A week ago my Vaio FZ1 gave up the ghost. It was a decent desktop replacement (1080p screen, GeForce 8400M GT, 2 gig) despite hateful build quality and reliability. The GPU fried (just like my last vaio, why are Sony's soooo poorly cooled??) and despite knowing how I can't be bothered to try a reflow because I work with computers all day and can't be bothered with the excessive effort only for it to fail weeks later. At work I get to play with the newest server tech but shamefully my home rigs have always been ghetto builds, like parodies of the rat bikes in road rash!. So I've managed to get my grubby hands on an Intel core 2 quad Q6600 x64 2.4 Ghz with 8GB of ram sitting on a Gigabyte board and a GeForce 7800 GTX GPU, going to run Win 7 x64 as my M$ OS. So my question is - anyone got a similar rig? what do you find are good settings and what kind of performance should I expect? I wanna dive right in and enjoy and not spend an hour setting it up if I can avoid it. Also, how big is too big for a screen? I know we got some pro gamers up in here and I guess there is an optimal size to play FPS on? I have a choice of 18" LCD, 30" 1080p LED or 1080p 42" LCD. Eitherway I have to move a bunch of stuff and tear up cable tidy, etc so I'd rather not just give it a go by trial and error! Considering I've been playing with ~60fps at best on a laptop for the past year I'm hoping for a marked improvement in FPS and resolution (I've only seen Empires at 1024 and low settings)
18" is too small. For a desk, 30" and 42" are too big. I have a 26" right now, took a while to get used to how big it is for a monitor, coming from a 21", but after that, it's been a real joy having a big monitor. However, I would never try playing on our 42" tv, for 2 reasons, up close its far too big, and from a distance I can't see small details as well as sitting up close. The 20-26 inch range monitors is probably the most suitable for gaming, but thats just personal preference. About your specs, they sound fine, I'd probably oc your cpu, and maybe see if you can get some better cooling for your geforce. Other than that, perfectly good for 1920 res.
A 7800GTX is gonna struggle 1920. I'm not sure -- it should have 512Mb RAM, right? At the very least that's what it's going to need. You might be able to get the res up to 1680x1050, but if you want high resolutions your card is going to suffocate; it's just too old. A Q6600 will OC like a champ -- do it.
Thanks Dizzyone, I guess I'll settle on the 30" for now and wait out for a good deal on something a little smaller, maybe see if a friend wants to swap. I'll raid the parts bin and see if I can find some cooling that won't make it sound like a 747 and then try OC on it. ALmost finished downloading Steampires so looking forward to the first round, I can't imagine what it will be like when the vehicle customisation menu doesn't fill the entire screen!
The GPU sounds like the weakest point of your build. You could get a 5770 or 6790 for around 100 euro. I'm not very uptodate on hardware anymore though.
Yeah its got 512, now I've finally dragged myself into this decade I may well go the whole hog and get a new GPU too, the 7800 can find a place on my media PC if/when I get around to building that. Any suggestions on what to stick in my pciex16? I'm not looking to spend much more than say £300 / $500 And regards the OC, I'll get right on it! (so some time next month prolly!)
Thats a lot less than I was expecting, I'll check it out - I've no idea about desktop hardware these day & I haven't bought anything for like 10 years so I'm pretty out of touch on prices too. Bonus - I'll spend the rest on beer!
What stepping is the Q6600? A G0 basically overclocks itself to 3.0GHz (333x9). It's a wonderful chip. If you have a G0, you have the first consumer-priced quad core CPU to hit the market, a sentimental gem by our modern tech-disposing standards. I almost got one myself, but decided to go for an E8400 instead. It does 400x9 like a champ. it. For the GPU, stick with the 18" monitor. It's probably a good (low) resolution for Empires on that (shitty) 7800GTX. If you want to upgrade, wait a while. The 6850s and similar ~$180 cards have been sporadically dropping super low ($130). It would be a shame to see you get a lame card like the 5770 (or it's newer and equally lame cousin, the 6790) or 550. BTW-What was nVidia smoking when they put "Ti" after all their new mid-range cards? I swear to god, these companies get reasonable naming systems and then they just do their damnedest to fuck them from here to New Hampshire.
