This is why i just started my own site/business haha. If your going to build a gaming rig, only thing you really need to spend the money on is a good GPU considering thats pretty much all games utilize now adays. I have the 6core 1100T. Overclocked to about 3.9GHz and when i play games. My GPU gets to 99% and my CPU is only at like 25-50% usage.
First important thing is good motherboard as this does affect over all system performance, poor motherboard will let down a good CPU & GPU. Things to never go cheap on is motherboard, PSU, and GPU and 120hrz LCD monitor at least are main things to sink the money into.
Yeah totally agree with you, its just ashame i see so many nice builds get taken down by last minute money saver on a crappy PSU. then 2 months later that same person is like... "GUYS! WHY DOES MY COMPUTER SMELT LIKE BURNT POPCORN!"
This is why i just started my own site/business haha. If your going to build a gaming rig, only thing you really need to spend the money on is a good GPU considering thats pretty much all games utilize now adays. I have the 6core 1100T. Overclocked to about 3.9GHz and when i play games. My GPU gets to 99% and my CPU is only at like 25-50% usage.
First important thing is good motherboard as this does affect over all system performance, poor motherboard will let down a good CPU & GPU. Things to never go cheap on is motherboard, PSU, and GPU and 120hrz LCD monitor at least are main things to sink the money into.
Yeah totally agree with you, its just ashame i see so many nice builds get taken down by last minute money saver on a crappy PSU. then 2 months later that same person is like... "GUYS! WHY DOES MY COMPUTER SMELT LIKE BURNT POPCORN!"
HA! That actually make me almost laugh out loud in the library. The burnt popcorn comment that is. Now here is a question. Why spend so much money on an 120hrz LCD monitor? LED monitors look great and last longer and I have never really even noticed a difference between the 60-120hrz. I've been seriously thinking about getting an ASUS VE249H and I have heard nothing but amazing reviews about it, not to mention I have viewed it myself in best buy and thought it looks quite great. I also think that though you should get a very good GPU this can be a piece people go way overboard with. Getting yourself a nice gtx 570 will do you just fine until the next generation comes around. Your news about the motherboard potentially bottlnecking the cpu/gpu is news to me though. Besides that though I would definitly agree on the PSU.
This is why i just started my own site/business haha. If your going to build a gaming rig, only thing you really need to spend the money on is a good GPU considering thats pretty much all games utilize now adays. I have the 6core 1100T. Overclocked to about 3.9GHz and when i play games. My GPU gets to 99% and my CPU is only at like 25-50% usage.
First important thing is good motherboard as this does affect over all system performance, poor motherboard will let down a good CPU & GPU. Things to never go cheap on is motherboard, PSU, and GPU and 120hrz LCD monitor at least are main things to sink the money into.
Yeah totally agree with you, its just ashame i see so many nice builds get taken down by last minute money saver on a crappy PSU. then 2 months later that same person is like... "GUYS! WHY DOES MY COMPUTER SMELT LIKE BURNT POPCORN!"
HA! That actually make me almost laugh out loud in the library. The burnt popcorn comment that is. Now here is a question. Why spend so much money on an 120hrz LCD monitor? LED monitors look great and last longer and I have never really even noticed a difference between the 60-120hrz. I've been seriously thinking about getting an ASUS VE249H and I have heard nothing but amazing reviews about it, not to mention I have viewed it myself in best buy and thought it looks quite great. I also think that though you should get a very good GPU this can be a piece people go way overboard with. Getting yourself a nice gtx 570 will do you just fine until the next generation comes around. Your news about the motherboard potentially bottlnecking the cpu/gpu is news to me though. Besides that though I would definitly agree on the PSU.
Yeah totally agree. A crappy mobo could have an unstable NB and only time ive seen my mobo inhibit me was when i tried to overclock. It couldnt handle any type of higher freqs and volts. Also theres ALOT of mobos out there that have this problem and will actually destroy your CPU if you try to overclock.
Originally posted by Nunez1212 HA! That actually make me almost laugh out loud in the library. The burnt popcorn comment that is. Now here is a question. Why spend so much money on an 120hrz LCD monitor? LED monitors look great and last longer and I have never really even noticed a difference between the 60-120hrz.
Eh, I would definitely get a 120Hz monitor if I could afford one. Just moving your mouse cursor across the screen will show you the limitations of 60Hz as you can see all the discrete instances of the cursor as it jumps across the screen, and then realize that is the most smoothness you will ever get in a game because of that limitation.
HA! That actually make me almost laugh out loud in the library. The burnt popcorn comment that is. Now here is a question. Why spend so much money on an 120hrz LCD monitor? LED monitors look great and last longer and I have never really even noticed a difference between the 60-120hrz.
Eh, I would definitely get a 120Hz monitor if I could afford one. Just moving your mouse cursor across the screen will show you the limitations of 60Hz as you can see all the discrete instances of the cursor as it jumps across the screen, and then realize that is the most smoothness you will ever get in a game because of that limitation.
Monitors are the reason why 60 FPS is pretty much the limit for what we can recognize. Its not because the human eye, its because the monitor. But i usually do advise to always try to get 120hz over 60
HA! That actually make me almost laugh out loud in the library. The burnt popcorn comment that is. Now here is a question. Why spend so much money on an 120hrz LCD monitor? LED monitors look great and last longer and I have never really even noticed a difference between the 60-120hrz.
Eh, I would definitely get a 120Hz monitor if I could afford one. Just moving your mouse cursor across the screen will show you the limitations of 60Hz as you can see all the discrete instances of the cursor as it jumps across the screen, and then realize that is the most smoothness you will ever get in a game because of that limitation.
Monitors are the reason why 60 FPS is pretty much the limit for what we can recognize. Its not because the human eye, its because the monitor. But i usually do advise to always try to get 120hz over 60
I will look more into it, but I just don't know... I guess it's just such a huge jump in price while I could probably get a better looking 60hrz for much cheaper. Also, people have played with 60hrz for a long time and have enjoyed them plenty enough...I just don't know if I find it necessary.
Even if you do want to spend more on a monitor, there are still a variety of ways you can go:
1) More inches
2) More pixels
3) 120 Hz
4) IPS rather than TN for higher image quality.
Do note that option #3 is also mutually exclusive with any of the other options. One could make a 27" 120 Hz monitor if so inclined, but I don't think anyone has. But none of the monitor ports have the bandwidth to do 2560x1600 at 120 Hz. And even if one could make a 120 Hz IPS monitor, I'm not sure if there would be a point in doing that with the slower response time of IPS.
The human eye can tell the difference between a steady 60 frames per second and a steady 120 just fine. And 120 does look better. But 60 looks pretty smooth, too. A lot of movies and television are 24 frames per second, which looks like smooth motion if done properly.
Originally posted by Quizzical Even if you do want to spend more on a monitor, there are still a variety of ways you can go: 1) More inches 2) More pixels 3) 120 Hz 4) IPS rather than TN for higher image quality. Do note that option #3 is also mutually exclusive with any of the other options. One could make a 27" 120 Hz monitor if so inclined, but I don't think anyone has. But none of the monitor ports have the bandwidth to do 2560x1600 at 120 Hz. And even if one could make a 120 Hz IPS monitor, I'm not sure if there would be a point in doing that with the slower response time of IPS. The human eye can tell the difference between a steady 60 frames per second and a steady 120 just fine. And 120 does look better. But 60 looks pretty smooth, too. A lot of movies and television are 24 frames per second, which looks like smooth motion if done properly.
I think Acer, Asus and Samsung all sell 27" 120Hz monitors now.
Yes, just like quizz said. There IS a difference between them, but is it overkill? One could say so. For television, i have a 120hz 32" and can tell difference on some hi-def channels compared to my dads old tv. But as for computer monitor and gaming. 60hz is all you need and its pretty much what everyone has. 60 FPS in any game looks perfectly smooth to me and dont see a to spend all this extra money to go any higher.
i was able to see the difference between 70 and 80 hz back in the day, but i can't tell any difference beyond that. 120hz is only for 3D or epeen purposes...
Eh, I would definitely get a 120Hz monitor if I could afford one. Just moving your mouse cursor across the screen will show you the limitations of 60Hz as you can see all the discrete instances of the cursor as it jumps across the screen, and then realize that is the most smoothness you will ever get in a game because of that limitation.
i'd gladly live with that limitation to have a 2560x1600 resolution monitor:D
This is why i just started my own site/business haha. If your going to build a gaming rig, only thing you really need to spend the money on is a good GPU considering thats pretty much all games utilize now adays. I have the 6core 1100T. Overclocked to about 3.9GHz and when i play games. My GPU gets to 99% and my CPU is only at like 25-50% usage.
That has to be literally the worst advice i have ever read here.
If your MOBO is bad it will choke CPU/GPU.
If your PSU is bad or has not enough capacity then chance is better GPU will choke on it due to lack of power and most likely burn some time after.
Bad PSU can pretty much fry entire PC
Bad CPU can bottleneck a lot of nowadays GPUs
Saying that you only ever need is good GPU is the most false and ridiculous statement i have ever read.
For your own good i would advise not to give such "tips" to people and for you to read-up on hardware.
This is why i just started my own site/business haha. If your going to build a gaming rig, only thing you really need to spend the money on is a good GPU considering thats pretty much all games utilize now adays. I have the 6core 1100T. Overclocked to about 3.9GHz and when i play games. My GPU gets to 99% and my CPU is only at like 25-50% usage.
That has to be literally the worst advice i have ever read here.
If your MOBO is bad it will choke CPU/GPU.
If your PSU is bad or has not enough capacity then chance is better GPU will choke on it due to lack of power and most likely burn some time after.
Bad PSU can pretty much fry entire PC
Bad CPU can bottleneck a lot of nowadays GPUs
Saying that you only ever need is good GPU is the most false and ridiculous statement i have ever read.
For your own good i would advise not to give such "tips" to people and for you to read-up on hardware.
well, i guess he should have qualified his statements better:) generally speaking, if you are talking about a single gpu setup,which 95% of the people who game are using) the gpu is in fact often the limiting factor to game performance given the same generation hardware. this is why a single cpu can drive SLi/xfire in a more balanced manner. HOWEVER, thats not to say that some games(RTS/turn based games) are CPU intensive and then the bottleneck falls on the CPU instead.
if you are talking about a typical build. a good mobo and a bad mobo has the same x16 pci-e slot. it's only when you cross over to Sli/xfire that mobo shows a bottleneck between cpu/gpu. other mobo based difference is overclocking which MOST builds aren't really using. (turbo boost works pretty well for most people)
PSU is a whole different discussion. that applies to a good or bad machine and has more to do with reliability then speed.
as for cpu bottlenecking a gpu, unless it's a complete mismatch (i3 vs 590gtx) or a cpu intensive game, it's usually the gpu that is the limiting factor.
overall, there is truth in what he's saying, just need to qualify it better when he say it:D
This is why i just started my own site/business haha. If your going to build a gaming rig, only thing you really need to spend the money on is a good GPU considering thats pretty much all games utilize now adays. I have the 6core 1100T. Overclocked to about 3.9GHz and when i play games. My GPU gets to 99% and my CPU is only at like 25-50% usage.
That has to be literally the worst advice i have ever read here.
If your MOBO is bad it will choke CPU/GPU.
If your PSU is bad or has not enough capacity then chance is better GPU will choke on it due to lack of power and most likely burn some time after.
Bad PSU can pretty much fry entire PC
Bad CPU can bottleneck a lot of nowadays GPUs
Saying that you only ever need is good GPU is the most false and ridiculous statement i have ever read.
For your own good i would advise not to give such "tips" to people and for you to read-up on hardware.
Haha actually my statement is correct is you knew anything about todays hardware. When building a gaming computer, most people put the money into the wrong place, when more money should be spent on the GPU above all. Looking at todays hardware, a $250+ Motherboard will improve no more than a $150 motherboard, only thing is that the $250+ mobo will have more features that mostly likely youll never use. You also talk about the PSU, and ive said this is my previous posts as to being one of the most important piece. Obviously you have to buy the correct PSU for your system, i didnt know i had to explain that because its pretty much a given. What do you consider a "Bad CPU nowadays" because i have personally seen 6xxx Series and 5xxx Series graphic cards bottleneck WAY earlier on a system running Athlon II, and if you take todays latest hardware that everyone uses. AMDs Phenom II and Intels SBs, EITHER of them will not bottleneck before a GPU when playing a game because games are made to utilize the GPU first for far better performance, not the other way around.
So for your own good, I would strongly advise you think about what is being said and instead of searching guides about hardware on google, you should test things in real life situations.
Originally posted by drazzah So for your own good, I would strongly advise you think about what is being said and instead of searching guides about hardware on google, you should test things in real life situations.
I'll agree that first-hand knowledge is better than second-hand, but aside from the top review sites (the vast majority of which get their hardware free of charge), very few people can actually afford to get first-hand knowledge on every single permutation of computer hardware available out there.
~Most~ of us just have to settle for pouring over the reviews and recommendations of others and muddling about doing the best we can with our meager information. After all, if I take a certain combination of hardware, and you have the exact same hardware set up the exact same way, I would expect the results of the testing to at least be pretty similar, if not exact... which is why we read these reviews and benchmarks and reports in the first place, and some of us place some amount of stock into their findings.
Even an enthusiast system builder is only going to have first hand knowledge on a select handful of pieces of hardware. There's a lot out there that's available.
I'll agree that first-hand knowledge is better than second-hand, but aside from the top review sites (the vast majority of which get their hardware free of charge), very few people can actually afford to get first-hand knowledge on every single permutation of computer hardware available out there.
~Most~ of us just have to settle for pouring over the reviews and recommendations of others and muddling about doing the best we can with our meager information. After all, if I take a certain combination of hardware, and you have the exact same hardware set up the exact same way, I would expect the results of the testing to at least be pretty similar, if not exact... which is why we read these reviews and benchmarks and reports in the first place, and some of us place some amount of stock into their findings.
Even an enthusiast system builder is only going to have first hand knowledge on a select handful of pieces of hardware. There's a lot out there that's available.
I completely agree with this. I do not know many people that cite things about computer components because they have first hand seen it working this good or this way, but you have to just take the information you get and hope that it is correct. I mean honestly you should try to do that with everything in life. I don't really "know" the Earth is even round. I have seen pictures and have been told it is, but have I seen it myself? No. Though many many people say it is and it seems unlikely they would all make up this sort of fiction for no good reason; therefore, I choose to believe it. This is a process nearly everyone does but merely does not realize they are doing it. So when talking about computer components we much research again and again to make sure the information we have is accurate...especially if you are going to spread that information to others as fact.
I don't really "know" the Earth is even round. I have seen pictures and have been told it is, but have I seen it myself? No. Though many many people say it is and it seems unlikely they would all make up this sort of fiction for no good reason; therefore, I choose to believe it.
Proving that the Earth is roughly round is actually pretty doable, which is why people were able to figure it out in ancient times. The most direct proof is a lunar eclipse. Look at the shadow the Earth casts on the Moon. Oh look, it's round. Or at least curved, and consistent with being round.
Something simplier to observe is watching a tall ship sail off into the distance. After a while, you'll be able to see sails or whatever the ship has to make it tall, but not the hull. That's not because the ship is sinking. It's because the curvature of the Earth blocks your view of the hull.
A third approach that is a lot more indirect is to observe the highest angle of the sun in the sky over the course of a year at various geographic locations. It takes quite a bit of cobbling together various numbers, but you this can let you figure out how big the Earth is. If you've lived for extended periods of time at two very different latitudes, then you may have noticed that the sun goes much higher in the sky at one than at the other. That wouldn't happen if the Earth were flat.
The issue of the Earth being round is sometimes confused with the issue of the Earth orbiting around the Sun. The latter is actually much harder to prove, and the scientific verdict on that was out until far into the 17th century. In particular, in Galileo's day, he happened to be right that the Earth orbited about the Sun, but he didn't have the evidence to back it up. At the time, it was actually highly plausible that the Sun orbited about the Earth, as nearly everything else seemed to. The Sun was a bit of an outlier, in that it had a different apparent orbital "period" (if you assume that the Earth was stationary) that was off by about four minutes from the rest of the stars. But the Moon was a bigger outlier, as its apparent orbital "period" was off by most of an hour. And the Moon does orbit about the Earth.
-----
But that is wandering far off topic. Yeah, I agree that usually the way to evaluate hardware is to read reviews. But that still leaves a lot of guesswork, as most SKUs don't get reviewed at all. You can extrapolate to figure out processor and video card performance pretty well. But that doesn't tell you about build quality for video cards or motherboards, among other things.
It's also nice to compare reviews among a number of different sites, as sometimes one site will catch serious problems that another missed. For video card reviews, Hard OCP is the indispensible site, as they try actually playing games and seeing how high you can turn settings. Driver "optimizations" to cheat at canned benchmarks may fool some other sites. Other sites give you a better idea of relative performance of a lot of different cards, but a lot of such sites are largely interchangeable.
Im not such a fan of big site reviews. Mostly because its showing only one case of something. I'm more of the type of person to fish through an overclocking forum or any type of heavily populated computer forum and see all the different people who have the same hardware and see what they have to say about it. Many times have i talked to people where they have seen very big difference in rigs where the hardware is near identical. I know for example that the AMD 1055T can be a hit or miss. While some can overclock it to 4.2+ GHz, many others cant even surpass 3.7+ and the same goes with a lot of GPUs.
As i do perfer multiple inputs on hardware by many people, i dont really ever count the Newegg or Tigerdirect reviews to be legitimate considering most of them are idiots
But that is wandering far off topic. Yeah, I agree that usually the way to evaluate hardware is to read reviews. But that still leaves a lot of guesswork, as most SKUs don't get reviewed at all. You can extrapolate to figure out processor and video card performance pretty well. But that doesn't tell you about build quality for video cards or motherboards, among other things.
It's also nice to compare reviews among a number of different sites, as sometimes one site will catch serious problems that another missed. For video card reviews, Hard OCP is the indispensible site, as they try actually playing games and seeing how high you can turn settings. Driver "optimizations" to cheat at canned benchmarks may fool some other sites. Other sites give you a better idea of relative performance of a lot of different cards, but a lot of such sites are largely interchangeable.
Another awesome thing about HardOCP reviews is that yes, they play the games and actually test the hardware. Where this is important is that you're not just looking at instantaneous FPS or the average FPS of the game, you get to see the fluidity of the game with said test bench. Things like microstutter that synthetic tests can't tell you are observed through these play through tests.
In terms of hardware you can't go wrong with quality. I'm reading lots of reviews even on RAM before building my machines. Fact of the matter is I don't have the tools nor time to test them in a professionel way. So you are looking at reviews, asking your palls and discussing options.
Going cheap with your mainboard can lead to desaster. A powerful GPU is great as long as your CPU can push it to the max. Why have a 580 GTX if your CPU can't push it?
One thing most people just don't take seriously (will never ever understand why) is cooling. They have top end hardware but yet cheap cooling. I mean cooling is one of the most maybe the most important part for the longtime safety or your system.
I'm building my machines in mind that they have to "survive" 4 - 5 years with small upgrades I'm not going to dish out a huge junk of money every year for small upgrades. So I'd rather go overkill at first and be fine for years to come.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Professional review sites present information that represents controlled experiments in which they fully share the methodologies used.
For the most part, that's more than I can say for forums. People will throw out all sorts of anecdotal evidence and opinions, but rarely do you have the information to actually tell whether what someone is saying on a forum is representative of typical cases.
Professional review sites present information that represents controlled experiments in which they fully share the methodologies used.
For the most part, that's more than I can say for forums. People will throw out all sorts of anecdotal evidence and opinions, but rarely do you have the information to actually tell whether what someone is saying on a forum is representative of typical cases.
On a review site, you do have that information.
It depends as to what forum your on. Ill take the words of any reppd people of overclock.net then ANY test/review i see done by a website. Just because the review is only done by the quote unquote "professional" review sites one time for the most part. Better to take the word of many who actually spent their own money on hardware and will give an honest answer.
Drazzah I would so get a gaming computer from your site but sadly shipping from US to Canada is costly and a giant bother
Its refreshing to see someone not trying to get some more money out of people with something worthless things they don't need.
"You have some serious mental issues you may need to seek some help for. There are others who post things, but do not post them in the way you do. Out of every person who posts crazy shit in this forum, you have some of the craziest and scariest" -FarReach
Originally posted by Catamount Professional review sites present information that represents controlled experiments in which they fully share the methodologies used. For the most part, that's more than I can say for forums. People will throw out all sorts of anecdotal evidence and opinions, but rarely do you have the information to actually tell whether what someone is saying on a forum is representative of typical cases. On a review site, you do have that information.
It depends as to what forum your on. Ill take the words of any reppd people of overclock.net then ANY test/review i see done by a website. Just because the review is only done by the quote unquote "professional" review sites one time for the most part. Better to take the word of many who actually spent their own money on hardware and will give an honest answer.
It may be an honest opinion, but opinion and fact aren't always the same.
The easiest way to illustrate this is with power supply quality.
How many people can really test a PSU in their home? You plug it in, the paint job looks great, and your computer turns on (or doesn't). And for 99.99% of us consumers, that's all we'll ever be able to tell about our power supply.
Even reading forums from people who have bought them, could you tell anything about ripple and voltage regulation? Would any purchaser review be able to tell you this? Maybe one in 10,000 actually even have access to the test equipment to do this - and that's being very generous.
But nearly every serious enthusiast on this forum (including yourself) will tell you that a solid, high quality power supply is a foundation to a good system.
So how do you tell which are good quality, if you steer clear of the big sites? These are the only ones with the resources to do this kind of reporting (and even then, only a select handful can actually do it).
And back to my original point, really, what is the difference between reading a review written on a review site, and a forum post written by anyone other than yourself? It's still not first hand unless you have physically put your hands on it yourself, and in either case your relying on someone else's interpretation of the product (be it just testing methods or opinions)
Comments
Yeah totally agree with you, its just ashame i see so many nice builds get taken down by last minute money saver on a crappy PSU. then 2 months later that same person is like... "GUYS! WHY DOES MY COMPUTER SMELT LIKE BURNT POPCORN!"
HA! That actually make me almost laugh out loud in the library. The burnt popcorn comment that is. Now here is a question. Why spend so much money on an 120hrz LCD monitor? LED monitors look great and last longer and I have never really even noticed a difference between the 60-120hrz. I've been seriously thinking about getting an ASUS VE249H and I have heard nothing but amazing reviews about it, not to mention I have viewed it myself in best buy and thought it looks quite great. I also think that though you should get a very good GPU this can be a piece people go way overboard with. Getting yourself a nice gtx 570 will do you just fine until the next generation comes around. Your news about the motherboard potentially bottlnecking the cpu/gpu is news to me though. Besides that though I would definitly agree on the PSU.
Yeah totally agree. A crappy mobo could have an unstable NB and only time ive seen my mobo inhibit me was when i tried to overclock. It couldnt handle any type of higher freqs and volts. Also theres ALOT of mobos out there that have this problem and will actually destroy your CPU if you try to overclock.
Eh, I would definitely get a 120Hz monitor if I could afford one. Just moving your mouse cursor across the screen will show you the limitations of 60Hz as you can see all the discrete instances of the cursor as it jumps across the screen, and then realize that is the most smoothness you will ever get in a game because of that limitation.
Monitors are the reason why 60 FPS is pretty much the limit for what we can recognize. Its not because the human eye, its because the monitor. But i usually do advise to always try to get 120hz over 60
I will look more into it, but I just don't know... I guess it's just such a huge jump in price while I could probably get a better looking 60hrz for much cheaper. Also, people have played with 60hrz for a long time and have enjoyed them plenty enough...I just don't know if I find it necessary.
Even if you do want to spend more on a monitor, there are still a variety of ways you can go:
1) More inches
2) More pixels
3) 120 Hz
4) IPS rather than TN for higher image quality.
Do note that option #3 is also mutually exclusive with any of the other options. One could make a 27" 120 Hz monitor if so inclined, but I don't think anyone has. But none of the monitor ports have the bandwidth to do 2560x1600 at 120 Hz. And even if one could make a 120 Hz IPS monitor, I'm not sure if there would be a point in doing that with the slower response time of IPS.
The human eye can tell the difference between a steady 60 frames per second and a steady 120 just fine. And 120 does look better. But 60 looks pretty smooth, too. A lot of movies and television are 24 frames per second, which looks like smooth motion if done properly.
I think Acer, Asus and Samsung all sell 27" 120Hz monitors now.
Yes, just like quizz said. There IS a difference between them, but is it overkill? One could say so. For television, i have a 120hz 32" and can tell difference on some hi-def channels compared to my dads old tv. But as for computer monitor and gaming. 60hz is all you need and its pretty much what everyone has. 60 FPS in any game looks perfectly smooth to me and dont see a to spend all this extra money to go any higher.
i was able to see the difference between 70 and 80 hz back in the day, but i can't tell any difference beyond that. 120hz is only for 3D or epeen purposes...
i'd gladly live with that limitation to have a 2560x1600 resolution monitor:D
That has to be literally the worst advice i have ever read here.
If your MOBO is bad it will choke CPU/GPU.
If your PSU is bad or has not enough capacity then chance is better GPU will choke on it due to lack of power and most likely burn some time after.
Bad PSU can pretty much fry entire PC
Bad CPU can bottleneck a lot of nowadays GPUs
Saying that you only ever need is good GPU is the most false and ridiculous statement i have ever read.
For your own good i would advise not to give such "tips" to people and for you to read-up on hardware.
well, i guess he should have qualified his statements better:) generally speaking, if you are talking about a single gpu setup,which 95% of the people who game are using) the gpu is in fact often the limiting factor to game performance given the same generation hardware. this is why a single cpu can drive SLi/xfire in a more balanced manner. HOWEVER, thats not to say that some games(RTS/turn based games) are CPU intensive and then the bottleneck falls on the CPU instead.
if you are talking about a typical build. a good mobo and a bad mobo has the same x16 pci-e slot. it's only when you cross over to Sli/xfire that mobo shows a bottleneck between cpu/gpu. other mobo based difference is overclocking which MOST builds aren't really using. (turbo boost works pretty well for most people)
PSU is a whole different discussion. that applies to a good or bad machine and has more to do with reliability then speed.
as for cpu bottlenecking a gpu, unless it's a complete mismatch (i3 vs 590gtx) or a cpu intensive game, it's usually the gpu that is the limiting factor.
overall, there is truth in what he's saying, just need to qualify it better when he say it:D
Haha actually my statement is correct is you knew anything about todays hardware. When building a gaming computer, most people put the money into the wrong place, when more money should be spent on the GPU above all. Looking at todays hardware, a $250+ Motherboard will improve no more than a $150 motherboard, only thing is that the $250+ mobo will have more features that mostly likely youll never use. You also talk about the PSU, and ive said this is my previous posts as to being one of the most important piece. Obviously you have to buy the correct PSU for your system, i didnt know i had to explain that because its pretty much a given. What do you consider a "Bad CPU nowadays" because i have personally seen 6xxx Series and 5xxx Series graphic cards bottleneck WAY earlier on a system running Athlon II, and if you take todays latest hardware that everyone uses. AMDs Phenom II and Intels SBs, EITHER of them will not bottleneck before a GPU when playing a game because games are made to utilize the GPU first for far better performance, not the other way around.
So for your own good, I would strongly advise you think about what is being said and instead of searching guides about hardware on google, you should test things in real life situations.
I'll agree that first-hand knowledge is better than second-hand, but aside from the top review sites (the vast majority of which get their hardware free of charge), very few people can actually afford to get first-hand knowledge on every single permutation of computer hardware available out there.
~Most~ of us just have to settle for pouring over the reviews and recommendations of others and muddling about doing the best we can with our meager information. After all, if I take a certain combination of hardware, and you have the exact same hardware set up the exact same way, I would expect the results of the testing to at least be pretty similar, if not exact... which is why we read these reviews and benchmarks and reports in the first place, and some of us place some amount of stock into their findings.
Even an enthusiast system builder is only going to have first hand knowledge on a select handful of pieces of hardware. There's a lot out there that's available.
I completely agree with this. I do not know many people that cite things about computer components because they have first hand seen it working this good or this way, but you have to just take the information you get and hope that it is correct. I mean honestly you should try to do that with everything in life. I don't really "know" the Earth is even round. I have seen pictures and have been told it is, but have I seen it myself? No. Though many many people say it is and it seems unlikely they would all make up this sort of fiction for no good reason; therefore, I choose to believe it. This is a process nearly everyone does but merely does not realize they are doing it. So when talking about computer components we much research again and again to make sure the information we have is accurate...especially if you are going to spread that information to others as fact.
Proving that the Earth is roughly round is actually pretty doable, which is why people were able to figure it out in ancient times. The most direct proof is a lunar eclipse. Look at the shadow the Earth casts on the Moon. Oh look, it's round. Or at least curved, and consistent with being round.
Something simplier to observe is watching a tall ship sail off into the distance. After a while, you'll be able to see sails or whatever the ship has to make it tall, but not the hull. That's not because the ship is sinking. It's because the curvature of the Earth blocks your view of the hull.
A third approach that is a lot more indirect is to observe the highest angle of the sun in the sky over the course of a year at various geographic locations. It takes quite a bit of cobbling together various numbers, but you this can let you figure out how big the Earth is. If you've lived for extended periods of time at two very different latitudes, then you may have noticed that the sun goes much higher in the sky at one than at the other. That wouldn't happen if the Earth were flat.
The issue of the Earth being round is sometimes confused with the issue of the Earth orbiting around the Sun. The latter is actually much harder to prove, and the scientific verdict on that was out until far into the 17th century. In particular, in Galileo's day, he happened to be right that the Earth orbited about the Sun, but he didn't have the evidence to back it up. At the time, it was actually highly plausible that the Sun orbited about the Earth, as nearly everything else seemed to. The Sun was a bit of an outlier, in that it had a different apparent orbital "period" (if you assume that the Earth was stationary) that was off by about four minutes from the rest of the stars. But the Moon was a bigger outlier, as its apparent orbital "period" was off by most of an hour. And the Moon does orbit about the Earth.
-----
But that is wandering far off topic. Yeah, I agree that usually the way to evaluate hardware is to read reviews. But that still leaves a lot of guesswork, as most SKUs don't get reviewed at all. You can extrapolate to figure out processor and video card performance pretty well. But that doesn't tell you about build quality for video cards or motherboards, among other things.
It's also nice to compare reviews among a number of different sites, as sometimes one site will catch serious problems that another missed. For video card reviews, Hard OCP is the indispensible site, as they try actually playing games and seeing how high you can turn settings. Driver "optimizations" to cheat at canned benchmarks may fool some other sites. Other sites give you a better idea of relative performance of a lot of different cards, but a lot of such sites are largely interchangeable.
earth is NOT round. if anyone tell you it is, then their monitor has too low of a resolution:D
Im not such a fan of big site reviews. Mostly because its showing only one case of something. I'm more of the type of person to fish through an overclocking forum or any type of heavily populated computer forum and see all the different people who have the same hardware and see what they have to say about it. Many times have i talked to people where they have seen very big difference in rigs where the hardware is near identical. I know for example that the AMD 1055T can be a hit or miss. While some can overclock it to 4.2+ GHz, many others cant even surpass 3.7+ and the same goes with a lot of GPUs.
As i do perfer multiple inputs on hardware by many people, i dont really ever count the Newegg or Tigerdirect reviews to be legitimate considering most of them are idiots
Another awesome thing about HardOCP reviews is that yes, they play the games and actually test the hardware. Where this is important is that you're not just looking at instantaneous FPS or the average FPS of the game, you get to see the fluidity of the game with said test bench. Things like microstutter that synthetic tests can't tell you are observed through these play through tests.
In terms of hardware you can't go wrong with quality. I'm reading lots of reviews even on RAM before building my machines. Fact of the matter is I don't have the tools nor time to test them in a professionel way. So you are looking at reviews, asking your palls and discussing options.
Going cheap with your mainboard can lead to desaster. A powerful GPU is great as long as your CPU can push it to the max. Why have a 580 GTX if your CPU can't push it?
One thing most people just don't take seriously (will never ever understand why) is cooling. They have top end hardware but yet cheap cooling. I mean cooling is one of the most maybe the most important part for the longtime safety or your system.
I'm building my machines in mind that they have to "survive" 4 - 5 years with small upgrades I'm not going to dish out a huge junk of money every year for small upgrades. So I'd rather go overkill at first and be fine for years to come.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Professional review sites present information that represents controlled experiments in which they fully share the methodologies used.
For the most part, that's more than I can say for forums. People will throw out all sorts of anecdotal evidence and opinions, but rarely do you have the information to actually tell whether what someone is saying on a forum is representative of typical cases.
On a review site, you do have that information.
It depends as to what forum your on. Ill take the words of any reppd people of overclock.net then ANY test/review i see done by a website. Just because the review is only done by the quote unquote "professional" review sites one time for the most part. Better to take the word of many who actually spent their own money on hardware and will give an honest answer.
Drazzah I would so get a gaming computer from your site but sadly shipping from US to Canada is costly and a giant bother
Its refreshing to see someone not trying to get some more money out of people with something worthless things they don't need.
"You have some serious mental issues you may need to seek some help for. There are others who post things, but do not post them in the way you do. Out of every person who posts crazy shit in this forum, you have some of the craziest and scariest" -FarReach
It may be an honest opinion, but opinion and fact aren't always the same.
The easiest way to illustrate this is with power supply quality.
How many people can really test a PSU in their home? You plug it in, the paint job looks great, and your computer turns on (or doesn't). And for 99.99% of us consumers, that's all we'll ever be able to tell about our power supply.
Even reading forums from people who have bought them, could you tell anything about ripple and voltage regulation? Would any purchaser review be able to tell you this? Maybe one in 10,000 actually even have access to the test equipment to do this - and that's being very generous.
But nearly every serious enthusiast on this forum (including yourself) will tell you that a solid, high quality power supply is a foundation to a good system.
So how do you tell which are good quality, if you steer clear of the big sites? These are the only ones with the resources to do this kind of reporting (and even then, only a select handful can actually do it).
And back to my original point, really, what is the difference between reading a review written on a review site, and a forum post written by anyone other than yourself? It's still not first hand unless you have physically put your hands on it yourself, and in either case your relying on someone else's interpretation of the product (be it just testing methods or opinions)