WAR PC spec

[vacuum]

My loving and kindly wife has authorised me to spend some semi-serious money on a new rig.
Of course, in her wisdom she then offered to come to John Lewis with me to buy it, but I demurred saying I'd rather put it together myself.
She looked at me in a strange way and said 'whatever makes you happy dear'.

On that note, and having read the excellent post on warhammeralliance ... if I was to hand you a grand and say 'there you go, knock yourself out' -- how would you spend it?

Current thinking:

Nvidia GTX 280, 8G Ram, Vista 64, Fast internal disk, Core Duo 3.3Ghz

I should be able to squeeze that into £1000 (remember the need for silence, so decent cooling, power supply, decent case, all the wife acceptance factor stuff etc)

Thoughts?

Vac

[vacuum]

Oh, the intention by the way ...

Play war with ALL the knobs turned to 11.

[Torgal]

I don't see much point in 8gb unless you're intending to use the rig for something other than WAR. Heavy graphics editing, movie editing that kind of thing.

You'll be able to run at max spec with that machine though I reckon, the requirements aren't that high for this game.

[Mangala]

Oh, the intention by the way ...

Play war with ALL the knobs turned to 11.

Use these guys.

Then play with knobs at level 12

[Goatboy]

Last I heard Kurtt say, the game still runs like a hamster in a heap of shit on an uber machine on full specs.
So if that's your only intention, don't get your hopes up.

[Gunnarr]

This is what I did, recently:

Antec P182 case (I like the looks, and with some extra cooling I haven't found it getting warmer than 42 degrees C while playing WAR)
mobo: Asus P5Q pro
processor: Intel core 2 duo E8500 3.16GHz, etc, etc.
sound: Creative soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme music
video: Asus ENGTX260 896MB, etc etc
2x2GB Kingston memory
hd: Samsung spinpoint 1TB hd
Scythe Ninja 2 cooler
620W CoolerMaster power supply
Windows Vista home premium
plus cardreaders, 2x dvd writer, etc

Cost 1369 euro including having it put together etc (I'm not much of a DIY guy), which is GBP 1002, so assuming the parts will be slightly cheaper there than here, and you save money by putting it together yourself, this should fit your budget nicely, and you could even tune it up just a little bit more.

The game runs smoothly at max settings, only loading screens still take a while (around 5-10 seconds, which is longer than I would have expected) - no choppiness ingame so far, not even in busy keep sieges. Except for the occasional CTD or black screen when tabbing, it all works as expected, actually!

Oh, piccie of the case:

[Torgal]

Last I heard Kurtt say, the game still runs like a hamster in a heap of shit on an uber machine on full specs.
So if that's your only intention, don't get your hopes up.

Nah it will run smoothly on a well specced machine. I don't have the slightest hint of FPS lag on mine, even in busy keeps / scenarios.

Only two issues I've encountered are the scenario stuttering (fixed by BuffThrottle), and some crazy graphics issue with RP master runes.

For the record I'm running;
Intel P35 mobo
Quad core 2.4Ghz Q6600
4Gb corsair ram
2x Ati 3870 cards in crossfire
2x Seagate hdd (raid-0)
Antec 900 case
Vista x64

[Goatboy]

Antec case is a winner. I did a lot of research on cases a while ago and that was the best one for a cooling vs noise ratio. I also have it at work (custom pc for the win) and it's great. It's not particularly small though.

Door is a bit of a bitch to open... but that's just because I keep forgetting to use the little indent on the side of the case.

[Pashur]

Last I heard Kurtt say, the game still runs like a hamster in a heap of shit on an uber machine on full specs.
So if that's your only intention, don't get your hopes up.

Nah it will run smoothly on a well specced machine. I don't have the slightest hint of FPS lag on mine, even in busy keeps / scenarios.
....

This is an interesting thread on game vs pc performance. I often have awfully chunky movements in tight scenarios and especially the other day while RvR fighting in the keep. It doesn't really matter if I turn down the graphic settings. The one difference I am quite sure has an effect is windowed vs. full screen, but then only in scenarios, never while soloing. I will try the buff addon and see if that makes a difference. Is there a good way of telling where the bottle neck is?
I don't remember my pc spec and the only performance indicator I can think of is WoW, which may not mean much to some of you, anyway I have 40-50fps at full graphic setting. In Shatt and during some 25-man raiding encounters it could go down to 20 but never lower. In WoW I have a steady 200ms response time.
It all boils down to:
- is it the game or something server side; something that may be fixed with patches?
- bad response time, isp issues?
- my computer?
We have people saying they have no lag what so ever even in Keep battles and some who have good PCs but still have a chunky game performance. It may well be a combo of issues but I would like to hear from more people. I will start to monitor my fps as well, is there an addon for fps and response time yet?

[Torgal]

Last I heard Kurtt say, the game still runs like a hamster in a heap of shit on an uber machine on full specs.
So if that's your only intention, don't get your hopes up.

Nah it will run smoothly on a well specced machine. I don't have the slightest hint of FPS lag on mine, even in busy keeps / scenarios.
....

This is an interesting thread on game vs pc performance. I often have awfully chunky movements in tight scenarios and especially the other day while RvR fighting in the keep. It doesn't really matter if I turn down the graphic settings. The one difference I am quite sure has an effect is windowed vs. full screen, but then only in scenarios, never while soloing. I will try the buff addon and see if that makes a difference. Is there a good way of telling where the bottle neck is?
I don't remember my pc spec and the only performance indicator I can think of is WoW, which may not mean much to some of you, anyway I have 40-50fps at full graphic setting. In Shatt and during some 25-man raiding encounters it could go down to 20 but never lower. In WoW I have a steady 200ms response time.
It all boils down to:
- is it the game or something server side; something that may be fixed with patches?
- bad response time, isp issues?
- my computer?
We have people saying they have no lag what so ever even in Keep battles and some who have good PCs but still have a chunky game performance. It may well be a combo of issues but I would like to hear from more people. I will start to monitor my fps as well, is there an addon for fps and response time yet?

Sounds like your problem is lack of BuffThrottle which is absolutely required use at this time in any mid-large scale pvp. If you don't have it, you'll experience awful performance it's that simple.

[vacuum]

Here's what I plumped for:

Antec P182 Advanced Super Mid Tower Black Case
CPU: (Sckt775)Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8600 @ 3.33GHz 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache 64-bit
HDD: Single Hard Drive (750GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
MB: (Quad-Core FSB1333) ASUS P5Q PRO P45 LGA775 CrossFire FSB1333 DDR2/800 Mainboard w/GbLAN,USB2.0,&7.1Audio
MEMORY:  4GB (2x2GB) PC8500 DDR2/1066Mhz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Dominator)
OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Basic w/ Service Pack 1 [-15] (64-bit Edition)
PSU: HIPER PSU 880W 4M880
VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB DDR5 PCI-Express Dual DVI-I & TVO

Should be here soon ... =)
Thanks for the advice, I went with the ATI after reading a few reviews online and it seemed quite future proofed.
Also, I liked the thought of my video card having as much RAM in it as my last desktop.

[Torgal]

VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB DDR5 PCI-Express Dual DVI-I & TVO

 

disgustingly good card right there

[Gunnarr]

Yea, I've been turning that video card over and over in my mind, but in the end I went the coward's way and went for Nvidia for sure-thing compatibility with most games.
That's a monster of a PSU by the way And don't forget to add some extra cooling - my research told me that the 4870s get kinda "hot hot hot".

[vacuum]

Apparently runs hot because by default the fan is set to 25%

http://www.digitalstormonline.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=3527