Rate this computer 1/10 please.

[Bloodmorphed]

Athlon II X4 630 / 2.8 GHz
RAM 8 GB
HDD 1 x 500 GB
Radeon HD 6850
Gigabit Ethernet
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
(DVD Writer as well, although don't consider that in your rating.)

Is this a good computer? I mean, it is a "gaming" computer so, speaking in performance is this a good computer? Stats wise anyways, obviously you cant test its "performance" first hand. But its stats, are they good? Bad? Let me know what you think.

(This is the computer I own so I have already bought it ETC. ETC> I'm just asking for opinions, Nothing more, nothing less.)

Also, if your opinion is bashful, completely stupid, or just complete BS, then well… You have wasted your time :)

[Godlord]

Similar to what I have, although I have a Creative Audigy SE sound card for epic sound quality, an AMD Athlon 640 X4 3GHz, 4 GiB DDR3 1600MHz RAM and an ATI Radeon HD5770 VaporX.

Why you have 8 GiB of RAM escapes me, but OK. We are living in an era where more seems to be better. What are your CAS-latencies and your clock frequency? Is your ATI Radeon HD6850 an original design or is it tweaked by the company who made it (e.g. my VaporX is over-clocked and has a better cooler)? How many rounds per minute does your hard disk spin at (or is it a solid-state drive), what controller is it connected with and how big are its caches?

As for performance, it is based on software, not hardware. Poorly designed software will run equally worse on all hardware. "Poor hardware" might only run certain software poorly. The problem is that the numbers of the hardware are getting way too high (e.g. 8 GiB RAM). You do know that 12 MiB RAM from 1980 performs faster than your 8 GiB RAM, right? Hence why processors have caches, to hide the performance gap. The problem is: the majority of software doesn't deal with your caches properly. Just to give one example.

Regards,
  Stephan.

[Marsh]

Seems like a decent computer 8 gigs of ram seems overkill but might as well have it considering how cheap ram is now a days.

Only thing i would think about upgrading is the hard drive. It may just be me downloading a ton of movies and tv shows but 500 gigs doesnt last me long.

[Bloodmorphed]

@S.J.R.:

> Similar to what I have, although I have a Creative Audigy SE sound card for epic sound quality, an AMD Athlon 640 X4 3GHz, 4 GiB DDR3 1600MHz RAM and an ATI Radeon HD5770 VaporX.
>
> Why you have 8 GiB of RAM escapes me, but OK. We are living in an era where more seems to be better. What are your CAS-latencies and your clock frequency? Is your ATI Radeon HD6850 an original design or is it tweaked by the company who made it (e.g. my VaporX is over-clocked and has a better cooler)? How many rounds per minute does your hard disk spin at (or is it a solid-state drive), what controller is it connected with and how big are its caches?
>
> As for performance, it is based on software, not hardware. Poorly designed software will run equally worse on all hardware. "Poor hardware" might only run certain software poorly. The problem is that the numbers of the hardware are getting way too high (e.g. 8 GiB RAM). You do know that 12 MiB RAM from 1980 performs faster than your 8 GiB RAM, right? Hence why processors have caches, to hide the performance gap. The problem is: the majority of software doesn't deal with your caches properly. Just to give one example.
>
> Regards,
>   Stephan.

How do I test the highlighted text?

Also no, My video card (to my knowledge) wasn't tweaked in any way.

@Marsh:

> Seems like a decent computer 8 gigs of ram seems overkill but might as well have it considering how cheap ram is now a days.
>
> Only thing i would think about upgrading is the hard drive. It may just be me downloading a ton of movies and tv shows but 500 gigs doesnt last me long.

YEs I seem to fill up 500GiGs easily too.

I only have about 120 gigs left out of 500.

[Godlord]

@Bloodmorphed:

> How do I test the highlighted text?

You don't. You normally can find all that information, if you know the exact hardware you are using. Either that or use CPU-Z.

Regards,
  Stephan.

[Bloodmorphed]

Ah thank you. I'm not really good in the field so I best not do that XD

[Cyprien]

Gaming pc online need 4 gigs of ram and get a six core

[Bloodmorphed]

@Cyprien:

> Gaming pc online need 4 gigs of ram and get a six core

Gaming online doesn't need a six core >.>

[Cyprien]

True but in long run it's best to get then trying to upgrade later unless you know how.

Edit: you computer will do fine. I rate it a 6.

[Bloodmorphed]

You will probably actually never need a SIX core for gaming. HOWEVER I may still get one eventually. You kinda dont need 4 GiB RAM either, 3 is pretty good as well. I chose 8 for hell I don't even know why. But I ALWAYS seem to only have 3 left over (even before I play games) aNd this I don't know why.

[Cyprien]

Problem with gaming computers is they are limited by Windows XP.
There are very few games which support direct x10 and fewer which support direct x11.
(Assassin Creed uses Direct X10… Assassin Creed 2 & Brotherhood uses direct x9.)

Windows XP is limited to only using 3.5gb of ram.

I hope when gaming has stop trying to support Windows XP that we will see more games use more ram and see more games use Direct X 10 & 11 as well support more cores.

[Robin]

@Cyprien:

> -snip-


[Bloodmorphed]

@Cyprien:

> Problem with gaming computers is they are limited by Windows XP.
> There are very few games which support direct x10 and fewer which support direct x11.
> (Assassin Creed uses Direct X10… Assassin Creed 2 & Brotherhood uses direct x9.)
>
> Windows XP is limited to only using 3.5gb of ram.
>
> I hope when gaming has stop trying to support Windows XP that we will see more games use more ram and see more games use Direct X 10 & 11 as well support more cores.

True. If IM not mistaken Crysis 2 is DX11 or has support in it. I knew I read somewhere about it, just no sure which it was.

Unfortunately ALOT of people still prefer XP over Vista/Win7 EVEN Linux which I did until I fell in love with Win7, and its really not because I'm a microsoft fan-boy I actually hate microsoft, but I like their products… Stupid right?

So I don't see that happening within the next 5-10 years... But it will happen. Especially once Win8 comes out I think it will start to change some. or the IPv6 (or w/e it was) or this point is just void cuz i have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to IPv's and shiz haha.

it will come eventually.

[Anna Comnena]

1\. Install APB: Reloaded
2\. Play it.
3\. If you can run that unoptimal game, you have a good gaming rig! xD

[Gwen]

Very true…. i thought i had a pretty good gaming rig, until apb crushed all my hopes!

Im still sad that anna is finally has a better system than me for once!

[Drummerpete]

@Gwen:

> Very true…. i thought i had a pretty good gaming rig, until apb crushed all my hopes!
>
> Im still sad that anna is finally has a better system than me for once!

At least you haven't got a netbook.

[Bloodmorphed]

@Anna:

> 1\. Install APB: Reloaded
> 2\. Play it.
> 3\. If you can run that unoptimal game, you have a good gaming rig! xD

Well the first few times I played it like you said above. I had no lag problems at, no stuttering, it ran as smooth as a fish swimming down stream.

But then it just stopped and started stuttering, idk if their patch made it do that or what.

[MrKris]

@Bloodmorphed:

> Well the first few times I played it like you said above. I had no lag problems at, no stuttering, it ran as smooth as a fish swimming down stream.
>
> But then it just stopped and started stuttering, idk if their patch made it do that or what.

I have never been able to play that game, but I only have a little Dell Inpspiron 560 :p not the best gaming computer out there.

[Aldur]

@Cyprien:

> True but in long run it's best to get then trying to upgrade later unless you know how.
>
> Edit: you computer will do fine. I rate it a 6.

6 cores would be a waste of money. You will be hard pressed to find a game that will fully utilize a quad core yet.

[Godlord]

@Proximity:

> 6 cores would be a waste of money. You will be hard pressed to find a game that will fully utilize a quad core yet.

Correction: you will be hard pressed to find an **operating system** that allows applications to utilise a quad-core (And setting thread affinity isn't the right way).

Regards,
  Stephan.

[AeroEBrown]

@Cyprien:

> Windows XP is limited to only using 3.5gb of ram.

Windows XP 32-Bit is, 64-Bit supports much more than that.

Out of 10, I give it a 7\. You really don't need that much RAM as everyone has stated. I don't even use my 4GB when I run multiple Virtual PC's and dedicate 1GB to each.

As for the Quad Core CPU, it'll do fine. You won't necessarily use all 4 cores for every game (or any most likely), but it will perform pretty well when multitasking. (As I often do.)

Thanks,
Aero/EBrown

[Cyprien]

@Aero/EBrown:

> Windows XP 32-Bit is, 64-Bit supports much more than that.

I know, however chances are your not going to have the 64bit version.

[Robin]

It's not a limitation of XP, it's a limitation of 32-bit.

The memory limit includes your graphics card's memory as well, so if you've got a 1gB+ graphics card you're severely limiting your memory as it is.

A lot of problems on APB arise from all this. You need 2.2gB+ of RAM _free_ to run the larger maps comfortably.

[Godlord]

@Robin:

> It's not a limitation of XP, it's a limitation of 32-bit.

Correction: it's a paging model limit, x86-32 processors can use up to 64 GiB of RAM since 1995\. If Windows supported physical address extensions (PAE) then it would be able to use up to 64 GiB of RAM on the x86-32 edition. In fact, PAE is what x86-64 processors use to support up to 256 TiB of RAM.

@Robin:

> The memory limit includes your graphics card's memory as well, so if you've got a 1gB+ graphics card you're severely limiting your memory as it is.

Correct: the physical address map contains both system memory and video memory, moving free system memory up above the 232 physical limit, which would only be accessible through PAE.

@Robin:

> A lot of problems on APB arise from all this. You need 2.2gB+ of RAM _free_ to run the larger maps comfortably.

If I hear all this about APB, then I really wonder if they actually did design the game well for optimal performance, or that they just assumed all hardware is just capable of getting it running.

Regards,
  Stephan.

[Robin]

@S.J.R.:

> If I hear all this about APB, then I really wonder if they actually did design the game well for optimal performance, or that they just assumed all hardware is just capable of getting it running.

We both know the answer to that. ;]

Since it was bought out by a F2P company they've been struggling to deal with all the complaints. Anyone using XP/Vista/Win7 32-bit gets an 'Out of Memory' error when playing for more than 30 minutes on the larger map.

It's not so much that they assumed all hardware is capable, they just didn't bother play-testing it on a 32-bit copy of Windows… which is just plain arrogant.