Halo 1 & 2 for PC
This topic has moved here: Subject: Performance and you- how to know what to buy to get good PC perform...
  • Subject: Performance and you- how to know what to buy to get good PC perform...
Subject: Performance and you- how to know what to buy to get good PC perform...
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This Post is going on most game forums that have people I think Should know about
the main question most pc gamers i know and see complain in forums is why the pc they have doesnt run games good despite having just purchased it.
all the information i got is true from experiance and smarts (and from www.tomshardware.com)<guys who benchmark EVERYTHING
ok. lets begin
1)obvious-CPU ok the CPU is probibly the hardest thing to figure out what company to buy from but according to severe benchmarking pentium performs better than AMD in a marginal area and that is video editing and convertions and compresions and decompresions (so if you are into 2D rendering editing and covertions and other office stuff than pentiums are 4u)
HOWEVER if you are useing your computer for gaming then you should go with AMD which outperforms Pentium in 3D rendering and other high end graphics processing
2)crittical-PC manufacturer yes who you buy your PC is vital to how you are going to play games. HP,Dell,and,Gateway-so far i have not seen much if any pc that those ppl sell have enough off shelf power to start playing games they are usually slow and the fact that they cut corners doesnt help (some are even unupgradeable) and are still charging a hefty sum for high perfomace PC lineups
the other guys: alienware,eMachines, and Apple(Yes Apple its still a Personal Computer!)
ok alienware is the BEST PC windows manufacturer for off the "shelf" performace-if you can dish out the cash-they are large cases and have high performance parts inside and are customizable from the ground up.
now the OTHER white meat Apple-again if you can dish out the cash- Apple currently is full 64-bit CPU ready and is great for gaming once someone acually comes out with a 64-bit game and has a pc with duel 64-bit processors 2.0gh (note that amd has a 3200+ which clock speed is 2.0GH so thats not slow) the pc is the G5(most expensive model ranging from 1400so$-15000$ depending if you get all 8gigs of ram and 3 21' cinema display monitors) mac my not have to many games out but the MOST popular ones make it there like UT2003-2004-UT2-maxpayne-the beloved Halo-and a few others one note about mac os the os its self is Very Stable owning an iBook i know since 2003 and the os hasent crashed on me once not requireing any 3rd party software to keep the os up and running -like norton utillities- but still safe to get antivirus protection
ok the 3rd guy eMachinesare best for buying the high performace models at a cheap price mine at 700so$(best time to buy is near or after christmas when the have s=a special limited computer out) after buing the eMachines its usually best to upgrade the 3dcard (described next) to enhance performance but the chipset is solid and the HD has a good amount of memory
my specs as i know them:
HD 120G
Ram 512 333mhz Two 184-pin DDR DIMM sockets for 64-bit, Unbuffered, Single/
Double-side and Non-ECC DDR-200/266/333/400 DIMMs
 Supports 128-bit dual channel memory architecture
 Supports up to 2 GB memory size
 Supports complete FSB/Memory and FSB/AGP Asynchronous
scheme for over-clocking
(exerpt from manual)
CPU socket and CPU AMD 2800+
Processor Supported
Supports 462-pin SocketA for AMD Athlon XP and Duron processors with
200/266/333MHz Front Side Bus
- Athlon XP (1500+ to 2800+) @ 266/333MHz Front Side Bus,
- Duron (800 to 1.3GHz) @ 200MHz Front Side Bus
(another exerpt)
chipset(why i upgraded my 3d card will explain later) Chipset
nVIDIA Crush 18G +MCP AGPset AGP at 8x 3 PCI slots
also has serial ATA sockets
ok that was MY computer moving on
3D card- he heart of a gaming pc- despite what they say Nvidia is NOT the way its ment to be played due to the following specs
i have an ATI radeon 9600XT
ATI's out perform ALL Nvidia cards when the stakes are up ATI vpu handels Anti-Aliasing and Anosotropic filtering better than Nvidia
Anti-aliasing splits the pixles into a triangle insted of a square to create a smoother look to everything(depending on the sampling setting its on)
Anosotropic filtering calculates how a texture should look at a sharp angle without it looking at a surface at a near parellel angle will make a texture blurry anosotropic filtering corrects it and reners it the way it should look(depending on the sampling setting its on)
Nvidia however excells at stencel shading (dunno what that is)
ok so the choice is up to you on what card to get but i sujest an ATI card seings how i had both ATI and Nvidia and perfere ATI Nvidia needs you to shell out a ton of cash to get high performance results where the Ati doesnt need that much money $500Vs$300
ok next is the unsuspected culprate of slow PCs the hard drive
yes harddrives do enhance performance and decrease it the best wat to know how your performance is is by the cable it runs on (IDE,Serial ATA, and RAID)
and its speed (in RPMs) I Heard from my bro that western digital has a serial ATA Raptor drive that is supperior in performance and speed(despite only having around 70GB) IDE is a standard connectin and is those big thin wide cables in your computer(normaly grey) running at 166 (give or take cant remember specific amount) MB p/s(per second) serial ATA can vary on the hard drive you attach to it but is usually only about 16mb per second faster that IDE, RAID is for the rich guy who wants ALOT of memory (usualy reaching a TB(TeraBite)-) seings how the speed depends on your PCI slot and the controler you bought.
ok now the simple one Power Supply
ecential in making ANYTHING work you only have to worry abot getting a high watt power supply if you get alot of stuff 112watt not recomended for gaming most 3d card suck up about 120 watts at system boot
ok now you may ask how will I know when i have to get a new Power Supply well the PC will tell you when you put in a new power hungry device(normally another HD or a new 3D card) your computer wont even start or will start and your BIOS will yell at you.
PS power supplies are Very cheap seen at 650watts for only $30 doesnt matter what company you buy it from even Nvidia couldnt screw up a Power Supply if they made one.
Ram a must have recomended at 512mb DDR pc 2700 at 333mhz and higher for best performance. Kingston boasting at best for Gaming ram chips
ok now sound card there is a thing that i am Very well aquanted with that is called Sound Lagg where your PC skips or pauses to wait for the sound card to finish up its prossesing of sound data. my Nvidia Nforce almost made me throw my compuert to hte ground and eat its inards.(i did replace it with an OLDER SOUNDCARD form early 2000 the card is a soundblaster pci512) and does much better there are alot of different companies that make soundcards but i trust soundblaster the most (if they are still around Crystal sound fusion made good cards back in the late 90's)
ok
keyboards all i have to say is find one you are comfortable with and make sure it is a USB keyboard otherwise a PS2 one can only accept 3-4 keys depressed at the same time.
now the mouse again fin one that sutes you and is USB but this time make sure its optical for best accuracy and no skipping.
last but definantly not least is cooling. a hard area to explain but remember this A Cool PC Is A Happy PC you will get better performance if you have more ventelation in the PC basicly good heatsync jell good heatsync and lots of case fans
( my eMachines only had one optional case fan but i Drilled holes into the site of my case and cut squares into the side and afixed two more fans one pointed a CPU and other at 3D card if i had a Dcam id post a pic but i dont)
Apple doesnt requitre more fans than they come with because of the desighn of the chipset and case shape.
What about water cooling? I saked some Tech geeks and they wernt big fans of it because the seals sometimes leaked or burst destroying the entire comupter ive been working on a different kind of water cooling that doesnt attach to the comuter parts but instead delivers cold air to the syncs
note that water cooling is Very efective at cooling brinning your cpu and 3d card down to below freezing.
some cooling companies are www.thermaltake.com www.coolerguys.com www.zalman.com

ok well thats it and remember that this is my opinon based on facts and life experiances and you can take or leave it as you please and performance can vary on the combinations of your hardware and the drivers that support them and contact the respective companies to see if the hardware will work for you specific motherboards


note that i dint get into motherboards b/c only the real cheap ones you should avoid the motherbgoards i sugest are the ones made by ASUS and Ati/Nvidia chipset ones.note that the noly problem i have with Nvidia is their 3d and sound card devises not their chipsets.

  • 06.02.2004 11:04 PM PDT

R.I.P Steve Irwin...you will be missed

Jerry: "Ah, you're crazy."
Kramer: "Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?!"

Join Date - 4/19/2004

wow thats long to bad i'm to lazy to read it

  • 06.02.2004 11:09 PM PDT
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copy the text and save to your pc and read little by little :P

[Edited on 6/2/2004 11:17:16 PM]

  • 06.02.2004 11:17 PM PDT
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the author should invest in a spell checker.. and maybe do some more research before stating "facts" about different vid cards. also make what he has written possibly less vague.

  • 06.02.2004 11:48 PM PDT
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There is another thread that someone made which is extremely similar and more cleaner then what you wrote.

  • 06.03.2004 2:04 AM PDT
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well like i said this is my opinin and i guess i just set it up to see what i know vrs others opinions and the main reason was to tell ppl who didnt fully understand on what was the cause of thier underperformance and to help them get a lead on what they should do next to improve on it

and where do i get this spell check you speak of?

  • 06.03.2004 11:02 AM PDT
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Im so stupid for not seeing the other guys post guess i should pay more attention to the stickies


ill shut up now

[Edited on 6/3/2004 9:45:49 PM]

  • 06.03.2004 9:45 PM PDT