New Computer Recommendation

Chromium_Man · 07-21-2010 11:26 AM

I've been running CoH on a scratch built computer for the last four years that my brother built for me. Last year I updated the vid card and about two weeks ago my computer pooped the bed so to speak. I have a friend looking at it now but it looks like it's shot for good and rather than waste anymore time without a comp, I'm looking to buy a new one.

Well, my brother has a relatively new baby and needless to say, he doesn't have time to build a new rig for me so I'm looking at something simple. I went to Best Buy and there were two computers that looked pretty good in the right price range.

My questions are, given these specs, will both of these computers run Going Rogue in Ultra Mode at MORE THAN the minimum specs? I'm not as knowledgeable about computers as I should be, so is there anything I'm overlooking that would prevent me from having a top notch GR experience? I've had an nVidia GeForce card of some variety since I started playing. Are the ATI Radeon cards as good? Better?

Computer 1: (ASUS AMD Phenom II X6 Processor 1035T)

-Windows 7 Home Premium
-8GB DDR3 Memory
-1TB Hard Drive
-ATI Radeon 5750 Graphics with 1GB Dedicated Memory

Computer 2: (HP AMD Phenom II Quad-Core Processor 945)

-Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
-8GB DDR3 Memory
-1TB Hard Drive
-ATI Radeon HD 5450 Series Graphics with 512MB DDR3 Dedicated Graphics Memory

Thanks in advance for any input!

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je_saist · 07-21-2010 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chromium_Man

My questions are, given these specs, will both of these computers run Going Rogue in Ultra Mode at MORE THAN the minimum specs?

Computer 1: (ASUS AMD Phenom II X6 Processor 1035T)

-Windows 7 Home Premium
-8GB DDR3 Memory
-1TB Hard Drive
-ATI Radeon 5750 Graphics with 1GB Dedicated Memory

Yes. this system will run most Ultra Mode options in High, if it not at maximum.

Quote:

Computer 2: (HP AMD Phenom II Quad-Core Processor 945)

-Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
-8GB DDR3 Memory
-1TB Hard Drive
-ATI Radeon HD 5450 Series Graphics with 512MB DDR3 Dedicated Graphics Memory

No. This computer will not run Ultra Mode. The starting point for Ultra-Mode support is really the HD-5750. I've had an HD-5670 through here and it struggled even at low resolutions like 1024*768 with even low Ultra-Mode settings.

Quote:

I'm not as knowledgeable about computers as I should be, so is there anything I'm overlooking that would prevent me from having a top notch GR experience? I've had an nVidia GeForce card of some variety since I started playing. Are the ATI Radeon cards as good? Better?

Depends on you ask. I look at cards based on multiple factors:

Driver Support: Windows and Linux
Product Average Selling Price
Product Quality
Product performance for price

Nvidia, as a company, pretty much hasn't been competitive since July 2008. For the past two years their cards have been way over priced for the amount of performance they offered.

Many Nvidia vendors, and I'm singling out Galaxy, Sparkle, ECS, and Palit since I've actually physically have had their cards in hand, have had to drop product quality to try and be profitable. Things like less mylar layers in the printed circuit board, cheaper capacitors, cheaper fans, no heatsinks on the video memory, and so on.

It's only been in the past couple of weeks that Nvidia has actually put out a graphics chip that vendors have been able to spin into something that's actually worth money, and that's the Geforce GTX 460.

Now, would I still buy one? Oh no. I've still got a long list of other reasons I wouldn't willingly spend money on Nvidia, such as:

Nvidia's 64bit driver support is still way behind AMD's 64bit driver support.
Nvidia still doesn't have any open-source / Linux plans beyond a binary driver
Nvidia's driver quality control still scares the living daylights out of me
Nvidia seems to be dropping or moving away from OpenGL support
The whole mess with disabling Nvidia GPU's leveraged for PhysX if an Nvidia GPU isn't used to render the scene
actively paying developers to sabatoge game-code on non-Nvidia GPU's (Borderlands, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Need For Speed)

I could go on for hours with reasons why I wouldn't, and don't, tell people to buy Nvidia products.

However, there are people out there who have had the exact opposite experience than I've had. There's been people who have had wonderful experiences with Nvidia hardware in gaming environments. There's been people who have had wonderful experiences with ATi hardware in workstation / CAD environments. There are some people that will tell you to buy one vendor or another with no regard as to the price / performance / quality or any other factors outside of the badge on the processor.

Case in point: I couldn't actually tell you the last time I installed a 32bit Nvidia binary driver under Linux and had my games suddenly start dropping textures. I can tell you that depending on the application I used, AMD's Catalyst 10.2, 10.3, and 10.5 drivers either worked flawlessly, or I had more graphics errors than Nvidia 64bit drivers. If I confined my experience with Nvidia to 32bit installations, Nvidia would seem like a better, more stable, and reliable choice

On the other hand, I couldn't tell you the last time that AMD released a driver that could physically burn my graphics card out and electrically destroy my computer. I can tell you that Nvidia just did that a couple months ago. So, if I confined my experience with each vendor to that alone, I could reasonably conclude that Nvidia was incompetent and dangerous.

A lot of what your experience with the hardware will be comes down to what you actually do with the computer. My opinion is that right now AMD offers better driver quality, better performance for price, and better physical build quality, across a wider range of cards, and across a wider range of vendors, than Nvidia.

Does that make AMD better? Well, to me it does.

If your not me, that might not make AMD a better choice.

Hyperstrike · 07-21-2010 12:29 PM

Okay, what you see from Je Saist is an example of personal bias.
Yes, very well supported personal bias. But personal bias nonetheless.

So here's a bit of personal bias on my part.

Honestly, I've gone with nothing but nVidia in my gaming systems for most of a decade now.

I've had exactly TWO problems that weren't fixable. Mainly because the board that I was using at the time was a bench-tester board with an older rev of the chip than was actually pushed to market.

This is not to say I haven't built systems with ATI cards in them.
Yes, ATI HAS gotten better. But they're still, by no means, flawless.

Moreover, just like nVidia, they have some less than stellar boardmakers.

As she noted, Galaxy, Sparkle, ECS, and Palit. All of these companies are essentially bottom feeders. Cutting corners and competing on price alone.

ATI has their share of bottom feeders too. Jaton, HIS, and PowerColor.
Diamond isn't exactly a great boardmaker (and hasn't been in almost 20 years). PowerColor is hit-or miss. VisionTek is a disgruntled ex-nVidia partner who screwed themselves over by bringing in an investor-suggested management group during a major business model change from a domestic supplier and support company to an outsources support and production company. Essentially they're a brand name now. Sapphire, in my experience, hasn't been bad at all (though that accounts for about 3 Sapphire cards total).

Gigabyte's boards are pedestrian, but stable, as are Asus. But both of them have nVidia product offerings too. XFX is a decent production house from my experience too.

Linux openness arguments I'm not going to touch. This is why I have Wintendo.

If this box is primarily for CoH, I wouldn't worry too much about nVidia or ATI. Either should do quite nicely for you.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Father Xmas · 07-21-2010 12:51 PM

From a video card standpoint, the first system hands down.

However the CPU, while six cores, is slower at 2.6GHz than the quad core at 3.0GHz. Since this game doesn't take any significant advantage of more than two cores and few in any game more than four, the hex core CPUs from either AMD or Intel (which are outrageously expensive) is overkill for gaming. But that fact and clock speed difference is a distance second compared to the strength of the two video cards as the HD 5750 is roughly 5-6x times faster than an HD 5450 in gaming.

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Hyperstrike · 07-21-2010 09:34 PM

Also, while you're looking, you may want to look at the iBuyPower systems they're selling too. IBP is a decent system builder and I've gotten a chance to work with some of their systems in the past.

Here's something in the same price range as the other systems you were looking at.

iBUYPOWER Gamer Extreme 552SLC Phenom II X4 965(3.4GHz) 4GB DDR3 750GB ATI Radeon HD 5770 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Pertinent bits:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
4GB DDR3 1600 (Memory upgrades are DIRT CHEAP)
750GB HD
AMD Phenom II X4 3.4Ghz
ATI Radeon 5770

So, while it's a step down in amount of RAM, it's a BIG step up in clock-speed for the CPU and a small step up from the video card.

Reasons (No particular order):

$50 mail in rebate (bringing price down, eventually, to $910).
Memory upgrades are cheap. 4GB of comparable memory is between $95-$120.
The MIR can be put towards the price of a memory upgrade.
While the slightly smaller drive IS a tradeoff, it's not a huge one.
While you're getting 2 fewer cores, you wouldn't be using those cores for most of your gaming. EVER. Whereas the 30% higher clockspeed will always be useful.
You're taking small hits on less useful amenities to come away with more overall power and performance.
The IBP cases are regular, 3rd party commodity cases. They're quite roomy and expandable.
Better vidcard. While it's not a 58** series, it's a VERY good card.

Of course, if you want to chuck another $100 at it, the system above has a slightly upscale brother. CPU scales back slightly, but vidcard bumps to a 5830 and you get a Solid State Drive on top of the 750GB disk.

I probably wouldn't. The 5770 is fine, I'd rather have the few extra clock cycles, and I could always add an SSD in myself later.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

je_saist · 07-21-2010 10:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike

Sapphire, in my experience, hasn't been bad at all (though that accounts for about 3 Sapphire cards total).

*coughs*

Sapphire = ATi

ATi used to produce their own graphics cards back in the days of the Rage 128. In 2001 ATi adopted a business strategy where Original Equipment Manufacturers and Add-in-board partners could produce Radeon branded hardware. ATi's manufacturing partner for ATi branded hardware was Sapphire. Sapphire also continues to manufacture AMD branded Radeon cards for demonstration purposes, and provided the cards for the Class-Action HMDI settlement.

So, if you buy a Sapphire, you basically buy what is the ATi reference card. Unfortunately, reference cards may, or may not, actually be as good as you'd want them be. Case in point for me, I've got a couple of Sapphire HD4850's. The fans on them are LOUD, as in you know the fans have been turned on.

The tight relationship between AMD and Sapphire means that you generally won't get a "bad card" ... say something like a Diamond Multimedia card that will leave you wondering if it's actually a good idea to even power it up... but you can do better.