Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi People!

I am new here,

I already spent a lot of time searching the forum but I think it would be best to create a new topic for this one

I am very interested in Wide Screen Gaming and are trying to build a pretty expensive Gaming Rig for it

I am a huge fan of Sim Racing and that´s the main reason why I am building this baby

I already have a Playseat, a Logitech G25 Racing Wheel and the TrackIR 4 Pro

This is what I have come up with so far:

Case: Lian Li PC-P80 Black
Powersupply: OCZ EliteXstream 1000 Watt, 80 Plus Rating

Processor: Intel Core I7 920 2.66 GHz, 4.8 GT/s, 4x 256kb, 8 MB, Boxed
Cooler: Thermalright Ultra 120 EXtreme 1366 Aluminium
Motherbord: Asus Rampage II Extreme
Memory: Corsair Dominator 6 GB, PC3-14900, 1866 MHz, 9, Non-ECC, Kit of 3
Harddisk: Samsung SpinPoint F1 1 TB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB, S-ATA II/300
Videocard: 2x Asus GeForce GTX 295 1792 MB, PCI-e 16x
Soundcard: Creative X-Fi Titanium
DVD: Samsung SH-S223F S-ATA

Screen: 3x ViewSonic VX2262WM 22 Inch / 55.8 Cm, 5 Ms

I want to play Games like GTR2 and rFactor

I want to play them (and future games) in a 5040x1050 (3x 1680x1050) resolution with all settings maxed out!

Will I be able to do that with this setup?

Besides that I have some more questions:

What will be my bottleneck? (The CPU?)

Would it be better to use 3 Geforce GTX 280/285 in SLI instead of 2 GTX 295?

I Problably wait for the Viewsonic VX2265WM 120Hz Wide LCD to come out.
Do you guys have a better idea? Perhaps a Dell UltraSharp 2208WFP or something like that...

All comments are welcome!

Thank you in advance!

With kind regards,

Jurgen

After checking the prices I have made some changes...

:roll:

This would make more sense:

Case: Antec Gamersgear Twelve Hundred
Powersupply: OCZ EliteXstream 1000 Watt, 80 Plus Rating

Processor: Intel Core I7 920 2.66 GHz, 4.8 GT/s, 4x 256kb, 8 MB, Boxed
Cooler: Thermalright Ultra 120 EXtreme 1366 Aluminium
Motherbord: Asus P6T Deluxe
Memory: OCZ Intel I7 Triple 6 GB, PC3-12800, 1600 MHz, 7, Non-ECC, Kit of 3
Harddisk: Samsung SpinPoint F1 1 TB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB, S-ATA II/300
Videocard: 2x Asus GeForce GTX 295 1792 MB, PCI-e 16x
Soundcard: Creative X-Fi Titanium
DVD: Samsung SH-S223F S-ATA

Screen: 3x ViewSonic VX2262WM 22 Inch / 55.8 Cm, 5 Ms

[EDIT]
Changed the case from Lian Li PC-P80 into Antec Twelve Hundred
[/EDIT]

Okay, I didn't read your whole list but I see you want surround gaming and you have a Creative sound card selected. BIG NO NO! Say NO to the Creative! They make rubbish sound cards, drivers are pretty poor and they overcharge for low featured sound cards. I say this because I did extensive research when looking for a good quality surround sound card to power my Logitech Z-5500s.

There is no reason in this day and age to settle for Creative's rubbish. My reason for selecting M-Audio is due to their high quality cards. They use excellent DACs on their sound cards and albeit slow with the drivers sometimes, theirs work fine and never cause any issues with my speakers. When I did a general survey of opinion on another forum of mine sometime back all of the people who recommended Creative were people who still used their cards. Everyone else recommended other brands but many suggested M-Audio.

If you were unaware, M-Audio makes sound cards for musicians and have all sorts of fancy sound cards that allow you to hook up a surround sound receiver and all sorts of things like that. They do of course make a regular surround card, and that is what mine is. While I was about to be soured off of M-Audio due to the lack of 64-bit Vista drivers they finally released them and all is well again.

I would also recommend HT Omega. They produce very nice sound cards, albeit I haven't heard as much about them. They were my alternative if I had to buy a new sound card. One thing that irks be besides Creative's low quality drivers and cheap DACs are their cheesy connectors. Most of their sound cards lack even an Optical connection! They make no sound cards with coaxial S/PDIF (Which is what I use to connect my speakers to my sound card currently) and only a few higher end ones have optical connectors. I don't care what marketing BS they push - you are not going to get high quality sound without having one of the two formats I mentioned. Creative is all about making a quick buck, not about making quality products. M-Audio equipment all receives good reviews, but I see much mixed opinion on Creative.

Without a doubt, avoid Creative. Buy Asus, M-Audio, HT Omega - anything but Creative. Your ears will thank you!

Also as far as a cooler - unless you plan to overclock it you don't need that. Stock cooling (at least on everything I've seen previously - perhaps Core i7 is different) is very sufficient and good at keeping the processor cool. I'm using a stock cooler on my C2D E8400 and it has never come close to overheating or even spooling up.

Given what you're going for with your PC, I'd recommend a 300 GB Velociraptor and if that is not enough space a secondary drive (ranging around 500 GB or so). Doing a defrag on a 1 TB sounds like utter torture to me. Say goodbye to your PC for a few days...no matter though, the sound card is the biggest issue I can see. What speakers are you using or planning to buy? If surround gaming is important to you you need a good set of speakers and that's hard to come by in PC speakers. As far as that would go, I recommend only the Logitech Z-5500s or if you can find a set (probably used) get the Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1.

Okay, I didn't read your whole list but I see you want surround gaming and you have a Creative sound card selected. BIG NO NO! Say NO to the Creative! They make rubbish sound cards, drivers are pretty poor and they overcharge for low featured sound cards.

Okay, I didn't read either of your whole posts but... This man speaks the truth.

Without a doubt, avoid Creative. Buy Asus, M-Audio, HT Omega - anything but Creative. Your ears will thank you!

First of all, thank you for your reply!

I´ll take your advice and found 2 soundcards for about he same price as the selected Creative:

1. Asus Xonar DX

2. M-Audio Revolution 5.1

Which would you recomment?

Also as far as a cooler - unless you plan to overclock it you don't need that. Stock cooling (at least on everything I've seen previously - perhaps Core i7 is different) is very sufficient and good at keeping the processor cool. I'm using a stock cooler on my C2D E8400 and it has never come close to overheating or even spooling up.

I am planning on some overclocking and wil keep the Thermalright Ultra 120 EXtreme as cooler

But thanks for bringing it up!

Given what you're going for with your PC, I'd recommend a 300 GB Velociraptor and if that is not enough space a secondary drive (ranging around 500 GB or so). Doing a defrag on a 1 TB sounds like utter torture to me. Say goodbye to your PC for a few days...no matter though, the sound card is the biggest issue I can see.

I actually was thinking about getting a WD VelociRaptor Backplane Ready 300 GB, 10.000 Rpm Hard Drive for Windows and stuff.
And keep the Samsung SpinPoint F1 1 TB for storage

What speakers are you using or planning to buy? If surround gaming is important to you you need a good set of speakers and that's hard to come by in PC speakers. As far as that would go, I recommend only the Logitech Z-5500s or if you can find a set (probably used) get the Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1.

I was thinking of his little brother, the Logitech G51

But if the Z-5500 is worth the extra money I will take it!

My only suggestion is to not buy anything Asus. Their support is completely non-existent.

Avoiding the stock cooler for i7 is probably a good idea - I've not really heard good things about it when it comes to keeping temps reasonable. But i7 is general is quite a toasty beast...

Velociraptor is a good idea if you've got the cash (which it looks like you have)...

I, too, am never going to buy another Creative card. In fact, I've got one of my rigs suffering with some truly horrible integrated sound at the minute as the Audigy 4 I've got spare causes all sorts of horrible crap in Vista 64. :(

I've never had a problem with Asus boards, but I know that a lot of others can't say the same.

I agree, Creative sucks, after having tried two of them and recently discovering even the cheap model of Audigy (LS, Value, etc) can be turned into an X-Fi via a mod called Audigy to X-Fi, including 24 bit and the Crystalizer, it was easy to see their product is cheaply made and hasn't really evolved much.

I have an M-Audio Revolution 5.1, and while it does have a great sound using one of the best DSPs in the VIA Envy, it's software leaves something to be desired. You get SRS CircleSurround II, X2, X3, Sensaura, and SRS TruSurround. No Dolby whatsoever and no DTS. It also doesn't record software sources so I can't use it with Fraps for instance.

Worse yet the driver updates have been few and far between, basically covering only the major service packs. Even worse still since they've been writing drivers for Vista, you supposedly get the same driver for XP and Vista now, which is one of the worst to use for XP. If I try and use the Vista/XP driver OR the XP SP3 driver, I get very low volume output. Thus I still use the original driver made about 4 yrs ago and it renders me without being able to adjust the sampling rate, so it's always at the default 44Khz.

I will be building a new rig soon with the top priority being gaming. I've considered parts very similar to your build spec. The sound card I'm liking the most so far is the Razer Barracuda AC1. The best price I've seen on it lately is around $115 USD.

Thank you all for your replys!

I just read an review about the Razer Barracuda AC1

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/cuda_sound

Seems like a killer soundcard!

[EDIT]
Techcage also seems impressed:

http://techgage.com/article/razer_barracuda_ac-1_sound_card/1
[/EDIT]

This is how the system looks for the moment

Case: Antec Gamersgear Twelve Hundred
Powersupply: OCZ EliteXstream 1000 Watt, 80 Plus Rating

Processor: Intel Core I7 920 2.66 GHz, 4.8 GT/s, 4x 256kb, 8 MB, Boxed
Cooler: Thermalright Ultra 120 EXtreme 1366
Motherbord: Asus P6T Deluxe + OC Palm
Memory: OCZ Intel I7 Triple 6 GB, PC3-12800, 1600 MHz, 7, Non-ECC, Kit of 3
Harddisk 1: WD VelociRaptor Backplane Ready 300 GB, 10.000 Rpm, 16 MB
Harddisk 2: Samsung SpinPoint F1 1 TB, 7200 Rpm, 32 MB, S-ATA II/300
Videocard: 2x Asus GeForce GTX 295 1792 MB, PCI-e 16x
Soundcard:Razer Barracuda AC-1
DVD: Samsung SH-S223F S-ATA

Screen: 3 x Samsung SyncMaster T220 22 Inch / 55.8 Cm, 2 Ms

Speakerset: Logitech Speakerset Z-5500 5.1

Thank you for your help so far!