What's Your Dream Machine for AH?

[Stiletto]

If money were no object, and you could build any sort of computer you wanted for optimal AH play, what would it be?

Stil

[Raubvogel]

It would probably be the one I have sitting under my desk right now  

[xanax]

Heya, Stil@! Haven't seen ya since yer Con back in 98.

 I'd say one of them Athlon XP chips with one of those new DDR motherboards lit up with one of those G-force 3 vid cards. I'd also throw in a nice 19" or 21" monitor. I'd run it all with Win 2000 or maybe XP....But that's just me. I'm sure someone will point out the benefits of P4's,other rigs and Win98 as well.

 I guess the old "go with the most proccessor,ram and HDD you can afford" still stands.

 I prefer to throw 'em together myself....saves money and you get exactly what you want. And it's actually even pretty easy-even I can do it. My hands are like a bull in a china shop, but they do the job.

 Good luck and have fun with whatever contraption you decide.

[Raubvogel]

Here's what I'm running now:
----------------------------
Athlon 1.4ghz/266 FSB
Asus A7A266
512mb PC2100 DDR RAM
40GB IBM 60GXP HD
Gainward GF3 oc'ed@ 240 core/520 mem
SB Live! X-gamer 5.1
Cambridge FPS1800 surround speakers
generic 52x CD-ROM
Sony 8/4/32 CD-RW
19 inch El Cheapo™ monitor  
---------------------------------
I run AH at 1600x1200 in 32 bit and average about 50-60 FPS. It slows down to about 30 in dense smoke. It can run any game I've tried at 1600x1200 and still look smooth. It bogs down if you turn anti-aliasing on, but if you run games at 1600 you don't really need anti-aliasing. I'm looking forward to seeing some dx8 features in AH, I bet it can look even better than it already does.

[Stiletto]

Hey Xanax! Great to see you here. We (Tigers) held out in AW as long as we could, trying to support the community, but one day, we logged on and, lo! We WERE the community.  

I hear ya about buying the most you can afford, but that's not my issue at the moment. The real issue is in choosing the right components. I can buy whatever I want (business is good), but I'm hearing that there are some chipsets that suck in AH, for example, even though they'll knock your sox off in other games.

I love these Boards! Great community here - I've missed it.      

[Stiletto]

Hail Raubvogel!

Sounds like an awesome system. Did you have to upgrade the power supply and add more cooling? One other thing I'm curious about:

Did you put this package together after you had been flying AH a while?

If so, did you see any change at all in your ability to keep your sites on a moving target? I ask this because we have 2 systems at home: One brand new, the other a year-old 800. The new system has virtually no nose bounce, while the old is all over the screen, even with exactly the same stick/slider setup.

Thanks!

Stil  

[Raubvogel]

I bought a new Antec server case that came with a 300w power supply. It has bays for 2 intake and 2 exhaust 80mm fans, so it's very well cooled.

Yes, I bought this after I had been playing AH for a while. My old system was a 1ghz Athlon with a GF2 GTS. It ran AH fine until you got in the middle of smoking hangars with lots of cons...then it would slow down to 5-6 FPS. I wanted a machine that would run nice and smooth no matter what the game throws at it. And yes, I have noticed that my plane just seems more stable with higher FPS. I also noticed that if you select to limit the FPS to 60 or 45 instead of Unlimited that it seems more stable with less nose bounce.

[Stiletto]

Ahhh...

Very interesting! I'll try the FP limiter and see what happens. As for cooling, I'm starting to suspect that it may play a bigger factor in game performance than people might realize.

Consider: Even if you pay 2 or 3 grand for a "ready to fly" system (like a Dell, for example), they still give you cheap little $10 fans. So, you take the thing out of the box, plug everything in and fire it up, and voila! Awesome performance.

Then, you put the thing under your table top, where the intake vents are next to the floor. Unless you're anal retentive about tidiness, in no time at all, your vents have dust and lint around them, choking air flow, and eventually, one of your fans goes belly up. But you don't realize it, of course, because the danged things are so quiet.

One day, you get this nagging feeling that your system isn't acting like it did out of the box, but you figure, "Jeez, I must have a huge ton o' crap on my hard drive," (you do) and maybe I should defrag this beast." (You haven't.)  So, you start screwing around with the thing, and maybe get some minor improvements, so you figure that's what it was. Truth is, you don't remember how it was when it was new, because that was then and this is now.

Then you go to the message boards, and everybody's talking about the fastest computers in the universe, and you think, "That's what I need: a new computer!"

Maybe what you need is a $10 fan. LOL

 

Stil

[bloom25]

If money were no object I'd get a Tyan Thunder (Dual Athlon) board and put two Athlon XP 1900+ in it with 1.5 Gigs of RAM.  Multiple SCSI harddrives, GeForce 3 Titanium 500 video card, Windows 2000 SP 2.

Since that system could top 3 Grand pretty easy a more practical (but still tops in performance) would be to get an Athlon XP 1900+ CPU and put it into either a VIA KT266a based board or even a little better - one of the new nForce based motherboards (not likely available just yet).  Add plenty of RAM (512 Mb is plenty) of CAS 2 PC 2100 DDR ram and a GF 3 video card ( or if ATI manages to make a good set of drivers for it - Radeon 8500 ) and an IBM 60GXP series large capacity harddrive and you'd have a very fast system.

Personally though I don't know if I'd spend that much cash for a system when you can build one for much less money that will perform within 5 - 10% of the absolute top of the line.  The best value right now IMO would be an Athlon XP 1600+ on a KT266a (must have the "a"!!! EXTREMELY IMPORTANT) based motherboard. Add a GF 3 Ti 500 and 512 Mb of PC 2100 DDR RAM (CAS 2 best) and it would still be very, very fast.

If you want top performance definately do NOT get some of these cheap P4s with SDRAM in them.  They will perform terribly! Even the P4 2 GHz with i850 and Rambus PC800 is no match for the Athlon XP 1800+ or 1900+.  Everybody should look at www.anandtech.com  and/or www.tomshardware.com  for fair benchmarks comparing the two.

NO MATTER WHAT - do not buy a name brand computer.  EVERY namebrand computer I've seen recently has corners cut to save money.  Either do it yourself or have a local computer store do it for you.

[Lephturn]

The big upgrade that I can't afford is a stupidly huge high quality monitor.  You know, like a 26" beast that would cost like 5k or more.  If money was no object, I'd have me one of those.

I'm still waiting for a video card that can do 1600x1200, 4x FSAA (good quality FSAA, not that crappy hack nVidia uses) and still maintain 60 FPS with all options maxed out.  Maybe when the GeForce 5 comes out.  

I still mourn the death of 3DFX.  Although nVidia is starting to look like they may have the power to do this down the road, I still don't like the quality of the image they put out compared to my V5.  I haven't had the chance to compare the GF3 side by side, but I wouldn't trade my V5 5500 for a GeForce 2 Ultra if you gave it to me for free.  If only 3DFX had managed to get the V5 6000 out the door before they crumbled, I would have had one of those bad boys.

[Toad]

Hey Bloom!


I goofed up! Ordered before I read your post. I have an Asus A7V266 KT266 MB on the way with an Athhlon XP 1600.

Didn't realize I should get the A7V266-E  KT266A board. It hasn't arrived yet so I can probably RMA it and reorder the -E.

Here's the question. The -E is going to cost me about another $45 and a 10 day delay.

Is it worth it? What's the big difference in end user AH performance?

Thanks in advance!

[bloom25]

The KT266a chipset is about 10 - 15% more powerful than the regular kt266 from the benchmarks I've seen.  (I haven't personally used an "a" yet though.)  Will you notice a difference in AH, probably not, since the video card is going to be the limiting factor for sure.  If it were me I'd probably try to get the -E anyway though.  

[Karnak]

My current system with a LeadTek GeForce 3 Ti 500 in it.

My current system:

Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53Ghz
Abit K7A motherboard (AMD 761 Northbridge)
512mb PC2100
LeadTek GeForce 2 GTS
Soundblaster Live! Platinum 5.1
Tekram DC-390U2B/W Wide SCSI 3
WindowsXP Professional