Gaming Rig specs

[fragger]

The real upgrade I keep hoping fragger will get is an internet connection that exceeds the bandwidth of a couple boy scouts learning semaphore or at the very least smoke signals.  A Bugatti Veyron revving its engine in the show room would have been a real marvel had it popped up in 1910 but considering the conditions of roadways in those days where would you have driven the bloody thing?

The satellite TV dish company I use has added an internet service through an up link that promises 4G connection and download times and once I figure out how 4G compares to the 23 Mbps download/5Mbps upload my connection averages I may add the service.

I checked to see if there was any chance that it was available in Australia but all of Dish's geosynchronous satellites are over the U.S.  :(

Thanks for the consideration, mate :) (sigh) Mps? I can only dream about such things - like a whizz-bang net connection, wining the lottery and bedding a Miss Universe. I'm lucky to see 200 Kps, and once or twice I've even seen a 300. My average is around 30 Kps (yep, Kays, that is).

The currently-being-rolled-out-with-glacial-slowness National Broadband Network that the local politicians have decided is worth turning into an election issue ( ::)) is a significant step in the right direction, but it's a slow motion step, a bit like when the Six Million Dollar Man runs. I'm hoping it will be complete just in time for me to reach retirement age, but by then it, like me, will probably be obsolete. Hopefully I'll still have enough strength to be able to satisfactorily thump something in frustration whenever it drops out.

I have my dreams :-D

On a happier note, I'm glad to hear that Art's newie is almost ready to launch :) All the best old bean, I hope you clear the tower without any major hiccups :-X

[Art Blade]

Hey guys :) This is from my new rig albeit (for the first time, though) using w8. At least I had to see it with my own eyes and guys, really, WHO needs windows 8??? My first reaction to the desktop after running through the unavoidable -- because of a prefab installation -- setup was..

IT LOOKS LIKE FUCKING TETRIS!

or a massive mobile phone. tons of "apps" and each flipping pictures like a bloody bill board or a cheap browser game.

OK, signing off again to slap in my beloved w7 ultimate... 64bit this time :)

(Hopefully) speak soon :)

[Art Blade]

 :D

Believe me, I am a patient guy, but this is starting to upset me. ALL the time between my last post and now I have been trying to get that machine to boot and install from the disc drive. I did it before, many times. This PC, however, does recognise the disc and boots from it, nice:  "loading files," but when the mandatory restart follows after the initial "starting windows" (7) the fricking thing resorts to the hard disk with w8 and starts that instead. For some reason, the bios keeps resetting itself every now and then and when I check, the boot sequence is back to the original installation HD as first boot option. And no, I did NOT forget to save on exit after changing the bios setting.

At first I thought it was just the bios setup which was set to RAID (which is ridiculous with a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HD) so I changed that to AHCI and maybe will try IDE. Oh, before that I found the bios setting "UEFI" turned on, and I tried all kinds of combinations to get the boot sequence to do: CD - restart - CD, so the installation might fucking finally continue. ONCE I got that far and I thought hell, that was the change from RAID to AHCI so I might reset the other stuff to what it was before and see if it still works. Which it didn't. Now I put everything back to what it was when it worked but hell, w8 popped up again and the next thing I did was check the bios which of course went back to what I didn't want regarding boot sequence. It did keep the AHCI rather than raid, though.

I want to bloody format the stuff and do fresh partitions of my liking but no, it keeps me from even getting there because it can't bloody boot properly from that disc. Or, it does, sometimes, but keeps falling back as described above. Now I'm going to tell the system that there IS NO HD to boot from and try forcing disc drive only.

Just letting you know, I'm still busy  :-D

[PZ]

Dang that sounds bad, Art.  How about creating a boot CD (or some kind of removable media) so you can manually format the main drive?  It almost looks like you need to get rid of w8 to install w7.  After all, from Microsoft's point of view, "what kind of fool would want to use one of our old operating systems?"  This would not be the first time I have seen foolishness of this kind.  For example, I have Vista Ultimate on my PC and wanted to "upgrade" to w7 Professional.  I purchased an upgrade CD and when I tried to do the upgrade, it failed with the prompt: "You can only upgrade to a version similar to what you have" (or words to that effect).  In essence, because I have "Ultimate"  I needed to purchase an upgrade to w7 ultimate.  What horseshite.

[Art Blade]

the problem was that I kept the SSD in the boot sequence and for some reason the boot sequence skipped the CD and went on with the SSD where obviously win8 was located. The next problem I encountered was the "OEM" installation occupied several "reserved" partitions where they had restore point stuff and backups and all kinds of things locked away and all I could do was delete those. Then I finally installed w7 on the HD so I could use the SSD for games and whatnot but now the SSD is not listed. When I check the devices that are connected it is there but it is not named or labelled or accessible (yet). Shouldn't be a problem to sort that out but right now I have a bigger problem.

The rig doesn't connect to the internet. I am currently on my old rig.

For some reason w8, as if it was nothing, connected happily and now w7 tells me there isn't a network adapter so I know it worked even without me doing any configuration or typing in user name and pw for it while w7 now behaves as if it really didn't find anything to connect with.

The beast definitely isn't all too easy to tame :) But eventually I'll get it to do what it's told.

[Art Blade]

I found the culprit and hope I got a solution: The system doesn't recognise the ethernet card hence "without hardware" no connectivity. Found a driver that should sort it out.. apparently when they set it up with w8 they added all necessary drivers. w7 doesn't recognise them and, of course, there's no driver disc. I'm just glad I kept this old rig alive so it can help me now. Damn, this is a chore right now :D :-D

[PZ]

... The next problem I encountered was the "OEM" installation occupied several "reserved" partitions where they had restore point stuff and backups and all kinds of things locked away and all I could do was delete those...

This is true of every PC that I have purchased in the past few years at w@&k - makes for a difficult situation when you want to do anything creative.  :D

Sounds like you have it under control however, and I suspect that you'll soon sort it out with the driver issue.  :-X

[mandru]

Sorry Art your project is way over my head.  I can't offer technical instructions but I know enough to search for solutions on Google when somethings beating me up.  Finding the right search terms can make the difference.

I entered Removing Windows8

The first result was on PCMag.com linking an article called "How to Uninstall Windows 8, Install Windows 7 on Your PC".

Here's that link:  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417359,00.asp

If nothing else it may warn you about pitfalls you haven't encountered yet.  We're cheering for ya!

[Art Blade]

Gotta love those guys  :-D Thanks, boys :) :-X

This is my new rig AND I am now, finally, using w7/64bit so I obviously solved the issues and sorted out those pesky problems  ^-^

Mandru, killing any OS entirely and definitely is simple: delete the partition it's on >:D That's what I use to do :-()

PZ, you were right, of course :-D

I found out that I have one of ASUS's newest high-end mobos, it's a P8Z77-M Pro with intel Z77 chipset
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z77M_PRO/

Also I have to correct my previously given information, my i5 runs at 3.7MHz and the case displays a blue glow BUT when I press the turbo button (at any given time) it will glow red which is called "defcon" and immediately OC it to 4.1MHz  >:D

WELL...

I had to download 116 updates worth some 560MB and half an hour of installing those and I just noticed there's more to come.

At least I'm on it now  >:D

Will keep you posted. :)

[PZ]

Glad you got it sorted.  Now to test your games on ultra high everything  >:D

[fragger]

On a happier note, I'm glad to hear that Art's newie is almost ready to launch :) All the best old bean, I hope you clear the tower without any major hiccups :-X

Damn, I shouldn't have said anything :-D

[Abletile]

I'm sorry you had all that grief with your new 'baby' Art. That is one of the reasons I have always had a floppy drive! MSdos is great for formatting, deleting partitions etc.
My new case has no floppy bay though, so I have to investigate the boot from usb pen drive options if required. I expect, if it works, it would be a lot quicker to load though  ^-^

Glad you managed to 'crowbar' Win 7 onto your new rig 

[Art Blade]

 :-D

It's not over yet. First off, I decided to install w7 anew, this time with the original bios setup which was a RAID configuration and this time I installed windows on my SSD and this time I didn't have any troubles regarding that installation and the SSD obviously is present.

However, my rig is so new that my "old" windows7 doesn't know certain components such as some "SM Bus Controller" and a few (not all) Universal Serial Bus (USB) controllers which is driving me bloody bonkers. It doesn't even know, despite naming it, where to find drivers for a G19 Gaming keyboard. Hell, it's an LG and well known, isn't it, so why can't it find drivers? At least that one isn't a problem for the human operating this machine but the rest still is.

GRRR going to GET this s#!t going >:D

PS: by the way, I found out they slapped some nice Kingston RAM bars into this rig.. nice one  :)

[Abletile]

You should have the drivers on your m/board disk. If you have no disk, go to the website of the m/board manufacturer. What make model is it?

Damn frustrating, driver issues.............   :D

[Art Blade]

I am sure I had them on my HD along with the pre-installed w8. But what good is a w8 setup if I want to use w7? And of course I did all I could to find the specs of minor components such as that ethernet card, which wasn't easy at all, but controllers? Not yet found.

What make and model? I posted that just a few posts up,

I found out that I have one of ASUS's newest high-end mobos, it's a P8Z77-M Pro with intel Z77 chipset
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z77M_PRO/

[Binnatics]

The beast definitely isn't all too easy to tame :) But eventually I'll get it to do what it's told.

That's the spirit matey ^-^ :-X

You'll get it going anyhow. I remember you told me you never buy components, only complete systems, generally to protect yourself from given 'issues' and bothers. I think you got the whole system upside down and inside out already, and all that due to one lousy 'component', the operating system :-D

Look at it the bright way; you're learning to know your beast >:D you're taming it indeed, and once it's belly up, it'll do anything you tell it to, because you know just where to tickle it and when :)

The driver problem for windows to recognize you hardware, should be given by the hardware manufacturer. If not a driver issue, it might be required to update your BIOS, but be careful if you do so. You should read carefully what and how to do when updating the BIOS. Usually when you f@#k s#!t up there, there's no return. Maybe your Mobo BIOS needs an update in order to run smoothly in combination with W7 with given hardware like your keyboard or ethernet card. W8 might have been prepared for that connectivity, while W7 needs a little hand to sort things out.
I once had such a new CPU (AMD Phenom II X4 944 I guess) that my mobo didn't recognize it in its supreme being. It kept running at ultralow speed because the mobo didn't know how to handle it. When I updated the BIOS it went smooth. The manufacturer People with the same problems explained this issue somewhere hidden on the net, and it took me a while to dig up the solution, but once the BIOS was updated, problems were over

Edit: Is it maybe an idea to split the struggle-part from the Gaming Rig specs topic, and create one that's called "Art's New Monstah"? ::)

[Art Blade]

thanks, Binnatics :) I'll keep the BIOS thingy in mind.

As to splitting this topic, I was thinking about it, too, but then again, this topic should have consisted of only a few post with specs alone but we're far from that for a long time now  :-D So I'll just keep it. See, those guys who started a topic of their own caused that information given there to get shifted down the list of topics and out of reach if you don't know they posted about it. Anything posted in this topic here is easily accessible.

[Art Blade]

Meanwhile, I downloaded sniper elite v2 and GTA IV from steam -- getting my favourite games one by one. The steam game sniper elite actually did include my current save game so I could continue where I'd left, nice :) GTA IV is a third party game (Rockstar plus Games for Windows Live) and it didn't know I already played it, I had to go through the entire registration process again but at least I didn't have to type in the registration key -- it was already filled in and I just let it through on the nod.

I got excellent benchmark results on sniper elite, 1920x1200 screen resolution (my monitor's native resolution), directX 11, anisotropic filtering 16x, all  other settings on ultra and high (when there was no ultra available) and all that but I had to skip the supersampling which loaded just too much of video data even for my card. I still got some 48 frames per second on average and some 21 fps as a minimum. And smooth as f***  :-D

It was a different story entirely when I loaded GTA IV. I had a screen res of 800x600 and warnings all over the shop that I exceeded or was about to exceed my graphic card's memory (which showed 202 MB out of 3GB). WHAT! ???

Did some research and came up with this
http://support.rockstargames.com/entries/20069778-Issues-with-GTA-IV-showing-video-cards-with-over-2GB-as-under-spec

OMG. I had to manually downgrade the specs using a command line parameter telling the game I had "only" 2GB. And it worked. Now I have everything maxed out and get some decent 60+ fps. The game looks NICE now  :-()

All this reminded me of nexor who said he was unhappy with his gtx650. In order to get fast rendering results, I always check the nVidia control panel first and change my global settings to something called "performance" and additionally I change those settings so that they still offer quite good quality. For fun and giggles I tried the original settings and started the benchmark in sniper elite and only got some 30 max, 11 min fps. With everything tweaked, I got twice as many fps.

Alright, on we go.. :)

Oh and I want to add, I haven't used my turbo for this, so it's an i5 @ 3.7GHz "only" result :-D

And, the rig is SILENT! I can't believe it. The loudest thing is my blueray when I have a disc spinning up in it. Else.. it is so.. silent ??? I do hear it, though, but hell, it is a lot more silent than my old rig ^-^ :-D :-X

[Art Blade]

Just tested LA Noire. Oh MAN, with everything maxed out and on DX11 it is a dream. And here I was thinking it already looked good on my old rig. Now it is very close to an actual movie :)

[PZ]

Dang, I'm jealous!  ^-^

[Art Blade]

Sorry, you really shouldn't be :) Instead, just change that into "Dang, I'm going to get one of those myself!" :-D

I just stopped by to get my cheats for FC3 (-GameProfile_UnlimitedAmmo 1 -GameProfile_GodMode 1 -GameProfile_IgnorePlayer 1) which is now installed. I had to take a look.. I turned everything on and set everything to ultra respectively the max and on DX11. Damn, this looks good :) And smooth as silk  :-()

By the way, the UBI cloud worked, I got all three savegames, too. Just taking off where I left  ^-^

[PZ]

That's perfectly alright; I can be envious, and yet be very happy for your fortune!   ^-^ I'm afraid that I'm quite a bit like you and will squeeze whatever life I can out of my current rig  ;)

By the way, the UBI cloud worked, I got all three savegames, too. Just taking off where I left  ^-^

That statement almost made me fall out of my chair; you mean it actually worked as advertised?  ????

[Abletile]

Sorry I didn't read properly your m/board make  :-[


Your keyboard drivers and software are available from here http://www.logitech.com/en-gb/support/g19-keyboard-for-gaming?section=downloads&crid=404&osid=14&bit=64

All of your drivers including USB, manual and bios' etc for you m/board are here http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z77M_PRO/#support_Download_30

I noticed there was a firmware update for the Intel Management Engine to run Win8! I hope this still runs Win7 ok after!

[Art Blade]

PZ, indeed, I was equally surprised. If nothing else, at least that feature worked  :-D

Able, very kind, thank you! Re: BIOS, yep, I should hope so. Going to check those mobo downloads  :) :-X

[fragger]

Glad to see that you're taming the beast, Art :-X Now to make it sit up and beg :-D

I'd love to see how those games you mentioned look on it 8)

I've been toying with the idea of getting a new machine together sometime next year, maybe. My current PC was upgraded not too long ago and I'm happy with it as it is, just as long as I don't try to max out everything. As you know I do a bunch of graphics stuff, and games being such resource-munchers these days I know that if a PC can run the latest graphically-intensive games it could handle my 3D graphics programs with one chip tied behind its back. So if I go for whatever can run games with aplomb, the rest will follow.

But what I DON'T want is W8. I've seen that and I don't think I could live with such a fugly desktop - I don't want something that looks like a dirty big smart phone sitting on my desk. I'd want to stick with W7, which would probably mean having to go through the same sort of hassles that you've been going through.

But whatever I might get, I know for sure that there's one thing that won't be improved - my internet access "speed" :D