Day 4: My New Gaming Rig is Operational
I actually finished building my rig last week, but I got caught up with RL stuff so I hadn’t posted it up yet. So far its running great. I’ve been playing Crysis on very high! Oh yeah! I’ll be honest, I had to drop the resolution to 800×600 to get playable framerates on very high settings, but it still looks great. Thinking about getting another video card, maybe running SLI so I could get to higher resolutions. Aside from that, all the other games and demos run great. Playing Unreal Tournament 3 getting above 100fps at 720P on a 32″ LCD. Its pretty sweet. Not only that but boy does it look sexy with all that metal and blue LEDs. Check the video after the break.
I’ve been running Vista 32-bit on this rig for the last week, seems pretty nice to me. Vista is actually not as bad as people claim, at least after SP1 (which is the version I installed). The ‘Start’ bar is a hundreds time better on Vista, the search button actually works. It looks great, lots of little things add up to a nicer experience. It doesn’t have any killer features over XP. They both have the same features, expect on Vista it actually works this time (like the search, or automatic driver installation which never worked *once* for me on XP). I did get one crash so far, but I was messing around with some beta Nvidia drivers and they are known to cause issues. Aside from that every thing’s been running lightning fast and pretty stable.
Theres a second round of upgrades I’m planning for the rig. I’m looking into getting another 8800 GTS to run SLI and a BFG PhysX card. Then I need a new monitor, might get one of the new 3d monitors as they seem a bit more reasonable now (around $600-700). Either that or a projector. Then some random peripheral devices, like the new n52 speedpad and an Ikari gaming mouse. So far I’m pretty happy with the setup, though.
Next up, I’m gonna overclock this baby. Hopefully I can reach 4.0GHz…
Hello cybereality
Nice job so far, keep it up. It would be nice to see some UV coolant like Freser one’s black nonconductive coolant that turns blue under UV light, perfect for your setup’s black and blue theme that I saw in your video.
Don’t bother with a PhysX card as NVIDIA bought Ageia the card maker and is currently implementing a physics drivers for the 8000 and 9000 series GPUs, no new hardware needed
I got this link from your signature @ MTBS (which is very cool by the way) and I was wondering what program used to create it?
Also a question on your stereo 3-D solution. are you currently using shutter glasses /shuttle glasses before you get your 3-D LCD monitor as I take it that your 32 inch is a high definition ready none 3-D TV/monitor? Or are you not using your gaming rig for stereo 3-D gaming with the NVIDIA beta drivers?
I’m having a nightmare with my new rig, I’m on my second Asus striker 2 extreme 790 sli mobo in as many weeks due to faulty beta BIOS’s and that’s after sending that my first version 1 striker extreme (third mobo) back to China for a vista SP1 fault that disabled the dual gigabyte LAN ports. Asus also has a problem with the NVIDIA 9800 GX2 GPUs and because you couldn’t upgrade the BIOS you’re locked out! I swear I will never buy another Asus product in my life their after sales service stinks.
So I’ve been without a gaining rig for nearly 2 1/2 months now while the retailer I bought the motherboard from decides whether they will give me an exchange or refund. The UK is a rip-off, with high prices for hardware etc and no accountability for the foreign manufacturers when things go wrong. I wish I lived in the USA , better prices & where litigation keeps people/manufacturers on their toes. I just hope trading standards back me up.
Now that I have got that off my chest I feel a little better - LOL.
Anyway thanks for your contributions on MTBS and congratulations on a nice website.
See you@MTBS.com
Thanks man! I’m still tweaking it out. I have got this giant CM cross-flow fan I’m going to install, a media card reader, another DVD drive, maybe another video card and some extra stuff like temp monitors. I might pass on the PhysX card, I’ll see what Nvidia plans to do first.
I’ve just been gaming mostly on my 32″ flatscreen. I haven’t used shutterglasses in a while, not since I got an LCD monitor. I use mainly the VR920 HMD for S-3D, but I also sometimes use the iz3D anaglyph driver for games that don’t work with the headset. Hopefully the Zalman monitor will be a worthy upgrade.
Sorry to hear that about your hardware troubles. Thats why I always buy EVGA, they have the lifetime warranty. I think they might even have a good policy in UK too (not lifetime, but some support).
Anyway, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I’ll see you around.
More news on the NVIDIA PhysX latest drivers benchmarks here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-PhysX-GTX2800,5725.html
Anyway to turn on auto reply notification via e-mail on your website ?