PC build to run the likes of L4D2 decently?

[hudson]

I haven't a magoo about overclocking, but yeah, once it's up and running I will come back here or look on the net to see how. Apparently, the CPU I have has a 4th core that can be unlocked. I think the mobo will allow it. Read reports that it may be a gamble to see if it will be stable or not.

Were you talking about the CPU fan being hard to tell if it had been installed properly?

Yeah the 5850 is a pricy card but it's a solid card (I've got one) and should allow max or near max settings until we're well into the PS4/720 days.

Assume you're going to be overclocking with that ram?

Warning on that fan. I put the fan in my system and not only are the pins a nightmare to put in the board, it's incredibly hard to tell if they're 'locked' in. I installed it. 3 months later, it wouldn't boot and the graphics card was going crazy (at full fan speed it sounds like a jet, rarely goes that fast though). The fecking card had fallen over. What's worse, trying to put it back in I snapped the pins in the motherboard. Took me half an hour to unblock the mounting holes and I was paranoid I was going to mess up the system.

Long story short, spend some time making sure it's locked in properly. May need a fair amount of force to lock the pins in.

Anyhow, back on topic. Good build, poor budgeting

It's always the graphics cards that mess it up. There's always such a huge gulf in performance between the ~?100 and ~?200 ones with little in between.

[Hohum]

I don't think you'll be using a pin mounting system anyway. Intel processor heatsinks use a push-pin type fitting, but AMD has a retention bracket instead (clips to either side of it, and then tightens down with a screwdriver).

The 4th core is usually disabled for a reason (i.e. it be broke!), so if you do go about trying to use it later on then be sure to run stability testing software on it (such as prime95).

[abigsmurf]

Ah the AMD system is much better. The pin system for the intel is horrible and it's especially bad in this cooler. Not only do you have to put in pins but you have to put pins inside the pins, all whilst holding the cooler with one hand.

In b4 'Yo dawg'

The fourth core may be knackered but sometimes they just disable a healthy core because they don't have enough 3 core cpus to fill orders.

[hudson]

Yeah, I think I'll leave the 4th core alone in case I break something.

[abigsmurf]

You won't break it, it'll just crash under load.

[Matt]

Awesome PC. Let us know what you think of the games. They'll look stunning You can AA the **** out of every title with that at your screen res

[hudson]

Will do. May even take a screen grab (with cl_showfps) woohoo!

[abigsmurf]

If you're after an impressive benchmark check out : http://unigine.com/download/

[MikeRox]

Nice to someone else getting back into PC gaming!

I recently bought a gaming rig too and was definitely worth it. All together I think I ended up spending ?350 and came away with a pretty high spec gaming PC. It is even capable of doing all the 3D stuff.

I'm looking to do the same now that my 360 has gone byebye for the 4th time. Gonna get a replacement, then sell the whole lot to put towards a gaming rig. Is what is being suggested in here alright for running the likes fo Star Craft 2 and Diablo 3 next year? Or should I up the budget a bit?

[huxley]

If you're after an impressive benchmark check out : http://unigine.com/download/

Wo thats amazing and purdy thanks to the 5850.

[hudson]

Put my new PC together yesterday and had a sneaky little look at L4D2 before packing the case (with guts installed) away for xmas (as promised to the gf).

Anyway, it looked frickin awesome. The game automatically had gfx settings set to the highest settings all over the shop. Well happy.

The game set my screen resolution to a res higher than my TVs native 720p res, maybe to fit in with the 1080i resolution my TV can display? I'm not sure. It really ran well there too. I changed it to the 720p setting (1280 x 720) and it looked equally awesome. Think I was hitting an average 60fps, which it fine by me

Looking forward to xmas evening.

[Matt]

Are you sure it's 720 native? Most LCDs are actually 1366x768. I'd run it at that if you can, rather than 1080i. You'll be able to turn AA up real high in L4D2 as well, but not sure if you can do it in game, or via the ATi control panel.

[hudson]

I'll have a good tinker with it on Friday. After installing the gfx card drivers, Windows restarted and displayed in higher (than without gfx drivers) resolution of 1280 x 720. When I went to manually change the resolution, the 1280 x 720 option had the word 'recommended' beside it.

When starting L4D2, a much higher resolution was automatically turned on. Will have a proper good look at all this on Friday.

[hudson]

Slightly off-topic, but just seen this uber beast PC offer from OverClockers. Like the case?

Ultima Divinity - ?3270!
:- Intel Core i7 950 3.06Ghz Overclocked to 4.20GHz!
:- Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
:- Corsair Dominator 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel
:- Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5970 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
:- Intel X25-M Mainstream 160GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive
:- 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB SATA-II 32MB Cache in RAID 1
:- Thermaltake VL30001N1Z Level 10 BMW Designed Case - Black

[Matt]

That's awesome

I'm guessing L4D2 may be doing a quick test of your system, then whacking it up to what it thinks it can handle - hence the too-high-for-you screen res.

You wait until you get some 4x, maybe 8x AA going. Goodbye Jaggies, hello Next Gen gaming