Need some advice

[greywulf58]

In the next few months (by this fall), I am planning to purchase a more powerful computer. The computer I am using now is nearly nine years old and even though I've added more memory and a larger hard drive, I still have some issues with graphics. This computer is quite capable of running all the CM series but the newer ones (CMSF, CMA, and the newer CMBN) can't be run with the best looking graphics level (for the most part I can't run those games at anything better than the Balanced setting). However, when it comes to the BF TOW series, forget it. So here is the system I'm thinking of getting. I'd like to know if I might have issues with any BF game with such a system.

System specs:

AlienWare Aurora with;

Intel® Core™ i7-3960X (Six Core Extreme, 15MB Cache ,Overclocked up to 4.0Ghz)

3GB DDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 7950

2TB RAID 0 (2x 1TB SATA 6Gb/s) 7,200RPM HDD

24.0” Dell U2410 UltraSharp™ Full HD Monitor

Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Titanium

Alienware TactX™ Keyboard

Razer USA DeathAdder Optical Gaming Mouse

Logitech Z506 5.1 Stereo Speakers

16GB Quad Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz

Dual Drives: BD Combo, DVD+RW

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English

Price: $4,252.98:eek:

So, would this be enough computer to run all the current Battlefront Games? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Chris.

[Schrullenhaft]

Yes, it would be enough computer to run the current games. However even the fastest computer may not always give the desired performance results in game play.

Some info about your selections:

RAID 0 - this will boost your disk performance, however it also has the side effect that if one of the drives crashes, you could lose A LOT of data since the data is split between the two drives. RAID gives you performance, but it will add to your misery if you run into a drive problem. If you have sufficient cash, you may want to check out the SSD (solid-state drive) offerings available since their performance can best some RAID setups. However there is a limit to the size of SSDs, so you will want some sort of reliable disk-based storage to complement the SSD (running/booting Windows and possibly some games).

AMD Radeons are fairly good video card and offer quite a bit of bang for the buck. However with the CMx1 series (CMBO, CMBB and CMAK), you will run into a bug with the display if you DO NOT have the 1.04 patch (which is NOT free). You will also run into the 'Radeon Text' bug that has a work-around, which is not perfect. I'm not specifically aware of any problems with the CMx2 series (CMSF, CMA & CMBN), but newer video cards sometimes have a bit of 'teething' to go through in terms of additional problems. Driver developers sometimes need a bit of time to get things running right with the latest hardware.

Currently the entire CM series does NOT benefit from multiple cores. Only a single core is used for all of the games. However your day-to-day computer usage will probably benefit in some way when it comes to multiple cores. For CM's purposes, with all CPU features being equal, you will see a bit more benefit with a high clock speed than with multiple cores. In this particular case you have one of the faster CPUs available, period.

All CM games (on the PC) are 32-bit only. So they will only be able to address 2-3GB of address-space/memory. This will not change if you have more than 2 or 3GB of real, physical memory, though having the extra memory space to run other programs definitely helps.

[Mord]

Would his sound card help at all with the stuttering and staggering you get when there's lots of gun fire on the screen...or are the sfx strictly powered by the PC's cpu?

Mord.

[Schrullenhaft]

A dedicated sound card like a SoundBlaster X-Fi might take a little bit of the load off of the CPU when it comes to producing sounds compared to some AC97/HD Audio chips that are integrated with motherboards. However I'm not sure how much of a difference that it may result in though.

[Mr. Yubby]

Mord,

In regards to the Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium, I recently built a new PC and installed the SB X-Fi Titanium THX/SB1270 card and it's worked pretty much flawlessly for me with all my Battlefront games.

This card is pretty cool, it has on-board 32-bit DSP with THX audio support built into hardware. What this means in practical terms is that some CPU overhead and interrupt processing from game audio is offloaded and processed on the sound card. High level of CPU interrupt processing, such as some of the urban scenarios in CMSF, can cause stuttering with on-board audio, I can testify to that. Since I've been using the X-Fi Titanium card, I've experienced no noise, crackling, or distorted audio with any of the BF games. I have several of the CMSF sound mods installed, and the game audio sounds pretty fabulous through my home hi-fi system, especially the subwoofer (LFE) channel, which is also something this SB card does well. Please note that to get the LFE channel to work properly on my system, I had to use a fibre connection (TOSlink) into my receiver. The first time I heard the "large" IEF explosion audio track in CMSF through a sub-woofer was a shock, it really got all the neighborhood dogs going.

Fortunately the SB card has a TOSlink fibre connector, and if you have an AV receiver or speaker system with TOSlink connectors, getting true 5-channel through this card is easy, and it sounds great through a good audio system.

Another nice thing about this card is that the onboard processor has a 102db signal-to-noise ratio, which rivals most home theater receivers. With my setup there's practically no background noise and the audio, especially high bitrate MP3 and FLAC audio tracks, sounds great through my receiver.

To me, the biggest downside of the SB card is the price. I had a hard time justifying spending $189 for a PC audio card and that was a discounted price on Amazon. Another potential issue is this card will only work with Windows 7 or above. So if you have a Windows XP Machine, don't waste your time with this card. I built my computer 6 months ago, so you'll probably find one now for significantly less that what I paid. I remember reading somewhere that the X-Fi Titanium series is being discontinued by Creative, so you may have trouble finding one once all the retail channels are sold out. Also, it you're a Linux fan, this card works perfectly with Fedora Core 16.

[greywulf58]

Yes, it would be enough computer to run the current games. However even the fastest computer may not always give the desired performance results in game play.

Some info about your selections:

RAID 0 - this will boost your disk performance, however it also has the side effect that if one of the drives crashes, you could lose A LOT of data since the data is split between the two drives. RAID gives you performance, but it will add to your misery if you run into a drive problem. If you have sufficient cash, you may want to check out the SSD (solid-state drive) offerings available since their performance can best some RAID setups. However there is a limit to the size of SSDs, so you will want some sort of reliable disk-based storage to complement the SSD (running/booting Windows and possibly some games).

AMD Radeons are fairly good video card and offer quite a bit of bang for the buck. However with the CMx1 series (CMBO, CMBB and CMAK), you will run into a bug with the display if you DO NOT have the 1.04 patch (which is NOT free). You will also run into the 'Radeon Text' bug that has a work-around, which is not perfect. I'm not specifically aware of any problems with the CMx2 series (CMSF, CMA & CMBN), but newer video cards sometimes have a bit of 'teething' to go through in terms of additional problems. Driver developers sometimes need a bit of time to get things running right with the latest hardware.

Currently the entire CM series does NOT benefit from multiple cores. Only a single core is used for all of the games. However your day-to-day computer usage will probably benefit in some way when it comes to multiple cores. For CM's purposes, with all CPU features being equal, you will see a bit more benefit with a high clock speed than with multiple cores. In this particular case you have one of the faster CPUs available, period.

All CM games (on the PC) are 32-bit only. So they will only be able to address 2-3GB of address-space/memory. This will not change if you have more than 2 or 3GB of real, physical memory, though having the extra memory space to run other programs definitely helps.

So let me see if I got this straight or not. Are you saying that this is just too much of a computer and that I might want to dumb it down a bit? At one time I might have needed such a computer since I did a lot of CAD design and CNC programming work with my old Sony VIAO (the one I'm using now). I have since shut down my resin casting business and will be using this new computer mainly for household and entertainment purposes.

I have read, although it took a bit of searching, that Windows 7 can run in either 32 or 64 bit modes or am I reading this wrong? When I go to the various computer websites, they all say that the installed OS is Windows 7 64-bit (each and every one of them). So, I guess my question is this. If I buy a new computer and it is running at 64 bit, can I switch it to 32 bit or do I have to do something else to switch?

HDD. Just a regular SATA drive will be better?

Almost all the new computers that I've have found are Quad Core, although I did find a Pentium running at 2.67 GHz by Dell. Would this be a better selection as far as the CPU goes?

Thanks for the help. I'm not a computer hardware expert by any stretch of the imagination and your info is very helpful. BTW, BF has some of the best Tech Support around (not to mention your fine games) and why I will always be one of your loyal customers.

Chris.

[Schrullenhaft]

The CM games will run fine under Windows 7 64-bit, there is no need to get a 32-bit version of Windows to play our games.

The point I was trying to make is that the CM series (CMx1 and CMx2) will NOT take full advantage of your hardware and memory. A lot of the 'improvements' in hardware in the last several years do NOT always affect CM's performance, such as large amounts of memory (beyond 4GB), multiple cores in a CPU and some of the latest capabilities of video cards. However that doesn't mean you should not purchase such hardware, but that you may not see as much benefit as you might expect with such expensive hardware.

Quad core CPUs are becoming fairly common now, though CM doesn't take advantage of more than one core. Still for other tasks you perform on the computer, even if their not CAD, it is nice to have multiple cores to multitask with. However you have selected the most expensive processor possible and I don't know if it is worth it. This system you have selected uses the LGA 2011 socket and a more reasonable processor (at least in terms of CM) utilizing that same socket would be the Intel i7 3820 (3.6GHz, with 3.8GHz Turbo Boost) Quad Core. The i7 3960X is a SIX core CPU that you may not see a whole lot of advantage from unless you really do A LOT of multitasking with CPU intensive tasks (video/audio encoding, etc.).

If your computer is going to have more than 4GB of RAM, then you will want the 64-bit version of Windows. Otherwise you will only be able to use 3 - 3.5GB of it under a 32-bit version of Windows. Most programs available today are actually 32-bit. So Windows may be 64-bit, but most of the programs that run on Windows will not be able to use more than 2 - 3GB each (per program).

The RAID 0 array you have listed actually consists of SATA drives. The only thing I was pointing out is that 'RAID 0' can cause severe grief if you have a problem due to the way data is 'striped' between the two drives. It gives you a significant performance bump for read and write operations, but when you have problems it magnifies those problems. If you want disk performance, then a better option may be to get an SSD (Solid State Drive) drive (which is also a SATA drive). SSD's are much more expensive than mechanical drives and also have a lot less storage capacity than most mechanical drives but their speed rivals RAID arrays without some of the problems (though they can have their own quirks and issues). If you get an SSD drive, then you will also want another mechanical drive to accompany it (for more storage space). Typically most people setup their SSD to be the boot drive with Windows on it and maybe a few select programs. Most other programs and data may be on the mechanical hard drive.

[greywulf58]

Again, thanks for the help. I have decided that I am going to get a computer that isn't so high on the performance and price scale. When I calculated the price I thought that I'd s**t a brick. Didn't even mention the price to my wife as she would have s**t a brick. I will do some more research into a new system and post the specs of it, if you wouldn't mind taking a look at it for me. Again, thanks. Chris.