Professional opinions wanted.

[Opinvu]

Here is my upgrade plan. To fix my three issues all at once. I plan to purchase the four items over the next month or so, as can afford. But my research has come to this being a cheap way to go with some good quality stuff. What you all think?

My processor.
http://www.compucare.com/product.aspx?n=CPUAM2750

On Motherboard,
http://www.compucare.com/product.aspx?n=MLBMSI145

And new memory to match,
http://www.compucare.com/product/memk10241-47.aspx

And then a PCI vid card cause I am still on AGP,
http://www.pcprodirect.com/product_details_parts.asp?PRID=6480

This way is only about $380.00 my monitor is already arrived, late xmas present. My mother won $11,000 at the casino playing Bingo!
20′ Samsung LCd wide screen… I have 3 windows open in DM client.. 3 colums for open windows in game! (resolution)

[Brindisium]

I dont know if my opinion counts as professional Opi but for what it is worth here you go….

They look like quality components to me, I like ASUS, MSI and Kingston. Although they are probably not considered to be super high end performance parts I am sure they they would eat NWN1 and hold their own in NWN2, if that is your objective. Having said that since I upgraded my video card and was then forced to upgrade my nvidia driver I have had scrambled textures popping up in NWN1. A common problem I believe.

A few thoughts:

Processor – You might be better with a higher speed single core processor if you are going to be gaming most of the time ( rather than (say) encoding ). For dual core I still like AMD but quite a few people seem to have shifted to Intel. Any good deals there?

Memory – If you have have any $ left … 2 GB made a BIG difference to me with many of the newer games for a relatively small cost.

Overall – I wonder, since you are buying a motherboard, processor, memory and video card whether it might be cheaper to buy a bare bones system of similar specification and swap your disks into it? You would get a new case and PSU that way and can keep your old system functional … just in case 🙂

Hope some of that was useful! Good luck.

-B

[Opinvu]

The over-all, no, this set turned up cheaper and faster. Not all the same components are available at all the dealers. The same or equivlant is much higher priced, or a differeant configuration, or cheaper but called something else (in the case of a few vid cards I looked at).

So, I haven’t heard negatives about dual core and gaming. This is to solve my problems with running the NWN2 toolset, as well as a few failing components. I have heard of Mule and his story about his assembly of his PC. I wish I could go barebones from one dealer, but that config was like 100$’s more. Granted they would assemble for me, then I do all the driver OS loading etc.

[Brindisium]

Dual Core Issues

Neverwinter Nights 2’s engine is not optimized (‘multithreaded’) for dual core CPUs. As such the game only uses the equivalent of one CPU at any time, and can’t be forced to fully utilize both for better performance. Worse still, the developers have stated that the game may experience issues or reduced performance on dual core CPUs (See the game’s Readme.rtf file). To prevent this, I firstly recommend that all AMD dual core CPU users install the AMD Dual Core Optimizer Utility which fixes a potential timing conflict in some games. For both AMD and Intel users who still feel like their dual core CPU could be the cause of problems in NWN2, you can run the game in single core mode by changing its affinity. Note that the game’s Toolset can utilize dual cores efficiently, just not the main game engine itself.

This is the sort of thing I’ve read. Then again I have a dual core AMD processor and it runs NWN2 fine! I believe the toolset IS multi-threaded so if it was me … I’d go with what you picked 🙂

[Opinvu]

And I see, dual core its the future… no choice, well, quad core and opit-core… Soon, apple core.

[Monty]

The main reason to use a dual core is that NWN2 has a nasty habit of sucking up ALL the system resources, to the point that the OS locks up. With the dual, at least the OS can run.

M3C

[Brindisium]

@Opinvu wrote:

And I see, dual core its the future… no choice, well, quad core and opit-core… Soon, apple core.

Followed by marine-core, hard-core and, just for Markshire 2, the manti-core.

[mule]

some advice. My systems got similar specs. There is a Dual core option in NWN1 so that you can tell it to just run on one core otherwise it runs like crack.. some very werid stuff happens. NWN2 runs fine on a dualcore.

The latest Nvidia drivers have screwed up NWN1, not sure about NWN2 yet. First it was the black screen of doom and when they released the new drivers it made it so that NWN1 runs laggy. You get sudden lag spikes (read low low frame rates) interspersed with normal speeds. Alternates about every 3 seconds. I’m not sure which drivers you’ll have to run with on that card but I bet you’ll have a choice of either the black screen or the lag. I am hoping they release new drivers to fix both soon.

The rest looks good, and cheap.

– mule

[Opinvu]

Thanks! Good stuff to bring up here. I was mainly going Nvidia cause I have been radeon for long time and well maybe a change (?), this one has 512Mb on it for that price.

There are so many cards out there to choose from…and so many are the same thing with different stickers or nameplates.

[Opinvu]

Here we go, I did find a radeon alternative.
http://www.pcprodirect.com/product_details_parts.asp?PRID=7841

512Mb of on board boxes from the old Chaz’s, must be the minature ones like on the pack badgers though.

I don’t like them driver issues. But I wonder if it’s just you? I have my own Radeon driver issues I wonder about at times. Then again it could be the card flaking out on me. I suspect both actually.

[Corgano]

My Dell is a dual 2.4 with 2 Gigs RAM and runs both NWN 1, NWN 2, and both toolsets just fine. Mind you, I usually only run one program at a time, but have on occasion run both 1 & 2 at once. NWN 2 Toolset can take a while to load depending on the size of your mod. Say one that’s 250 MB takes a few to open.

I did have a driver issue with NWN 1 and the new NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX…

BUT…

I reverted to older drivers and they work well for all, so far.

*knocks on wood… yes that means my head* 8)

Peace,
Cor

[Brindisium]

@Opinvu wrote:

I don’t like them driver issues. But I wonder if it’s just you?

Nope.

Having said that since I upgraded my video card and was then forced to upgrade my nvidia driver I have had scrambled textures popping up in NWN1. A common problem I believe.

It’s to do with (lack of) paletted texture support in the NVIDIA OGL renderer post 97.xx (I believe). It is rumoured that there ~may~ be a fix in NWN 1.69. Or maybe I should say some people hope there will be a fix in NWN 1.69.

NWN2 runs fine on a dualcore.

Yes, but the NWN client only uses one of the cores. The other sits there twiddling its thumbs. The toolset ~is~ multithreaded, if that is any consolation.

EDIT

but have on occasion run both 1 & 2 at once

Now that is a good reason to have two cores… unless only Corgano does that? 🙂

[Opinvu]

Ok, with some further digging it appears 2.2 is maxing out on one core. But don’t want to buy too old and then need to upgrade next Tax return. THat should be paying off car up grades.

I found a bundle with a better board for only a few dollars more, will have to roll a bunch of penneis now, but IT will take more upgrades in Processors, and has faster PCI slots. Same as listed but Asus, and Nforce 570 versus 550 which has much slower PCI and less ram holding modulators. I think My mind is nearly made up on….

Asus nForce 570 and AMD 5000 2.6ghz and 1gb Ram.
Next year will get the 1gig add-on. By then Markshire 2 will demand 12gigs of HDD and 4gigs ram… and Seven Monitor Assemblies.

[Corgano]

@Opinvu wrote:

…By then Markshire 2 will demand 12gigs of HDD and 4gigs ram… and Seven Monitor Assemblies.

By next year? Nope… just right after you upgrade! 😆

Sounds good Opi! Happy PC upgrading!

[mule]

I know the NVidia thing isn’t just me, it’s all over the forums. I can’t roll my drivers back because the Mysterious fix that the techies did on my computer apparently involved updating the drivers, though they couldn’t tell me how this fixed my computer not booting to the bios. Even given that what they told me of this fix was an utter lie i’m reluctant to roll back my drivers because my machine works otherwise so i’m stuck. BTW corgano if your dualcore runs NWN1 just fine you set the option to only use one core or someone else did because you’d know it if it was trying to run on two cores… it’s pure crack.

– mule

[Opinvu]

So… update on the upgrades.

The MOBO and processor kit with a HDD and ram bundle gave me a deal I couldn’t compare, with my prior purchases I got 40% off the ram and HDD. I put the order in on 1/14. It hasn’t shipped until today, it was just in pending limbo. But, I did get this email that follows. Maybe Mule…*cough*…. I will say no more.

😆

Thank you for your recent order placed with our company on 01/14/08!



This message is just a reminder that everything is fine with your current order and we are continuing to process it in a regular manner. We constantly monitor all of our pending orders and in case of any problems with your order, you will be contacted by e-mail or phone.



Just to make sure that you completely understand how we process orders, we would like to inform you about some important details of our standard processing procedures. Because of the nature of the products that we sell, often the most time consuming stages of the order processing are assembly, testing, 24-72 hour "burning-in", and loading software phases. We specialize in custom products (computer barebones, PCs, servers and laptops) which require all of those steps to ensure quality, stability and perfect compatibility of the system configuration. According to our policy it usually takes 5-7 business days to process every order from the time when payment is received. In some cases, for example, failure of certain components during the testing phase, it may take additional several days to complete order processing, in such cases we partially or completely, depending on source of failure, rebuild a failed computer system and repeat all testing procedures. In any circumstances we will do our best so that products you ordered will be shipped out to you promptly.



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Either that ofr the kid that was too jack it off the truck was caught and they sent another burgler.

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