Computer for SOW
 

Well this is my second build for SOW...

First build ( May 2008 ) which I am writing this on:

ULTRA Aluminus Case, (2 std case fans + one added)
Intel Q6700 CPU OC'd from 2.66 to 3.33 MHz
EVGA 2 X 9800 GTX GPU in SLI
OCZ 800 Mhz OC'd to 1000Mhz DDR2 Dual channel 8 Gigs memory
EVGA 780i Mobo
OCZ Ventetta 2 Cooler
OCZ Memory cooler

New build (not yet completed, will be a week from now :grin:):

Antec 1200 Case, (7 slow/quiet 120mm fans + Antec big boy + controller)
Intel 980x CPU (Plan to OC to 4 Ghz)
EVGA GTX 480 GPU
Mushkin 1600 Mhz DDR3 Triple channel 6-8-6-24, 12 Gigs memory
EVGA X58 FTW3 E768 Mobo
Prolimatech's Megahalem Cooler (sounds like its from the Bible or something...)
Newer model OCZ Memory cooler

There were two major errors in the first build:

- Two 512 Mb 9800gtx cards in SLI does not make 1 gig of video memory !
and 1 gig is now considered a high end minimum. Unless you have a big screen (2560 X 1600), SLI (or Crossfire) will not help you much with most flight sims (well maybe for AA). CPU limited and all that...

- The ULTRA case has only two case fans, and that is not enough to overclock on air, unless you like the sound of a vacuum cleaner. More fans, less speed = good cooling and less noise. 8 slow fans is better, the sound is less irritating than the shrill noise of 2 or 3 high speed fans.

The best thing is overclocking, that gives a real change in FPS, in proportion to the overclock actually. OC by 25 %, get 25% increase. Simple. As long as you have enough of a graphics card. A GTX 480 should do the trick :-P.

The combination of an OC'd 980X, 6-8-6 1600Mhz memory and a GTX 480 should prove effective... :cool:

But SOW will be 32 bit (for now) so that's 8 Gigs of memory too many...
Will it be DX11 ?, that's for the GTX 480...
I sure as hell hope it will be multicore (the 980x has 6...).

Hardware is so far ahead of software its getting ridiculous...I expect that rig will still not be fully used 3 years from now, and then it will be a new generation of everything that will not get used for another few years...

Anyway its all great fun ! :-P

Louisv

Wow all you guys think you need the best computer on Earth to run SoW.
I have an HP Compaq with 2 gigs of ram and an ASUS ENGT240 which only cost $100.Runs Rise of Flight like it's nothin,Bad Company 2 like a beast,FSX like it's not even there.DCS:Black Shark clocks at around 20-30FPS.CoDs 4,WaW,MW2 run like a beast as well.Not even mentioning the $70 500GB hard drive.
The overall value of my box is around $750,not alot at all.
Oh yeah it also uses an ''Old now'' Core2 Duo.Avging at 2.83GHz.

BTW these games are all set to max settings too.

20FPS is not exactly smooth framerates. Besides, you're full of it.

You probably won't need the best computer on earth to run SoW either, but let's just see shall we?

I kind of agree. Lot's of very expensive stuff without any tangible way to know if it's going to be used effectively or just end up sitting there.

I think a mid-range i7 CPU with 4 cores or even the "low-end" i7 920 overclocked and pushing between 3 and 3.5 GHz, plus 4-6GB of memory will be fine. As for graphics cards, it depends on what you want. I have no problem waiting 6 months to a year for DX11 cards to get cheaper. If SoW comes out in the meantime, my Ati 4890 1GB still supports DX10. I doubt there will be heavy use of DX11 specific functions like tesselation on the initial release version to make me want to get a DX11 card before they drop in price.

Louisv has a point. Hardware is way ahead of software, so why go for top of the line hardware if we can't bring the medium range line of components to their knees? On one hand, people want to get a capable rig with some amount of future proofing, a PC that will last a couple of years without major upgrades. On the other hand, if you go too far with top-end components you might find yourself in a position where something newer comes out and as is often the case, it happens to be incompatible with what you have (different sockets, need for specific components and so on). It's a fine balance between the two.

Just like people with a core 2 quad couldn't simply upgrade to an i7 without buying a new motherboard and DDR3 RAM, there might come a point where you can't upgrade from an i7 to the next CPU without changing most of your components.
If and when this happens i think it's better to be in the middle of the scale of the previous platform, so that you haven't spent an enormous amount on building a PC you never managed to use to its full capacity before it became obsolete.

Absolute performance is a very poor benchmark in my opinion. What more accurately reflects the consumer's needs is having a PC that can run most or all current games at high detail and some of them at maximum, plus a small performance margin or capability for future minor upgrades to make sure you won't need to do a major upgrade sooner than 1-2 years, but not so powerful that it runs everything at 50% load and then gets superseded.
That would just mean the other 50% of processing power that you never used before upgrading to a different CPU is money thrown to the wind. Most importantly it's money that could have gone to an upgrade towards a mid-range component of the next platform, which could do as well as the top-end component of the previous platform for less money. The only catch here is waiting a bit for the new models to penetrate the market and trends to stabilize...a person getting the fastest core 2 quad 6 months before the i7 was released would probably wish he'd gotten a mid-range core 2 quad for less and keep the spare change to go towards an i7 when it hit the shelves.

As an example with abritrary numbers, if an i7 920 is priced at 200-250 Euros, can be safely overclocked to 3.8 GHz or more and runs SoW maxed at 80% load, while the i7 980 is priced at 600-800 Euros and runs SoW at the same detail level (max) at 50% load, it's better to get the 920, keep those 400 Euros and use them after a year or two to buy a complete set of new motheboard, new RAM and a mid-range new CPU from the next series. That is, unless you want to be running photoshop on a second monitor during the dogfights in order to edit the screenshots with your favorite parts of the fight at the same time that they happen :-P

Most importantly, today we have quite a lot of things that can break the line of continuity. If it's not the new CPU requiring a different socket and motherboard or RAM type, it will be the new OS requiring a different video card to make use of the latest DirectX version and so on. So, for people who do upgrade it's better to do a series of small upgrades when the price of the component is low and that usually happens when it's either a low or mid-range model of the best line of products, or when it's the top-end model of the second best line of components.

Of course, others may have a different opinion on this, they may really need monster PCs for other reasons (eg, graphics and video editing professionals) or they simply decided to spend 1500-2000 Euros on a PC and not upgrade for the next 5-6 years no matter what. In that case, when going only for maximum system longevity with minimum upgrades, it does make sense to get the absolute best you can afford. The money spent will end up being the same over the course of time as someone who follows the method of incremental cost effective upgrades, maybe even less.

What throws a spanner in the works in this method however is potential failures. What happens if i break the bank on a monster PC, don't upgrade anything at all and after 4 years it's still going strong but my graphics card gets fried one day? There's nothing compatible with my motherboard to replace it without changing everything else is what usually happens, which leaves me wishing that i'd spent the same amount of money incrementally over the years so as to be up to date with the current hardware standard and have available spare parts to buy ;)

Just food for thought and how most people i know tend to do things. Your mileage may vary and after all, it's your own wallets. :cool:

for $750 you'll get:

- MSI 890GXM-G65 mobo
- X4 955 BE C3
- 260GTX OC(said to have 96% performance of GTX280)
- 4 Gigs of DDR3
- BQ 550W PSU
- 500GB HDD


Thats my build [in fact, I built this for IL2 only, lol]and I spent pretty much exactly that amount.

SoW will probably require a new CPU (or cooler if I decide to OC) and new GPU(no maybe here).
And if the prices of SSD's drop...

"Problem" is that most people aint content with playble frames anymore. Alot of them actually think they can see the differance between 50 fps and 150 fps + they just have to crank everything to max, even though 36x AA doesnt look one bit differant to 16x AA (generally speaking). Alot of them also seems to forget there are other things that causes lagg/stutter etc. than "bad" equipment (crappy coding/internetconnection/hardrives full of p*rn etc) when playing online so they upgrade every singel year with every new release of a game/GPU/CPU that hits the shelfse= giant waste of money.


Its pretty much a useless time and money consuming hobby to uppgrade, iv been there myselfe altough to my defence my last upgrade was secondhand stuff. :)

No.
If you have 50 average you'll experience some major drops in framerate - very noticeable.

If your system puts out 150, you can be pretty sure fps never drop below 50, therefore you won't even notice.
;)

And, btw: 30fps, that's almost unplayable.

The most significant PC upgrade i have tested is the SSD hard disk system. People with amazingly powerfull PC's are restricted for the most slow component: hard disk. The loading times of IL2 or Rise of Flight are just reduced by two or even four. Always consider a SSD in yor new builds. I don't think they are expensive: a 128gb SSD for 200€ is cheap if you compare with the huge boost you got on your system. The SSD is very important for us, because flight sims use to have thousands of little files, and the acces to these files for a SSD is much better than a normal hard disk.

SSD, all the way.

Feel free to buy the newest and best, not my problem ;), but like i said there are other things that can cause the game to slow down other than "your" 6 months old and "out of date gpu". ;)

Same debate as the one with people claiming they just have to have a 120 Mhz screen because 60 Mhz causes stutters and flickering and gives them a headache and cant refresh fast enough for theire highly developed brain/eyesight.

Look at today, now everyone just have to have a gpu thats capeble of DX11 and tesselation. (for what one might ask)

I am waiting to see the specifications of the BOB to finish my PC.
At this moment I have some pieces, and the rest will depend on the requirements.
I'm poor (at least, not all rich as some of you... :() and what I'm thinking more or less is:
Box: Lian-Li PC-7 Plus Series (I have it)
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H rev 2.0 (I have it)
Ram: 4Gb 1333 G.Skill Rip Jaws gaming series
CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition. (I can´t take more at this time...Money is limited)
CPU Cooling: I´m thinking about Coolit ECO Advanced liquid cooling kit...
GPU: HD 5770 or HD5830.. depend on pricelist diference...
PSU: 900W
Win 7 64 Bits

I hope it can move BoB decently...
What do you think?? ;)