Be Excellent To Each Other

Project "play about with the PC" has started.

Machine wiped, Windows 7 reinstalled. Worked out that is is my fucking mouse that is causing random BSODs! Binned mouse.
Machine is up and running, wired xbox controller plugged in and away we go.

Current graphics card is an ATI 4xxx something or other. Installed Dungeon Siege 3 and it played it ok, a fair bit chuntery in sections though, but it all works.

Next step is to buy a new mouse (logitech MX 518, I assume is still the best value option?) and buy a graphics card with displayport out, a new power supply to run it (current one is 350w) and a cable to plug it in to the Mac.
Was thinking about buying a 2GB version of the HD5850 as it'll be running at the stupidly high 27" iMac resolution.

All that will set me back about £200 I think, but will have to wait till after i'm back from me holidays next week.

Gentlemen, start your arguments...

in before JC... and buy an xbox or mac

I have heard logitec mice are good, but I do not have one.. I use a gigabyte and a huge MS mouse... I should get a wireless one soon..

I'm intrigued about this 'plugging it into the iMac' lark. How does that work then? The iMac's monitor surely doesn't have a video input does it? None of mine did.

Which makes me wonder if this is a dongle + video software thing - in which case, won't it be horribly laggy?

Yep, you still can't fall off with the MX518!

And don't skimp on the power supply. Cheap ones blow up and take your components along for the ride. Usually noisy, too. Don't listen to the "this has never happened to me, and I've built 367 PCs" brigade. It had "never happened to me" either until it did.

Similar doubts.

The mini-displayport out on the iMac (2009-2010 model at least, not sure about earlier ones) is also a displayport in, which allows you to use your iMac as monitor for any machine that outputs displayport.

I was going to go for a 600w modular silent thingy for about £50 from overclockers. My case isn't the biggest, so a modular system would be best.

I'm mildly concerned about fitting a double width graphics card in it, but people on the internet say it fits fine (it is a Dell Studio case. I think it is a 540, but no idea really )

£50 is fine - I'm talking about the £15 ones people buy at computer fairs! As for your case, I'm not sure. I have a hefty Lian-Li thing and I struggled to get my card into it the last time I upgraded. It's a twin chip card, though, so larger than most. Wouldn't be a huge deal to transfer it all over to a new, larger case if worse comes to worst though I suppose.

It's more that the motherboard has a hell of a lot of cables and jumpers on the bottom edge, which look to be very close to where the casing of the card would sit, and there isn't much room to reroute all those cables even if they don't get covered over by the card.
We shall see...

PSU - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... -OK&tool=3 (Or any half-decent modular PSU around the £50 mark, as WTB has already said, just steer clear of no-name shit).

GFX - The 5850 might struggle a bit at 1900x1200, which I assume is the native res of your iMac screen? It's not so much the RAM, more the raw horsepower that's required to chuck that many pixels around, especially if you like your AA.

If you can stretch to a current-gen card such as a GeForce 570 or maybe a Radeon 6950, you'll be more comfortable at that res I think.

6950 at £180 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1752

The 5850 is a great card and is silly-cheap at the moment, so if your budget constrains you to that, it's still a good choice.

MOUSE - Personal choice I suppose

Sexy, sexy power

I replaced the RAM in my home server at the weekend! Look at me go!

2560x1440 is the native rez of the iMac

I don't need full whack stuff, just the occasional pretty lighting. Plus im not adverse to playing at none native resolutions. You could almost think that I don't really care that much about it all, if the 5850 is good enough, then that'll do me.

2560x1440 is a crazy res

Depends how fussed you are I suppose when it comes to all the super-shinies, but I'd spend the extra cash upfront and chuck one of the current-gen's big boys at it.

GTX570 at £250 looks good, assuming it'll fit in your case - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1010

But that is twice the price, bearing in mind i'm coming from a 4000 series at the moment and don't think that looks too bad
Plus I need displayport out...

Hmmm, this one then.

Can't take it with you and all that

2GB 6970 + display port £264 - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1752

(Are display port and mini display port compatible? It's all a bit Maccy for me )

Plus it comes with DiRT3, which is currently £30 on Steam and is one of the most deliciously gorgeous games I've ever seen (more importantly it's a fantastic game to play too).

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... off?page=3

Yes. They're different plugs but the same data, like USB-B and mini-USB. MiniDisplayPort is part of the normal VESA standard too, it's not Mac-specific, although it was originally invented by Apple and only it uses it currently to my knowledge.

Well, that is something new I've learned today. I'm actually a little surprised that Apple allow that. Good though, as the screen on the larger iMacs is amazing and it would be a shame wasting it on the Mac alone.

Indeed, it's 160 rows short.

How so? That is the resolution of a 27" iMac.

So, I decided to actually do some sort of real research and see what I was letting myself in for.
It turns out I have a Dell Studio XPS 435MT
http://www.pcworld.com/article/155893/d ... sktop.html

Reports on the web say that it isn't a problem fitting a HD5850 card in it, but I will need to upgrade the power supply, as I expected.
The only worries are heat, as the PCI-E x16 slot is right at the bottom of the motherboard, but it's a standard microATX motherboard so if all overheats I'll just get a new case.

The choice now boils down to the following:
HD5850 1GB (£128)
HD5870 1GB (£180)
HD6950 1GB (£180)
HD6950 2GB (£215)
HD6970 2GB (£274)

HD5850 is the lowest performing, but best bang for buck i'm thinking?
Out of the 5870 and 6950, which is better? They cost the same.
HD6970 is obviously the best performing, but is it twice as good as the 5850?
NVIDIA cards are out as I need DisplayPort and none of them seem to have it...

You're putting 64bit Win7 on there, right? If not, don't even consider those 2GB cards.

Yup, proper legit copy with a code and everything. My late mother would be proud!

If you want to game at the native res of your iMac screen when you're gonna need the 2GB 6970 or 6950. TBH it seems crackers to have such a high-end display and then deliberately knacker your gaming experience on it with a relatively cheap graphics card.

On top of that, your PC is really keenly specced, lumber it with a 5850 and you'll be wasting the potential of the CPU and RAM.

That's not to say the 5850 is a bad card, far from it, but you're basically 80% of the way to having a proper top-end PC gaming experience available to you, why cripple it at the last hurdle for the sake of £150?

If the 6970 will fit in that case, I'd say go for it, as you'll be set for years to come.

At the very least, go for the 2GB 6950, which is only £90 more than the 5850, and is a far better match for your set-up than the 5850.

How many times does he need to tell you that he's not bothered about that? Because so far it's twice.

Maybe three times will be the charm?

Which makes him wrong twice, too.

It depends what you consider as 'proper gaming' I suppose - the 5850/5870 will happily output that res and deliver a 'reasonable' experience in a lot of games, Trooper's made it clear he doesn't care about all the shinies, although on that basis a sub-£100 card will 'run games' at 2560x1440, it's just that they'll just look like a 360 having a particularly bad day.

I don't see the point of having a screen capable of displaying 2560x1440 and then running games at some shitty res due to a cheap-ass graphics card, where's the cut-off point? Trooper's old 4000 series card could render everything at 1024x768 and just have it upscale to fill the screen.

It's a pointless question in many ways, as Trooper has pretty much already answered it before he asked it, so I'm giving my opinion that the 5850 will 'do the job' but considering all his other kit is pretty damn nice, why not just go the extra distance on a graphics card to make the most of it?

I was agreeing with you, in case that wasn't clear.

Yes! I knew that!

It's almost like AE doesn't read the things he's replying to before cutting and pasting a subtle new variation of his stock PCS ROOL OK rant.

Except he's right.
And, er, this is a thread about PCs. Congrats on being the first person to take it off topic!

I was just doing my-monitor-has-more-pixels-than-yours, which gives me the opposite perspective of the craziness of that resolution.

Ah! In that case

Two things to consider. I played Portal 2 on the iMac in a non-native resolution and it looked more than fine.
This started off as a "I've got a pretty decent PC, if I chucked in a £100 graphics card it would make a more than adequate gaming machine again" it has now turned in to "As the rest is so good, and you need to play in native res with everything turned on, then you would be foolish to go for anything other than top end" £100 has turned into £350 (card plus power supply), plus the inevitable post in a few days time asking for recommendations on a good case for around £50 when the 6970 doesn't fit...

It's a mindshift i'm not entirely sure I want to make...

But then, it's only money and would give me a kick-ass machine for sure!

Hmmm....

Thoughts continue.

If I was to get a 6970, i'm pretty sure the current case, with its cramped conditions and single fan won't be up to the job cooling wise

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =CA-160-CM

One of those seems to be just the job, with an extra one of these

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... 7&subcat=4

Well it's your call at the end of the day Trooper, personal opinion basically:

1) Shinies - important?
2) Native res - important?
3) Futureproofing - important?

etc

For me one of the great advantages of PC gaming is maximum shinies and game performance (personally I don't consider stuff like a solid 60FPS versus a dodgy 30FPS to be 'just shinies' either, and the Eurogamer face-offs increasingly point towards these sort of bread and butter performance compromises on the consoles as being to the detriment of the games), in your case, you're basically already there with a pretty ninja PC, all it needs a hefty graphics card, especially because....

You'll be playing on one of the nicest screens in the world, a 27inch iMac with a massive native resolution. Again just my personal opinion, but why be in possession of a screen like that and then smear some crappy looking lo-res game all over it?

The only reason I've not moved up to 27-30inch at that res is because I'm not convinced there's a single GPU card out there that can handle it, although I suspect the 6970 will be capable of it. (The reviews seem to think so.)

Seeing is believing IMO, once you've experienced the likes of DiRT3 maxed out in DX11 mode, running at 60FPS on a big screen (it'll be even more luscious on your iMac), I suspect you won't look back.

You need to spend a bit of money to get your PC 'games ready' anyway, why not spend a bit more upfront and set yourself up for years to come?

I'm coming round to your way of thinking

Any thoughts on the case? Seems as good as any other to me, and reviews are good enough.

A mate of mine is using the Coolermaster case you linked to above, and it's amazingly good quality for the price. (The one supplied fan is very quiet.)

If the 6970 will fit, it'd make a solid choice with the extra fan.

I have the predecessor to that case, same inside, different front and it's very good. Not very deep though, so I'd check the length of your GFX

Check your length (oeer missus...):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SpxihI0pKc

Looks like the power connectors for the 6970 aren't at the back of the card, so assuming Trooper isn't filling all the hard drive bays, it should fit.

I do have 2 hard disks, but as one of them is currently stuck to the case side with blutack and wedged in with the graphics card, im pretty sure I'll be able to find a place to put it in the new case

I feel ill just thinking about it

Playing in non-native resolution isn't that big a deal is it? E.g. surely most 360 games are scaled up from 720 to 1080 when played on most hdtvs?

It's not a huge deal, it's the difference between looking great and looking awesome, IMO.
A lot of the people who say never do it are thinking back to the original days of LCD, where it just looked awful.

However, you are generally sitting much closer to a monitor, than you are to a HDTV, so any scaling flaws will be more obvious.

Ha, you should see my PC! I have a mini case, but the gfx card in it wouldn't work with my monitor, so I use my old card, but it isn't a mini card, so I have the side of the case off and the card hanging out. This means the HDD overheats, so that is hanging out the back. How it hasn't broken yet, I don't know.

Case wise I have changed my mind and am looking at this instead
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =7&subcat=

An extra £15, but comes with a billion fans and will easily fit a longer graphics card.

It also has some LEDs which should increase my frames-per-second by quite a bit, and has the essential case design ethos of looking like it was sketched out on the back of a maths notebook, by a 13yr old boy on a break between masturbation sessions.

That's far too bling for me.
The case I chose was expensive, but it lovely looking and an absolute joy to work with.

Back with a link in a sec.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161660

It's gone up in price a fair bit