Hi,
a friend of mine, after seeing how good Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus and God of War I/II run on PCSX2 hi res on my Q6600, wants to build a new computer to run these games smoothly. Granted, he has an old Pentium IV with Geforce4 Titanium series on it. I think he would need something like 4Ghz dual core to run PCSX2 at a good frame. Overclockability is also something to be desired.

If you guys have any suggestion on what component he should buy, please advice (motherboard, cpu, videocard, etc.) His budget is around $1,000-$1,200. This computer will be doing video editing too so...

thanks

(04-12-2009 09:29 AM)agentghost Wrote:  Hi,
a friend of mine, after seeing how good Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus and God of War I/II run on PCSX2 hi res on my Q6600, wants to build a new computer to run these games smoothly. Granted, he has an old Pentium IV with Geforce4 Titanium series on it. I think he would need something like 4Ghz dual core to run PCSX2 at a good frame. Overclockability is also something to be desired.

If you guys have any suggestion on what component he should buy, please advice (motherboard, cpu, videocard, etc.) His budget is around $1,000-$1,200. This computer will be doing video editing too so...

thanks

My computer can run a PCSX2 game pretty well (The only 2 I was able to try so far are Fatal Frame and FFXII however) I don't drop below 60 fps if my settings are set right. I'm pretty sure you could get a decent comp for 1kish I've spent a ton of money on mine but I bought it a while ago and upgraded the proc. (By the way disregard the fact that I have SLI'd 8800GTX's I haven't seen any evidence that these help with frame rates in PCSX2)

Usually I use settings:
Windowed Direct 3D 10 (hardware) blend bff 4:3 1024x1024 internal res NLOOP hack Texture filtering on everything else off on GSDX 887 MSVC 15.00, SSE41 and I use the default settings on SPU2-X 1.1.0. I don't have any speedhacks on and I use default options in advanced options.

You might be able to go i7 for that budget but i haven't kept up with new stuff so I can't say how it'll be. It would probably be more future proof though.

Not sure how it'll do for advanced video editing but I do some basic video editing with mine and it goes fine but heres something I'm looking up assuming you don't need a monitor or keyboard/mouse:

I Hit about $1,004.93 when shipping to Illinois so you can probably go for higher with a 1.2k budget, but this should get you playable framerates in PCSX2

Edit: erm it didn't put my links???? sec editing.

Was gonna put it in a newegg wishlist but it wont show up as public, oh well.

Cooler Master 690 case

9800 GTX+ 512MB card

750 watt pc power and cooling psu - it actually peaks at like 810 watts 750 is constant. I've always had good results with PC power and cooling PSUs

DDR2 1066 memory - It has a memory fan too, but you can knock off 10 bucks by getting rid of it if you search for OCZ platinum. You might want to grab 8 gigs if you're going to be doing serious video editing though, in which case you'd have to jerk around with the timings of this memory a bit.

a 780i motherboard - Umm you can change up the chipset and such if you really want to. I've never had problems with my EVGA 780i

Q9550 core 2 quad

Hard drive - Since you're doing video editing you might need a good deal of space.

Like I said its about $1,004.93(In the US) so you have a bit of leeway for upgrades but its something to start with.

and if you're going to be ocing it leaves some room for an aftermarket heatsink.

Build like mine, it`s under 1000$ and plays most recent games prefectly and all PS2 games great.

CPU: E8400@ 4.0GHhz Clocked, it`s easy, trust me
RAM: 6 GB DDR2
video: nVidia 9800 GT
HDD - whatever you take: mine are 3 - 80 GB/320 GB/ 500GB

I can't personally attest to how well it will run any given game, but this is my wish-list for when I get the monies.

NVIDIA 9800 GTX+ $135
GA-EP45-UD3L (motherboard) $95
Q9550 2.83Ghz (quad-core) $270
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 (heatsink) $32
G.SKILL 4GB DDR2 1066 x2 $55 each, $110 total

If my math isn't completely fail that's $642 for an amazing gaming machine. I'm no editor, but 8GB of very fast RAM and a very nice quad-core is probably the best possible consumer setup for video editing.

This doesn't include power supply, case, hard drives, or cd/dvd drives, but is fairly complete. If you already have them (as is my case) why waste money buying them. This would require a 64-bit OS, so if you don't have a cheap way to get a license, then that's another matter.

Get a wolfdale chip. The wolfdale chip comes in the form of E5200,E8200,E8400,E8500,E8600. Well, those being the ones I have knowledge on.

The E5200 is a very cheap CPU, I've overclocked one to 3.45GHZ easy.. For if the budget allows it, I'd advise the E8600 any day, it's purely brilliant.

For the graphics card, either get a GTX 260 (216 core), GTX275, GTX280, or GTX 285... I'd either go for the 280 or 275..

For RAM, get some nice Corsair Domm's and overclock them.

It may be wise to get a quad core. Especially if you also do video editing...

If you want to play games at full speed a core 2 duo (E8400 or E8500) is better because you can overclock it to 4GHZ. A quad core is not so easy to overclock. But I gues you don´t want to build a computer just for playing PCSX2 on it.

an i7 MB, CPU, and Ram can be bought for about $993.94 USD on newegg.

spend the last $200 on a 1TB HDD and optical drive(s), then done.

edit:
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

ASUS EAH4850 TOP/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

Antec TPQ-850 850W Continuous Power ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Retail

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail

G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8TU-6GBPI - Retail

hm... Thanks for the input guys! A quadcore set up @ 4.0Ghz is something to be desired alright!!! Is it overclockable or hit-and-miss?

If not, I might look into an E8600 or 8500 or 8400 like some suggest (what the difference anyway?!?)? Which one can easily reach 4.0Ghz between those three?

Does GPU or RAM matter at all in this case (DDR3 vs. DDR2)?

i7 is built for overclocking.

ddr2 vs ddr3 is quite a difference. the bandwidth offered with it using tri-channel isnt a fair comparison to ddr2.

overclocking i7 for ps2 emulation is not necessary however. at stock speeds it will emulate anything ive thrown at it at full speed.

not to bag on the 775 chips, i used the e6600 and am quite familiar with the wolfdales, but they do not compare to i7 at all.