New build

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 9:37 am

I'm currently putting together a new system. Actually already put it together, but I'm now downloading the Win8 upgrade. Based it roughly on the Anandtech recommendations for midrange gaming:

MB: Biostar TZ77B
CPU: Core i5 3570k
Vid: Powercolor Radeon HD 7850 PCS+ 2GB
RAM: 8 GB GSkill 1.25 v CAS 9-9-9-24
HD: 1 TB WD Black SATA 3 (6Gb/s)

And, because my old DVD drive was IDE, I had to make a Fry's run at 10:00 to pick up an ASUS 24x DVD burner w/Lightscribe.

Anandtech's Bench tool estimates about 2x my old CPU performance (vs Core2Quad Q6600) and 50% better video (vs. nVidia GTX 465). My old HD was Hitachi 1TB but was only a SATA2. And I'm sure that 8GB of DDR3 is going to perform better than 4GB of DDR2.

Looking forward to a faster, cooler, quieter, and more energy efficient box. Let's see if it helps with Planetside2.

The new vid card is smaller and only uses one extra power connector. The 465 used 2. I've been buying nVidia so long that the thought of a Radeon in my rig is strange.

And yes, I'm putting Win8 on it. I figured that $40 upgrade deal was pretty decent and I'm sure I'll have to get used to it sometime anyway. Might even be fun.

XMEN Iceman · Post by **XMEN Iceman** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 9:39 am

You gonna come play Tribes Ascend with me??!!

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Sat Dec 08, 2012 8:00 pm

are you going to play PS2 with us?

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sun Dec 09, 2012 4:12 pm

Right now the security features of Win8 are playing havoc with my upgrade from Vista. Trying to import Thunderbird email, most importantly.

I would love to play either with you guys. And I'll have a lot of time around Christmas and New Year's. But still trying to settle out the whole 'just married' stuff and find the new normal.

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Sun Dec 09, 2012 5:03 pm

np

Unfortunately all my security training has been in Linux thus far, or I'd engage you in a win8 conversation, lol.

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sun Dec 09, 2012 6:31 pm

As it happens, at least part of the problem is the local account vs. the "Windows store" account. Seem to be different SIDs on the local box. So before I go TOO much further I need to figure out which I'm going to go with. Bleh.

Atheist · Post by **Atheist** » Tue Jan 01, 2013 5:38 pm

I'm running win8. It's not terrible as most people say.. it's different.

I just upgraded my video card from 5850 to the 7950. Figured it was time - the old one was over 2 years old... which I'm impressed I got that much life out of it. It's still going strong, but now I'm running into the head wind with some games.

Redneck90 · Post by **Redneck90** » Thu Jan 03, 2013 5:07 pm

So no problems with 8 then? I'm pretty leery of the upgrade, I've been more than happy with 7.

Nice looking specs on that box! How do you like that Radeon card?

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Thu Jan 03, 2013 8:58 pm

The card so far has been great. Only two oddities: in Planetside 2, I ran into some corruption issue or other where on some frames I could only see one or two nearby objects, other frames looked normal. Very flickery experience... A reboot fixed the problem. The other is an odd noise when I'm in a 3d RPG and I go to the menu. The card itself makes a weird noise. Doesn't seem to hurt anything though. Overall the new system runs PS2 a heck of a lot better.

I have found some things that don't have proper Win8 drivers, like my network multifunction printer/scanner. It'll print OK out of the box but the other things don't work. New drivers supposed to be available end of the month. I've run into a few strange permission / ownership issues but I couldn't say if they're unique to 8 or if I would have had the same in Win7. My previous OS was Vista. If I had Win7 I would probably have just hung on to it. I suspect part of that difficulty is Win8 and how it wants you to log in to your PC with your "microsoft" account. Gotta do that if you want to use the "app store" which I haven't yet.

The hoohah about no start menu and the weird metro interface and stuff seems overblown to me. You can still get "there" and take care of your business. Most of the time I run in desktop mode so don't even think about it. And switching around is no big deal. The microsoft account thing is a bigger issue in my mind, but you can use a local (old-style) account instead.

Nilk · Post by **Nilk** » Sat Jan 05, 2013 3:53 pm

Unfortunately this is a game bug. I've found that I can his esc to map screen and then back to play and it sometimes corrects itself.

XMEN Gambit wrote:The card so far has been great. Only two oddities: in Planetside 2, I ran into some corruption issue or other where on some frames I could only see one or two nearby objects, other frames looked normal. Very flickery experience... A reboot fixed the problem. The other is an odd noise when I'm in a 3d RPG and I go to the menu. The card itself makes a weird noise. Doesn't seem to hurt anything though. Overall the new system runs PS2 a heck of a lot better.

I have found some things that don't have proper Win8 drivers, like my network multifunction printer/scanner. It'll print OK out of the box but the other things don't work. New drivers supposed to be available end of the month. I've run into a few strange permission / ownership issues but I couldn't say if they're unique to 8 or if I would have had the same in Win7. My previous OS was Vista. If I had Win7 I would probably have just hung on to it. I suspect part of that difficulty is Win8 and how it wants you to log in to your PC with your "microsoft" account. Gotta do that if you want to use the "app store" which I haven't yet.

The hoohah about no start menu and the weird metro interface and stuff seems overblown to me. You can still get "there" and take care of your business. Most of the time I run in desktop mode so don't even think about it. And switching around is no big deal. The microsoft account thing is a bigger issue in my mind, but you can use a local (old-style) account instead.

Starmage21 · Post by **Starmage21** » Mon Jan 07, 2013 8:08 am

XMEN Gambit wrote:The card so far has been great. Only two oddities: in Planetside 2, I ran into some corruption issue or other where on some frames I could only see one or two nearby objects, other frames looked normal. Very flickery experience... A reboot fixed the problem. The other is an odd noise when I'm in a 3d RPG and I go to the menu. The card itself makes a weird noise. Doesn't seem to hurt anything though. Overall the new system runs PS2 a heck of a lot better.

I have found some things that don't have proper Win8 drivers, like my network multifunction printer/scanner. It'll print OK out of the box but the other things don't work. New drivers supposed to be available end of the month. I've run into a few strange permission / ownership issues but I couldn't say if they're unique to 8 or if I would have had the same in Win7. My previous OS was Vista. If I had Win7 I would probably have just hung on to it. I suspect part of that difficulty is Win8 and how it wants you to log in to your PC with your "microsoft" account. Gotta do that if you want to use the "app store" which I haven't yet.

The hoohah about no start menu and the weird metro interface and stuff seems overblown to me. You can still get "there" and take care of your business. Most of the time I run in desktop mode so don't even think about it. And switching around is no big deal. The microsoft account thing is a bigger issue in my mind, but you can use a local (old-style) account instead.

I'm troubleshooting some Win8 issues at work now, plus I'm running Win8 Pro on both my home machine and my laptop. Let me know what you've got issues with.

Also, I run with local accounts. I dont want to wait for my information to sync from "the cloud". I've just added my microsoft account to metro instead.

FaLLGuY · Post by **FaLLGuY** » Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:15 pm

Windows 7 runs great.