000 Mhz.

[Flyby]

I intend to do Win7-home-64 bit, and crank my i7-920 only to about 3.6ghz. With DO-stepping, it''ll do 4.0 easy enough, but I'll star somewhere near there. I just need to get the right mobo
What about a good hard drive? Need to do some checking for fast reads and cache. I'll probably get two, plus an external for back-ups. I'll check the older system-builds posted at Tech Report, and Tom's Hardware. But always open to suggestions (that's why I'm here!)
Flyby out.

[Tvrdi]

I intend to do Win7-home-64 bit, and crank my i7-920 only to about 3.6ghz. With DO-stepping, it''ll do 4.0 easy enough, but I'll star somewhere near there. I just need to get the right mobo
What about a good hard drive? Need to do some checking for fast reads and cache. I'll probably get two, plus an external for back-ups. I'll check the older system-builds posted at Tech Report, and Tom's Hardware. But always open to suggestions (that's why I'm here!)
Flyby out.

I have my i7920 CO stepping at 3.5Ghz (21x166) on stock volt and my GTX470 twin frozr 2 is at 800/1600/1800 on 1.040mV. I suggest you to take GTX560 which is around 10% faster than 470 (also cooler and less power hungry) and still enough for COD. Its pretty close to 570 even on stock clocks. No need to spent a money on 570 or even 580 now......4GIGS are must but I recommend 6 for win7 64bit as this OS proved to be best for new quad cores in sims (in ROF on example which is a CPU killer partly because its badly optimised). If you aim to go to 4Ghz (on air) with ur i7 be sure to buy a good CPU cooler (maybe form Scythe).

[Flyby]

and I don't intend to go to 4ghz, unless CoD forces me to! :D Good tip on 6 gigs of ram for Win7, Tvrdi.
Flyby out

[4H_V-man]

Bang for buck would be pretty darned hard to beat AMD right now. Plus, have you heard about the problem Intel has with the Sandy Bridge chipset?

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/intel-recalls-all-sandy-bridge-processors-925065

[Blackdog_kt]

Obviously, just because we can push 4Ghz on a D0 stepping i7 920 doesn't mean we should.

I recently saw a very interesting benchmark discussing an often overlooked aspect of overclocking. Most of us will think in terms of pure performance, or performance vs temperature and the need for expensive aftermarket coolers, because that cost might cover the price difference towards the next bigger CPU in the product line, defeating the purpose of overclocking in the first place.

However, not a lot of people think about performance gain vs watts expended. Granted, this is not an issue if you only use your PC at certain times of the day and it also depends on how expensive electricity is where you live, but some people keep their PCs open for days, weeks, or months on end for a variety of reasons.
For example, i have a sibling studying abroad on a post-graduate program and while i do have a combined internet and telephony package at home with free calls to landlines in most of Europe, this doesn't apply to my relative's landline should they need to place call. So, since one of the cheapest and easiest ways for them to communicate is skype, my PC is almost always on to receive incoming video calls.

It might seem like small fries but it's not, in fact some guys in a local hardware forum sat down and measured the average power consumption of a mid range PC. It turns out that if you keep it on 24/7, the way electricity is priced here it translates to an extra 50-70 Euros or more on the bills every couple of months.

In that sense, when overclocking it might be also useful to think about performance vs watts expended because that drives up the bills. On a recent article i saw (excuse me but i don't remember where, as i don't usually spend much time on dedicated hardware websites unless i'm doing some research prior to buying new components), it was deduced through a series of benchmarks under various load conditions that the best compromise is around the 3.6Ghz mark for an i7 920. Higher than that and the extra performance is not enough to justify the cost of the electricity used.

Just something extra to keep in mind in case you might be interested ;)

[WTE_Galway]

Bang for buck would be pretty darned hard to beat AMD right now. Plus, have you heard about the problem Intel has with the Sandy Bridge chipset?

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/intel-recalls-all-sandy-bridge-processors-925065

Not for long, AMD have to do some serious work to get back in the ballpark.

The 2500K and 2600K are giving high end performance at what used to be a mid/low price. Intel are being quite aggressive with unmatchable performance at an aggressive price.

The SATA bug is more a PR/marketing issue than a real game breaker for Intel.

It doesn't effect the first two high speed (6Gb) SATA ports at all, so most users will see no issues. There is about a 5% chance users with 3 or 4 drives will see the 3rd/4th etc SATA ports degrade over several years, which leaves plenty of time to get a replacement. Annoying but not disastrous for most people.

None of the faulty MB should still be on sale. The recall is thus a pain in the butt for users purchasing boards between 9th January and 1st February and for distributors but no real problem for anyone else.

[KG26_Alpha]

Stay focused fellas :)

[Flyby]

I'm going to build a system that won't be cutting edge in any way. The one area that I would indulge myself would be the GPU, and it's looking like I might go for the AMD 6970. I figure the extra ram, per CoD's recommended GPU memory, can't hurt. Plus this card sits, performance-wise between the 570 and the 580, depending on the game. It may not have as long a future-proofing impact as a dual-GPU or even the 580, but it's ahead of the CoD requirements at the moment until Oleg starts "turning stuff on".

I'm no overclocking fiend here. I know [Hard]OCP still uses the i7-920 when it tests video cards, and states that it overclocks that cpu to 3..6ghz "to remove the cpu bottleneck" from it's testing. For what that's worth. But with Oleg's recommendation for a 2.66ghz quad, I know I have plenty of overhead for just how far I want/need to push my cpu.
As I said, I'm no overclocking fiend. I'm not one to replace a cpu at every new turn. Room to "grow". That's what I'm interested on. With air cooling, of course.

In the end, I want a fluid display experience, and as much immersion representation (eye candy) as my want will tolerate.

So, back to ram. Fluid play and cache ram on the hard drive? System ram? GPU ram? Can I take it all three help the cause? Those plus a good cpu and I'm in there. Right?
Flyby out

[Tvrdi]

I'm going to build a system that won't be cutting edge in any way. The one area that I would indulge myself would be the GPU, and it's looking like I might go for the AMD 6970. I figure the extra ram, per CoD's recommended GPU memory, can't hurt. Plus this card sits, performance-wise between the 570 and the 580, depending on the game. It may not have as long a future-proofing impact as a dual-GPU or even the 580, but it's ahead of the CoD requirements at the moment until Oleg starts "turning stuff on".

I'm no overclocking fiend here. I know [Hard]OCP still uses the i7-920 when it tests video cards, and states that it overclocks that cpu to 3..6ghz "to remove the cpu bottleneck" from it's testing. For what that's worth. But with Oleg's recommendation for a 2.66ghz quad, I know I have plenty of overhead for just how far I want/need to push my cpu.
As I said, I'm no overclocking fiend. I'm not one to replace a cpu at every new turn. Room to "grow". That's what I'm interested on. With air cooling, of course.

In the end, I want a fluid display experience, and as much immersion representation (eye candy) as my want will tolerate.

So, back to ram. Fluid play and cache ram on the hard drive? System ram? GPU ram? Can I take it all three help the cause? Those plus a good cpu and I'm in there. Right?
Flyby out

GPU V-RAM - 1GB....GTX470 and GTX570 comes with 1.28GB, GTX580 1.53GB and GTX560 Ti 1GB; ATI6950 and 6970 2GB....you will be safe with 1GB if using one screen with resolutions up to fullhd (including fullhd)....so no worries there unless you have 3x 24" monitors.....

RAM - 6GBs....that would be enough for COD and for win7 64 bit......

HDD cache - 32MB....I have SATA disk drive with 32mbs of cache.....I think its more than enough....SSDs are nice but you will not gain much from them (in gaming!).....they can be used for some other things better....its a waste of money to buy an SSD drive just for gaming....