Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
Yes, flip that sucker over, as it stands the power supply is sucking in hot air from inside the case, it isn't going to cool very well like that.
Desktop Computers
- Thread starter brekk
- Start date
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,278
- 4,034
Yea, PSU is definitely upside down. Those holes in the bottom of the case under the PSU are meant for the unit to draw in cool air externally, not hot air from within the case.
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,278
- 4,034
Back in 2005 / 2006, AMD cpus were not only cheaper, but superior to the Intel chips for gaming. AMD's Athlon 64 chips were what really turned it around for the company, but late 2006 Intel released the Core 2 Duo and have held the performance crown by quite a margin since then. It would be nice if AMD created another contender because it is we, the customers, who benefit from it. As it stands, Intel can just trickle out minor performance bumps at their own pace because they are so far ahead of the game.
IIRC, AMD keeps in the green on competitive server CPU pricing.
Problem was AMD priced their cpu's extremely high. If I remember correctly, I bought the dual core 64 bit high end chip for $800.
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,278
- 4,034
They werent any different than Intel. Intel had their "Extreme Edition" CPUs and AMD had their Athlon 64 "FX" lineup. I remember shelling out for a FX-60 back then as well. Athlon 64 was their mainstream chips.
Right, but its not like they were always super cheap, just no one is willing to pay for one. SO just because you root for AMD and hope to get a faster chip doesn't mean it will be priced low. They'll price it for what they can get for it. So really, they're no different in intel other than they cant seem to make a competitive chip.
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 6,278
- 4,034
I think you are missing my point. I have no brand loyalty at all and I go where the performance is. I have had AMD and Intel, ATI and nVidia, Seagate and Western Digital, an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy, etc. My point was that if AMD made chips that rivaled the performance of Intel's offerings (regardless of price point), it would influence better technology overall from the competing companies. When AMD took that gaming performance crown in 2005-2006, Intel came back with a monumental leap in performance with C2D.
TLDR: I'd just like to see more competition to spur more development.
TLDR: I'd just like to see more competition to spur more development.
Oh I was just providing more insight, not related to what you said. I agree, but there isn't really a chance for competition. Intel has the best fabs. SO even if AMD designed a better chip, they couldn't make it. They're behind a few die shrinks. I dunno how much it costs to make a fab plant, but they if they want to be real competition, they need to un-hog tie themselves from being generations behind.
But it may be too late, as desktop sales are abysmal, everyone is going mobile or server. Atleast, that is how it seems.
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
Yeah at this point, AMD just might not give a crap. I have to assume the ATI branch of the company is still quite profitable, and their new deals with Sony and Microsoft making the innards for the XB1 and PS4 were probably pretty lucrative as well. They might very well just concede the desktop CPU market, it would cost them too much to catch up to intel at this point, and they'd be chasing the leader of a shrinking market anyways, not sure you invest heavily into that when you have other areas of your company that are doing quite well that you could focus on.
So, do you guys think that the new consoles releasing will cause a huge spec bump in PC gaming? I'm afraid that I'll buy this computer, and then suddenly it won't be able to run shit in about 3 years. This has happened to me before, where specs just kind of blew up from like, 256 megs of RAM on your video card, to a gig and higher really fast.
Was retarded.
Was retarded.
gogusrl
Molten Core Raider
- 1,359
- 102
Unless you're ready to wait another year or two before upgrading, yeah, that's pretty much what's gonna happen. I also think there's shift towards 2560x1440 as the new "standard" resolution for gaming monitors as they are getting cheaper and more ubiquitous.
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
There is no "best" time to upgrade. Spend $1000 on building a gaming PC, and it should last you a solid 2 years. At that point you might only need a video card upgrade to make it another year or two. Than at that point, you rebuild. Maybe you can eek out another year or so with a 2nd video card upgrade, but you'll really be pushing it using the same CPU for 5-6 years, that's about as long as you can reasonably expect to get by on a CPU without being horribly bottlenecked.
You can't spend enough money today to where you can be gaming in 5 years on the same hardware(at least not state of the art games) It's just the way it works. Fortunately in recent years, the need to upgrade the complicated stuff (motherboard/CPU) has really slowed down, and you can usually buy yourself more time with just occasional video card upgrades.
So bottom line, if you want to game now, build now. Waiting a year will only buy you another year on the backend, there is no holy grail of PC hardware coming down the pipe that will have you set for 5+ years. It's never happened before in PC gaming, and I don't see it happening in the future.
I always take the route of spending less money on more frequent upgrades. Build a decent PC for $800-$1200, and plan on having to plunk down another $200-$300 on a new video card every 18 months to 2 years. That method will get a lot more bang for your buck than trying to spend $3000 on a PC now that may only last you 1 year longer than that $1200 build.
You can't spend enough money today to where you can be gaming in 5 years on the same hardware(at least not state of the art games) It's just the way it works. Fortunately in recent years, the need to upgrade the complicated stuff (motherboard/CPU) has really slowed down, and you can usually buy yourself more time with just occasional video card upgrades.
So bottom line, if you want to game now, build now. Waiting a year will only buy you another year on the backend, there is no holy grail of PC hardware coming down the pipe that will have you set for 5+ years. It's never happened before in PC gaming, and I don't see it happening in the future.
I always take the route of spending less money on more frequent upgrades. Build a decent PC for $800-$1200, and plan on having to plunk down another $200-$300 on a new video card every 18 months to 2 years. That method will get a lot more bang for your buck than trying to spend $3000 on a PC now that may only last you 1 year longer than that $1200 build.
- 25,424
- 37,545
Just stop dude. When will it be the best time? In 10 yrs. Fuck. Nothing you buy today or tomorrow or a year from now will be shielded from obsolescence. Quit being a pussy and pull the trigger. The rig you build will last you for years. And all you will have to do is upgrade your video card in a year or two. Also the shift to 2560x1440 has got nothing to do with the core of your system and again is all about the GPU. So yeah, you will have to upgrade your video card in the future, welcome to PC gaming.
Also this is why you buy the best bang for your buck, not the high end or the low end. Its the fucktards that spend $3000 for a rig that are the dumbasses. you spend $800-$900 now with an GPU upgrade in a year or two and you are golden for 4.
To be fair, my paranoia comes from the fact that like, a year or so after I got my PC, dual-core processors (and higher) started coming out, along with a new version of Direct X that I immediately couldn't even get on my PC a year later.
It was just like, a major architecture change happened in a year. I think I had probably picked the absolute WORST time to buy a new PC back then. So that paranoia follows me still.
It was just like, a major architecture change happened in a year. I think I had probably picked the absolute WORST time to buy a new PC back then. So that paranoia follows me still.
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
Back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, processor technology moved forward a LOT faster than it does today. Moving from 386s to 486s to pentiums, to pentiums with MMX, all that crap back then that made people have to upgrade to entirely new machines every couple of years. Now, the bleeding edge of technology is more in the video card realm, those still move forward FAST, with a new generation with significant upgrades coming every year, but it's a hell of a lot easier to just slap a new video card into your machine every other year to keep up than have to build an entirely new PC because your CPU is outdated and your motherboard isn't compatible with new ones, like back in the day. Hell, the Intel i7 has basically been the best all-around desktop processor for about 5 years now. Sure there have been multiple versions and revisions, but it's still an i7. I don't ever remember a processor generation lasting that long at the top of the heap in the history of PC gaming. I have friends plugging right along doing high-end gaming with their i7 systems built 4-5 years ago, just with new video cards now.
And as to the worries that the new consoles will push PCs forward quicker for a little while...I just don't see it. I can't remember a console generation since the dawn of 3D accelerated graphics(around PS1 launch) that is already so far behind the curve compared to a PC at the launch of the console life cycle. These new consoles are high-end PCs from like 3 years ago. They are currently mid to low-range PCs, so there's already no need for any catch-up in the PC world, we're already significantly ahead of the new consoles.
I think the area to keep an eye on will be mobile technology...that could push drastic changes to the PC gaming market. We could see a big push towards touch-screen monitors over the next few years, and definitely a push towards higher than 1080p resolutions becoming the norm. I'm not going to do the math, but PC monitors in general are woefully behind the top-end mobile devices in PPI. 1920x1080 looks friggin amazing on a 7" tablet, not so much on a 24" monitor. 1440p is just the first step, I think we'll see a real push towards 4K gaming on computers during this next console generation(next 5+ years)
And as to the worries that the new consoles will push PCs forward quicker for a little while...I just don't see it. I can't remember a console generation since the dawn of 3D accelerated graphics(around PS1 launch) that is already so far behind the curve compared to a PC at the launch of the console life cycle. These new consoles are high-end PCs from like 3 years ago. They are currently mid to low-range PCs, so there's already no need for any catch-up in the PC world, we're already significantly ahead of the new consoles.
I think the area to keep an eye on will be mobile technology...that could push drastic changes to the PC gaming market. We could see a big push towards touch-screen monitors over the next few years, and definitely a push towards higher than 1080p resolutions becoming the norm. I'm not going to do the math, but PC monitors in general are woefully behind the top-end mobile devices in PPI. 1920x1080 looks friggin amazing on a 7" tablet, not so much on a 24" monitor. 1440p is just the first step, I think we'll see a real push towards 4K gaming on computers during this next console generation(next 5+ years)
- 25,424
- 37,545
Well they are not going to change like that anytime soon. They have been increasing power by about 10%-15% every generation since the inception of the new quad cores. They have been really trying to buff up and shine their on board video and decreasing power requirements more than anything. They are really focusing in trying to infiltrate the mobile market more than anything.
Do what you want, dude. I think you should wait a few years, see how it plays out... (<--- That was sarcasm, if you didnt figure it out.)
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
- 8,157
- 140
Yeah, it seems like the current trend in processor technology is towards maintaining the same power(roughly, maybe marginal gains), while decreasing power consumption, rather than really pushing the power envelope. Hell, I'm sitting here with a quad-core processor and when I'm gaming it's using like 70% of one of the cores. Current processors aren't even close to being fully utilized in gaming, so I guess Intel is happy to stand mostly pat and really focus on power consumption reduction.
I've never been much for having the best resolutions, I just want to be able to play my game at whatever resolution (a decent resolution, but nothing crazy) at a good frames per second. I'm not really after turning everything up to max all the time.