So DELL' s XPS range is are just Alienware PC' s rebranded?

So, even though it' d be cheaper to build my own machine, if i buy from Alienware (i' m not sure i could get a discount with DELL - i' ll have to check), and i go for this setup:

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB

NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard

768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra

4GB RAM - 4 x 1024MB (800MHz)

AGEIA PhysX Physics Processing Unit PCI-E

27" Dell UltraSharp 2707WFP Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor

Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard

Razer Diamondback Mouse

...then i' ll be good to go??? I don' t want to be making sacrifices when it comes to running Crysis and UTIII. They' re both out next month and i want a PC that will run them at max.

As far as I am aware (someone correct me if I am wrong.) Dell bought Alienware, however the Alienware brand is still being marketed and sold as a separate entity. I think however that they still company off the same production line, if you know what I am getting at.

If you can wait until November I strongly suggest you wait for the Nvidia 780i motherboards and Penryn. The 780i supports Penryn, PCI-E 2.0, and SLI. Buying now would be stupid when the new tech is launching next month.

Core 2 Duo will be replaced in January by the refresh Penryn, but the flagship QX9650 will come ealy next month. They will perform better clock for clock and have much more headroom with overclocking. You should be able to overclock a QX9650 past 4Ghz.

8800GT!

This thing looks great. It should perform between 8800GTS and 8800GTX.

GTS
-96 Stream proccessors
-500Mhz core speed
-64GB/s
320/640MB


8800GT
-Built on a 65nm process.
-112 Stream Proccessors
-600Mhz clock speed
-57.6GB/s bandwidth
-512MB

GTX
-128
-575Mhz Core
-84.6GB/s
-786MB


We' re looking at an entry-mid range level priced card that will be nipping the butt of the flagship card in terms of raw processing power. My advice is to get two of these since they are cheaper and single slot and go SLI. Most motherboards can only fit one dual slot videocard if you have a sound card and a physics card. However, you would be able to have two single slot videocards along with a sound card and a physics card. Two 8800GTs will kill an 8800ULTRA, and cost less.


Having less bandwidth would affect performance but much less if you have SLI. Same thing for memory. While having 512x2 isn' t like having 1GB as both cards need to have the same assets loaded on both cards... The processing power is far more important than the extra memory.

I' ve read rumors of a 1GB version of the 8800GT. If this is true, two of those in SLI would be a fantastic idea. The cards are expected for release in about a month. If I can sell my 8800GTX for a good price I might even go for this.

Well i already ordered an overclocked GTX...

Core Clock: 626MHz (vs. 575MHz standard)
Shader Clock: 1450MHz (vs. 1350MHz standard)
Memory Clock: 2000MHz (vs. 1800MHz standard)
Stream Processors: 128
Memory Bandwidth: 86.4GB/s

...which should tide me over until 9 series.

But if the GT in SLI offers a significant performance increase over that then i' ll just pick a couple up. I' ll just wait to see the benchmarks.

What i need to do now is find a good keyboard and mouse. I was looking at the Logitech Dinovo Edge keyboard...



...and the Sidewinder mouse...



Are they suitable/worth getting or are there better alternatives?

Keyboard looks snazzy. I always prefer a simple mouse that works well to one with high spec and tonnes of functions. Some people like Razers, but I' ve tended to go for Logitech' s G-series.

Got a G7 at the moment which is wireless, but the wired G5 is also solid.

Keyboard is an Enermax black aluminium model. Keystrokes are light like laptop ones, but its expensive for what it is!

...which should tide me over until 9 series.

But if the GT in SLI offers a significant performance increase over that then i' ll just pick a couple up. I' ll just wait to see the benchmarks.

Nah fuck it. A 8800GTX should be able to tide you over for the next few months. There is one significant advantage to having a single 8800GTX over two 8800GTs, noise. With those small fans the 8800GT is sure to be louder than a 8800GTX which is surprisingly quiet.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/10/14/microsoft_sidewinder_mouse/3

Found a review of the sidewinder, they seem to agree.

...which should tide me over until 9 series.

But if the GT in SLI offers a significant performance increase over that then i' ll just pick a couple up. I' ll just wait to see the benchmarks.

Nah, one GTX will be Fine, Everything ive thrown at mine it' s handled with ease .



I have one, the best Keyboard on the market..

I live by the G7. Cords hinder your movement and reduce accuracy.

Don' t get a PhysX card. Just a waste of money. Parallel processing is starting to take off, making the need for a dedicated physics processor redundant. CPU' s will have plenty of processing power to spare with every leap they make, and developers don' t want another unnecessary API to worry about.

Heck Aegia even made their API free and they' ve struggled to give it away for nearly 2 years. Yeah, I know UE3 supports it, but I guarantee you' re not going to see any significant performance increase if you have a decent system to begin with.

PhysX is going to tank. Hard.

Same goes for SLI. Don' t bother. I learned my expensive lesson - believe me. Best to buy a single high spec card now and replace it with its successor as it' ll usually perform better than 2x old cards in SLI. You also have to put up with driver issues. Quite often you' ll see issues with new games and SLI/CF and end up having to run a single card until they sort it out.

Heck Ageia even made their API free and they' ve struggled to give it away for nearly 2 years. Yeah, I know UE3 supports it, but I guarantee you' re not going to see any significant performance increase if you have a decent system to begin with.

The card is capable of doing amazing things with physics as it not only has a dedicated chip but also has built in logic for massive increase in efficiency with physics calculations. The problem is that in order to see this happen a game needs to require the cards. No game has done this so far except CELL Factor, where a few levels are only accessible if you have the card. These are a good showcase of what the card can do. Cloth physics in particular look amazing. No CPU will ever catch up to a dedicated physics card in terms of potential. Not when they have to feed GPU' s that have four times their transitor count. GPU' s are monsters compared to equivalent CPU' s, the CPU can barely keep up as it is without having to worry about advanced physics.

UT 3 will infact have a few levels that require the card. With the modding environment for UT, we' ll see many many more player created levels that can only be played with the card. So it won' t just be a junk card to add 10 fps to your performance. For 150$, it' s not a big investment anyways. I' ve had bottles of wine that cost more than that. I wouldn' t recommend a physics card for people on a tight budget but that' s not the case for Majik. If you want to build a gaming rig uncomprimised, a physics card is not a bad idea. Majik might want to wait for UT 3 to make the judgement call but I made the bet that it will be worth it just for that game alone.

I agree that physics cards will never take off for the mainstream, but it will add a lot to a some games. I' ve said this before but the physics card is not the primary goal of Ageia. The chip in these physics cards were designed very much for the same reason that CELL is made for. They' re not meant for gaming or any consumer product. They were made for the lucrative HPC market. They want to sell these chips to make super computers basically. They' re very efficient with parallel processing as well power consumption. Making them ideal for this. The only problem is that they' re new chips and R&D has to be cost reduced before they' re ready for the cost conscious HPC market.

Gamers are suckers, we' re always willing to pay too much so Ageia, IBM/Sony decided to get us to pay their bills. We' re one' s paying for R&D for CELL and the Ageia chip. As for Ageia being a success or not, I would say they already have as they cost of a Physics card already half of what it was when it was first introduced! Although they could be subsidizing the card to gain momentum.

ORIGINAL: Virtua fighter 5

...which should tide me over until 9 series.

But if the GT in SLI offers a significant performance increase over that then i' ll just pick a couple up. I' ll just wait to see the benchmarks.

Nah, one GTX will be Fine, Everything ive thrown at mine it' s handled with ease

Do me a favour when you get a few minutes...

I want to be able to play Crysis on max but i haven' t found any screens of the game running on a 768MB GTX. Capture a couple for me wilya - so i can get an idea of the cards real world performance. Granted the card i' m getting is overclocked and i' ll be running an additional 2GB RAM but at least i' ll get the picture - so to speak :)

ORIGINAL: Virtua fighter 5



I have one, the best Keyboard on the market..

A guy who works with me has one. It' s the nicest keyboard i' ve ever seen.

ORIGINAL: UnluckyOne

Don' t get a PhysX card. Just a waste of money. Parallel processing is starting to take off, making the need for a dedicated physics processor redundant. CPU' s will have plenty of processing power to spare with every leap they make, and developers don' t want another unnecessary API to worry about.

Some of the machines at work have them and while i could easily go without and let the fast as fuck quad processor [Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB ] handle things, i agree with Agent about the user created maps and i think that it' ll get used. I could be wrong though.

Yeah I just hope the Ageia API is built into the level creator. It doesn' t hurt to wait to buy the card, it' s easy to install if you didn' t buy it already. The game is supposed to ship with levels only playable with the card. We' ll know soon enough if modders will be able to design levels with the advanced physics featured.

I use the Logitech G15 and Razor Deathadder. It will be a long time before I part with this combination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JrGWP-Gnho&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHIqL4poT2c

Ok so after weeks and weeks of deliberating, ordering and then waiting... i finally (yesterday) took delivery of my new desktop.

I went with Alienware.

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate
768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
4GB 800MHz Low-Latency DDR2 SDRAM
750 Watt Power Supply
2 x 250 GB Serial ATA 3 Gbit/s, 7,200 RPM with 16MB Cache (RAID 0 )
22' ' Samsung 1680 x 1050 (2ms) SyncMaster Widescreen Flat Panel
20X Dual-Layer DVD±RW w/ LightScribe
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Soundcard
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech G9 Laser Gaming Mouse

Before my discount the total was just over £2700.

I priced as similar spec a machine up on the US website and the total came to $4676 (£2300) which is almost what i ended up paying in the end. If i' m correct i' m not the only Kikizo poster who has access to discounts from companies like Alienware. I think Rampage has taken advantage of it already when he bought his laptop?

Since the options on the UK website are more limited than on the US, i had to go with the GTX as opposed to the Ultra. The GTX has already been taken out and replaced with an overclocked Ultra that i bought from Play.com and is now sitting happily in my brothers machine.

The RAM will also be going sometime next week, the 4GB 800MHz being replaced with 3GB (i think) 1066MHz. Since i' m running the 32-bit version of Vista, i won' t need more than 3GB until next year. I' m still looking at the 64-bit Vista... i have a copy, but i need to check whether there are drivers available for everything i need.

The keyboard and mouse were the best options. Well, i could have bought a DiNivo Edge with the machine but i would have been paying £30-40 more then i can buy it in the store and even though i' m not exactly on a budget, it doesn' t mean i appreciate being blatantly ripped off. I' ll be picking one up this weekend.

I changed the mouse at the last minute. I ordered a Diamondback thinking it' d be fine until i could find something else i really liked, but i changed it to the G9 after taking a look at a friends. It' s corded but it feels perfect and it' s not like the cord is rubber... it' s like rope.

The monitor is 22" and is pretty basic. It' s fine for the moment but i have a feeling i' ll be buying something else after Christmas. If anybody can recommend a great 22-24" flat panel then i' d really appreciate it.



Anyway, even though i' ve seen images of the machines on website and in reviews etc... i wasn' t quite prepared for just how long and how wide the case is. It' s not tall, but it' s definitely wider than most cases. This fucker' s got girth!

One of the main reasons i went with Alienware as opposed to buying an XPS or building my own is the P2 Chassis. It' s fucking badass and it actually kinda reminds me of 1950' s American cars... or uh, being in Cuba... As far as i' m concerned it' s the nicest case on the market.

I probably could have bought an Alienware case from eBay or alike, but i guess i also wanted the whole pre-boxed, brand new, straight from the company thing. Daft considering i could have saved myself some money building it myself, but meh...

I booted the thing up and as i' d specified on the website, the only installed software was Nero and Norton Anti-Virus. The hard-drives had been defragged and Windows had been configured as requested. The only thing i had to do was update to last months 8800 drivers and remove the tick from the ' let the application control...' option for anti-aliasing.

The first thing i installed was Crysis, and i wasn' t disappointed. Running in DX9 at 1680 x 1050 with everything set to Very High i' m getting around 30fps. It does drop in some areas but i figure that when i look into the available performance tweaks i' ll be able to get it running at a solid 30. I played around with the settings and found that taking the particle effects and volumetric effects down to high it improved the performance, but since the game was fully playable on Very High with anti-aliasing disabled i figured i' d leave it maxed out.

Obviously i' ll be checking out how the game runs in DX10 mode and i don' t expect it to run so smooth but i' ve read there are DX9 tweaks to enable some DX10 effects without a performance hit? Could anybody elaborate?

The machine runs cool too. The processor has a massive heatsink and the video cooling + vents on the sides keeps everything nice a nice temperature, but... i was thinking...

I' ve read that the QX6850 - which at stock speeds runs at 3.0GHz - isn' t multiplier locked and so can be overclocked close to 4.0GHz without altering the bus speeds. Though it may need some minor memory timing adjustments.

I know i have a friend with an Core 2 Duo E6850 (which i very nearly went with) which is overclocked from 3.0GHz to 4.0GHz, and the QX6850 is essentially 2 of these in one chip... so i' m guessing it' s definitely possible. I' m not big on overclocking and things like CPU temperatures though so i' ll have to get somebody to look at it for me. If any of you guys (Agent, Loco, Unlucky etc...) know of decent sites or guides for this kind of stuff then let me know

The only think i had been concerned about was the noise, but while there are several large fans in the case, it' s nowhere near as loud as i had expected. I think there must be some sort of noise dampening. The 360 is still the noisiest piece of kit i have (though it' s never bothered me).

All in all i' m happy with my purchase. I' ll be online to play UTIII at the weekend if any of you guys are up for it... i just need to sort out the Vista incompatability with my router which i' m guessing will result in buying a new one. Heh, so if anybody can recommend a great wireless router... say so

Hmmm, aparently i am running in DX10 mode as Vista does by default. That means the performance is even better than i thought...

I know i have a friend with an Core 2 Duo E6850 (which i very nearly went with) which is overclocked from 3.0GHz to 4.0GHz, and the QX6850 is essentially 2 of these in one chip... so i' m guessing it' s definitely possible. I' m not big on overclocking and things like CPU temperatures though so i' ll have to get somebody to look at it for me. If any of you guys (Agent, Loco, Unlucky etc...) know of decent sites or guides for this kind of stuff then let me know

Your CPU won' t overclock as high as the E6850 because it has twice the core meaning more heat and voltage leakage. What kind of heatsink do you have on the CPU? Actually, just post some pics. Don' t expect to see miracles with performance gain by overclocking the CPU even if you reach 4Ghz (some games will be more significant), you would see higher performance gains by overclocking your Ultra, although i' m not sure how much further you could push it.

I hate to say this but you would have been much better off getting a Q6600 and 2 GTXs as opposed to a ridiculously overpriced Q6850 and one Ultra. The Q6600 would overclock past 3GHz and the exta Ultra would make a huge difference with games like Crysis. Although with the 9800GTX coming soon, there might not have been much point in getting an SLI settup now. Worst is that fact that you didn' t get the QX9650 instead, ouch. It' s the only Penryn chip available before January. Were they not available when you ordered? You should have shown us what you were going to buy, had we known you were going to spend 1000$+ on a cpu we could have shown you the best one.

Good sites:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-28-174.aspx
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/537/10/

There' s a lot more but my brain doesn' t seem to be working at the moment.

*drool*

Now when you replace the RAM, my address is....

For noise reduction, you' ll notice a huge difference if you replace the case fans with silent ones. Doesnt cost much either.

eg http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-002-NC

Other noise sources are less noticable but gfx card and cpu fans can also be replaced, as well as more costly silent PSUs. Mines as quiet as a baby....thats sleeping.

Did you get/do you have - a nice surround sound system with it?

With overclocking, I find it fun messing with timings and voltages but at the end of the day, you have there a fucking beast, so you' re not gonna get much noticable benefit yet! Either way, cooling is key, and I' d invest in cpu/gpu coolage before seriously straining it.

You could get liquid nitrogen cooling if you wanted!

http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/12/30/5_ghz_project/

ORIGINAL: Agent Ghost

I hate to say this but you would have been much better off getting a Q6600 and 2 GTXs as opposed to a ridiculously overpriced Q6850 and one Ultra. The Q6600 would overclock past 3GHz and the exta Ultra would make a huge difference with games like Crysis. Although with the 9800GTX coming soon, there might not have been much point in getting an SLI settup now. Worst is that fact that you didn' t get the QX9650 instead, ouch. It' s the only Penryn chip available before January. Were they not available when you ordered? You should have shown us what you were going to buy, had we known you were going to spend 1000$+ on a cpu we could have shown you the best one.

Thr QX9650 is only available from Alienware in a machine that starts at £3320 and wouldn' t ship until Feb at the earliest. For that price you get 2 x Radeon HD 3870' s, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD and no monitor. I' d have been looking at 4K+ easy and since i' m more than happy to spend another grand upgrading what i now have in 6 months time... it wasn' t worth it.

I did consider the Q6700 but meh...whatever.

I' ll see what the Penryn lineup is like come Jan/Feb and consider upgrading then as long as the performance increase is significant.

As for the Ultra, it' ll hold me over until the 9800 series touches down. It fucks UTIII and CoD4 in the ass and runs Crysis on Very High at a playable framerate so it' ll be ok for a short while. I wanted a new machine before Christmas as i have 3 weeks off work and i don' t see any games coming before the next generation of cards arrive that will push it as hard as Crysis.

ORIGINAL: choupolo

Did you get/do you have - a nice surround sound system with it?

No actually, i' ve never been an audiophile, but i do need to get some sort of 7.1 speakers... I' ll probably be looking this weekend. Are there any weekly computer fairs in west yorkshire?

Great system Nitro. You' ll be happy with it for years to come.

Just a couple of things though. Why are you replacing the perfectly good RAM? Trust me, you won' t be able to tell the difference between 1066Mhz and 800Mhz, and it seems like a waste of money in all regards - even if you do want to venture into overclocking. Games will probably only register a 1 or 2FPS increase. 4GB of RAM at 800Mhz is plenty and, if anything, you' ll likely run into capacity issues long before speed becomes any sort of an issue.

As for overclocking, each system is unique so while one person may be able overclock theirs well, you may end up only being able to push 200Mhz or so. As others have said, unless the game is really stressing the CPU, the common bottleneck these days is the GPU. I currently have my Q6600 clocked at 3Ghz for 24/7 use, up from its usual 2.4Ghz. While most games don' t register any benefits, I do play Supreme Commander a lot which is optimized for quad cores and quite frankly rapes the CPU when playing against multiple AI opponents. So while playing SupCom I do notice a significant difference when overclocked. While I can push it to 3.4Ghz (I played with it a bit), I didn' t want to just yet. Doing so requires me to increase voltages, which in turn reduces life expectancy. So while me being able to get an extra 1000Mhz out of my CPU is cool, I asked myself whether I really needed it.

So do you really need to overclock now? Are you willing to risk frying a $1000 CPU if the worst comes about? Are you patient? (very important) Would you rather be tweaking your system and running 24 hour stability stress tests or playing games on it?

To get a very general guide on how to start overclocking you can start here