Building/Upgrading a PC for TS2

[Hegelian]

From what I heard from my husband, AMD has already annouced something like a 50% price cut on many of their processors, so I'm going to wait until those prices reach Finland, and then buy one.

What I'm reading is that AMD has told its customers privately that it will cut prices signifcantly once Intel's Core 2 CPUs are released, currently slated for 23 July. This is apparently because Intel's planned pricing scheme is quite agressive.

AMD Plans Major CPU Price Drops Day After "Conroe"

[IgnorantBliss]

Yeah, that must be what the hubby was talking about. Looks like the likes of AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ might actually be afforable after the planned price cut. July 24th, hmm, guess I'll need to wait some more 

[Winklesim]

Geez I'm confused!    I have a computer with an intel pentium 4 3.00ghz processor which my little brother is due to inherit some time soon so I can buy a new one. Now I've managed to figure out what I need in the way of graphics cards and memory etc, but I am completely lost on the whole cpu thing when comparing Intel and AMD. I want a processor that is at least as good as the one I am handing off, better would be preferable, but I'm going with AMD this time around. When I was having a play around on the alienware site all the AMD's seem to have speeds slower than 3.00ghz.
 
Example: An 'AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5000+ Processor w/ HyperTransport and Dual Core Technology' has a listed processor speed of 2.6ghz. wtf?

I must be missing some crucial point here (lol) but basically, if I was looking at getting a processor that is better than the one I have at the moment, what would be the starting point in the AMD line up?

[J. M. Pescado]

The bottom line is that while clock speed has been used as a metric for CPU performance for the common peasantry for ages, that's not the only factor which decides the performance of a CPU. The short version is that AMD engages in a bit of hardware chicanery that attempts to wrangle equivalent performance out of a lower clock speed, but to the common peasant, this makes very poor advertising, so they use those inflated numbers to post its "equivalency" to an Intel CPU of similar clocking. This, of course, mostly serves to confuse the issue.

[VyeOlin]

My fiance is friends with a guy that is a Senior Design Architect for Intel and his recommendation for upgrading was to buy AMD. He said that Intel made a huge mistake but they will rectify that within 5 years as they are planning on using liquid nitro to break the 5ghz limitations. He said that cpu chips will come in an enclosed refrigeration unit.  Sounds expensive to me.

[Winklesim]

Righty-o then, I shall just ignore processor speed from now on.    Thanks for the reply JM.

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm not saying processor speed doesn't matter. All other things equal, a higher processor speed makes a more powerful processor. However, all other things are NOT equal. There's a lot more complicated stuff that I personally am not that well acquainted with at work here, but it's enough to say that raw processor clock speed is not the only factor at work, just like how how a weapon with a faster firing rate isn't necessarily a better gun.

[Orbit]

I'm getting a new computer today, but the graphics card won't cut it for Sims 2.  At least, I don't think so (ATI X200 Express).  So, I'm just wondering what graphics card you guys think I should get.  $450 is the most I'm willing to spend on one.  Also, the system comes with 528 MB RAM, and I'm wondering if that's enough for Sims 2.  So, if the RAM doesn't cut it, what RAM should I get?

[jsalemi]

At least a gig of RAM, and at least an ATI X800, which will run you around $200 (you can put the rest of that $450 towards getting as much RAM as possible ).

[BlueSoup]

I would try to get at least 1GB of RAM.

I merged your thread with Hegelian's - lots of good info in this thread.

[Hegelian]

My fiance is friends with a guy that is a Senior Design Architect for Intel and his recommendation for upgrading was to buy AMD.

Was that before or after Intel's Core 2 CPUs ship next month?   

He said that Intel made a huge mistake but they will rectify that within 5 years as they are planning on using liquid nitro to break the 5ghz limitations. He said that cpu chips will come in an enclosed refrigeration unit.  Sounds expensive to me.

The mistake Intel made was assuming it could continue to increase raw clock speeds without excessive power-consumption and heat issues by continuously shrinking the die, which turned out to be wrong. The solution for the foreseeable future for both Intel and AMD is multiple, lower-power cores in each CPU unit.

FWIW, Intel's new "Athlon killer" CPUs were designed by Intel's team in Israel. 

So, I'm just wondering what graphics card you guys think I should get.  $450 is the most I'm willing to spend on one.

You don't need a $450 graphics board for TS2, and buying at the top of the price curve is usually a mistake unless money is no object. That said, you can (sort of) future-proof your PC for a couple years by going with something like the Radeon X1900 GT (under US$300) or X1800XT (under $250). OTOH, you can get a PowerColor X800 GTO for US$120, and while it won't match the performance of the other boards, it offers more performance per dollar (I have a Sapphire X800 GTO in one PC and an X800 GT in another, and they work quite well—my game performance is limited by my 2.8 GHz P4).

One thing that makes TS2 quite different from most 3D games is the extent to which it is scalable to your hardware. Most games have fairly "hard" minimum hardware requirements, and if you don't meet them you don't play the game. But TS2 will run on some pretty old and underpowered PCs—at greatly reduced levels of visual detail. For the most part, this compromise doesn't affect gameplay:  you don't get cinematics, you can only invite a couple sims to parties, and community lots may look like slide shows. But the improvements in the look and feel of the game with a graphics board that allows all settings to be set to High and the surrounding landscape to be seen when playing a lot really improves the overall game experience, and there are game situations where having more rather than fewer sims at a party or on a community lot can be a real advantage. There is a significant difference between what is needed and what is optimal.

Let's say you went toward the high end with the X1900 GT. That would leave US$150 of that US$450 for a second hard drive (for documents and archives, media files, and the main paging file), and more RAM. IMO that woud be a better buy than spending the entire $450 on a graphics board.

Bear in mind that some high-end PCI-E graphics boards require a dedicated lead from the power supply, so you will want to check the PSU to see if it will support the board you end up buying.

One thing to keep in mind when buying a graphics board now is that Windows Vista ships next year with DirectX 10, and DX10 will be Vista-only; so if TS3 is released as a DX10 game, you will need to upgrade both your OS and your graphics board to play it. Therefore, it's probably a good idea to make the board you buy now the last one you need until you need  one with DX10 support in hardware. The X1900 model I mentioned above would probably fit the bill.   

Also, the system comes with 528 [512?] MB RAM, and I'm wondering if that's enough for Sims 2.  So, if the RAM doesn't cut it, what RAM should I get?

As others have said, get 1 GB at the minimum. If your new PC has a motherboard that supports dual-channel RAM, you need two modules in order to have dual-channel operation (so that would be 512 x 2). WinXP is happier with 1 GB than with 512 MB, and TS2 will certainly use more than 1 GB if it's available (although you may need to modify/reduce the paging file settings to get Windows to use all your available RAM).

[VyeOlin]

Was that before or after Intel's Core 2 CPUs ship next month?

He said it last week, what he was referring to I'm not exactly sure.  Just thought it was strange that he recommended AMD.

[J. M. Pescado]

You know, I've been wondering: How does the X64 stuff affect existing programs and the OS? That part has me stumped.

[Hegelian]

From everything I've read, the 64-bit extensions in current CPUs only really have an affect when running a 64-bit OS like WinXP Pro x64 or Windows Server 2003 x64. So it's partly marketing and partly future-proofing; in the long run, it is probably more economical to make all your processors 64-bit capable rather than having separate 32-bit and 64-bit products.

Of course, unless you have 64-bit apps, there's not much point in running a 64-bit version of Windows on a desktop. The ony realy advantage with current apps is that the 64-bit OS can address 32 GB of RAM compared to 4 GB for WinXP, and as much as 4 GB is available to 32-bit apps, compared to 2 GB for WinXP.

Tom's Hardware:  Windows XP x64, Promise and Reality

[J. M. Pescado]

Am I looking at compatibility issues if I just plug Ye Olde Windoze for Ye Olde 32 Bit Machines onto one of these newfangled gewgaws?

[Hegelian]

No.   

In fact, as far as I know, all current Athlon CPUs from AMD and most if not all current Pentium CPUs from Intel include 64-bit support, so you don't have a choice since you can't buy WinXP x64 off the shelf (you can only upgrade online or buy it pre-installed on a new PC).

This isn't the first time we've been down this road:  MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows (Win 3.1?) ran fine on 80386 and 80486 CPUs, which were 32-bit processors.

[J. M. Pescado]

* J. M. Pescado stares blankly.

People buy Windoze?

[Hegelian]

* J. M. Pescado stares blankly.

People buy Windoze?

Of course. If you build your own machines, you need to get it somewhere (of course if you don't want to pay you can obtain a pirated copy—but I don't do that). And if you already have a copy, you need to buy the upgrades if you want to "move up." WinXP Pro x64 is not available as a retail upgrade, and apparently the "exchange" program for users with WinXP Pro expired in July 2005.

Of course, as with other versions of Windows, if you shop around you can probably find the OEM package of x64, although you may need to buy a bit of hardware (or the seller will include some broken bit like a non-functioning $10 mouse) to meet Microsoft's OEM resale requirements.   

[Hegelian]

Intel made a huge mistake but they will rectify that within 5 years as they are planning on using liquid nitro to break the 5ghz limitations. He said that cpu chips will come in an enclosed refrigeration unit.  Sounds expensive to me.

I just read this morning that IBM and researchers at Georgia Tech have produced a prototype CPU that runs at 500 GHz when cooled to 5° Kelvin using liquid helium (that is -268.5° C). The processor runs at 350 GHz at room temperature. It is not likely we will be seeing these for the desktop anytime soon, very possibly never. Note that the team believes that using silicon-germanium technology, it can achieve 1000 GHz.

Although Intel is the big dog in the desktop market, IBM is definitely still a major player at the high end of silicon-chip engineering.

IBM accelerates silicon to more than 500 GHz

[J. M. Pescado]

Will the processor actually *REMAIN* at room temperature when you run it, or is it going to wind up 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun?

[Hegelian]

Well, no. But the processor you have now doesn't remain at room temperature when you run it, either. I read the article as meaning it will run within its design parameters in "room temperature" ambient temps—in other words,without a cooling apparatus like a heatsink-fan assembly, or at least without heroic cooling measures.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, but would this 350 GHz machine require heroic cooling just to KEEP it at room temperature, or are normal measures adequate?

[MaximilianPS]

maybe with 10ghz we can reduce the cooling ?

btw. i'm thinkin about a laptop..
ausus, with a gefo inside, it whould be a dual core 3Ghz with 1gb ram...
mabye 1gb it's a bit low...  but i'm pretty intrested in a laptop.. about 1500€ same in dollars +/-
any suggestion about that ?

[Hegelian]

The issue with laptops is always the same:  for what are you going to use it? Does your primary use require (or is greatly facilitated by) the mobility of a laptop? If so, then the 1000€ price premium over an eqivalent desktop is probably worth it. Otherwise, laptops are not at all a good value for money in price/performance terms.

If your primary use is for gaming and you're not going to LAN parties, a laptop is a poor choice. In order to keep weight and heat down, laptops are way underpowered compared to a desktop at the same price. You can build or buy close to a state-of-the-performance-art desktop PC for US$1500 (not including monitor), whereas the same money gets you a nice laptop near the top of the low-power-consumption mobile CPU range (i.e., Centrino and  Core Duo—Intel really is the leader in this market segment), but even the best of these don't top 2.2 GHz. Now, because of performance optimizations and massive L2 caches, these CPUs based on the P6 architecture (Pentium Pro) rather than the high-speed, high-wattage P7 "NetBurst" architecture (Pentium 4) can hold their own with desktop CPUs up to around 2.8~3.0 GHz in many applications, but probably not with apps that benefit from sheer CPU speed (like TS2). BTW, Intel's imminent Core 2 dual-core CPUs are based on the P6 architecture, which goes some way in explaining how they can outperform P4-based CPUs that run at higher clock frequencies.

Now, you can buy a laptop that (with the exception of its LCD display) can match an upper-end desktop PC in gaming performance, but you're going to spend in excess of US$3000 and end up with a heavy (5.5+ kg), hot (you've got a desktop CPU crammed into a tight space), loud (the tiny CPU fan will be buzzing all the time), and upgrade-limited machine. Some of these run so hot you can't actually use them as laptops. As for the display, despite advances in LCD technology, games and other primarily visual applications (photo-editing is one) still look much better on a CRT. Of course, you can probably attach a CRT to the laptop, but then you've lost most of the advantage of having one. Oh—don't forget that the keyboards on laptops can be difficult to type on and are mediocre at best (and you don't get a separate numeric keypad); the keyboards on business models tend to be quite a bit better than those on "consumer" models. OTOH, for US$3000 you can build or buy a killer desktop rig that will last you for several years before performance becomes an issue.

I'm not saying don't buy the laptop. I have a company-paid laptop myself because I work from home, and with a properly-secured wireless node on my network, the mobility is quite nice. But I'm writing this on my desktop, both because the display is much better (a larger LCD; I also have an inexpensive CRT attached for games and Photoshop), and because the relatively inexpensive IBM keyboard is much easier to type on than the (relatively good) keyboard on the laptop. What I am saying is evaluate—objectively—your needs before spending the extra €€ for a laptop you don't really need. In another month, Intel's very interesting next-generation CPUs will ship at what are reported to be very competetive prices. My personal opinion is that this is a bad time to be buying a new PC; wait a month and see what's available once the Core 2 processors ship and AMD slashes prices on its CPUs.   

FWIW, ASUS and other mid-range manufacturers source ther laptops from just a handful of Taiwanese OEM builders, so unless you're buying a Dell, HP, or IBM (Lenovo), they're all pretty much the same. I don't know that there's much to choose between the integrated graphics from nVidia and ATI, although the nVidia laptop display controllers probably suffer from the same driver issues as do its desktop products and from what I've read in various places, ATI still offers superior image quality. Regardless, whatever you get, be sure it has at least a 5400-RPM hard drive (instead of 4200 RPM); 7200 RPM is better but you'll pay for it.

[MaximilianPS]

indeed my friend...
this is a sort of .."to buy or not to buy ...?"
ehe.. i wish a powerfull laptop 'cause i've 2 pc (@home / @work)

i'm my boss ... i've an internet point but "my job" is also to model and do render for some architect...

i wish to buy a laptop just to play with my sims...on this way i'll stop to have 2 sims installed (@home @work)
and also i will test / install my objec just on the laptop and all "source" of the objects, like texture and meses will be in the laptop, that i'll use to "sinc." the @work pc with the @home pc...

i hope that will be clear (isn't easy to explane it with my eglish lol)

the problem of the laptop could be the ram.. @home pc have 2gigs..
wile @work pc is a Dell Dual Xeon 2Ghz with 1GB ram (Rimm @ 600Mhz) with a quadroFx 1100 (128megs)
that pc is the one that i use to made 3d model/meshes and  render too.

i've seen some alienware laptop that could be intresting but maybe a bit expensive ^^