Upgrade Time!!!!

[supamario00]

Ok I need to upgrade some of my parts

I was looking at these:

Xtreme N PCIe Desktop Adapter

FX 8150 Black Edition 3.6GHz Octa-Core Socket AM3+ Boxed Processor

and maybe this 100314-3L AMD Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 x16 Video Card

[xartin]

I just picked up one of those wifi cards as well to upgrade my older atheros chipset 32bit pci G mode wifi cards i've had for several years.

Best part is the dlink dwa-556 has an atheros chipset which is fully supported under linux in both master and monitor mode meaning you can run the card as a wifi access point or a packet injecting wifi sniffer usable with nvidia cuda wpa2 cracking goodies =D

WPA Crack Pyrit Aircrack - YouTube

That might be a long mouthful but it's pretty exciting stuff for a networking engineer.

The cpu may be the best you can get for an amd system but the reviews have been pretty lackluster due to the poor single threading performance of the bulldozer. amd even admitted these are a poor choice for gaming. overall long term best choice for any amd owner looks to be switching to intel based cpu's.

AnandTech - The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested

As far as the ati video card is concerned... i'd advise against it and switch brands to an nvidia 500 series. Several reasons why stated numerous times by Tim as well as several other mb.com forum members.

Out with the old

If madmattco regrets buying a 6990 and switching -from- nvidia to ati why would anyone realistically want an ati for a high end gaming system when you cannot run crossfire in windowed mode and the performance is poor by comparison.

ATI does have some advantages in gpu based super computing over nvidia due to having a higher ALU count in the gpu's which has been proven to have a significant benefit in some gpu applications such as bitcoin mining or gpu based mathematic research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit

However where gaming is concerned ati has proven time after time to be bottom of the barrel. with poor driver quality control, poor application support for crossfire and sub par performance for more than for more than 15 years I've blatantly refused to use any ati videocard in a system i personally own or in good conscience recommend one to a customer. From a computer network systems engineer that's been professionally building, supporting and selling pc's and server systems for nearly 20 years hopefully it will an added consideration.

As always buyer beware...

[supamario00]

I know but then I would have to buy a completely new processor and motherboard for it to work...I think

[xartin]

indeed you would have to switch to use an intel cpu which is unfortunate but can also be done time and money permitting buying the parts when your able. It took me a year to build my system to finished specs.

just pickup parts when your able to. $300 to 600.00 for a cpu, 350 on a motherboard.

You get quad channel DDR3 memory usability and your free from amd prison camp for several years

The new intel 3930K socket 2011 is only 600.00 and for the price humiliates everything on the planet at the moment including socket 1366 i7 intel processors currently selling for double the price.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

You would not have to switch to use an nvidia videocard. that's probably your first task. planning your conversion to intel to escape amd's performance marketing fud.

Intel Launches Sandy Bridge-E Series Processors - Slashdot

NCIX.com - Buy Intel Core i7 3930K 6 Core 12MB 3.2GHZ Hyperthreading Unlocked LGA2011 Processor - Intel - BX80619I73930K - in Canada

NCIX.com - Canada's Premier Computer Store - X79 Chipset LGA2011 Motherboards

[supamario00]

mmm My friend just built the pc gamer rig :| that has a sandy bridge in it. All in all I dont think its worth it, to buy a processor and mobo and graphics (I'd have to buy them all at once because I have no money atm) would be 2 months pay of my summer job, even if I went with 2600k series stuff, so its debateable

[xartin]

which cpu are you running at the moment?

Buying the parts one per month could be more affordable to help switch over. considering the bulldozer is no faster than a phenom II X4 for most gaming there really isn't much benefit to upgrading to bulldozer.

switching to the sandy bridge however wil offer a significant upgrade and if your considering upgrading anyway it's a good time to bite the bit and take the plunge.




The amd bulldozer cpu sells for $280.00 and fails to outperform an intel core i5 2400 that sells for $213.94 at ncix.com. by switching you would also save money and get a better value overall.

I linked the X79 which would more than likely last 3 to 5 years without becoming a performance bottleneck but that also comes with an investment price tag.

you could pickup an intel 1155 sandy bridge motherboard and core i5 2500 cpu for around $400.00 depending which motherboard you needed or wanted.

[supamario00]

well i am currently running the Phenom II X2 555 Black edit.

The core i5 plus motherboard is the most affordable and that wouldn't be too big of a strain on me.

[Ualaa]

If you're looking at i5 2500K vs i7 2600K, the difference in price is about $100.

The i5 system has no hyperthreading (logical cores), while the i7 does have them.
That's the biggest difference.

For most games, the logical cores don't offer any kind of a performance gain.
In some tests, unless they're disabled the game actually runs very slightly slower when you have them.

However, if you're streaming or doing additional tasks while gaming, or are making movies (Fraps, or what have you), the additional logical cores are highly beneficial.
For the amount that you spend to go with either one (Motherboard, Processor, Ram), $100 is not that much of a difference.

Will you primarily game.
Or will you stream and run additional programs while gaming?

Either way, the upgrade is a significant improvement.
And the system will run Warcraft or most other boxing games quite well for several years.
Or one-box just about anything for quite a while too.

[supamario00]

I Dont do much streaming, I never could get it to work write and I dont feel like reading through 99 pages of edits to the guide so I'd probably just record games for use later.

[Ualaa]

If you want to stream, check out Xsplit.
XSplit - Going Live is Simple

The setup was extremely easy.
Click File, and Screen Resolution.
Click anywhere on the screen for the whole window, or drag a box around whatever (click and hold, drag around, release) for a portion.

You can have 12 separate scenes.
So I have:
a) Monitor 1, in its entirety.
b) Monitor 2, in its entirety.
c) Monitor 1 & 2, as a huge widescreen view.
d) Monitor 1 as a large region & four regions from monitor two stacked above it (my old 5x clients on one monitor view).

Under the View menu, set your resolution to 1280x720.
This is ideal for streaming in HD.
Not sure why, but this is smoother than other options.

Under View, also set frame rate to 29.97.
Which is a drop down menu option.

Under Broadcast, go to Edit Channels.
In the dialogue box, click add.
Choose your service (JustinTV, Ustream, Livestream, Own3D, or Custom RTMP).
I did Justin.TV/Twitch.TV.
Enter either your Username and Password, or your stream ID (I'd do User/Pass, as the password is displayed as astericks, so even if this screen is streamed no one gets to view your info).
Enter your channel name.
Leave everything else as default, but change your Bit Rate to something less than half of your average upload speed on speedtest.net.

Once you enter everything, click Test Bandwidth a few times.
If the results are consistently "green", then go with that.
If you get occasional "yellow" results, but not often then you're okay but close to too high.
If you get "red" results than lower your bit rate.
Click OK.

You might want to select an image onto a scene you're not using.
So you can switch to that, as what is visible on your stream, when you're entering your log-in information so your B.Net emails are not displayed on the stream.
This process is just File - Add Media, then browse and select your file.

When you want to stream, go onto the Broadcast menu, and click on the Justin.tv link (or whatever provider you went with).

As a bonus, you can stream to multiple places at once.
So how Tim does a HQ stream and a Medium and Low quality, you could set up all three as well.
You can even stream to UStream and Justin.tv at the same time, just click on the things you want to stream.

To finish streaming, go Broadcast > then click on whatever has a check mark beside it to cancel that streaming.

The software is in a beta stage at the moment.
Meaning it is totally free, if you register.
You get a 10 second blurp, asking you to upgrade for a discounted price $39 (or $59 for Professional version... which allows you to stream for a business).
The software is slated to go live around July of 2012.
Free until then, than its $39 for two years, commencing from when the beta (free) period ends whenever that is.
After the beta ends, the regular version will be almost a hundred per year.