Game Machine 2

After getting caught up on all the latest consumer computer component technologies I started ordering parts from Newegg.com, where I always order all my parts. I already have all the peripherials such as a monitor, keyboard, etc. I decided to put together an entire PC, including case, rather than just replacing parts in my current PC. There is a pratical reason for this. My current web server is on its last leg. The northbridge chip pretty much melted after a fan failed; I cant believe it still works at all. If you power off the computer, it will take you 5 minutes of jiggling connections to convince it to turn back on. This was an oppoturnity to get a new game machine and move the current game machine into the web server role.

Once I got all the parts it took me about 6 hours to put everything together and get windows up and running. Now Age of Conan runs at about 30 frames per second on max settings. Perfect.

Its no secret I am an AMD fan, I have been ever since I started putting together computers. I started using their chips because they offered more performance per dollar. Recently that is not always the case. According to all the benchmark tests I have seen Intel chips clearly provide better performance. The question is still, which chip in my price range provides the best performance. In the sub $200 price range I had a couple options. One option was the AMD quad core Phenom. Another was the higher clock rate Intel Dual Cores, both the 65 and 45 nm dies. After doing lots of research it seems that the games I most often play get more benefit from a higher clock rate dual core than a slower clock rate quad core. In time this will probably change as games are written to take advantage of 4+ cores. For now I am going with a fast dual core. The 65 nm Conroe Intel chip was a good choice, but for $10 more I could get the equivelant 45 nm Wolfdale chip, which I did. I am betting that over the life of the chip I will save $10 on my power bill thanks to the smaller, more efficient processor.

Stock this chip runs at 3.0 GHz. Supposedly it overclocks to 4.0 GHz without too much trouble. Hopefully I dont need to do this to play any games for a while.

I need a TOS-Link optical digital audio out jack on my sound card since I already ran the 40 feet of wire from my computer to my home theater. The Asus motherboard I really wanted did not come with this connector on board. The next board in line that came with it was about $45 more. For the first time in a long time I looked into add-on soundcards. I ended up getting a Turtle Beach Riviera sound card that has the jack I need and supports 5.1 surround sound. I was only $30 so it came in cheaper overall than the next Asus board with the premium on-board audio.

So far I have been satisfied with the quality of the board. It does exactly what it says it does. I do have a couple complaints though. First, there are no headers on the board to support front panel audio connectors. Second, the company has released drivers for both XP and Vista but only the 32 bit versions. They have even gone so far as to say they have no plans to support 64 bit versions. Bummer. In this case I need their driver and software package running to enable output simultaneously on the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack as well as the optical jack. Another bummer.