Need some computer advice

[Devant]

Alright,

Since I am returning to school for a computer engineering degree, I have decided that rolling with a five year old dell with a few replaced parts won't really cut it...So my question is, is it cheaper / better to build or to buy. I would like to get a computer that is able to do 3d rendering and gaming but not run at a ridiculous price...my loans are already high enough.

[StarYoshi]

Build it. I sold my old GTX 260 to a friend's friend and it CADs great. Anything faster than that will dominate both work and play. I can put together TONS of parts recommendations. I'm pretty pro at it. All I need is a price ceiling, components needed, and preference (aka amd/intel/nvi). You can build yourself an AMAZING bang for the buck in the mid-range performance section.

[.bot.]

Yoshi is very correct. I built my friends computer like 2 weeks ago, twp gtx 265's with a 1000 W psu, 8 gb ram, 3.6 ghz quad, i cant recall his mobo, 750 gb HD 10000 RPM, he got all parts, plus his case, for under 1000. Or you could have a manufacture build this for you and cost like 1700-1900

[Devant]

let me do some magic with some finances *newegg has payment plans which is nice unless you guys know of a better place to get parts* and maybe I'll build a new computer sometime this week with some help with you guys

[.bot.]

I am a fan of newegg myself.

[StarYoshi]

Newegg is the best. they do not charge sales tax in most states and they usually have the best prices. I wouldn't want to return anything there though.

[stewlounse]

Newegg does awesome at RMA's from my experience.
If newegg is out of stock at the time then I may check over at zipzoomfly.

[Devant]

Sounds really good. Thanks guys. In the meantime....is there anyway to increase the fps on my old frankencomputer? I've never looked into overclocking or anything...i have all of the settings at the lowest...even though i shouldnt have to...and I still find it very stuttery and running slow at times which makes it difficult to explode people...

If a dxdiag can help, here it is -

Time of this report: 12/5/2009, 18:50:23
Machine name: TOM-PC
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc
System Model: Dimension E521
BIOS: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3400+, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 913MB used, 3179MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7600.16385 32bit Unicode
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 9400 GT
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0641&SUBSYS_0562196E&REV_A1
Display Memory: 1776 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1009 MB
Shared Memory: 767 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor Model: DELL E153FP
Monitor Id: DELA00C
Native Mode: 1024 x 768(p) (60.004Hz)
Output Type: HD15
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver File Version: 8.17.0011.9562 (English)
Driver Version: 8.17.11.9562
DDI Version: 10
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 11/20/2009 21:34:54, 9333352 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp:
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-4501-11CF-845F-69251FC2C535}
Vendor ID: 0x10DE
Device ID: 0x0641
SubSys ID: 0x0562196E
Revision ID: 0x00A1
Driver Strong Name: oem14.inf:NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTx86.6.1:Section003:8.17.11.9562:pci\ven_10de&dev_0641
Rank Of Driver: 00E62001
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG2_C ModeVC1_C ModeWMV9_C

[Zero Hour]

Yeah build it on your own. You can get some amazing parts for so cheap right now. Oh man your comp is old. Don't think too much can be had maybe ~5-10fps max. Better off to use that as a file server :P.

You can also check out http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3610 as a starting point. Now it's a little old (july 2009) as there are new video cards out, but you should get the basic idea. Check out Anand period for benchmarks/recommendations.

[Devant]

there's nothing i can do? i have all my settings at the lowest and i'm about to try a polygon skin plugin...

i've never dabbled in overclocking or anything, is that a possiblity?

[stewlounse]

The only suggestion I have is run a high fps config (autoexec.cfg).
I have one that I used before I upgraded my computer...

[Zero Hour]

Sure you could dabble in some OC'ing, but it's really complicated with AMD because of the memory controller. Basically, you take a weekend and an excel spread sheet. You loosen all of your memory timings and then work on getting your processor stable first. So, kick up your FSB (from 200 to 210 for example) and adjust the FSB: DRAM ratio; reboot and prey it comes alive, boot into windows, run super pi, if that passes do some game tests. And then repeat until your system is stable. Then, you need to go and start tightening up your memory settings again with frequent boots to windows/super pi/games. Then once you've found a good setting, run MemTest for 24 hours to make sure its stable. Then, party time.

I read a few pages and they got the 3400+ to 260x10, 1.5v (FSBxMULT) giving 2.6GHz which got them about 15% performance increase in synthetic results. Game results were 8-20% depending on games. Stability,, that's questionable.

To be honest, just buy a new computer. You can get great performance out of something ~$500 and it's so much nicer to work/use a new computer. OC'ing will give you [best case] 15% increase where if you built a new computer you would get probably 1% increase per dollar you spent. No joke.

[Devant]

yeah I'm running everything on the lowest setting, a high fps polygon skin, quantum config and I was getting a high of 15 fps today. I shouldnt be having these problems with my video card and 2 gigs of ram, which is well over the lowest system reqs

[StarYoshi]

Give me a dollar amount and I can give you a faster computer :D And you'll gain the life experience of putting it together... do it!

[Christian]

Have you replaced your power supply yet? I also have a 5 year old Dell and they put the minimum wattage in there and I ended up replacing it at about the specs you're running now. You probably need a 500W minimum.

[stewlounse]

I never recommend overclocking a dell. You won't get very far. Unless it's a beasty XPS then just mayyyybe..

Your log says you are running at 1024 x 768. Is this for in-game as well? If you are getting this bad of performance at that resolution...I don't think there's any hope for it running TF2 any better.
TF2 is really cpu intensive. A bit too much for a Sempron 1.8GHz. The GeForce 9400 GT is about a $50-60 video card now if that tells you anything.
If you are wanting a good gaming system for a good price, I would start out building around the AMD Phenom X2 550 (dual core). It's a perfect gaming cpu for ~$100.

FYI:
Newgg Power Supply Calculator (http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html)

[stewlounse]

High fps configs are trial and error until you get it configured to your system likings.
On my old PC, I tried many different high fps configs found on different forums and 80-90% of them made my FPS drop even more than all low settings. I finally found the sweet spot for my system and the fps config.

If you have made a crap ton of changes with .cfg's, I would suggest adding -autoconfig to your launch options to get everything back to defaults. Keep this command in your launch options until you get something that works in your autoexec.cfg (keep it read-only after editting), then take it out when your autoexec.cfg is final.

[Brains]

High fps configs are trial and error until you get it configured to your system likings.
On my old PC, I tried many different high fps configs found on different forums and 80-90% of them made my FPS drop even more than all low settings. I finally found the sweet spot for my system and the fps config.

If you have made a crap ton of changes with .cfg's, I would suggest adding -autoconfig to your launch options to get everything back to defaults. Keep this command in your launch options until you get something that works in your autoexec.cfg (keep it read-only after editting), then take it out when your autoexec.cfg is final.

+1

took me a while to find my sweetspot too. my suggestion is to first find what each command does and see whether you will notice it in game or not. some of the changes the commands do just won't have any impact to you. check out this page for a list of a good amount of commands to help max your game settings. http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Ultra_high_settings
keep in mind to play tf2 at max settings AND with these extra commands will require a pretty beefy cpu and gpu.

[Devant]

thanks for all of the help guys. I was able to find a config that suited me well. It doubled my fps to about 20-25 on average but i still dip pretty low when things get spammy. No way around that i think. It's enough to maintain my 1:1 average. Maybe when my fps goes up, my k:d will =)

[stewlounse]

Your k:d will definitely improve, probably by a significant amount I'd say.
Can you send me your config?

[Devant]

rate 30000
cl_cmdrate 60
cl_updaterate 101
cl_interp .002
cl_interp_ratio 1
cl_showfps 1
mat_antialias 0
mat_forceaniso 0
mat_hdr_enabled 0
mat_hdr_level 0
mat_picmip 2
mat_trilinear 0
mat_vsync 0
r_rootlod 2
mat_monitorgamma "1.6"
fps_max 0
fov_desired 90
cl_detaildist "0"
cl_detailfade "0"
cl_drawmonitors "0"
cl_ejectbrass "0"
cl_forcepreload "1"
cl_lagcomp_errorcheck "1"
cl_lagcompensation "1"
cl_downloadfilter "nosounds"
cl_ejectbrass "0"
cl_forcepreload 1
cl_phys_props_enable "1"
cl_phys_props_max "300"
cl_show_splashes "1"
cl_smoothtime "0.01"
cl_smooth 1
commentary 0
mat_aaquality "0"
mat_autoexposure_max "0"
mat_autoexposure_min "0"
mat_bloomscale "0"
mat_bufferprimitives "0"
mat_bumpmap "0"
mat_clipz "1"
mat_compressedtextures "1"
mat_diffuse "1"
mat_disable_bloom "1"
mat_disable_fancy_blending "1"
mat_disable_lightwarp "1"
mat_disable_ps_patch "1"
mat_envmapsize "0"
mat_excludetextures "1"
mat_envmaptgasize "0"
mat_fastspecular "1"
mat_filterlightmaps "1"
mat_filtertextures "1"
mat_forceaniso "0"
mat_forcehardwaresync "0"
mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware "0"
mat_framebuffercopyoverlaysize "0"
mat_hdr_enabled "0"
mat_hdr_level "0"
mat_hdr_manual_tonemap_rate "0"
mat_mipmaptextures "0"
mat_lightmap_pfms "0"
mat_maxframelatency "0"
mat_max_worldmesh_vertices "0"
mat_parallaxmap "0"
mat_queue_mode "-1"
mat_reducefillrate "0"
mat_shadowstate "0"
mat_show_ab_hdr "0"
mat_showlightmappage "-1"
mat_specular "0"
mat_texture_limit "-1"
mat_trilinear "0"
mat_use_compressed_hdr_textures "1"
mat_showenvmapmask "0"
mat_showlowresimage "0"
mat_showmaterials "0"
mat_showmaterialsverbose "0"
mat_supportflashlight "0"
mat_wateroverlaysize "0"
mat_motion_blur_enabled "0"
mat_motion_blur_percent_of_screen_max "0"
mat_softwarelighting "0"
mp_decals "200"
muzzleflash_light "0"
net_maxfragments "1280"
net_maxfragments "1280"
net_showevents "0"
npc_height_adjust "1"
props_break_max_pieces "0"
props_break_max_pieces_perframe "0"
r_3dnow "0"
r_3dsky "0"
r_PhysPropStaticLighting "1"
r_WaterDrawReflection "0"
r_WaterDrawRefraction "1"
r_ambientboost "0"
r_cheapwaterend "1"
r_cheapwaterstart "1"
r_decal_cullsize "0"
r_decals "2048"
r_dopixelvisibility "0"
r_drawbatchdecals "0"
r_drawflecks "0"
r_drawmodeldecals "0"
r_drawmodelstatsoverlaymax "1.5"
r_drawmodelstatsoverlaymin "0.01"
r_drawspecificstaticprop "0"
r_dynamic "0"
r_eyeglintlodpixels "20"
r_eyemove 1
r_fastzreject "0"
r_flashlightrendermodels "0"
r_unloadlightmaps "1"
r_flashlightrenderworld "0"
r_flex "0"
r_forcewaterleaf "0"
r_lightaverage "0"
r_lod "2"
r_staticprop_lod "4"
r_maxdlights "0"
r_maxmodeldecal "0"
r_maxnewsamples "0"
r_maxsampledist "0"
r_minnewsamples "0"
r_mmx "1"
r_norefresh "0"
r_occlusion "0"
r_renderoverlayfragment "0"
r_queued_decals "1"
r_ropetranslucent "0"
r_shadowmaxrendered "32"
r_shadowrendertotexture "1"
r_shadows "1"
r_spray_lifetime "2"
r_sse "1"
r_sse2 "1"
r_staticpropinfo "0"
r_updaterefracttexture "0"
r_updaterefracttexture "0"
r_visualizeproplightcaching "1"
r_waterforceexpensive "0"
r_waterforcereflectentities"0"
rope_averagelight "0"
rope_collide "0"
rope_shake "0"
rope_smooth "0"
rope_smooth_enlarge "0"
rope_smooth_maxalpha "0"
rope_smooth_maxalphawidth "0"
rope_smooth_minalpha "0"
rope_smooth_minwidth "0"
rope_subdiv "0"
rope_wind_dist "0"
violence_ablood 1
violence_agibs 1
violence_hblood 1
violence_hgibs 1

[stewlounse]

Ok. I saw a few errors in there. Try this one out. It doesn't take out as much but it's what worked for me running an old Opteron 148 and Radeon X1800XT-512MB with 2GB ram. I got 30-60 fps (at 1920x1080). Some custom maps would drop me below 20, but not all the time. Valve maps were just buttery as always.

I took out your rate commands. I probably wouldn't mess with them at all until you get your fps settled.

// stewlounse
// x:\Steam\steamapps\<user name>\team fortress 2\tf\cfg
// ***MAKE SURE THE .CFG IS READ-ONLY BEFORE YOU START TF2***
// Right click Team Fortress 2 in Games menu > Properties > Set launch options...
// Add these: -dxlevel 81 -width 1920 -height 1080 -novid
// ^^^Change to your resolution.
// ;; if defaults are needed, add -autoconfig, run once, then remove.
// (Keep -autoconfig in until finished with autoexec.cfg fine tuning)
//????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
//
// SETTINGS

fov_desired "90" // Set to 90 for widest field of view

// MATERIAL vars _________________________________
mat_aaquality "0" // Anti-alias set to (4,8) and aaquality set to 2 = (8,16)xCSAA
mat_antialias "0" // ANTI-ALIASING: 0/2/4/6/8
mat_autoexposure_max "0"
mat_autoexposure_min "0"
mat_bloomscale "0"
mat_bufferprimitives "0"
mat_bumpmap "0" // Disables bumpmapping
mat_clipz "1"
mat_colcorrection_disableentities "0"
mat_colorcorrection "0"
mat_compressedtextures "1"
mat_disable_bloom "1"
mat_disable_fancy_blending "1"
mat_disable_lightwarp "1"
mat_disable_ps_patch "1"
mat_fastspecular "1" // Enable/Disable specularity for visual testing. Will not reload materials and will not affect perf.
mat_filterlightmaps "1" // Tiled-looking textures if 0
mat_filtertextures "1" // Tiled-looking textures if 0
mat_forceaniso "0" // TEXTURE FILTERING: 0/2/4/8/16
mat_forcehardwaresync "0"
mat_framebuffercopyoverlaysize "0"
mat_hdr_level "0" // Set to 0 for no HDR, 1 for LDR+bloom on HDR maps, and 2 for full HDR on HDR maps.
mat_hdr_manual_tonemap_rate "0"
mat_max_worldmesh_vertices "0"
mat_mipmaptextures "1" // texture quality decreases with distance
mat_monitorgamma "1.6"
mat_motion_blur_enabled "0"
mat_parallaxmap "0"
mat_picmip "2" // TEXTURE DETAILS: 10-Ultra High, 0-High, 1-Medium, 2-Low, 3-Rather Low, 4-Very Low
mat_reducefillrate "1" // SHADER DETAILS: 0-High, 1-Low
mat_shadowstate "0"
mat_show_ab_hdr "0"
mat_showlightmappage "-1"
mat_softwarelighting "0" // 0/1: 1-Very ugly red looking character models.
mat_specular "1" // 1 for shiny uber, black int/flag
mat_trilinear "0" // TEXTURE FILTERING: 0/1
mat_use_compressed_hdr_textures "1"
mat_vsync "0" // V-sync 0/1
mat_wateroverlaysize "16" // Sets the resolution of water distortion. Must be multiple of 8.

// R vars ________________________________________
r_3dsky "0" // Enable the rendering of 3d sky boxes
r_ambientboost "0"
r_ambientfactor "0"
r_ambientmin "0"
r_bloomtintb "0"
r_bloomtintexponent "0"
r_bloomtintg "0"
r_bloomtintr "0"
r_cheapwaterend "1" // worse water rendering
r_cheapwaterstart "1" // worse water rendering
r_decal_cullsize "0" // Decals under this size in pixels are culled // lower texture quality at distance
r_decals "5"
r_decalstaticprops "0" // Decal static props test
r_dopixelvisibility "0"
r_drawbatchdecals "0"
r_drawdetailprops "0"
r_drawflecks "0"
r_drawmodeldecals "0"
r_dynamic "0"
r_fastzreject "-1" // Activate/deactivates a fast z-setting algorithm to take advantage of hardware with fast z reject. Use -1 to default to hardware
r_ForceWaterLeaf "0"
r_hunkalloclightmaps "0"
r_lightaverage "0"
r_lod "2" // Adjusts model quality -- set between -x and x (server will limit bounds).
r_maxdlights "0"
r_maxmodeldecal "0"
r_maxnewsamples "0"
r_maxsampledist "0"
r_minnewsamples "0"
r_rootlod "2" // MODEL DETAILS: 0-High, 1-Medium, 2-Low
r_renderoverlayfragment "1"
r_shadowrendertotexture "0" // SHADOW DETAILS: 1-High, 0-Low
r_shadows "0" // Enables shadows
r_unloadlightmaps "0" // 0 because of alt tabbing causes black walls
r_WaterDrawReflection "0" // Enable water reflection
r_WaterDrawRefraction "1"
r_waterforceexpensive "0" // WATER DETAILS: 0-Single reflections, 1-Reflect world
r_waterforcereflectentities "0" // WATER DETAILS: 1-Reflect all

// CL vars _______________________________________
cl_crosshair_blue "255"
cl_crosshair_file "crosshair5"
cl_crosshair_green "255"
cl_crosshair_red "255"
cl_crosshair_scale "16" // 16 is smallest size
cl_downloadfilter "nosounds" // all - downloads all custom server content
cl_drawmonitors "0" // Disables the rendering of ingame "monitors" which contain 3d rendered images.
cl_ejectbrass "0" // Disables brass ejection
cl_forcepreload "1" // Forces the game to load all texture and model information into memory on map load.
cl_interp "0.002"
cl_ragdoll_collide "0"
cl_ragdoll_physics_enable "1"
cl_show_splashes "0"
cl_showfps "1" // 1 = fps, 2 = smooth fps
cl_showhelp "0" // Set to 0 to not show on-screen help
cl_smooth "0" // 0 = model is on hitbox, 1 = predicts where model isn't on the hitbox
cl_smoothtime "0.01"