InfinitusEquitas You Were Right: See Last Post

[Bionic-Badger]

Re: Need advice for a new computer please

For that one, since it's pretty old, I'd max out the RAM and get a new video card. At least it has a PCI Express x16 slow, so you can get some video card that is like $150 (like an HD 6870; actually any video card over that stock 7300LE would be better) would be a pretty decent improvement. Those video cards do use quite a bit of power, so a new power supply (600W or something) might help over that 300W.

Oh and of course get an SSD if you can swing it.

You might end up spending more than you want to on an older machine like that, but at least it can tide you over.

 

[Kartracer00]

Re: Need advice for a new computer please

Nice, thanks again for the advise! I have installed an nvidia 8500GT a few years ago. For some reason, it lags in single player playing Source Engine games (CS:S, GarrysMod). Its terrible.

 

[MarioMaster]

Re: Need advice for a new computer please

I'd recommend upgrading that, the 8500GT is a very slow card by today's standards. Even an HD5850 would be a massive upgrade in video performance. (They're cheap now from bitcoin miners shutting down from the recent block subsidy halving)

 

[Bionic-Badger]

Re: Need advice for a new computer please

Yes, it is terrible. The 8500GT was a poor card even when it first came out. nVidia just rebagged old cards for the on-paper next-generation and enabled DX10 support, which was worthless on such a slow-ass card. The 7600GT is actually better, despite being a 7000-series.

Anyway, those times are long gone, and you're lucky that you have a PCI-express 16x slot so you can pretty much upgrade to whatever card you want. Nab one of those HD5850s for $100 on eBay. A limiting factor might be the power requirements of the card, so you'll need to see if you need a new PSU too.

 

[IsaacT]

Re: Need advice for a new computer please

Okay. IE was right, and thusly got bumped up 3 :beer: Usually all I can manage is +2 so that was fun.

I am selling this Windows 8 Laptop as I am ready to strangle someone. I am going to probably build a performance desktop and just get a portable laptop with an SSD to carry around and surf the web on.

Any advice for building my own desktop?

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Lol, sorry, I don't mind being wrong, wish you didn't have to have had a bad experience.

I haven't built a computer in over a year now... not really much advice to give, except settle on a good processor, and stay away from crossfire or SLI setups... way too much hassle.

Also go with at least a mid tower case, with good airflow. I can personally vouch for the Antec 900. A bit more expensive, but there are sometimes case & psu bundles. Get a PSU with at least 600W, preferably more (900 would be good), and preferably modular.

 

[herunotsurugi]

I might be too late to this discussion but I would recommend Digital Storm: Gaming Computers & Custom PCs Built To Dominate

If you're willing to spend the money actually you can get a really powerful gaming laptop. I have the np9390-S with sli with twin gtx 780m's. On tomb raider 2013 I can out perform the overclocked gtx 780 and gtx titan.

With this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXXQEMWuBuU you can see that the titan does 60ish; the 780 80ish. My laptop does 90ish.
If you don't believe me i will upload a pic.

 

[IsaacT]

I actually built my own desktop. With monitor and keyboard I paid 1200. I am running an intel i5-4570 with an MSI H87-G43 motherboard. My graphics are powered by an EVGA GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB. I have 8GB of RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and the whole thing is powered by a 750W Corsair PSU. Hard drive is a WD 7200rpm 1TB drive.

 

[herunotsurugi]

Wow nice that's actually a pretty good price. Do you know what fps you get on skyrim from that?

 

[IsaacT]

60 constant at ultra high settings. And 100 on maxed settings World off Warcraft.

 

[herunotsurugi]

Nice you mod with textures or enb?

 

[IsaacT]

I have a couple of mods going such as the elven overhaul mod but I may try some full texture mods and see. Any you recommend?

 

[herunotsurugi]

Do you use skyrim nexus? If you do try this.
RealVision ENB at Skyrim Nexus - mods and community It is an enb mod. But if you don't want enb it still gives you a series of texture mods and an install order to get best results.

Alternatively you could use this
Texture Pack Combiner at Skyrim Nexus - mods and community
1) WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES
The Texture Pack Combiner (TPC) is a utility that will merge over 60 different texture packs by hand-picking textures from each one, putting them all together into a single, fully compatible and load-order free package. The end result is a stunningly beautiful world where the majority of textures in Skyrim have been replaced.

This is not just some simple copy+paste merge similar to what you get by utilizing different load orders of your mods. There is substantial work behind it. Every single texture has been hand-picked after extensive testing with different texture combinations, and each texture has been measured against certain key points. More on that later. The bottom line is that this is the result of a rather gruesome, time consuming process that has taken hundreds of hours and thousands of screenshots and saved games to complete.

If you want to run a lot of textures you will need this!
Optimizer Textures at Skyrim Nexus - mods and community
This texture optimizer will drastically reduce the size of the textures with barley any loss of quality. This will really help your computer run skyrim with a lot of texture mods.

Also no matter how much ram your computer has skyrim can only utilize 3.1gb of ram before it crashes so I also use a ram optimizer application cleanmem I think that the realvision enb guide talks about it.

If you don't already know about this check it out http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/11/?tab=1&navtag=%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D11%26preview%3D&pUp=1

This one as well http://skyrimgems.com/index.html