An amusing anecdote if you build your own PC or are a PC gamer.

[Kallahan11]

There should be no more 32 bit operating systems. Should be retired.

A desktop is really the only way to get a good gaming system. You need serious budget. Heck, you can figure $500-$800 for a high end video card alone. I5 minimum with an i7 preferred. I would not build one with less than 16 GB ram, but likely not more for most things. SSD drive or drives. 750 watt supply or more. It adds up quickly.

Or you could do some looking at a refurbished workstation class machine with a 6 or 8 core Xeon.

I cannot believe companies are still writing 32 bit stuff- At some point they need to cut the cord and get current.

This is why I no longer game. For me it is a waste of time and money. Enjoy.

You don't need to spend much money at all to play new games maxed out at 1080p, You can build a machine for under 500 bucks which will best all the consoles even the PS4 pro.

 

[Bat-mite]

Earlier this year I built a new PC...it had been a bit over 10 years since I built the last one (AMD 64 bit now running WinXP).

The new one runs on an i4590k, 16 gigs of memory, a 500gb SSD for the system disk, a 1tb WD Caviar for storage, and a 4tb Blue for backups. Windows 7 of course. The build cost was reasonable as I purchased sale-priced items over time and used a few hand me downs from my son (pair of SLI video cards and a Antec 900 power supply).

My failure to post anecdote is that without a monitor, I couldn't see the "no keyboard found" error message in POST. After hooking up the keyboard and mouse, everything was up and running without a hitch.

:lol: I did something like that once! I put everything back together but forgot to plug in the monitor. I started up, heard the post beep, and waited and waited and waited ... and no video.

Turned it off, tried again. Same thing. I don't know how long it took me to remember that I had not plugged in the monitor.

 

[dhbarr]

You don't need to spend much money at all to play new games maxed out at 1080p, You can build a machine for under 500 bucks which will best all the consoles even the PS4 pro.

Yeah, but this augmented reality at high frame rates sure gives the ol' BEA5T a pretty hefty workout.

 

[Winston]

Im not a bleeding edge gamer myself. As I said, thanks to Steam preventing the use of used games (one of the primary reasons for establishing it besides the ant-piracy effort), I buy one generation behind consoles and used games. I've built every desktop system I've ever owned and they have all used AMD processors because they had the best price performance up to my current CPU, an AMD Athlon II X4.

Of potential interest to gamers especially, as of the 1st quarter of 2017, it looks like AMD will be back in spades:

First, a brilliant IMO, very technically detailed and, therefore, very interesting analysis of CPU architecture progression AMD vs Intel. In this video, his analysis reveals that AMD is positioning itself VERY cleverly and strategically to provide very serious competition with Intel cash cow sectors again... FINALLY.:

AMD - The Future is Zen

[video=youtube;OvF3BJTLgRQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvF3BJTLgRQ[/video]

Post release discussion of Zen (now Ryzen):

AMD RYZEN ZEN 8 Core / 16 Thread CPU Benchmarked – On Par With Intel’s Core i7-6900K (and rumored to be at around 1/2 the price), Clocked at 3.4 GHz+ at 95W, Stellar IPC Gains

[video=youtube;eoLaP6mer0U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoLaP6mer0U[/video]

https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-ryzen-benchmarked/

 

[dhbarr]

Ryzen + Vega does look pretty interesting ; hope it lights the competition off again.

 

[Marc_G]

I'm annoyed that many/most modern motherboards don't come with a system beep piezo. Sure, one can buy one for a buck or three and the boards usually have pins to plug them in. But turning on the thing for the first time after a build and getting no friendly "beep!" to signal that it's alive is sad. This threw me way off on a build about six years ago... didn't realize I needed to buy one, had other issues that prevented me seeing anything on the monitor. Lost hours.

 

[Winston]

I'm annoyed that many/most modern motherboards don't come with a system beep piezo. Sure, one can buy one for a buck or three and the boards usually have pins to plug them in. But turning on the thing for the first time after a build and getting no friendly "beep!" to signal that it's alive is sad. This threw me way off on a build about six years ago... didn't realize I needed to buy one, had other issues that prevented me seeing anything on the monitor. Lost hours.

Yep, the Power On Self Test (POST) beep... and hopefully just ONE beep. The mobos I've used always relied on a connection to a speaker in the case.

 

[Winston]

Ryzen + Vega does look pretty interesting ; hope it lights the competition off again.

Yes, the only thing I'm concerned about as a lifelong AMD person is what they were once supreme at up until their botched architecture that they are only now leaving - price/performance. Intel needs SERIOUS price competition and it looks like they're going to get it. I see so many Intel fanboys saying bad things, but I remind them that REAL competition once again is fantastic for BOTH Intel and AMD users. I use the analogy of football games with one team, auto races with one car, etc., and ask them if they can see the problem with that. Same for CPU and graphics cards.

I really, really, REALLY wish I'd been paying more attention to this situation.

AMD stock:

$1.91/share on Feb 19, 2016
$10.75/share on Dec 19, 2016


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[heada]

I'm annoyed that many/most modern motherboards don't come with a system beep piezo. Sure, one can buy one for a buck or three and the boards usually have pins to plug them in. But turning on the thing for the first time after a build and getting no friendly "beep!" to signal that it's alive is sad. This threw me way off on a build about six years ago... didn't realize I needed to buy one, had other issues that prevented me seeing anything on the monitor. Lost hours.

Do modern motherboards still output POST beep codes? I have built a few dozen boxes in my day and POST beep codes have saved countless hours of troubleshooting.

-Aaron

 

[dhbarr]

Yes, the only thing I'm concerned about as a lifelong AMD person is what they were once supreme at up until their botched architecture that they are only now leaving - price/performance. Intel needs SERIOUS price competition and it looks like they're going to get it. I see so many Intel fanboys saying bad things, but I remind them that REAL competition once again is fantastic for BOTH Intel and AMD users. I use the analogy of football games with one team, auto races with one car, etc., and ask them if they can see the problem with that. Same for CPU and graphics cards.

Well, their Barton / Thoroughbred cores were where they legitimately brought the fight to Intel, who were busy making a bad bet on Northwood / Itanium. AMD was then able to get ahold of DEC's leftover brain trust and extend the x86 ISA to 64-bit and solid multicore.

Unfortunately, Intel's strongarm OEM tactics were able to stonewall AMD long enough for the Pentium Pro branch to rise from the ashes and ultimately churn out the core2duo, achieving parity again.

 

[Johnly]

Not a gamer myself, but did put together a new system a while back. Getting a free MB with an i7 processor did help push things forward. Not being in a rush to get it up and running, I came up with a wish list of parts and signed up to receive the daily Fry's adds by email. Ended up with a 64bit Win 7 Pro OS, 20Gb of memory, mid-range PNY GeForce® GT 730 Graphics Card, 512k SSD drive for the OS, and a couple 1TB drives for data and auto-backup, USB 3.0 daughter card, a couple optical drives. Then my wife claimed it as hers.<BG>

Time to start gathering parts again.

 

[Bat-mite]

Not a gamer myself, but did put together a new system a while back. Getting a free MB with an i7 processor did help push things forward. Not being in a rush to get it up and running, I came up with a wish list of parts and signed up to receive the daily Fry's adds by email. Ended up with a 64bit Win 7 Pro OS, 20Gb of memory, mid-range PNY GeForce® GT 730 Graphics Card, 512k SSD drive for the OS, and a couple 1TB drives for data and auto-backup, USB 3.0 daughter card, a couple optical drives. Then my wife claimed it as hers.<BG>

Time to start gathering parts again.

Oh, the humanity! :lol:

 

[Winston]

Do modern motherboards still output POST beep codes? I have built a few dozen boxes in my day and POST beep codes have saved countless hours of troubleshooting.

-Aaron

It's been so long since I've used a case with a speaker included to even connect to, I don't know off the top of my head. A search on Google with people in 2015 mentioning error indicating POST beeps or no beep seems to indicate that at least some of them do. And there's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-on_self-test

But a scan of it doesn't indicate to me that POST is a required part of some standard.

 

[Winston]

Unfortunately, Intel's strongarm OEM tactics were able to stonewall AMD long enough for the Pentium Pro branch to rise from the ashes and ultimately churn out the core2duo, achieving parity again.

And from what I've read more recently is that Intel's OEM policies are still an issue for AMD. Hopefully, their new superior architecture and (hopefully) an extreme price/performance advantage (at least until Intel lowers it prices!) will be able to overcome that. Competition is good.

 

[o1d_dude]

Do modern motherboards still output POST beep codes? I have built a few dozen boxes in my day and POST beep codes have saved countless hours of troubleshooting.

-Aaron

My anecdote was based on the digital readout that most Gigabyte mobos have. Didn't need a speaker to view POST progress. The problem was I was mis-reading the digital readout code...you know those stick figure numbers and letters? Once I correctly deciphered the code (awaiting user input - no keyboard found), it was easy peasy.

 

[markkoelsch]

And from what I've read more recently is that Intel's OEM policies are still an issue for AMD. Hopefully, their new superior architecture and (hopefully) an extreme price/performance advantage (at least until Intel lowers it prices!) will be able to overcome that. Competition is good.

We will see if their architecture is really superior to Intel.

Competition is really good, but realistically AMD has not been much competition for some time. I sincerely hope AMD succeeds.

I am sure that the purchase of ATI likely caused them issues. They probably over paid for it significantly. This money outlay may have hurt R&D some. One thing Intel has in abundance is money for R&D as evidenced by the better process size and power consumption they have typically had.

I personally would love to build something like an 8+ core machine without breaking the bank.

 

[Winston]

We will see if their architecture is really superior to Intel.

It doesn't even need to be superior, it only needs to be as good but significantly cheaper which all indications are that it is. Price/peformance. The Ryzen that benchmarks with Intel's $1050 CPU uses 95W while the Intel uses 140W IF I recall correctly, a reversal of power fortunes, at least for now. The "The future is Zen" video that I praised so highly above goes into a VERY detailed analysis of what AMD did wrong with their last architecture even delving into die sizes and what they did so right with this one. Their new products are aimed squarely at the very heart of Intel's most lucrative product lines and the lower expected prices will put major AMD arrows in those hearts UNTIL Intel significantly lowers their near-monopoly-level prices.

 

[markkoelsch]

It doesn't even need to be superior, it only needs to be as good but significantly cheaper which all indications are that it is. Price/peformance. The Ryzen that benchmarks with Intel's $1050 CPU uses 95W while the Intel uses 140W IF I recall correctly, a reversal of power fortunes, at least for now. The "The future is Zen" video that I praised so highly above goes into a VERY detailed analysis of what AMD did wrong with their last architecture even delving into die sizes and what they did so right with this one. Their new products are aimed squarely at the very heart of Intel's most lucrative product lines and the lower expected prices will put major AMD arrows in those hearts UNTIL Intel significantly lowers their near-monopoly-level prices.

Let's hope it pans out Winston. I like competition and lower prices.

 

[Winston]

Let's hope it pans out Winston. I like competition and lower prices.

From everything I've seen, it very likely will.

HOWEVER, one of the DUMBEST things AMD has followed Intel's lead on is THIS. It is, IMO, now that I've found out about it, THE pending mother of all hacks to come. Why are they not as concerned about it as they should be? I suspect because I believe the hack would result in the need to replace ALL hardware with this "feature."

While reading about the new AMD Zen processor line, I read them bragging about a security feature which would allow, for instance, a stolen PC to be disabled. I thought this to be a really stupid idea, investigated, and found that Intel has had the same "feature" for quite some time. I saw a short time later this article about that Intel "feature" by someone who shares my reservations:

Intel&#8217;s Management Engine is the single most dangerous piece of computer hardware ever created
28 Nov 2016

https://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-management-engine/

Excerpt:

Five or so years ago, Intel rolled out something horrible. Intel&#8217;s Management Engine (ME) is a completely separate computing environment running on Intel chipsets that has access to everything. The ME has network access, access to the host operating system, memory, and cryptography engine. The ME can be used remotely even if the PC is powered off. If that sounds scary, it gets even worse: no one knows what the ME is doing, and we can&#8217;t even look at the code. When &#8212; not &#8216;if&#8217; &#8212; the ME is finally cracked open, every computer running on a recent Intel chip will have a huge security and privacy issue. Researchers are continuing work on deciphering the inner workings of the ME, and we sincerely hope this Pandora&#8217;s Box remains closed.

AMD processors have had something similar for a while (post-2012), too:

AMD Announces TrustZone Partnership with ARM

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-TrustZone-Security-ARM-CPU-Cortex-A5-APU,16000.html

 

[FredA]

Businesses love the ME....it allows them to control THEIR HW being used in the wild.
Granted it is a giant "backdoor."
Just hope it is secure --- it's now in every [x86] computer you buy....

 

[Bat-mite]

I now declare this a hijacked thread! :wink:

 

[Winston]

I now declare this a hijacked thread! :wink:

Sorry. Anyway, back to the original intent of the thread which was, I think, to come up with the best ways to upgrade a system to play a desired game whose minimum specs or performance on currently owned hardware is unacceptable. GENERALLY, from what I've seen in many YouTube videos, the best path from least to most useful:

3. Memory beyond 8GB isn't that much help in most cases to game speed unless you have an integrated CPU/GPU that shares system memory which as a serious gamer you wouldn't.
2. CPU upgrade IF in relation to your current graphics card it is acting as the bottleneck to the graphic card's performance; there are videos on YouTube on how to determine if it is.
1. Graphics card upgrade - by far the most helpful since most of the important game related computing is happening ON IT.

Anyway, that's what I've correctly or incorrectly gleaned from what I've seen.

 

[Bat-mite]

Sorry. Anyway, back to the original intent of the thread which was, I think, to come up with the best ways to upgrade a system to play a desired game whose minimum specs or performance on currently owned hardware is unacceptable. GENERALLY, from what I've seen in many YouTube videos, the best path from least to most useful:

3. Memory beyond 8GB isn't that much help in most cases to game speed unless you have an integrated CPU/GPU that shares system memory which as a serious gamer you wouldn't.
2. CPU upgrade IF in relation to your current graphics card it is acting as the bottleneck to the graphic card's performance; there are videos on YouTube on how to determine if it is.
1. Graphics card upgrade - by far the most helpful since most of the important game related computing is happening ON IT.

Anyway, that's what I've correctly or incorrectly gleaned from what I've seen.

Actually, the original intent was just the (slightly) humorous story of how I had to spend over $200 to play a $60 game, but the rest has certainly been interesting!

 

[gdjsky01]

You would never IMO guess... if you looked at this old 57 year old (unless you saw I worked for Riot Games for a while)

I have 2 PS3s (3 but one is dead)
And I have a Windows 10 box I built for gaming... Its not a monster Because for what I play, I don't need a monster.
AMD [email protected], 16gb of Ram, I use the my iMac 27 inch monitor in 'Target Display Mode' through mini-displayport as the monitor. A few SSDs. And two GTX 970's in SLI.
A steam account that is RIDICULOUS. Plus an Origin account... Plus GOG...

 

[dhbarr]

My claim to fame would be having SLI'ed 3x Titans ( borrowed ); or possibly my 2.8->3.5 air overclock; or that time I bought a control board direct from NVIDIA to get a first gen GSYNC display

And I haven't turned the winbox on in months :-/