new computer

[Snowreap]

my wife's computer has been acting up, so I just built her a new one:

Lian Li PC-B25B case
ASUS P6T motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 CPU
Corsair DDR3 RAM (6GB kit)
PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 1GB
WD Velociraptor SATA HD (300GB, 10K rpm)
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 910W power supply
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit (OEM)

I had thought I had a spare DVD drive handy, but it turned out that the Sony DRU-840A that was in her old computer was the handiest, so I ended up using that.

so far so good, although I haven't tried to increase the CPU or memory speed above BIOS defaults yet (so the RAM is running at 1066 rather than 1333), and I did have to lower the memory clock on the graphics card to 900MHz to resolve a jitter problem.

Vista gives everything a performance rating of 5.9, whatever that means. and Warhammer seems to run just fine at maximum settings (although I haven't tried a fortress fight yet). I haven't figured out how to install addons under Vista 64 yet, though.

I plan to steal another Velociraptor from her old computer so that I can enable mirroring. and I'll probably also replace the stock Intel CPU fan with something heftier, like a Zalman.

-ken

[Slamz]

Yeah, getting a lot more tempted to build a new machine myself.

How's that case? Noise? Any trouble getting everything to fit? Is that enough ventilation?

My current machine, AMD64 with nVidia 8800 has been so troublesome. Weird crashes, especially. COULD be the motherboard. COULD be the power supply. But I have a second machine that's nearly identical and it's even more troublesome.


I think I just need to rebuild for Intel.

[Vanraw]

Yeah, getting a lot more tempted to build a new machine myself.

How's that case? Noise? Any trouble getting everything to fit? Is that enough ventilation?

My current machine, AMD64 with nVidia 8800 has been so troublesome. Weird crashes, especially. COULD be the motherboard. COULD be the power supply. But I have a second machine that's nearly identical and it's even more troublesome.


I think I just need to rebuild for Intel.

Let me see if I can detect your problems. .... "AMD64" . Ah ok got it!





Snow, how much did you spend in all?

[Moristans]

How's Vista 64 run with all your legacy apps, or did you have to upgrade everything to 64 bit?

I just haven't been keeping up with Windows OSs beyond Vista Ultimate 32 bit.

[Moristans]

Let me see if I can detect your problems. .... "AMD64" . Ah ok got it!

Yeah, it really hurt to give up on AMD. Hopefully they'll get back in the game in time for my next mobo/processor upgrade.

[Slamz]

How's Vista 64 run with all your legacy apps, or did you have to upgrade everything to 64 bit?

I just haven't been keeping up with Windows OSs beyond Vista Ultimate 32 bit.

Biggest problem is setting up the network.

Regular 32-bit applications will run just fine in 64-bit Windows. 32-bit drivers, however, will not. You must have 64-bit drivers. Network adapter makers seem way behind on this and its been a bit tricky to get the network up and stable.

Actually Vista (32 and 64?) have a weird wireless issue that basically drops 1 packet every 60 seconds. So I have my main gaming machine on a wire now (through a hole I had to drill through the floor...)


I was going to tell Microsoft about this problem but they wanted money to open a support ticket to tell them about the problem I was having with their product.



There is little reason to use the 64 bit OS if you aren't running 64 bit apps. Since almost no games are compiled for 64-bit, there's not a lot of reason to upgrade.

[Snowreap]

the case is very quiet. 3 120mm fans, all running at a fairly low 1500RPM or so. at least, I *think* it's quiet. I certainly can't hear it over the racket the air purifier makes.

everything fits, although routing all the power supply cabling through the cable-management channels takes a while. actually channels is probably not the right word. more like "holes". still, it's effective at keeping cables out of the way when you're done. I'll try to take a picture later tonight.

all told, it cost maybe $1700 or so. I'm sure I could have done better, but I was in a hurry so I just picked a bunch of stuff on Newegg, sent Mona the links and said "order this". I didn't even take the time to check ZipZoomFly.

I've only tried one "legacy app" with Vista 64 so far -- Warhammer Online. maybe I'll install WoW on it and see how that goes. I do plan on installing Office 2007 Pro, does that count as a legacy app?

since this machine has 6GB RAM and a 1GB video card, use of a 64-bit operating system is important. with a 32-bit desktop OS, I'd probably end up only being able to use about 2.6GB of RAM, since 32-bit "consumer" versions of Windows are locked at 4GB of physical address space (primarily due to device driver writers who blithely assume that the existence of a 32-bit virtual address space means that all physical memory can be addressed in 32 bits as well). I don't want to use a 32-bit "server" version of Windows that will recognize more than 4GB of physical address space either, since some software (like DirectX and Media Player) can be a bit quirky on server platforms.

my own machine, by the way, is an AMD64 and it works just fine (using 64-bit XP). a bit slow by current standards (2.21GHz Athlon 64 X2 4400+), and only 2GB RAM, but basically reliable as long as I minimize use of the audio card to ventrilo only (and that's probably Creative Labs' fault, not AMD's).

you should never give up on AMD, even if Intel is selling a better product today. that would be like giving up on Intel back when the Athlon 64 first came out -- if you had done that you would have missed out on Core 2 and Core i7!

-ken

[Vanraw]

Vista 64 works great for me. The only problem I have had is that I loaded the 64bit Internet explorer as opposed to the 32 bit version. It has allot of computability issues that the 32 bit version does not. For instance, flash would not run because the browser was 64 bit.

So I uninstalled it and installed the 32 bit version. (Honestly the 64 bit browser didn't do anything for me anyway)....

[grizzle]

Looks like a good setup. As soon as the price drops on the i7 965 I'll be building a new rig as well.

[Grieve]

I'm holding off on getting/building a new machine until Windows 7 is released. It looks great so far - I'm going to install the RC on my home machine, dual booting with XP professional. Vista didn't last more than a day on my desktop...

[Snowreap]

Exterior:


Interior:


Power Cable Routing:

[Diggles]

no front chasis fan?

[Zouji]

Don't buy Windows Vista Ultimate 64 OEM!!! OEM Vista is tied to the motherboard so if you replace the motherboard or it burns out then you are SOL.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/01/8730.ars">http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/01/8730.ars</a><!-- m -->


What you want to buy is Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade. DO NOT BUY A OEM VERSION!!! Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade has both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Vista Ultimate. The dvds install the exact same Windows Vista as you would get from a regular version of Vista Ultimate. The only thing that is different is that you get a upgrade code instead of a regular activation code. What you can do is to install Vista from the disk and then upgrade to the exact same version of Vista from the same disk.

This guys page explains it a lot better than I can.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_upgrade_clean.asp">http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/wi ... _clean.asp</a><!-- m -->

[Ulfen]

I don't have any problems with Vista 64. In fact, I finally deleted my XP partition that I thought I should keep when I installed Vista because of all the bad pub. I found that I had no need to do anything in XP, especially since I noticed a huge difference in speed running Vista 64, not only in games, but also just cruising around in windows.

[Snowreap]

no front chasis fan?

there are 2 front fans, they blow through each of the hard disk cages. the front fans account for 2 out of the 3 120mm fans I mentioned.

-ken

[Snowreap]

Don't buy Windows Vista Ultimate 64 OEM!!! OEM Vista is tied to the motherboard so if you replace the motherboard or it burns out then you are SOL.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/01/8730.ars">http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/01/8730.ars</a><!-- m -->


What you want to buy is Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade. DO NOT BUY A OEM VERSION!!! Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade has both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Vista Ultimate. The dvds install the exact same Windows Vista as you would get from a regular version of Vista Ultimate. The only thing that is different is that you get a upgrade code instead of a regular activation code. What you can do is to install Vista from the disk and then upgrade to the exact same version of Vista from the same disk.

OEM Vista is tied to your system, so if you build a new system (for example, what I just did for my wife) the license won't transfer. but if your motherboard burns out and you replace it (especially if you replace it with an identical motherboard) that's allowed. so it's not quite as dire as all that. my wife's next machine won't be able to use this license, but that's fine, because I'll be using this machine when my wife's done with it, so *I'll* get to use this license.

as for the upgrade version, last time I checked there were separate 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and if you bought the 64-bit upgrade and tried to use it to upgrade from 32-bit you would find that it didn't work. I'm glad to hear they're packaging both versions together now, and I will certainly try to keep it in mind for next time (assuming there is a next time -- the next machine I build might very well get Windows 7).

-ken

[Snowreap]

last night I increased the memory clock speed from the default of 1066 to its vendor-rated speed of 1333. since then, Prime95 has accrued 98 hours of CPU time (4 cores, each of them hyperthreaded), with no errors.

this is something I was never able to achieve with my wife's previous machine, even though the old one had even faster memory than her new one does (DDR3 1333 6-6-6-20 1.75V, versus DDR3 1333 9-9-9-24 1.5V on the new machine).

I should try her old memory in the new machine to find out whether the problem was with the memory itself, or just more nForce fail.

-ken

[Zephyrs]

Let me see if I can detect your problems. .... "AMD64" . Ah ok got it!

I have had an AMD64 for 3200 for about 2 years now, running 64 bit Vista. I use it for all kinds of games , and apps. I have zero problems with crashes.

By far the largest PITA was the user access control. Once I disabled that I was a happy man.

[Slamz]

I think I just fixed my AMD64 woes with a new power supply. I thought that rather than buy a whole new machine, I'd just get that and if it didn't make my problems go away, well at least I have the first thing I need for a new machine.

Now I can play WW2O again without it crashing.

[Hoofhurr]

Well since we're solving problems...

I use a laptop. Get over that fact. :wink:

I've noticed that the video card overheats and causes the laptop to shut down a lot when I play high demand games. Should I just try playing those games at lower resolutions and reduced setting to solve that problem or does that not help? Can you underclock a video card?

[Snowreap]

laptop cooler. like this one.

-ken

[1000xZero]

laptop cooler. like this one.

-ken

I use an upside down basket that is rectanglar shaped. It lifts the laptop off my lap and allows air to flow through.

[Snowreap]

we just acquired a pair of Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboards. these are like Nostromo gamepads, except with more buttons and an LCD display.

mine is working just fine in Warhammer (my machine is running 64-bit XP) and I'm using the display to show Ventrilo information (since the Ventrilo in-game overlay doesn't seem to work on my machine). I haven't tried using my wife's yet, although I read that I might have a problem with the gamepad not recognizing the game due to a UAC issue. we'll see. edit: sure enough, it didn't work with Warhammer on Vista. but disabling UAC eliminated the problem.

I have all the buttons bound to simple keypresses (row 1: shift-1 through shift-7; row 2: 1 through 7; row 3: tab, f1 through f4; row 4: v, m, c), but you can also bind macros which allow finer control. for example, I can set up a button in 'toggle' mode, where it begins running a macro when you press it, and the macro repeats until you press the button a second time (pressing the button a second time doesn't immediately stop the macro, it runs to the end then stops). macros allow fine control of key-down and key-up events, including customizable delays (so you can set up one macro to press and release a key right away, and another macro to press the same key but hold it down for 1200ms before releasing it). also, running macros aren't interrupted if you press other buttons while they're running. so you could reasonably set up a fire-and-forget macro to twist 3 auras, and it will just run by itself until you hit the button again to stop it. or, you could set up a macro that always swings a ram at 100% power (if you're the leader, anyway).

there are also more advanced things that can be done via LUA scripting, but I haven't looked into any of that.

-ken

[Slamz]

Ohh, I like that G13 Gaming Board.

You can also do macro stuff with the Nostromo, which was quite handy in Age of Conan, but I often find myself wishing it had more buttons (while still keeping the thumbpad handy). I always run out of buttons in RPGs where your character can do like 28 different attacks.

[Eremith]

I'm gonna have to agree with the G13. It looks quite nice. I've got the Nostromo N52TE with the backlighting on it. I've got no complaints other than quirky software.

I may have to consider getting one of the Logitech ones for that LCD screen. I can't always tell who's talking in Vent, and my overlay eats up important screen real estate.