Talk about your current PC set up

[eastyy]

Yes! Damn I thought I was going mental. I have had two of them and they both froze, crashed and generally screwed my comp up. So I switched back to the HDD as a boot drive with the OS on it.

What kind of things have you tried to resolve it? Any motherboard problems? Cables connected properly etc?

happened with two seperate motherboards aswell cables all fine

I dunno it feels the same sort of issue like using a normal hardrive and having installed loads of stuff the slow down of the system like with a normal hardrive (weirdly when i ran the windows experience benchmark it got a 7.9 to begin with now its a 5.9)

[eastyy]

may try a fresh installation of windows 7 again

[dataDave]

I'm on a laptop for the time being until I have room to build a desktop.

Asus G74sx
i2760 2.4ghz quad
Nvidia gtx560m 3gb
16gb G-Skill 1600mhz
500gb 7200 rpm HDD
1920x1080 glossy screen

Runs SC2 on high, 8man FFA insane AI at 60fps with v-sync until battles start. Also runs Kingdoms of Amalur on full at 60fps.

I only got it for SC2 and Diablo. Needless to say it jizzblasts Counter Strike Source into next year.

For work I'm getting around 85% usage out of the RAM when I work carelessly, so I'm glad that wasn't a complete waste.

[dataDave]

By carelessly I mean simultaneously rendering in both After Effects and Premier, previewing Flash documents, multi tabbed browser with tons of Flash content and movies playing, and Illustrator and Photoshop with several 600dpi print artwork being randomly and frantically hand-tooled about. I don't normally work like that...

[eastyy]

have been using handbrake to reencode video files (as there just far to big and to be honest dont really need them in 1080p) had been using my phenom II quadcore and it was just taking ages so decided to unlock the two extra cores (making it hex core) but reducing the clock speed just for stability and blow me down its almost halved the encoding times now

[Kit]

Lian Li master race! Totally agree.

My last proper GPU before my 6850 was a 4890.

Quick question, what sort of performance increase did you see moving from a 4890 to a 6850, speed? I'm thinking of getting either that or going for a GTX 570 - though I wonder if my Q9550 will hold me back.

[speedlolita]

Noticeable difference when playing Skyrim, but that's the most intensive game I play. Not to mention that it's less hot, consumes less power and clocks itself down when it's not in use - like a CPU.

I don't think your Q9550 is holding you back, but I mean, you could get like ?120 for that on eBay which isn't far off getting a i5 2500k new. So maybe sell your old parts and upgrade? It's what I did. Q6600 setup sold and paid for my i3-2100T, mATX H61 board and 8GB of RAM.

[Baseley09]

There is quite a price leap between 6850 & 570, thought Scan have been doing the EVGA SC version of the 570 for ?200 recently which is a steal for higher end performance imo.

[Kit]

I'm of two minds atm. Either go the budget route and get a 6850 (or maybe track down a 5870 on ebay) or go for a card that will last me ages like the GTX 570.

There is quite a price leap between 6850 & 570, thought Scan have been doing the EVGA SC version of the 570 for ?200 recently which is a steal for higher end performance imo.

Yes, there's a lot of choice in-between, but I've been swayed slightly by the lowering price.

Edit:

Should add the sort of games I'll be planning on playing.

Got a copy of Rage to play through, recently picked up Crysis 2, still haven't finished Arkham City, and I'd like pick up a copy of Dirt 2 to check out some DX11 effects.

Gaming at 1920x1200.

[Baseley09]

I have it (EVGA SC 570) and all I can tell you is that it is badass.

Though you know how it is with PC's, there is always something better gnawing at your mind.

[Herbalizer]

I've just bought my first gaming rig, after a lot of help from FSW on here. Never had a gaming PC before, I'm really looking forward to it. The catalyst for me making the purchase was the DAYZ mod for ARMA2.

Anyway, this is the spec

Case	PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)	Intel? Core?i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3570K (3.4GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard	ASUS? P8Z77-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI?CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)	8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card	1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
2nd Graphics Card	NONE
3rd Graphics Card	NONE
Memory - 1st Hard Disk	1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk	NONE
RAID	NONE
SSD CACHE DRIVE	NONE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive	24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ?R/?RW/RAM
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive	NONE
Memory Card Reader	INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply	CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES? TX650 V2-80 PLUS? BRONZE (?69)
Processor Cooling	SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (?19)

[NW2013]

Sweet rig, should be a beast. Were you not tempted by an SSD as well?

[speedlolita]

That 52 in 1 card reader is gonna pull some serious frames!