Compatibility worries

Here's that bottleneck term I abhor so much. OK, since the monitor's refresh rate is 60Hz, with current graphics cards pumping out 200+FPS, isn't that the real "bottleneck"? And don't even get me started about. "persistence of vision", or the fact that feature movies are run @ 24 FPS, which is sufficient to eliminate "flicker". So, at the end of the day, our brain is the real bottleneck.

. That's what I'm sayin', half now, half later, and only if you need it.

Just to confirm, you have seen Keanu Reeves and Colin Farrell "acting" ?

Indeed I have! All they need do to further "hone" their craft, is "hook up" with Tara Reid, (on camera), and they'll find their comfort zone, so to speak. But can you imagine the nightmare in post, trying to put Tara's girls back up where they belong, and get rid of the implant scars?

Aftertaste, er, I mean afterthought: If you received an "Oscar"for a porn performance, would that then actually be called a "Johnson"?

Well, captain in regards to your statement on " eye toward expansion" I am assembling it myself using some of the best products i can find that are within my budget. Also I am hoping to keep this for a little while longer then anyone could keep a laptop because I realize that it is impossible to future proof anything when it come's to technology, but when your a grad student working at a casino not making much money i can only do so much. I also am keeping in the mind the idea of expandability, i do realize that yes I may need ti upgrade this or that here or there. But hopefully I won't have to worry about doing something like for a few years to come...

When you talk about CAD (or similar) software, workstation graphics are more precise and accurate, because they are optimized for vertexes and vectors, instead of textures, hence they can be considerably faster than their discrete cousins (forget about onboard stuff for this comparison).

However, when it comes to discrete graphics, which are optimized to render textures or playing HD videos your comment makes much more sense.

Edit:
Just for reference, the difference between discrete and workstation graphics is clearly evident..

Since the 1080P standard hasn't been even fully adopted yet, and is unlikely to change anytime in the near future, your machine stands a chance of a longer service life,than if you were building a gaming rig. The whole competitive frenzy thing drives gamers to Newegg in droves.(or perhaps "herds").

OK, the point of my whole "intervention" here was a cautionary tale against, "overbuilding".

My bottom line position is that one really solid video card would be enough for this type of usage.

Now video editing, at least the cut and slice grunt work, isn't really that graphics dependent.

The CPU is solely responsible for the rendering of the footage. Whatever involvement the VGA has, is entirely transient. Once the project is ready to be "printed" so to speak, you can take the video card out of the computer, then throw it, and the monitor away, and just hit > "Enter"<.

Now, this discussion took a bit of a strange turn when the term "olden days" came into play. In the "olden days" a 6200GS was considered " a mighty fine, rippin' fast video card, that would charge into action, bringing it's enormous 64MB of RAM to bear on the graphics task at hand. And, it's a laughable flea market part today. The 9500GT that everybody insults at every available opportunity, will outperform cards of that era by a factor of ten.

So, when so many "helpful people" pile on, and start imposing their own ultimate gaming box hardware fantasies on a machine that really needs to be only as competent as a 100 dollar Blu-Ray drive, at least with respect to video performance, I just say ,"shouldn't we think about this first". Buy the one of the planned cards now, the other one later, and only if you need it. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

Anyway, here's a couple of "real workstation" VGA cards to ponder; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=100008333 600044687&IsNodeId=1&name=matrox

I keep reading that the workstation GPU drivers make all the difference. Wspecially the nVidia Pro drivers. So the question is when should one actually consider getting a workstation GPU considering their huge price if ordinary gaming GPUs can do the same work...

You're comparing apples with oranges. Workstation cards "work" differently than desktop graphics. They are geared towards multi-monitor, large vRAM, much more stable drivers that are geared towards rendering (3D apps in particular). Workstation cards are also generally more expensive because they have 24/7 phone/tech support during their warranty period-typically three years.

If you are going to recommend workstation cards, then matrox isn't the one offering best price/performance/feature ratio. I think other alternatives i.e. nVidia or ATI can be of more interest.

So here are the options for ATI and nVidia. In particular if you are willing to spend any thing over 400$ mark, instead of the matrox ATI FireGL V8650 is far superior performer, on the lower end of this spectrum nVidia Quadro FX looks reasonable option (unless you want to attach 3 or more monitors).

I hard to imagine that my humor is subtle enough to convince someone that I was actually recommending one of those Matrox offerings, but in hindsight and given the wording, I suppose you could.

OK, this was a practical joke, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814106024 It has 32MB of RAM, is connected via PCI-E X 1, has a dual DVI output that requires and external splitter and costs $164.00

Basically it's from the "olden days", nothing more than a relic Newegg is stuck with.

@captaincranky forgive me for being naive I am pretty sure you explained it well enough for everyone to understand but I am having a hard time understanding. Are you saying a quad core CPU isn't necessary when seeking to building a gaming rig because the software/technology/drivers aren't available to take full advantage of the multi-core hardware or that its just simply useless? Also you said something along the lines of "If you have a powerful graphic card then it can't be bottle-necked by a slower CPU"! As much as I hear the term bottleneck I am beginning to hate it, but its presence seems to be undeniable! Don't laugh, but I don't have the cash to put together the system I want all at one time, and when I can afford to buy a new part then the previous parts I bought seems to be out dated! So with that being said I am running the N680i SLI (A1) Motherboard and currently one GTX 280SC with 2GB of DDR@ Crosair 800Mhz Memory, I have the 3.6Ghz P4/HT Prescott 560J running everything(This CPU has came out of my other 3 systems since 2004 and it still serves well and its all I have until I buy a new one!) Now the system can run any game at 1600x1200 everything set to high even Anti-A enabled at the highest! The issue I see is that no matter what I change my resolution to I always get the same FPS(min18-45max) even running at 640x480 in-game and also on benchmarks. Everyone I come across says it's because my CPU is bottle-necking the system! I was running a 9800GTX+ before I got the current GTX 280SC and the FPS seem to be the exact same with the GTX 280SC as I had with the 9800GTX+! So is that a bottle-necking issue and would upgrading to a quad core qx6850 improve my performance better vs e8600? I bought the motherboard because I wanted something affordable that I could keep for a while, so SLI and CPU upgrade-ability won all hands down! Please tell me if what I'am explaining is what you where referring too. Some of my roommates disagree with you and some agree! I just would like to know if what I'am explaining is what you are talking about.

I myself had a P4 Prescott clocked at 3GHZ and it severely bottlenecked my XFX 9800GT during Crysis.

Yes, if im not mistaken what he is saying is exactly true, a lot of programs and applications as well as games can't fully use all the technology thats offered with a quad core. The hardware is coming out before the software is that can fully utilize the quad core set up. Or so i hear. Now its no reason to not get something of such high quality because in due time applications and programs will come out where it will be able to take advantage of what is being offered. But as of right now not many programs or games can fully utilize quad core technology. The reason that i am getting it is becasue in time what will be coming out with only use quad core and i just want to be prepared, but i know full well that a lot of the time it will be basically just producing heat in my room. But once vegas pr comes out with the software where i can properly use all 4 cores, i will just be one step ahead of the game.

The term "bottleneck" when used in a colloquial, abstract, or slang manner, directly refers to a restriction of flow. "Because of the overturned truck, traffic was "bottlenecked" down to one lane". A CPU >>generates the flow<< it can't "bottleneck" itself, it can only create insufficient flow! Now contemporary "Geek Speak" calls everything that >>lessens flow <<a "bottleneck". I disagree with many applications of the term. In your example, I would say that your CPU is inhibiting the game, creating insufficient data, not up to the task, something on that order, but not really bottlenecking it.

Now, if your CPU were capable of generating 200 FPS, and your video card was only capable of offloading 50 FPS, then that would be the true or traditional application of the term. Yep, that baby would be "bottlenecked"...!

As to the Quad vs Dual Core issue, more games seem to be able to utilize multiple cores than in just the past couple of years. Wisdom was up until now, that the higher clock speeds that the dual cores (notably the E8XXX Intel Wolfdales) were capable of generating, were more to the benefit of gaming than extra cores. Some of today's quads are approaching the clock speeds of the duals, and offer many benefits in other areas of computing as well. (CAD, Photoshop, movie editing, and transcoding). It's probably time to consider four cores as the optimum.

I'm not a gamer, but those at the forum that are, at least the more experienced, (read "more affluent there") have opted for quads if not the new hexacore issues.

On the other hand, one of our members, not two years ago, opted out of a quad for gaming, and went with a high end Intel dual core for games.

With all that being said, today even the lowest end Intel Core 13-530 will take the measure of most of the E8XXX series, with hyperthreading to boot. (Am I still allowed to use the slang phrase "to boot", without referring to starting up a computer? Gosh I hope so).

With all of that being said, why not check out this CPU report at "The Tech Report", http://techreport.com/articles.x/18448 With enough Red Bull, this should keep you and your roomies up to the very wee hours of the next day, arguing about whether, "if a CPU burns up in forrest, and nobody's there to unplug it, can you see or hear the forest fire"? (Geek existentialism).

No, it didn't. It just wouldn't generate sufficient information to utilize the full capacity of the video card. A "bottleneck" would be something more on the order of eating five pounds of cheese, slamming down a half dozen Percosettes, then trying to take a s***...! :haha: :wave:

@UM
What the cap'n is saying is this (I believe)...



From iXBT's excellent seven part series regarding CPU architecture and the utilisation (or not) of multithread/multicore application.
In the above instance CPU core speed is more relevant than parallel computation (multithread) since the game is not coded or optimised to allow the workload to be executed simultaneously. Where a game allows for parallel execution a single core CPU, or indeed a dual core will "work slower" than the graphics card's ability to render textures etc.

EDIT: Sorry for jumping on your thread cc . You posted while I was uploading the jpg -didn't realise you had the job in hand...so to speak.

DeeBeeZee, there's no need to apologize, this is far from my thread. Although, I daresay I think I had one "shining moment" in post #35....:rolleyes:

That's an interesting point, and it should provide a lively debate, can software "bottleneck" a CPU. I'm tired of typing ATM, so I'm gonna stand pat with, "meh, DILLIGAF"?

Poorly coded or "unoptimised" games often "bottleneck" hardware. RTS and flight sims (amongst others) quite often are "CPU bound", not by core speed or thread count but by one thread that is tasked with either a large workload or poorly coded (for example) AI, enviroment rendering or physics computation (regardless of the ballyhoo regarding PhysX - all physics engines, whether GPU or CPU based, require CPU input).
There's also the case where extra threads offer better graphical quality but don't increase the metrics that are usually associated with benchmarks- namely the almighty f.p.s.

And the way I interpret that is "bottleneck."