Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

Oh i get it. :)

Odd question: On a torrent I have, there arre three seeders. There was only one seeder connected and the speeds were up at 600+ KB/s. Now all three are connected and the speeds dropped to 1.2 KB/s. Shouldnt it be the other way around?
 
Connected != sharing. Connected just means they are online and your client sees them, but it doesnt mean its downloading from those seeders.
 
The weird thing was that I was watching and the speed went down as soon as the other two came online. I dont know whats up with that.
 
Looking to get a new comp for Civ 5 and Starcraft.

Looking at getting a barebones from Portatech.com anybody have experience with the company?

I'm looking at a Phenom II X4 965 (3.4ghz) processor
Gigabyte M68M-S2P motherboard
and buying a Radeon HD 5770 GPU and 4 gigs DDR2 RAM separately from Amazon, sticking my old hardrive with XP on it inside and running with that.
That should be able to handle Civ 5 and Starcraft 2 right? Also what are my chances with huge C3C maps/scenarios using the Phenom processor, I used to have a single core Celeron 2.8ghz running with 760mb RAM, how much faster might it be??
 
Isnt XP nearly 10 years old?
 
Zelig said:
XP is a terrible, terrible operating system, don't try to use that on any reasonably newish computer.
Click to expand...

XP isn't a terrible, terrible operating system. But there really isn't a reason to use it on any reasonably newish computer, especially since it lacks legacy support.
 
nc-1701 said:
Looking to get a new comp for Civ 5 and Starcraft.

Looking at getting a barebones from Portatech.com anybody have experience with the company?

I'm looking at a Phenom II X4 965 (3.4ghz) processor
Gigabyte M68M-S2P motherboard
and buying a Radeon HD 5770 GPU and 4 gigs DDR2 RAM separately from Amazon, sticking my old hardrive with XP on it inside and running with that.
That should be able to handle Civ 5 and Starcraft 2 right? Also what are my chances with huge C3C maps/scenarios using the Phenom processor, I used to have a single core Celeron 2.8ghz running with 760mb RAM, how much faster might it be??
Click to expand...
Should have no problem with Civ5 and SC2.
The "how much faster" question is highly depending on the game, for modern games that heavily utilize multi-core at least 5 times as fast. For old games like Civ 3 maybe twice as fast. But if you are keen on optimizing performance for old games, you would be better of getting an intel core i5 or i7 based system. Those will automatically overclock when only having load one or two cores and deliver a significantly higher performance in non multicore optimized games. My recommendation would be the i5 750 as a very good allround gaming CPU, if you can afford the 50$ more. The 5770 is a good choice as a video card.

I am however a bit sceptical regarding the power supplies, no brands and no detailed specs are giving on their website, which is not a good sign. A high quality 400 W PSU would have no problem with your selected build, but an el cheapo 400 W will be the potential for serious trouble.
 
Jerrymander said:
XP isn't a terrible, terrible operating system. But there really isn't a reason to use it on any reasonably newish computer, especially since it lacks legacy support.
Click to expand...

:confused: Microsoft agreed to support it until like 2020 for businesses
 
I think its standard to support an OS six years after a new one comes out for them. It also doesnt mean you "need" to change. If your XP is working and you have no reason to need Microsoft's support, keep using it.

I don't support software piracy, but you may eventually need to pirate it to break activation if they don't patch out all the DRM by then, and turn off their activation servers.
 
Zelig said:
XP is a terrible, terrible operating system, don't try to use that on any reasonably newish computer.
Click to expand...
Normally I'de go for Windows 7 64-bit, but I still have the hard drive from my old computer that died, with my old OS and files on it. Even getting the student edition of Windows 7 it's $30. So by reusing my HD and OS I'm saving about $50-60 and saving the trouble of reinstalling all my old software.

tokala said:
Should have no problem with Civ5 and SC2.
The "how much faster" question is highly depending on the game, for modern games that heavily utilize multi-core at least 5 times as fast. For old games like Civ 3 maybe twice as fast. But if you are keen on optimizing performance for old games, you would be better of getting an intel core i5 or i7 based system. Those will automatically overclock when only having load one or two cores and deliver a significantly higher performance in non multicore optimized games. My recommendation would be the i5 750 as a very good allround gaming CPU, if you can afford the 50$ more. The 5770 is a good choice as a video card.

I am however a bit sceptical regarding the power supplies, no brands and no detailed specs are giving on their website, which is not a good sign. A high quality 400 W PSU would have no problem with your selected build, but an el cheapo 400 W will be the potential for serious trouble.
Click to expand...

Looking at the Intel motherboards they don't appear to be back compatible with my old hardrive (ATA/IDE as opposed to SATA), which would end pushing my costs up over $100 more. I was going to go with their 600 W power supply, but I had noticed no brands or specs were given for any of them... How difficult is a power supply to install yourself separately? Also are there any companies similar to Portatech with better reputations you could point me to, to compare with?

Thanks guys
 
nc-1701 said:
Normally I'de go for Windows 7 64-bit, but I still have the hard drive from my old computer that died, with my old OS and files on it. Even getting the student edition of Windows 7 it's $30. So by reusing my HD and OS I'm saving about $50-60 and saving the trouble of reinstalling all my old software.
Click to expand...

Civ5 and Starcraft2 are both going to cost you $50-60, upgrading from XP to Win7 is easily worth far more than either of them.
 
I thought that you couldn't just pop a hard drive into a computer with a different motherboard. youd have to reinstall the system.
 
nc-1701 said:
Looking at the Intel motherboards they don't appear to be back compatible with my old hardrive (ATA/IDE as opposed to SATA), which would end pushing my costs up over $100 more. I was going to go with their 600 W power supply, but I had noticed no brands or specs were given for any of them... How difficult is a power supply to install yourself separately? Also are there any companies similar to Portatech with better reputations you could point me to, to compare with?

Thanks guys
Click to expand...

After looking over the site a bit more, I realized that they charge $20 for case+PSU. You get what you pay for :eek:
You should avoid those no-name 400W and 650W PSUs at all cost, those have a nasty tendency to literally blow up your PC when delivering anything remotely approaching their nominal rating.
That 600 W PSU looks better, will deliver probably way more real load than the "650 W". But given the choice, I would prefer a brand name 350-450W PSU for the same price.
Installing a PSU is not more complicated than installing a harddrive, just follow the manual. And unless you happen to have a Dell, they will all fit :)

A Phenom II X4 965 + HD 5770 system will consume around 250 W under load, and that is already A LOT for a not-overclocked system with a single GPU.
You probably will run into trouble with that one if you neglect to properly ventilate your system, and if you use the stock fan it might get rather noisy. You would want to install additional fans at the rear of the case, which is a good idea anyway. Problem is, there is no information about fan mounts for the cheap cases.

This is starting to look as if all you would get out of buying a semi-assembled system from portatech is that they attach the mainboard to the case and plug in the CPU for you.
You might want to concider to assemble the system yourself, which would have the advantage that you probaly will get better quality for less money :)

Unfortunately I can't help you with alternative suggestions to portatech, being from Old Europe

aimeeandbeatles said:
I thought that you couldn't just pop a hard drive into a computer with a different motherboard. youd have to reinstall the system.
Click to expand...

Good point, but in most cases the "Repair Installation" function of Windows will take care of that, which will not touch your data.
 
DOesnt really matter. You'd be lucky if you can get the system to boot if you just transplant the drives like that.

Every driver installed is going to be the wrong one. When you change motherboards, you want to, nay, you need to reinstall your OS unless you're putting in the same motherboard as the old one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Mesix
Achievements difficult to trigger
Replies
3
Views
165
Mesix
Mesix
Eyswein
  • Sticky
6otM195 Announcement
Replies
0
Views
426
Eyswein
Eyswein
Nizef
TSG 267 Announcement
Replies
6
Views
863
Rhodro
R
Birdjaguar
Being a Tourist in Italy
7 8 9
Replies
178
Views
5K
Birdjaguar
Birdjaguar
Blake00
CivFanatics attacked, SL unaffected
Replies
2
Views
495
CurtSibling
CurtSibling
Back
Top Bottom