Poll: Super Computer

[MorteSphere]

If OnLive turns out to be a total success, an expensive gaming PC will be rendered a waste of money.

OnLive will be available this winter, hence I voted next year.

This is what I'm doing.

There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that OnLive is going to work to the extent that they've advertised.

 

[Gaderael]

I say wait 'til next year. Win 7 works fine now, but no harm in waiting for what kinks might pop up to be fixed.

Not to mention, all the bleeding edge stuff out now will have dropped in price by then, which will be your best bet. Patience is a virtue.

Also, from what I've heard, ARMA II is more of a PC killer than Crysis, so you may want to base your benchmarks off of that if your looking at building a killer rig.

 

[stone0042]

Personal opinion, i say wait until windows 7 has been out for a few moths, has the bugs worked out, and then buy a prebuilt PC from an established company. You build your own and it breaks, and you are screwed.

 

[ActionDan]

If OnLive turns out to be a total success, an expensive gaming PC will be rendered a waste of money.

OnLive will be available this winter, hence I voted next year.

This is what I'm doing.

On-Live will crash and burn like the buildings on 9/11.

Go to Hell. Are you really that cold? People actually died. It's not to be joked about.

People die every day man. What is the difference? Even as we type this people are dying by the thousands around the globe. Americans just get worked up because it was a black eye against out nation. As for human life it was not really that huge in the grand scheme of things. Go to the Sudan if you want to see a real tragedy in motion.

Also, crysis really isn't a huge benchmark anymore, a $400-500 pc can run it easily.

$400-500 will NOT easily run Crysis, no way on this EARTH will that ever happen.

He is right. That is BS. Try a minimum $800-$900 to get it running smoothly.

And upto $3000+ to get it running everything maxed out.

True that. I have a ripping $1600 PC. I could run Crysis at a good 50 FPS with NO Anti Aliasing. It looked great but damn if I turned on even 2X AA it bogged me down to around 30 FPS. Then if I turned on 4X AA it got way worse. Everything else was on Max setting at 1680x1050 Res.

Same here. I have around the same price PC (In £'s), Turn on AA x8 and my FPS goes to around 2. I laughed when I did that.

 

[axia777]

Same here. I have around the same price PC (In £'s), Turn on AA x8 and my FPS goes to around 2. I laughed when I did that.

No joke. My jaw dropped as the gameplay stopped.

 

[ActionDan]

Same here. I have around the same price PC (In £'s), Turn on AA x8 and my FPS goes to around 2. I laughed when I did that.

No joke. My jaw dropped as the gameplay stopped.

Hah. Well I should be getting a new card at my birthday, that could help. Not that I play Crysis that much, I just see it as a Benchmark the size of a full game.

 

[A random person]

If OnLive turns out to be a total success, an expensive gaming PC will be rendered a waste of money.

OnLive will be available this winter, hence I voted next year.

This is what I'm doing.

Also, if Santa becomes supreme ruler of the world from his North Pole fortress and the fourth wall is destroyed, we will live in a utopia where bacon is good for your heart and law enforcement is being befriended by magical girls (cookie if you get both references).

But seriously, OnLive isn't going to work. The bandwidth would be hilarious, not to mention inherent lag that would happen with single player games.

You really think that the idea of cloud computing is impossible? I'm sure the internet providers would adjust prices and bandwidth, to suit the needs of gamers.

Cloud computing is possible with things that are hurt less by lag and less demanding of bandwidth, but for gaming, which takes up large amounts of bandwidth and is pretty much the thing most affected by lag, it wouldn't work too well. Also, axia777 is right, companies wouldn't just reduce the price of bandwidth. If anything they'd increase it as the law of supply and demand dictates.

 

[Nutcase]

No, the hard part is when you put it together, hear the fans go on but don't get a picture. If you don't have spare parts that fit, you are then basically guessing whether the problem is with the processor, motherboard, memory, graphics card, power supply, or some combination of those. That's a situation where you definitely want to have a warranty that covers the whole thing for troubleshooting, not just a pile of parts.

Well certainly if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to screw it up. With today's PC architecture, only a fool (or a self-righteous idiot who doesn't RTFM) has difficulty putting a computer together. The one thing I'd say to home-builders is that you might want to buy the motherboard and CPU as a package deal since CPUs are notoriously fickle and the easiest part to accidentally break during installation, but if you get a barebones mobo/CPU and a pile of parts, it's easy to put them together---so easy that they pay people in the single digits per hour (as in barely above the US minimum wage) to do it for the big manufacturers.

You misunderstood me completely. What I'm saying above is that even if you do everything right, if one of your key components is dead on arrival (which is totally out of your hands), then you are in a world of pain unless you have experience and spare parts to boot.

 

[Nutcase]

Buy it now, most are offering Windows 7 upgrade vouchers. If you need a computer now, buy it now, in the PC world if you don't buy it when you need it, you will always be waiting for the next new hardware (which is never far away).

Personal opinion, i say wait until windows 7 has been out for a few moths, has the bugs worked out, and then buy a prebuilt PC from an established company. You build your own and it breaks, and you are screwed.

And the above post is pure 100% grade A bullshit. Buy a pre-built and watch your money get wasted.

About 95% of my computer's purchase price was components, peripherals, and OS license. 5% was the cost of having it built for me, and a warranty for troubleshooting.

That 5% equals the price of about two hours of my work. I have built a computer before, but I would definitely spend more than two hours just putting it together, or do a worse job at wiring and airflow than guys who build in these cases all the time, or both. (My case is notorious for being difficult to wire.)

Further, assuming any part is DOA, say hello to hours of crap I don't want to deal with. I don't have another computer to cannibalize for spare parts, which makes certain problems totally impossible to pin down to a single component, so I wouldn't know which component I need to exchange.

I think you'll be hard pressed to show how building is cost effective for anyone who is employed, doesn't find it fun, and isn't looking for the elusive "geek cred".

 

[Rednog]

Also, crysis really isn't a huge benchmark anymore, a $400-500 pc can run it easily.

$400-500 will NOT easily run Crysis, no way on this EARTH will that ever happen.

My rig Cost me $530 after rebates:

EVGA 123-YW-E175-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI FTW ATX Intel Motherboard
EVGA 512-P3-N884-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ Superclocked Edition 512MB
Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Wolfdale 2.66GHz LGA 775 Dual-Core
GameXStream 700W powersupply
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2
640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Protip: Building a PC takes time (I planned for about 3ish months), collect parts that are on sale (some rebates are silly good) or bundled and buy them over time, you will save a good chunk of money.

I run Crysis on high with no problems.

 

[Nincompoop]

People die every day man. What is the difference? Even as we type this people are dying by the thousands around the globe. Americans just get worked up because it was a black eye against out nation. As for human life it was not really that huge in the grand scheme of things. Go to the Sudan if you want to see a real tragedy in motion.

I would get just as worked up if you were to joke about people dying in Sudan. You fucking son of a *****.

 

[Nincompoop]

If OnLive turns out to be a total success, an expensive gaming PC will be rendered a waste of money.

OnLive will be available this winter, hence I voted next year.

This is what I'm doing.

There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that OnLive is going to work to the extent that they've advertised.

I would wait and see. I would give it a shot before bashing it so fast. Besides, we will know in a few months.

 

[Nincompoop]

Cloud computing is possible with things that are hurt less by lag and less demanding of bandwidth, but for gaming, which takes up large amounts of bandwidth and is pretty much the thing most affected by lag, it wouldn't work too well. Also, axia777 is right, companies wouldn't just reduce the price of bandwidth. If anything they'd increase it as the law of supply and demand dictates.

My advice is still to wait and see how it goes. It's just a couple of months. It will work to some extent, the question is how well it'll work.

 

[Nincompoop]

If OnLive turns out to be a total success, an expensive gaming PC will be rendered a waste of money.

OnLive will be available this winter, hence I voted next year.

This is what I'm doing.

You forget, alot of people have gaming PCs because they get a superiority complex over people who dont have godly computers. Oh wait, that's just me...

Lol =P.

If I ever get rich, then I would get me the nastiest beast on the planet. Have scientist from everywhere building me something that could devour every other PC in the world.

I'd have a black hole installed on mine, so it actually would, before spewing them out in thousands of pieces to the corners of the universe when it erodes.

I wonder how much it would cost.

 

[axia777]

People die every day man. What is the difference? Even as we type this people are dying by the thousands around the globe. Americans just get worked up because it was a black eye against out nation. As for human life it was not really that huge in the grand scheme of things. Go to the Sudan if you want to see a real tragedy in motion.

I would get just as worked up if you were to joke about people dying in Sudan. You fucking son of a *****.

Well I guess I have been known to be one.

Also, crysis really isn't a huge benchmark anymore, a $400-500 pc can run it easily.

$400-500 will NOT easily run Crysis, no way on this EARTH will that ever happen.

My rig Cost me $530 after rebates:

EVGA 123-YW-E175-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI FTW ATX Intel Motherboard
EVGA 512-P3-N884-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ Superclocked Edition 512MB
Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Wolfdale 2.66GHz LGA 775 Dual-Core
GameXStream 700W powersupply
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2
640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Protip: Building a PC takes time (I planned for about 3ish months), collect parts that are on sale (some rebates are silly good) or bundled and buy them over time, you will save a good chunk of money.

I run Crysis on high with no problems.

I would like to see that.

 

[mfserious]

Well, I'm sure glad this post got some things out in he open. Although, it is tough for me to figure out what's great and what's not, I'm going to sit on the sidelines for a while and watch everyone, like I usually do. Hopefully, everyone that's a pc gamer has spoken about their personal favorite things to watch out for and has a good idea on what works well. I am starting to wonder about the debate of homemade pc vs off the belt line pc. As for homemade, I'm a bit out of touch with what piece goes with what. I mean, if I bought a pc like a box of Legos, I probably could put one together with out feeling bad, but since I don't have any know how on what works with what, it, to me, would feel like reaching into a bin full of random objects that might work together, but then again, might have conflicts with other pieces. I'm sorry to say, but I'm not very in depth reader of components and even though I know what's in a computer, I'm not very confident with my selections. My dry run of buying a custom PC was about $1000. It may have not been perfect, but I took a shot at it. If anyone is willing to prescribe a customized list of items for a homemade pc, I'd be please to share what I'm looking for. I don't expect you to build it for me, but if there's a chance of making one myself for less than store bought, I'd consider it. Thank you.

 

[Horticulture]

My dry run of buying a custom PC was about $1000. It may have not been perfect, but I took a shot at it. If anyone is willing to prescribe a customized list of items for a homemade pc, I'd be please to share what I'm looking for. I don't expect you to build it for me, but if there's a chance of making one myself for less than store bought, I'd consider it. Thank you.

What parts did you pick out? I'm sure you'll get tons of feedback if you post it in here.

 

[TaborMallory]

If OnLive turns out to be a total success, an expensive gaming PC will be rendered a waste of money.

OnLive will be available this winter, hence I voted next year.

This is what I'm doing.

I just watched a trailer for OnLive and it reeks of Peter-Molyneux-Syndrome.
Also, how would it render PCs useless? It connects to PCs as well.
You couldn't expect them to pack all that boasted power in a little box, can you?

Anyway, OP, I've got a very computer-savvy friend. He has a Windows 7 beta, and says it's the best operating system on the PC.

 

[axia777]

Anyway, OP, I've got a very computer-savvy friend. He has a Windows 7 beta, and says it's the best operating system on the PC.

It is good to here that. All the press I have heard about 7 has been good from places like Ars Technica. I have had XP x64 for too long and I want a new OS. It is starting to feel dated. My next machine will be a Windows 7 OS based system for sure.