CTXMedia
Well-known member
My 5 year old gaming PC gave up the ghost last weekend, so I decided to spoil myself.
I fired-up the laptop, hopped onto eBuyer.com, and bought these:
Built it yesterday afternoon, took it home last night, installed Win 7 (x64) and all the latest drivers ... then fired-up COD Black Ops to see how it looked.
I could only get 30-40 fps on my old PC @ 1024x768 res. with all the textures turned down and x2 AA, so was curious as to how fast and far I could push the new rig.
I decided to start at the top and work my way down. I set x8 AA, textures to "extra" enabled colour shading, shadows, bullet holes, etc. and put the res. to the maximum the monitor would support - 1920×1080.
UN-FRICKIN-BELIEVEABLE!!!!!! 90+ fps without any additional overclocking on the machine. WOW!!!! Textures are amazing, no lag whatsoever, no artifacts, no glitches, nothing but instant response at full res and revs ... YESSSSS!!!!!!
Just out of curiosity I OC'd the card some more with EVGA Precision to see if the framerate increased, but it appears to be max'd-out already out-of-the box, and even after three hours of playing the fans on the GTX 460 never rose above the 40% default ... RESPECT!!!!
I'd originally planned to go with the Palit 460 (my previous Palit card ran VERY fast), but with a single fan it was going to be v.noisy and I didn't want it cooking itself out of business one month outside of the warranty!!
The new case, has four fans (including a 200mm one in the top) - combined with the twin fans of the 460 and the massive fan on the ENORMOUS CPU cooler, it runs very cool and very quiet (which is good, because the PC lives in our bedroom and Mrs. Geeks is usually trying to get to sleep whilst I'm saving the world ... lol).
I'm really pleased with it (can you tell
) and just wanted to share my happiness with people who might understand what a joy it is to use a fast, impressive, kick ass bit of kit. (Mrs. Geeks just doens't "get" IT at all ...).
... and that's all I have to say about that.
Cheers,
Shaun
I fired-up the laptop, hopped onto eBuyer.com, and bought these:
- Corsair A50 Socket Intel 775, 1156,1155, 1366 AMD AM2 AM3 Performance CPU Cooler (because I hadn't realised what an MASSIVE BEAST it was.)
- Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (because I'm a mug for cheap "extras")
- Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 P55 Socket 1156 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
- Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz/PC3-12800 XMS3 i5 Memory Kit CL9(9-9-9-24) 1.65V (because I thought 8GB would be overkill when I have a GTX 460 and i5 in the box.)
- Intel i5 760 2.8GHz Socket 1156 8MB L3 Cache Processor (8MB of cache ... 8MB!!!!)
- AKASA Black Velcro Cable Ties - 5 Pack (got to have it looking tidy inside ... lol)
- Gigabyte GTX 460 OC 1GB GDDR5 OC Edition Dual DVI HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card (because it's fast baby ... real fast ... he he he)
- Antec 902 Nine Hundred Two V3 Gaming Case (big - quiet - and has pretty blue LEDs under the fans ... cooooolllllll)
- Corsair 650W TX Series PSU - 120mm Fan, 80+% Efficiency, Single +12V Rail (to power the moster CPU and GTX)
- Sony Optiarc AD-5260S 24x DVD±RW & DL SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black
Built it yesterday afternoon, took it home last night, installed Win 7 (x64) and all the latest drivers ... then fired-up COD Black Ops to see how it looked.
I could only get 30-40 fps on my old PC @ 1024x768 res. with all the textures turned down and x2 AA, so was curious as to how fast and far I could push the new rig.
I decided to start at the top and work my way down. I set x8 AA, textures to "extra" enabled colour shading, shadows, bullet holes, etc. and put the res. to the maximum the monitor would support - 1920×1080.
UN-FRICKIN-BELIEVEABLE!!!!!! 90+ fps without any additional overclocking on the machine. WOW!!!! Textures are amazing, no lag whatsoever, no artifacts, no glitches, nothing but instant response at full res and revs ... YESSSSS!!!!!!
Just out of curiosity I OC'd the card some more with EVGA Precision to see if the framerate increased, but it appears to be max'd-out already out-of-the box, and even after three hours of playing the fans on the GTX 460 never rose above the 40% default ... RESPECT!!!!
I'd originally planned to go with the Palit 460 (my previous Palit card ran VERY fast), but with a single fan it was going to be v.noisy and I didn't want it cooking itself out of business one month outside of the warranty!!
The new case, has four fans (including a 200mm one in the top) - combined with the twin fans of the 460 and the massive fan on the ENORMOUS CPU cooler, it runs very cool and very quiet (which is good, because the PC lives in our bedroom and Mrs. Geeks is usually trying to get to sleep whilst I'm saving the world ... lol).
I'm really pleased with it (can you tell
... and that's all I have to say about that.
Cheers,
Shaun