Alzir

Depends on how you reformat it. Do you have the win 7 cd or a recovery drive with tools to reinstall it? You can reformat during the windows installation process. If you straight reformat, you’ll lose everythung on the disk, including windows.

wow some good memories brought back there 🙂

hmmm you have to wonder what marketing research concluded that’s a good idea. I’m apparently within their target market, but can’t think of anything i’m less likely to buy.

Sorry to disappoint but this is a game I iust couldn’t ever force myself to play, though I was late in getting it. I’ll keep an eye out for nom on steam though, as he might be up for a few games with you. Unless you’re pc is ridiculously old, it should run bf42 though. It’s free these days through origin.

Just to further my query slightly, wet’s prebuild board supports the higher fsb, so am I right in the slight performance gain part of my previous statement? The internet told me yes when I researched it a while back, but that was about 6 months ago.

It all boils down how much you think the effort is to do something yourself. For me, I’d rather spend 50 quid on a few pints rather than to someone who could do it for me. Generally I’d feel I was being lazy not doing it myself,but only do so up to the point where i’d not have full confidence in avoiding damage to components, eg i’m happy to opt for an overclocked bundle.

With that bit of sense out of the way, lets try amd stretch my knowledge a bit and tackle your point about RAM in Lammie’s build. As far as I understand, the front side bus speed offers very little over 1600 on a K series i5, 2 or 3% low, as far as remember from when I was looking at it. You can achieve the higher frequencies to use with fast memory, but for 2 or 3%, i’d deem the extra cost unnecessary.

I don’t mind getting shot down if i’m wrong on this because i’d like to know if I am.

There are a few areas you might want to look at in that build, which looks good but I’m curious how it tots up to 1300 quid, especially with no monitor in there.

The motherboard description caught my eye as it highlights Crossfire support with no mention of SLI, and a quick google turned up this: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/z77-express-ivy-bridge-benchmark,review-32489-6.html

Also missing are any PCIe 3.0 pathway switches, which would have made x8/x8 mode possible for the P8Z77-V LX’s two x16-length slots. Instead, users get one slot locked into 16-lane transfers and a second locked into four-lane PCIe 2.0 transfers through the Z77 PCH. That limitation still allows for CrossFire configurations, but crosses SLI off the feature list, unless you get your hands on a single-card, dual GPU solution.

Maybe the more technically minded can look into that a bit further for you, but that would suggest to me that you’ll not get the most out of two GTX 670’s.

That being said, if you’re still using a 19 inch monitor, you probably have no need for two in the first place. As Ben has told me a few times, the max resolution you can use in a game is limited by your monitor’s native resolution, which in turn is more or less determined by the screen size. For example, Ben plays at 1920×1080 on a 24 inch screen, whereas I’ll play at 1680 x 1050 on a 22 inch screen, which is the highest the monitor supports, however with a smaller screen area, the picture quality is pretty much the same. The lower resolution on the smaller screen is less demanding on the GPU (my laymans understanding of it anyway), so you could save yourself a healthy chunk of cash just by dropping one of those two cards, and even use your spare cash to go for a better monitor. Even one GTX 670 will likely run BF4 on top settings on a 24 inch screen (Ben has two cards because he has 3 screens).

There are small areas where you can save in there as well, for example the thermal paste is £9 you probably don’t need to spend, unless you plan on dismantling your entire setup to apply a new coat of paste to your CPU or GPU. If that’s something you’d not be comfortable with, drop it off the shopping list. If the need ever arises to do it yourself, you can easily pick a tube of paste up a local hardware store, for probably the same price.

As Ben also mentioned, the sound card is something you could easily drop as well, but that’ll boil down to personal preference. I have no issues with a set of £5 speakers/microsoft headset and mic, using onboard sound.

Regarding how big to go with your SSD, consider only how you’ll be using the machine. At the moment you’ve not got many games on your list, and if that remains the case, you’ve no need to go bigger than 240 gb. I have a lot of games installed and a 250 gb SSD just about covers the main ones I use, but I have to juggle things around sometimes. As time goes on I’ll expect this to be an area where I’ll have to upgrade, however as time goes on the price of SSD’s should also drop further than have done so far.

Re windows 8, I’m also not sold on it and don’t see the need to go for it at this time. Windows 7 is pretty good, and is probably going to remain the main OS in use for some time, much in the same way as XP was. If the supplier can offer you a cheaper price on win 7 than win 8, I’d take it.

Finally, regarding the hardware requirements for BF4, I think it’s safe to assume the jump in hardware requirements will not be as great as it was on BF3’s release. Aside from all the technical nonsense regarding the engine, EA are positioned this year to take a proper chunk out of Activision’s Call of Duty sales, and they’ll not want to jeopardise that by releasing a game that requires half the world upgrading their PC’s. Their focus this time around will likely be on making the game ready for the XBOX 720 so, while the engine may be called frostbite 3, it’ll probably just be a lick of paint over the current engine (maybe also some increased destruction), as far as PC users are concerned anyway. In short, I don’t expect them to push the boat out too far in terms of hardware requirements for BF4, and the i5, GTX670, and RAM listed above, will be more than enough for you.

Next piss up at yours then Ben?