I think Im addicted to computer parts :(

[Jakalwarrior]

Newegg had the 4850s for 150 shipped AR, I couldn't help it. I dont even have any graphically demanding games my way way overclocked 2900pro couldn't play (which I bought because it was 159 6 months ago, and I couldn't pass). Now I think ive piled up a little list. The logitec 200 watt 5.1 stereo I didnt need but was 50 bucks... the razor diamond back mouse I didnt need but was 29 bucks... the 2gb mp3 / video player I didnt need but was 50 bucks... I think pretty much every part in my computer falls into this category...

Anyone else addicted to upgrading their computer when prices seem great?

BRB, gotta go buy a new PSU for my wifes computer, otherwise when I put my 2900pro in it, it may become a volcano.

[szaxazs]

Anyone else addicted to upgrading their computer when prices seem great?

General, pretty useless upgrades, yes. I like to buy pretty useless - and cheap of course - things which enhance the system a little.

About real hardware upgrades however, I would love it if I was able to upgrade my computer all the time, or even better, if I was able to build a new computer like every month, or every day, or every five hours, or less. At least one time per day, I am going to browse the hardware section of at least two online shops and look at the prices of the specific hardware I am interested in, just for the sake of it.

It is one of my craziest dreams, I am in the computer world and I have access to infinite hardware parts and software. It would be like heaven. Or, if there are no computers in heaven, even better.

[Pirate1650]

I like to look at the parts but I can only afford to upgrade like once or twice a year. I usually save up $300-$500 on the side, just for my computer, and then I buy the best of what is available at that time.

[Motor Jax]

if i see 120Tb external harddive on sale, oh you bet, i will by that sucker...

[burazekun]

The 4850 from ATI is actually an awesome buy. It's price of 200 and performace beating the 3750x2 in many areas makes this a wonder card. It also can process 1tflops and the 4870 can process 1.2tflops makings these cards the first to cross over to the other side.

I snippet from a reveiwer.

A new record! With its 160 five-way VLIW shader units (800 ALUs in all), the RV770 dethrones the GT200, with its 993 Mflops to become the first GPU to pass the very symbolic bar of 1 Tflop (1 Tflop for the HD 4850 and 1.2 Tflops for the 4870). But what’s really impressive is for a GPU with a die measuring barely 260 mm² to achieve such figures.

I am personally waiting for custom heatsinc's for these 4850's before I invest into one. The idea that the fan on these guys can be surpisingly loud is what drove me away from buying it soon.

And yes, I do buy parts that may marginally increase my performace. But from my point of veiw, moving from the 2600xt with ddr4 to a 4850 with ddr3 is a massive upgrade. 120steamprocessors to 800?! and a noticable performace increase! Oh yeah... And besides that, I bought my 2600xt for 150 so 50 dollars more on this would be appropriate.

[szaxazs]

if i see 120Tb external harddive on sale, oh you bet, i will by that sucker...

By 2012 they say that we will be using BRDs in the we are using DVDs at the moment, and by that time DVDs will be looked at the same fashion as we see CDs now.

But an 120TeraByte external? Maybe at that time we could have one too. As we use now 4.7Gb of compact disk storage and somewhere like 500Gb of hard disk storage, by 2012 it is possible that we might use 120Tb hard disk storage and 50Gb of compact disk storage.

Have a look at this one:
Holographic Versatile Disc (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)
Sweet huh?

[rokxal]

Think of all the stuff that will fit on a 120TeraByte external!

Lets download the Internet ;)

[Jakalwarrior]

And besides that, I bought my 2600xt for 150 so 50 dollars more on this would be appropriate.

The Newegg 150 shipped AR deal is gone, but you can still get them for 170 or less if you hunt around a bit.
I know the lack of memory bandwidth is really going to hold this powerful core back, but what can I say... 150 bucks!

[Monte314]

There's a Dilbert cartoon where he walks by a hardware store, and this overpowering indraft rips his clothes off and sucks him in. Inside, the place is full of naked engineers....

[Kris3]

It's difficult for me to hold off right now, as this is a great time to be a PC gamer. Finally AMD/ATI is pushing the envelope, and the prices that are resulting are insane compared to what they've been the last couple of years. The 4850 at $150 and even the 4870 at $300 are incredible bargains, and the 8800 GT/GTS were comparable values six months ago.

Also, my Razer Deathadder perhaps my favorite purchase for my current PC!

[HackerX]

I have to admit, I have a Razor mouse and it's the best mouse i've ever used by a long shot.

It's even hand neutral which, being left handed, is a rare thing for quality mice.

[Caramel]

You people are not addicted to computer parts at all. You're just taking good care of your computers. They need to be upgraded and maintenanced once in a while, otherwise they end up as e-waste. I think your computers would feel very happy to have you as owners, if they were capable of feeling.

[Jakalwarrior]

It's difficult for me to hold off right now, as this is a great time to be a PC gamer. Finally AMD/ATI is pushing the envelope, and the prices that are resulting are insane compared to what they've been the last couple of years. The 4850 at $150 and even the 4870 at $300 are incredible bargains, and the 8800 GT/GTS were comparable values six months ago.

Also, my Razer Deathadder perhaps my favorite purchase for my current PC!

I have to add that I took mine out of the box and maxed out what CCC would let me overclock to in all of about 5 minutes lol. from 625/99X to 700/1150. A lot of people are finding that the faster memory on the 4870 only makes about an 8% difference and the 4850s can clock just as high on the core if you work with them. Some people already over 900mhz core with em by editing the bios and vmods. I'm going to wait a week or so before I mod my bios though... I have to have something to look foward too and research while im at work (not to mention I want to make sure its not going to die on my before I void the warranty too much)

*edit, had to knock the ram down a notch. Ram may need further tweaking :( 2400mhz makes artifacts on firefly in 3dmark06. 2300 doesn't seem to yet .

[nickasummers]

How can anyone not be addicted to computer parts. I'm seriously considering getting a 4870 X2 the day it comes out even though I can't really afford to spend $500 on a video card. Especially since my 650 watt PSU might not handle it and even if it does, my current PSU was only 30 bucks. I can handle risking a 150 dollar 2900pro with my low quality PSU, I saved a bunch of money, but I'm not sure I want to use a $30 power supply with a $500 card. On a side note, has anyone else bought a G15 keyboard. I absolutely LOVE mine. Best $80 I ever spent. I can view my cpu usage, fps, memory usage, and cpu temp at any time....

[Jakalwarrior]

I had one a friend gave me (G15 - one of the ones that was recalled for the paint coming off the keys). It died that when somone (not me) spilt water on my desk and left it there overnight... Its not dead but some keys dont work sometimes.

No dont risk that PSU with a 4870X2. It might run it but that would be scarey! You say it was a cheap PSU? read some of the PSU reviews on [H] too and notice most of the cheapy PSUs blow up at about 80% load or less.
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[imposter]

How impressed are you with the 4850? I have a 3870 atm I am thinking about buying a 4870x2. Though if the 4850 is a great card than I may go that route.

[Jakalwarrior]

How impressed are you with the 4850? I have a 3870 atm I am thinking about buying a 4870x2. Though if the 4850 is a great card than I may go that route.

I dont really have any games that stress it! I guess the witcher sort of does. I am running it at 1680x1050 with 16XAS and 12X edge detect AA. That gets me 40ish fps. My 2900pro ran it similarly but at lower fps and no AA (Those cards sucked at AA bad). The only reason I really bought it was to have a new toy to overclock and to pass my 2900pro down to my wifes computer to replace the aging 7600GT.

I did have some fun overclocking it though. My final 24/7 max was 725/1150. The card can actually do about 735 or 740 core but it wasn't worth it to ride the ragged edge for a tiny tiny difference in games I already play maxed out.

My overall impression of it is that it is about as much power as anyone who games at 1680x1050 or lower will need for the next year or two (Crysis players and eye candy junkies excluded). That is my max resolution on this monitor so it is all I can judge from first hand experience. The reviews show that people who game at higher will probably find it to be good enough too for a while atleast, unless they want maxed out eye candy. Dont get me wrong, it does AA and AS very well with the new core design, I just dont think it will be able to run high levels of them in games that come out a year or later from now (Standard assumption with each gen). Great bang for the buck card if you get it for 150 or less.

[imposter]

I just bought a 4870, I plan on buying another in about a month to CF. I can't wait to see my FPS on AoC. Also I hope to play SC2 and the new fallout out on near max settings.

[ScottH]

I'm jealous. I bought a 3870 in March with my new system, and I love it. I'm SO impressed with ATI's aggressive pricing these days, and this time (the 4x line), the "little" card has all the stream processors (800!) of the big one, so with the OC you're still at over 1 Tflop. I want 2 of them :-)

[possibly boring story]
Years ago I wrote code to draw the Mandelbrot set, then spent months (in my spare time) optimizing it (on a P-II 266Mhz). I wrote core portions in assembler and invented some nice optimizations to eliminate pixels. In the end, I got to a performance of about 2 seconds per 1024x768 screen.

I always wanted to write a distributed version to run in our lab and see if I could do "fly-in's" on the set.

Recently, I ran my code on my current quad core box and I get about 4 fps at 1600x1200, only using one core.

So, I decided to write a GPU version. Now, the mandelbrot calculations are VERY bad for GPU processors due to the massive looping (up to 1000 iterations). And, to simplify my effort I did away with ALL pixel-eliminating optimizations.

Even with that, I get 30 FPS on my 3870.

Life is good if you're a geek these days :-)

[/possibly boring story]

[Jakalwarrior]

I canceled my AOC account after the first month so I haven't gotten to see if this card runs it much better than my old 2900pro. The buildings and characters were pretty but I thought that game badly badly needed speedtree, better grass, and overall some better looking enviornments. Oblivion looked better IMO even with its lower res textures.

I am looking forward to spore, the new fallout, D3, possibly Warhammer, sc2, etc...

[OneHertz]

Wow you are not addicted at all. Very mild spending...

Once you start buying unreleased ES Xtreme series CPUs for over 1grand to bench on your custom phase change unit and dry ice then you can say you are addicted. I used to spend 6k-10k usd per year on that stuff... and I still spend a lot, but not that much anymore. My rig does have an ES QX9650@ 4.2ghz though that I got well before their release and a 4870, but I got rid of my phase change unit.... Expensive little hobby.

[MichaelH]

I'm glad it's not just me. I've gone through four computers in the last two years:
eMachines tower
Mac mini
G5 dual
HP Laptop
Macbook Pro

Unfortunately, going through computers tends to eat away money. I'm back on a Mini. :)

[Jakalwarrior]

Wow you are not addicted at all. Very mild spending...

Once you start buying unreleased ES Xtreme series CPUs for over 1grand to bench on your custom phase change unit and dry ice then you can say you are addicted. I used to spend 6k-10k usd per year on that stuff... and I still spend a lot, but not that much anymore. My rig does have an ES QX9650@ 4.2ghz though that I got well before their release and a 4870, but I got rid of my phase change unit.... Expensive little hobby.

I only spend about 1-3k a year on it. It gets a bit wattered down though since I have to keep a rig up for both myself and my wife.
For me to have fun the parts dont have to be the latest and greatest and im not worried about records, I just like squeezing the last little bit out of whatever it may be.

I did used to have my case built around a window unit though lol... only problem was every time the power would go out id have to bust out with the towels to keep the frost from dripping inside the case (inside stayed humidity free so no frost, the outside of the case would freeze.)

[AgentofGaming]

I'm building a new computer for my brother this week.

Compiled from local stores
(need to avoid shipping costs: tigerdirect.ca, canadacomputers.com)

Core 2 Duo E8400 $180
P45 Neo3 $135
OCZ DDR2-PC6400 4 GB $40
2x Hitachi 500GB $112
Apevia X-Plorer w/ 800W PSU $146.99
My Old Geforce 8800 Free

I'm trying to keep this potent but low cost, any suggestions/opinions?

[OneHertz]

I only spend about 1-3k a year on it. It gets a bit wattered down though since I have to keep a rig up for both myself and my wife.
For me to have fun the parts dont have to be the latest and greatest and im not worried about records, I just like squeezing the last little bit out of whatever it may be.

I did used to have my case built around a window unit though lol... only problem was every time the power would go out id have to bust out with the towels to keep the frost from dripping inside the case (inside stayed humidity free so no frost, the outside of the case would freeze.)

A lot of people spend that much... It is normal to keep your computer running relatively fast. You are fine! What you shouldn't get into is audiophile stuff. Never buy headhpones over $50 or you will never go back. It is stupidly addicitng and expensive. You eventually end up paying hundreds upon hundreds for extremely small marginal improvements in sound quality.

[Jakalwarrior]

My computer heard me talking about spending too little and my motherboard blew up last night lol!... ok nothing that spectacular, it just stopped posting after a crash. The video card tested and still works (scared the piss out of me since I changed its heatsink yesterday, thought I had bad contact and had fried it! whew :scared:). Beep code says my bios memory is messed up. Hoped a simple clear would help, no luck. Left the battery out with system unplugged over night, no luck. That is what I get for buying a brand new chipset on a brand new board as soon as it is released.

Anywho ordered an E7200 + Motherboard since I can't be computerless for a month while I rma this crap. Chalk up another $160 for this year lol. Can't say I'm too sad. Hopefully I will be in the 4ghz club by friday. Barring that, atleast the 3.8ghz club!