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MrHoatzin

My graphics card has kicked the proverbial

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Can't you just sum it up in a few words? :\

Intel dun put DRM onto their chippies, it makes movieland peoples happy becos they're filmies won't get Long John Silvered easily when wacted on teh interwebs. Auch if compy gets stoled then it can be stopped like a fone can be.

Artists interpretation:

sandybridge.png

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Intel dun put DRM onto their chippies, it makes movieland peoples happy becos they're filmies won't get Long John Silvered easily when wacted on teh interwebs. Auch if compy gets stoled then it can be stopped like a fone can be.

I see. So why tell Kingz to wait until this technology had been implemented before buying a new machine?

Don't get an iMac until they upgrade to sandybridge, which is rumoured to be in a month or so.

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I see. So why tell Kingz to wait until this technology had been implemented before buying a new machine?

Because the machine would be more powerful, or he can get a previous generation model for a substantial discount.

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I'd imagine Sandy Bridges being quite a bit faster than the current ones.

Edit: beaten.

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I'll sum it up a bit. Sandy Bridge eliminates something known in computer architecture as the Northbridge. This component was previously separate from the CPU and controlled communications between the CPU and RAM/GPU. In order to decrease the latency between these components and increase performance, the latest generation of processors in Sandy Bridge architecture and AMD's Fusion series integrate the Northbridge into the CPU.

In both cases, integrated GPUs are placed on the same die as the CPU, increasing native graphics performance to support 1080p video and hardware acceleration.

Long story short, Sandy Bridge/Fusion has about a 20% performance advantage on top of the previous generation of processors. Furthermore, the higher graphics performance means that video processing can be relegated to the integrated GPU rather than a discrete GPU in lower level functions, which in turn leads to more spartan power consumption.

I hope that sums things up, as the DRM aspect of the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture is probably the least interesting and affecting aspect of the whole ordeal.

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Oh hey, can i jack this thread for my own problems?

The computer i have now is... seven... seven years old. It is too old. It is also dying, it has cancer, very sad. Now... I used to be fairly savvy with this stuff? Kind of, i guess? I used to always build my own gaming PC's and stuff, and when i built this PC, it was very top-end and future proofed. It only really started topping out at Crysis, and since everything after that took several steps back, it was fine for a long time. This thing is failing though, slowly and surely. And... I find that i have no idea what kind of computer i should be building now. All my savvy has left me, i'm completely lost, too many console games in the interim. I keep putting it off, but i desperately need to build a new PC.

So basically - I'm looking at building a mid-range low-cost PC.

Heeeeeeeeelp. ;(

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Oh hey, can i jack this thread for my own problems?

The computer i have now is... seven... seven years old. It is too old. It is also dying, it has cancer, very sad. Now... I used to be fairly savvy with this stuff? Kind of, i guess? I used to always build my own gaming PC's and stuff, and when i built this PC, it was very top-end and future proofed. It only really started topping out at Crysis, and since everything after that took several steps back, it was fine for a long time. This thing is failing though, slowly and surely. And... I find that i have no idea what kind of computer i should be building now. All my savvy has left me, i'm completely lost, too many console games in the interim. I keep putting it off, but i desperately need to build a new PC.

So basically - I'm looking at building a mid-range low-cost PC.

Heeeeeeeeelp. ;(

Firstly where do you live, and what's your budget?

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Hailing from Canada, and i'd like to keep it closer to 500, but hopefully no more than a thousand. I understand a really solid 500 dollar rig shoould be fairly feasible with the current market? (Which feels crazy to me.)

I want to go from the ground up, all this stuff is too old to salvage now.

I'd also like to stick with AMD and Nvidia parts, just more familiar territory to me. (Which is to say, that was my last build.)

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Hailing from Canada, and i'd like to keep it closer to 500, but hopefully no more than a thousand. I understand a really solid 500 dollar rig shoould be fairly feasible with the current market? (Which feels crazy to me.)

I want to go from the ground up, all this stuff is too old to salvage now.

I'd also like to stick with AMD and Nvidia parts, just more familiar territory to me. (Which is to say, that was my last build.)

For a fairly cheap AMD Nvidia build, I'd suggest an AMD Phenom II 955 and an Nvidia 460, I don't know about the Canadian prices, it seems as if you can get below $700 with this build.

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I've been working on a pretty budget build, so I can fairly easily think up one... I'll update this post as I research.

$134 - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ955FBGMBOX

$70 - MSI 870-G45 AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

$70 minus $20 USD rebate - OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ500MXSP 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply compatible with core i7

$40 - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9S-4GBRL

$129 minus $10 promo code minus $30 rebate - HIS H577FK1GD Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ Eyefinity

$50 - Rosewill Blackbone Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

$22 - ASUS Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM

$58 - Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB 5400 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

So, some of those parts obviously have some room to be changed, like switching in a Samsung Spinpoint F3 for the Caviar Green HDD for higher performance or downgrading the Radeon 5770 for a GTX 450 if you don't need multimonitor/high resolution gameplay. Also, I didn't factor in shipping, but then again I didn't factor in shopping at local outlets and hunting down any deals. That build adds up to about $525 and will be able to handle any game you throw at it.

As Thompson said, you can also swap in parts from your old computer, though I'd recommend getting a new hard drive and power supply as those parts don't survive so well over the years. I didn't throw in the cost of an OS, as that can vary based on what you want to get/what you care to settle with/how you can get it. Anyways, hope this helped a little.

Edited by JonCole

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Spent about $AUD1100 getting this:

GIGABYTE 560 TI SOC (SOC = Super Overclock)

Intel Core i7 960

ASUS Rampage III Motherboard

Corsair Vengeance 8GB Dual Channel DDR3

Keeping the same hard drives, monitors, mouse (I got a new one recently anyway), keyboard, case and PSU which saves a load of money.

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Just picked up a 460 GTX SE after my 8800 GTX decided to vomit rainbow colors all over my screen. Problem is, games are running like shit - all games. I've got the latest driver, and I've reinstalled it several times, but it hasn't fixed anything.

All I've done is put it in, install the latest drivers and install some Direct X stuff off the disc that came with it.

Any help is appreciated.

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To hijack again here, I recently bought an AMD video card with a Best Buy gift certificate I was saving to use when the price was right, but they Catalyst Control System does not work!

I'm on XP and I did have CCC working for my previous crappy onboard video card, but I installed a newer version for this card which just has CCC.exe shown running in the Task Manager for about 20 seconds and then ending. I just simply cannot get the program to load. The video card works fine however, and certain 3D games that were slow now work like a charm.

I've looked around multiple forums and tried many different ideas, but no help. I just gave up because the card works anyway, but would like to be able to adjust things like the anti-aliasing if possible.

Maybe is there an alternative program I can use?

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Uninstall it and reinstall it? AA and AF are often in game options, which are preferable to doing it on the GPU.

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Yeah I've uninstalled and reinstalled, both the older version that were on the disc that came with the card and the newest version on the AMD site.

There was another thread I had found online that had me download multiple programs, reboot in safe mode, and clean all remnants of Catalyst Control and AMD products from my hard drive and registry, but upon reinstalling the program yet again, same thing.

I somehow suspect maybe it's because I'm still on XP and the compatability with that version of Windows now sucks.

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There's also a little util called cat-uninstaller.exe from ATI - doesn't work on Vista/7, but will on XP.

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An update on mine:

Turns out the card was faulty, so I returned it. Turns out it was for the best since I accidentally ordered the GTX 460 SE (aka Slow Edition). Basically it offers more GRAM at a lower price but at the loss of a lot of other functionality. Amazon return went through today, so I ordered a new Superclocked 460 with a lifetime warranty.

If you're looking for a cheap card, the 460s are dropping in price rapidly (on the US Amazon store at least). The SE I ordered last week dropped $15 since I ordered it, and they all have rebates on them. I went ahead and decided the lifetime warranty with EVGA was worth another $30-40.

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