June Competitions

[Ramjet]

13th now, and my 3rd gold is there, on to the 4th!

Congrats on the 3rd gold Dirk, looks like you are acquiring a nice collection already.

[Dirk Broer]

Thanks Ramjet,

There's two more bronze in the making, but I'll never catch that string of sapphire that you've acquired!

[gamer007]

I've decided to hop into this competition.
I haven't been around much, but since I upgraded my computer, I'm back in action.

[Dirk Broer]

I've decided to hop into this competition.
I haven't been around much, but since I upgraded my computer, I'm back in action.

Any fancy new hardware that you have tips about?

[NeoGen]

Welcome back gamer!

What upgrade did you do? Did you get one of those big bad Radeon 79xx GPUs?

[gamer007]

Welcome back gamer!

What upgrade did you do? Did you get one of those big bad Radeon 79xx GPUs?

Intel i5 3570k CPU
ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard
8GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Visiontek HD 7870
120GB Patriot Pyro SE SSD

Old build was:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4GB DDR2 RAM
Radeon 4850

I've had the SSD for a couple months now, but I wish I got it with my other stuff since they've become quite cheap now.
I didn't get the 79xx cards since they're out of my price range. I was hoping to get a 7870 from another brand like Gigabyte, but the Visiontek one was around $70 off, so it was close to a price of a 7850. I couldn't resist.

My old rig lasted me around 5-6 years. This should last me just as long, if not longer.

Any fancy new hardware that you have tips about?

Hmm.. nothing really. My rig is mainly for games, so I picked an i5. Sometimes I wonder if I should've went with an i7 so I can crunch more at once. Hence why I picked a 7870 as well. Then looking at benchmarks, the 69xx cards do better in crunching stuff....

[NeoGen]

Now that was a big leap from what you had to what you have now!

To last 5-6 years the only things I can think of maybe is adding another 8Gb of RAM to it (you know how the future Windows 8, 9 and 10 are going to be memory hogs ), and another 7870 in crossfire mode for those future GPU hungry video games. Oh, and a second Pyro SSD to be set in RAID 0.

That would get your machine faster than ever

[Dirk Broer]

The combination SSD and Z77 chipset should be good for Smart Response Technology,
is this a real-world phenomenon, or just a marketing gadget?

BTW: Windows 8 is no memory hog! I'm Running a Win8 Dev and a Win8 Consumer preview at the moment,
the latter on my Llano 3870K, using Boinc 7.0.27, so I'm on the cutting edge of progress.

[NeoGen]

BTW: Windows 8 is no memory hog! I'm Running a Win8 Dev and a Win8 Consumer preview at the moment,
the latter on my Llano 3870K, using Boinc 7.0.27, so I'm on the cutting edge of progress.

I have not tried Windows 8 at all yet, just extrapolating from previous version leaps.
Even though Microsoft's minimum requirements show really low values (128Mb for WinXP, 1Gb for Win 7) I don't recommend anyone less than 2Gb of RAM for XP and 4Gb for Win7. I'm thinking Windows 8 ideal values would be between 4 and 8Gb. This of course to be able to run OS, applications and games comfortably without constantly accessing swap file.

[Dirk Broer]

I build systems with 8Gb as minimum nowadays -using my rule-of-thumb 2 Gb per core rule-, and on 8Gb Win8 performs quite well, even when I've donated a full 1Gb to the HD 6550D.