All these seem to be good suggestions, but...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xander
#1 There's no real point getting an extreme processor unless you're overclocking.. well not really... and if you burnt it out could you replace it?
|
I wasn't suggesting he overclock it, but there don't seem to be any other quad-core processors that go very fast. They all seem really slow at 2.66GHz or 2.40GHz. The EE has 3.0GHz, and that's ultimately why I selected it... you have to go down to a dual-core in order to get 3.0GHz otherwise.
Quote:
|
#3 Raptors are okay if you have money to burn but the present terabyte offerings are pretty damn quick and far more cost effective.. as for RAID I think Anandtech reviewed it and found little performance gain for a desktop. The main thing is to put your games on a different harddrive. Perhaps one raptor and one TB drive? Oh and keep your eyes open for the Velociraptor. Larger (320GB) and 30% quicker than a raptor 150GB.
|
That might be useful. I was looking at the Velociraptor myself in a review, but it didn't appear to be out yet. The main thing I was considering is that he really wants this in particular for playing one specific game with such a fast computer that he can react more quickly than his opponents even while running everything at full settings, and not as much general storage.
I know RAID 0 is supposed to improve performance to some degree, although I don't know how much.
Quote:
|
#4 Memory. If you go for DDR3 then spend a LOT of money otherwise it's just a label. DDR2 however, you can get decent speed for less cash these days.
|
DDR2 has been pretty slow in my experience. It only seems to go up to 800MHz. How much would he need to spend in order to make sure it's not just a label?
Also, I'm a bit confused as to why everyone is pointing out ways to save money rather than improve performance, because I really got the impression that that wasn't really what he was interested in doing. He's building a $5000 computer for a favorite game, and wants it to run as well as possible. It's almost like it's hard-wired into your minds to look for the best deals rather than the best quality.