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GR-TEK Gaming Computers & Custom built Computers manufacture high quality custom PCs & gaming pc systems to suit most people needs and budgets. If you require a gaming computer, gaming pc or custom pc for your home or office, or require a fast Core i7 Computer or Core i5 computer system then this is the place for your custom build computer. custom pcs, core i7 computers and gaming pcs.

The tests we performed here were to find out what difference, or graphics speed increase, is attained with multiple graphics cards in a SLI system. We used a Triple SLI Core i7 system with a single GTX 285 and then went to dual SLI and finally Triple SLI. The CPU we used was a Core i7 920 with 6 Gigs of 1333Mhz RAM and Vista Premium 64 Bit. The benchmark program we used is 3DMarkVantage from futuremark.com

As the above chart clearly indicates there is a substanstial increase in speed from the single card to the Dual SLI, in fact the increase in graphics speed was approx 68% extra.

Adding a third card was a little dissappointing. The increase from the Dual SLI system to a Triple SLI only resulted in an extra 18%  in speed.

We have conducted a series of tests to see what components are required to make a fast gaming computer.

We used 3Dmark06 (futuremark.com) which is a benchmark program designed to test how fast a computer can play games.

These tests all use the same Motherboard, a Gigabyte G31M-ES2L and a 9500GT graphics card in Vista Home Premium with all settings at default.

In the 1st test we used a Dual Core 2.5Ghz E5200 CPU with only 1 stick of 2gigs of RAM running in single channel mode.

In the 2nd test we increased the RAM to 2 sticks of 2Gigs each, in dual channel mode, a total of 4 gigs.

In the 3rd test, a Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz E8400 CPU was used

In the 4th test a QUAD Core 2.83Ghz Q9550 was used.

As the above chart indicates, there is hardly an increase in speed at all by increasing the RAM from 2gigs single channel  to 4 gigs in dual channel .

The difference between gaming from using an E5200 with a 9500GT graphics card to a E8400 was a mere  2.6% and to a Q9550 was only another 3.1% increase in performance.

To upgrade this computer from a E5200 CPU with only 2 Gigs of RAM to a Quad Core Q9550 CPU with 4 gigs of RAM in dual channel resulted in less than a 7% increase in performance but a major increase in cost!

In the above tests, it is quite obvious that increasing the RAM and increasing the CPU power did very little to increase overall gaming performance.

So how do we increase gaming performance?

In the next series of tests, we went back to the E5200 2.5Ghz CPU and 4 gigs of RAM, but instead changed the graphics card from a 9500GT to a 9600GT to the 9800GT.

As is clearly shown, changing the graphics card makes a major difference!

The 9600GT gains an increase of an extra 120% in gaming performance while the 9800GT adds a further 16% in speed.

One more test…

And for the final comparison test we used the same 9600GT graphics card with the 3 different CPU’s.  While there is an increase in performance, with the faster CPUs, the difference is only quite marginal.  Upgrading the CPU from an E5200 all the way up to the Q9550 resulted in an increase of only 14% in gaming performance.

SUMMARY & Final Words

Quite clearly, when purchasing a gaming computer, spend as much as you can on the graphics card before you spend big on the CPU. The graphics card does the majority of work during gaming and is the most important component in a gaming computer.

Soon to come…..  upgrading the motherboard,  are more expensive motherboards faster?

Intel® Core™ i7 Processor

For Desktops & Gaming Computers

Go to the next level of multi-core performance with the Intel® Core™ i7 processor, the best desktop & gaming processor on the planet. Built on advanced technology that automatically applies processing power where it’s needed most, the Intel Core i7 processor’s fast speed and efficiency lets you multitask 25% faster and delivers an amazing multimedia experience

Now you can really let your imagination go wild. The Intel® Core™ i7 processor enables digital content creation that’s much faster and more efficient than ever before, with up to 40% faster video encoding and amazing fast performance for other demanding applications like image rendering and tasks like photo retouching and editing.

Experience the full power of today’s most complex and immersive games. By distributing AI, physics, and rendering across eight software threads, the Intel Core i7 processor lets you concentrate on taking down the bad guys while your PC renders all the visuals. And this processor is ready to handle tomorrow’s gaming advances too.

• Dynamic scalability, managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces, and power for energy-efficient performance on-demand.
• Design and performance scalability for servers, workstations, notebooks, and desktops with support for 2-8+ cores and up to 16+ threads with Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology (Intel® HT Technology), and scalable cache sizes, system interconnects, and integrated memory controllers.
• Intelligent performance on-demand with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology taking advantage of the processor’s power and thermal headroom. This enables increased performance of both multi-threaded and single-threaded workloads.
• Increased performance on highly-threaded applications with Intel HT Technology, bringing high-performance applications into mainstream computing with 1-16+ threads optimized for new generation multi-core processor architecture.
• Scalable shared memory features memory distributed to each processor with integrated memory controllers and Intel QuickPath Technology high-speed point-to-point interconnects to unleash the performance of future versions of next-generation Intel® multi-core processors.
• Multi-level shared cache improves performance and efficiency by reducing latency to frequently used data.

Performance Benchmarks

Below is a chart which shows what features are available in which edition of Vista.

We highly recommend Vista Premium for price, features & functionality

Choosing an operating system is also part of buying a new custom computer.

Unfortunately XP has officially ended since January 2009. While there still are some copies available it is best to purchase the latest operating system so that you will be compatible with future software products.

Many people may say that Vista is rubbish, but they are usually the people who have barely tried it themselves. It’s  funny how self professed experts always seem to appear with so called “expert advice”  when you want to purchase new technology.

Vista is here to stay and the next phase of operating system will probably be Windows 7, which is remarkably very similar to Vista. So you might as well  get used to it. We have been using Vista since it was first released, and while there were some problems, as there was when XP was first released, we find Vista to be a very good operating system for our computers.

Unless you have older software which is not compatible with Vista then we thoroughly recommend Vista.

This is a question often asked by many a PC enthusiast or someone simply looking for new family PC.

A quad-core CPU has four processing units on one chip (this first quad-core from Intel was actually two dual-core CPUs on the same chip).
Unlike clock speed increases, multiple cores don’t scale linearly. In other words while a 3ghz CPU is twice as fast as a 1.5ghz CPU,  a quad-core CPU is not four times as fast as a single core. A quad-core CPU is only about 25% faster than a dual-core CPU (Core 2 Duo).

Running multiple cores is very complex. The performance varies depending on hardware configuration, software etc. Those four CPUs are sharing bandwidth on the motherboard used to access Memory (RAM), hard disk drives, etc. Very little software has been optimised to utilise all four cores. It’s very difficult to write multi-threaded applications that utilise multiple cores. It may take many years before the majority of mainstream applications are able to use multiple cores.

Operating system like Windows are multi-threaded, and support splitting applications between CPUs. While this make sense for a dual-core system on the desktop, it would very rarely require four CPUs.

Modern CPUs are able to multi-task common applications quite easily. Things like a virus scan, or ripping a DVD require two CPUs to allow the system to work on two different tasks without slowing down the computer. But, how often are you going to be running a virus check, encoding a video, unpacking compressed files, and surfing the net with a half dozen other applications open, all at the same time?

No doubt that multi-core CPUs are the future, but it may take years before software developers learn how to write software for multiple CPU cores. Right now the Dual Core CPU’s are the best. If you can see yourself purchasing all the latest software in the future then perhaps going quad core now will help to future proof your computer.

Contrary to popular belief a Graphics card that has 1 Gig of RAM rather than only 512Mb is NOT faster.

This myth has been created by Gaming Software Developers.  The specifications that Gaming Software developers give that will run their new game is far from accurate. Usually they state a 256Mb or 512Mb graphics card is enough to play the game. This would make one think that a 1Gig card would be twice as fast and play that game even better. This is far from the case.

Speed in a graphics card comes from the GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) on the card. For example 9500GT, 9600GT, 9800GT and so on. Each card is faster than the previous. Whether it has 512Mb or 1 Gig is irrelevant

The above chart shows a 9800GT 512Mb and a 9800GT 1 Gig card perform almost exactly the same in gaming benchmarks.

The above chart also shows a GTS 250 512Mb and a GTS 250 1 Gig card perform almost exactly the same in gaming benchmarks.

The 1 Gig cards will cost you a lot more, so before you spend the extra money on a graphics card that has 1 Gig, consider spending the extra on the next model up.

There are only 2 major GPU manufacturers in the world, ATI and Nvidia. Third party comapanies like Inno3D, XFX, Gigabyte, Asus, Xpertvision etc buy the GPU’s from either ATI or Nvidia and resell the graphics card under their own brand name. Spending more money on a well advertised “brand name” will often cost more money and will not perform any faster. Well, someone has to pay for the advertising!

For examples of how different graphics cards perform refer to How fast is that Graphics card?

Below is a chart demonstrating the performance of various VGA (Graphics) cards

Higher is better

The above results were tested on a GA-P45-DS3 Motherboard - 2 Gigs 800Mhz RAM - Intel E8400 3.0Ghz CPU - nVidia Driver version 180.48

The above was tested using a P45 Motherboard with a Q9550 @ 3.4Ghz with 2 gig of RAM

Below is a chart demonstrating the performance of 32bit and 64bit applications

The exact same system was used to achieve these results.

The Yellow bars represent the system with 4 gigs of RAM on Vista 32Bit.

The Orange bars represent the system with 8 gigs of RAM on Vista 64Bit

PCMark05, 3DMark06 and 3DmarkVantage are all 32 Bit applications. Running these benchmarks in either the 32bit or 64bit system yielded almost identical results.

PCMarkVantage comes with both 32bit and 64bit versions.

Our tests would indicate that running a 32Bit application under Vista 64Bit and 8 Gigs of RAM does NOT increase performance.

However running a true 64Bit application under Vista64 yields almost 10% extra in performance results.

The above results are based on a P45 Motherboard - 2 Gigs RAM - E8400 CPU - GTX260

Before purchasing a custom gaming computer or gaming pc  check the below chart for the difference in CPU speeds.

Below is a chart of the CPU’s we have tested using PCMark05, higher is faster.

If you are experiencing problems like the “screen freezing” etc in Vista then you should try this first;

Click on the Start Button (ORB) and select CONTROL PANEL

Make certain you are in CLASSIC VIEW (left hand Column) Double click on ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS

Double Click on MEMORY DIAGNOSTICS TOOL

Click on RESTART NOW AND CHECK FOR PROBLEMS

The computer will restart and test the RAM in a DOS window. This will take anything up to an hour. When it is finished it will automatically reboot into Vista

When you are back in VISTA, it will report if there were any problems found or, as above, No memory errors detected.

If the system detects any problems remove all the RAM sticks and test one at a time. It is likely to be only one of the sticks of RAM and then please contact us for warranty/replacement

If you experience any problems with DVD/CD burning, try a different brand of media.

Unfortunately not all brands are compatible with all DVD burners.

Try playing an Original CD or DVD to verify that the DVD drive works.

A firmware update to your burner may also help. Visit the relevant website for your burner to do this.

You turned on the computer and nothing happened, no lights, nothing at all.

Try a different power board/socket. Change the surge protector.

Disconnect everything from the back of the computer and let it stand for 20 mins and then reconnect everything.

If all else fails, contact your computer dealer.

My computer seems to be running slowly/shutting down or rebooting on its own.
This is usually caused by Spyware, Malware, Viruses, Trojans or incompatible software.
Please check that the programs you have installed are fully Vista compatible.
Even though you have an Anti-Virus program running, nothing is 100%.
You can try a System Restore  see vistahelp.com.au

If this does not solve the problem then you may need to Re-install Vista entirely.  See vistahelp.com.au

Before it can be determined that it is a hardware problem on your computer, a full software re-install needs to be done. If the problem continues on a fresh install of Windows, then it is likely that it is a hardware warranty issue.

We strongly recommend a fresh install of windows before you contact your computer dealer.

Will more RAM speed up my system?

One question we always come across is how much random access memory (RAM) do you need for a computer to speed it up. Up to a point, adding RAM will normally cause your computer to seem faster on certain types of operations.

When you run a program such as a word processor or an internet browser, the CPU in your computer pulls the file off the hard disk and loads it into RAM. The microprocessor also pulls in a number of shared dynamic link libraries (DLLs), shared pieces of code used by multiple applications. The DLLs take many more megabytes. Large programs can use large amounts of memory.

The microprocessor (CPU) loads in the data files at which you want to use, which might total several megabytes if you have loaded more than one document or browsing several pages with a lot of graphics. This can slow your system down significantly if there isn’t enough memory. On your computer system, you may at any given time you might have several applications running: A word processor, an email program, a spreadsheet, several internet browser windows and so on. All these programs plus the operating system will use the available RAM.

Every time something is loaded or opened, it is placed into RAM. This simply means that it has been put in the computer’s temporary storage area so that the CPU can access that information faster and more easily. The CPU requests the data it needs from RAM, processes it and writes new data back to RAM in a continuous cycle. When an application is closed, it and any accompanying files are usually purged (deleted) from RAM to make room for new data. If there isn’t enough RAM, the computer uses the Hard Drive to store these temporary files. A hard drive is a lot slower than RAM and so if your computer stores all this data on the hard drive instead of RAM , it will inevitably slow down the computer.

RAM is important because it reduces the need for the computer to “swap” data to the hard drive.

When Windows XP was first introduced RAM was still very expensive and many systems were built using smaller amounts of RAM like 128 Megabytes and 256 Megabytes. Windows XP actually required more RAM to run efficiently. In turn XP used the “Swap File” on the hard drive a lot more extensively. This slowed down the computer a lot because hard drives are a lot slower than RAM. Upgrading the system to 1 Gigabyte of RAM sped the system up dramatically because XP no longer needed to use the Swap File on the hard drive so extensively. It meant XP could use the larger amount of RAM to swap the data around rather than the hard drive.

This led to the common belief that the more RAM in a system the faster the computer. In fact, this is not always the case.

If your computer system had only 128 megabytes of RAM and you upgraded to 1 gigabyte, you would really notice the speed increase quite dramatically. But increasing the RAM from 1 gigabyte to 2 gigabytes or more, makes very little difference to the speed of the system. XP was very comfortable with 1 gigabyte of RAM.

Microsoft Vista is generally very comfortable with 2 or 3 gigs of RAM and increasing RAM beyond this usually results in very little speed increase. There are, however, some programs that do prefer extra RAM. These are usually large photo editing programs and the like.

A 32-bit version of Vista or XP will never even use the full 4GB of RAM in your system. It’s because of the memory mapped IO reservations, which control how the onboard memory on your installed devices overwrites parts of the system memory, which lowers the total memory available to Vista or XP itself. According to Microsoft, the 32-bit version of Vista is limited to 3.12GB of total available memory. This can vary according to how the system has addressed the RAM from the Video Graphics card. You can usually expect anything from 3.12GB to 3.58GB

To go beyond 4 gigabytes means you need Vista (or XP) 64bit. But installing 8 gigabytes of RAM will not increase performance of your system. Unless you have a program which can specifically use all this RAM then the extra RAM is usually wasted. If you require more speed and performance extra RAM will not help. Spending the extra money on a faster CPU or Graphics card is the best way to go.

Below is a chart demonstrating the performance of RAM

Clearly these results show that more RAM does not always yield better performance.

Manufacturers claim that RAM running in DUAL channel runs 20-25% faster. Our test results indicate that DUAL channel yields less than 1% extra over SINGLE channel.

Note that increasing RAM from 4gig to 8gig resulted in almost identical scores. No performance increase at all.

These tests were conducted using PCMark05.

Toms Hardware supports my findings…. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/PARALLEL-PROCESSING,1705-11.html

According to Intel “With faster, intelligent multi-core technology that applies processing power where it’s needed most, new Intel® Core™ i7 processors deliver an incredible breakthrough in PC performance. They’re the best desktop processors on the planet.^? You’ll multitask applications faster and unleash incredible digital media creation. And you’ll experience maximum performance for everything you do, thanks to the combination of Intel® Turbo Boost technology and Intel® Hyper-Threading technology, which maximizes performance to match your workload.”

But the real question is, how much faster are they really?

We have done some benchmarking with different systems, different CPU’s, different RAM etc but stayed with the same Video card throughout all the tests.

SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS

Core i7 920 Overclocked to 3.2Ghz with 3×1Gig DDR3 1600Mhz RAM - GTX 285

Core i7 920 @ 2.66Ghz with 3×1Gig DDR3 1600Mhz RAM - GTX 285

P45 Motherboard Q8400 Overclocked to 3.6Ghz with 3×1Gig DDR3 1333Mhz RAM - GTX 285

P45 Motherboard Q8200 Overclocked to 2.8Ghz with 3×1Gig DDR3 1333Mhz RAM - GTX 285

P43 Motherboard Q8200 @ 2.33Ghz 2.8Ghz with 2×2Gig DDR2 800Mhz RAM - GTX 285

In all tests the Core i7 certainly came out on top.

While it remains the fastest CPU at the moment, the price is still well beyond reach for most.