New computer

[awdrgyjo]

Hi, I've been playing Black Shark with a friend of mine for several months, and decided to buy it. The only problem is, I haven't got a computer. What's the minimum spec, or best ready made computer I can get, so it's running flat out, maximum everything.

 

Thanks in advance, Awdrgyjo

[Shez]

Recomended specs should be on the www.digitalcombatsimulator.com Black Shark page. I'd grab the link for you but that page is blocked at work. :D

 

If it was me I'd build one to run A10C! I believe, eventually, Black Shark is getting updated to A10C level. No clue about specifics for that though.

[Pyroflash]

At least a quad core(you could buy a hexa-core, but it wouldn't really show any FPS increase) 3.5 GHZ setup with more the 4 GB ram, a 64 bit OS, and an HD 6870/GTX470 or better.

 

As always though, I suggest building your own computer. It is much easier than most people would believe, not to mention many hundreds of dollars cheaper.

 

@ Shez, Vista 32, a 6900, 3 GB RAM, and a G940? Who built your setup? The computer devil?

Edited June 1, 2011 by Pyroflash

[Shez]

It's a Gateway FX7020. It's been in use for a few years :D More than 3 gigs is a waste when the video card has 1 gig itself. G940 isn't so bad. The rig has done everything I've thrown at it...Even A10C...just not very well lol. I thought about trying to throw W7 64 bit in it. But I'm not sure it's worth it. Probably try it on a different hard drive just to see if it works. I'd rather fly than fiddle with my an antiquated system!

 

It's what I have so it's what gets used. If I wasn't getting married soon I'd have upgraded. :P

[topdog]

Hexacore would be wasted I think, unless you get one that simply has more per-core brute power than an i5-2500k can give, and even then the quad core equivalent would be ample even if you were to concurrently record your gameplay in FRAPS whilst playing.

 

That said, it's all subjective. Even with my spec and overclock, I can periodically dip down to some pretty lowish framerates without crazy resolutions (only 1920x1080p, not some 6k triple screen resolution nuttiness), but the gameplay seems fine and unaffected by it for the most part - I have no complaints with the performance I'm getting.

 

If I was recommending a PC to someone, I'd probably start out looking at an i5 sandybridge config, then seeing how that compares to an available i7 on the non-sandy boards (x58 chipset?) price-wise, and probably around a 460 GTX starting place on graphics cards for price/performance or the team red equivalent. 4GB minimum, 8GB preferred, and a 64-bit OS.

Edited June 2, 2011 by topdog

[power5]

x58 is outclassed by cheaper 2500k system especially when overclocking like you have.

 

For intel get a 2500k (HT in 2600k is not good for most gaming and needs to be disabled). Get 4gb of ram at least. Win7 HP x64. I would get no less than a 560ti SOC or HD6950(unlocked to 6970).

 

For AMD grab a x6 1090 as they can be had this week for $169 on Newegg with [H] code: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1614204 Everything else the same.

 

If you can wait another month AMD "SHOULD" be releasing their new chips but I think that has been the story for the last couple months, or its my anticipation.

[topdog]

Not sure what your info is based on but disabling HT in 2600K is unnecessary for anything except epeen overclocks (even then some benchmarks like prime will be quicker with it on and 8 threads, than off with 4).

 

To say that it needs to be disabled for most gaming is (very) misleading, I never once had to on my last two CPUs, and I never once have to on this one either. That's about 8 years worth of gaming and computing with HT on (my first HT enabled processor was bought in late summer 2003).

 

What I would say and wholeheartedly agree on, is that it is just of no added benefit for most gaming, and therefore, an unnecessary expense if you're just interested in gaming that you could put towards a better graphics card or something instead. That's why I recommended the 2500K over 2600K in this case to base a starting spec from.

 

HT as a feature is (currently) more for scientific or highly concurrent multithreaded (e.g. graphics/video processing) app uses.

[Bucic]

At least a quad core

What kind of b* is that. At least refrain from advising (misleading) others.

[awdrgyjo]

Sorry, but I'm not very computer literate.

 

Would either of the HP models below be suitable for it to run flat out?

And if so, woould either of the two be preferable?

 

HP Pavilion p6792uk Desktop PC

· Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

· AMD Phenom II X6 1045T

· 6GB Memory

· 1TB SATA Hard Disk Drive

· The latest ATI Radeon™ HD 6570 for gaming and 3D applications

· DVD writer, Wireless Keyboard & Mouse, TV Tuner, HP Media Center remote

HP Pavilion p6799uk Desktop PC

· Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

· Intel® Core™ i5-650 processor

· 4GB Memory

· 1.5TB SATA Hard Disk Drive

· The latest NVIDIA GeForce GT420, with 2GB dedicated graphics memory for gaming and 3D applications

· DVD writer, Wireless Keyboard & Mouse, TV Tuner, HP Media Center remote

Thanks in advance

[Rahvin]

Neither of those has a sufficiently powerful graphics card for anything beyond low-def 800x600 gaming...

 

 

Having had a look around HP offers, they have no reasonably graphics cards for any of their boxes.

Edited June 12, 2011 by Rahvin

[awdrgyjo]

thank you for your replies, ok can someone please recomend an off the shelf pc, that will run black shark, with everything flat out, no specs just a specific pc, and if possible a 24 inch moniter to go with it, it does not have to support an upgrade, or run any other sim, just black shark, thankyou.

[Rahvin]

If it has to be prebuilt, you might want to have a look at the basic Aurora model by alienware/dell. That specced with the base CPU option, 8 GB RAM and the HD6950 should get you pretty close.

If you also spec the 256 GB SSD and 2TB hard drive you hit 2250 dollars, but without the two, it should be around 1500.

A total rip-off in every way, but that's the price you pay.

here is the configurator:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dpcwsx1&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=alienware-aurora-r3

 

You probably won't find a computer which has a reasonable price and enough performance without customization to do what you require.

 

Not sure where you are from, so can't recommend much more, but both in Europe and the US there are plenty of custom-builders that will build a performance machine mostly to specs, so you don't have to worry about that.

[Bolt-1]

thank you for your replies, ok can someone please recomend an off the shelf pc, that will run black shark, with everything flat out, no specs just a specific pc, and if possible a 24 inch moniter to go with it, it does not have to support an upgrade, or run any other sim, just black shark, thankyou.

 

do yourself a favor if you want prebuilt...

Not sure what shipping will be but

try here first

 

http://www.digitalstormonline.com/

[Rahvin]

Yeah, something like their "best" Enix is also pretty good. Adding a 120GB SSD is one customization to consider though.

[EtherealN]

awdrgyjo, if you give us a budget and a territory (country/state/etc, I could look at your account's connection details but I only do that when required for moderation, as a privacy thing) we should be able to find you a few options. But looking at newegg would be pointless if you can't order from there, etc. :)

[awdrgyjo]

Thank you for your replies, I am living in the UK, budget is about £600-£700, thats just for the PC, I thought it would be easy to find a cheap, off the shelf computer to run a two year old game, as already stated it would be dedicated to black shark only, as it stands, no upgraded version, thank you again.

[Rahvin]

Bad news: It's going to be pretty much impossible to do what you want to do.

Maxing out a two year old eagle soft game was never the 600-700 pound range, even back in the original lock-on days. They "planned ahead" with their maximum settings so that it would require next years high-end machines to even be playable.

But with a budget it should be possible to find something that will get you something where you can play with slightly more than medium settings.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-210-OK&groupid=43&catid=2040&subcat=1444 with an HD 6950 graphics card and win 7 home option selected are getting pretty close to what you're looking for, and just within your budget.

Similar retailers will probably offer similar deals.

[awdrgyjo]

thank you Rahvin medium settings are fine, can you recomend a monitor to go with this remembering that its not very powerfull computer, and i would like a 24 inch, so high resolution is not a good idea.

[awdrgyjo]

PC pilot have recomended the DIHEDRAL from easy computers upgraded with a GTX 570 it runs A10 flat out at 80fps, its £900 and I will stretch to that, for that kind of performance, any comments? also do you know when the next nvidia graphics card will be released, that might decrease the price, thanks in advance.

[EtherealN]

I thought it would be easy to find a cheap, off the shelf computer to run a two year old game

 

The budget itself isn't really a problem. I could make something even cheaper than that which would max DCS:BS except in cases of the most extremely active missions. The problem is more the segmentation of the PC market as far as "complete" computers goes - that end of the spectrum is considered, by most manufacturers, to not be gaming computers. They'll therefore be fitted with GPU's that work fine for watching youtube and browsing facebook, but not much more than that. Unfortunately they often also use custom motherboards and cheap power supplies that may sometimes complicate replacement of the GPU (which would otherwise be an option).

 

If you have acess to a friend who can build the machine for you, or would consider doing so yourself (it isn't terribly difficult, involves practically no tools, and there are many guides on the net), the problem should be easily solved: http://techreport.com/articles.x/20722/4

 

Something like that appears to fit your budget, and is more than "good enough". It'll obliterate DCS:BS, and also offer good to magnificent performance ind DCS:A-10C (and, for that matter, pretty much any game currently on the market).

 

I've been digging through the ready-made manufacturers I know, and unfortunately it would appear that you won't find much joy with them until you approach the 800-900 pound level.

[awdrgyjo]

PC pilot have recomended the DIHEDRAL from easy computers upgraded with a GTX 570 it runs A10 flat out at 80fps, its £900 and I will stretch to that, for that kind of performance, any comments? also do you know when the next nvidia graphics card will be released, that might decrease the price, thanks in advance.

 

Thanks for that, but the situation has changed.

[EtherealN]

Phew, finally managed to track them down. They don't make it easy to dig up the proper site... As long as you meant EasyPC's (http://www.easypc-uk.com) and not that weird easycomputers.co.uk company and their horde of awful sites... :P

 

I do not like the looks of the hard drive selection. Need to know a lot more than just the size of the HDD's to ensure that what otherwise looks like a pretty good gaming rig (don't ever trust guarantees about overclock speeds though, only accept their "4.8GHz" speed if they set that up for you and offer warranty that it will continue to operate. It's not impossible of course, 2600K's do very often get up there and sometimes even higher if given proper cooling, but the only speeds guaranteed by Intel is 3.4GHz and 3.5GHz to 3.8GHz TurboBoost speeds depending on core load).

 

As an option for your storage, if you will only be using it for simulators and not much more, you can consider a cheap "boot drive" - the 60GB SSD. However, I really do not like that they are not upfront about make and model of that. Bad storage media can make the most powerful computer in the world feel like it's frozen molasses simply because all that awesome machinery ends up constantly having to wait for the HDD's to give them some data.

 

But aside from that it looks good. Fairly similar to what I use.

 

Regarding price decreases though, there's a "next card" coming all the time. You do however need to realize that the new one isn't always better. The market segmentations are such that some new cards are worse for games than something that was crap 4 years ago. That said: even when there's a new gaming card arrived, there'll still be another new one coming way soon, and you'll spend years constantly waiting for that next good thing that will push down the price on something else.

 

If you want to save money, I'd much rather suggest you drop the 2600K and get a similar system with a 2500K instead. It should overclock just as well as the 2600K, and all it sacrifices is Hyperthreading (not used by DCS:BS nor DCS:A-10C) and 2MB's of L3 cache. Basically, for the purposes of DCS, you get the same performance but you just slashed a third of the price off of the part. Use that money to add another 4GB RAM or something like that, and still keep a good wad of cash for vacation. :)

 

EDIT:

With the same caveats as above regarding disclosure on storage media and so on, this is a much better value for DCS purposes:

http://www.easypc-uk.com/gamers-systems/89-eco-gaming-water-cooled-36ghz-core-i5.html

Edited June 14, 2011 by EtherealN

[awdrgyjo]

thank you Ethereal to go to that trouble, I contacted the company and they said they either use, CGATE or western digital, normally for the 500gb hdd,, any good?

[EtherealN]

WD is what I use. If it's a Caviar Black model it's pretty much as good as it gets for mechanical hard drives.

 

(Last couple years I've used one WD external HDD, two WD Caviar Blacks and one WD Greenpower, and the only issue I've had was the external one dying on me after ~2 years or so; which was totally fine since by that time it had been mercilessly dragged along on some 12 flights abroad and at least 60-70 road trips and hotel stays for work. WD makes good stuff, IMO.)

 

CGATE I don't know much about. They're not commonly sold in my country as far as I've been able to see, so I've never had cause to investigate them.

 

EDIT: Oh, and just for security's sake: don't even consider the GTX460 they have as an option. The card itself is powerful enough and would probably work almost as good as the 560 or 570, but the version they have is a bit starved for vRAM. I would suggest either 560 Ti or 570. For my own use I've found the 560 Ti to be quite acceptable and performing well even with maxed graphics, but a 570 isn't all that much extra money and does afford you greater margins.

Edited June 14, 2011 by EtherealN

[awdrgyjo]

it looks like the sandybridge 2500k, navidia 570, and an extra 4GB RAM [8GB total] will that run BS at highest settings , or near? any suggestions for a 27'' monitor? thanks again.