Building a PC for BC2
I have been asked to spec a couple of PC's recently for clan members for playing BC2. Some of this advise is relevant for any modern game some is BC2 specific. Also if you are reading this in six months or a years time some of this will be out of date.
What's important and what's not!
Multiple Cores or Multi-threads, more is better
Four is better than two that's obvious but the two cores of an i5 are multi threading so as far as the game is concerned old school Quad or new i5 ??? not sure that would take some benchmarking to separate them. If your pockets are real deep than an i7 with it's four cores and multi-threading giving you 8 logical processors will kick butt big time.
Before we leave this topic one point worth noting, my old school quad (Q6700) is not being maxed by this game! so if you do own a new i7, that will be doing even less and not looking any nicer!
Graphics Cards, and the DX11 wow factor!
DirectX11 dose make a difference to this game. They have not implemented everything they could have. Barrels and other circular things still have flat sides are are not perfect circles. If they had goe DX11 crazy the game would look so much better. There is some DX11 especially the rubble, odd i Know but rubble is important to BC2! Look at a heap of rubble with DX9~10 and you have a hump with a picture of rubble like a blanket layed over the top. Look at it with DX11 and you get the same but there are bricks and blocks laying on top of the blanket.
Right now if you want DX11 you have to get ATI, nvidia will have their DX11 cards out later this year, but for now it's ATI's party! I have a middle of the road ATI5770 1Gb it cost me £135 quid and is doing very nicely. I would point out it is the lowest power G/Card I would fit to a new PC being built for BC2 play. (Max eye candy at reasonable frame rate) Powerful enough but with very little head room for the future.
Hard Drives, you need some speed or you will be late to the party!
Back when I was playing BF2 hard drive speed was important, well it is again with BC2! Slow hard drives with their long map load times mean people will be capping flags before you are selecting your weapons. Obviously solid state flash drives are the fastest you can readily get. They are expensive and small and there are concerns about life span. You can look at RAID as there are some other tricks to make your drives faster. If you are building a new PC make sure you get the fastest drives you can afford.
Sound, where did that come from???
DICE has done a lot of work with sound, it's one of the reasons you need a multicore CPU because DICE thinks everyone's sound cards are crap and is pushing the processing through the CPU. So you have built a nice PC the game is looking lovely than you put some crap cheapo headphones on! WTF!
The sound in this game deserves good speakers and lots of them!
I was on a map with a friend looking about before playing. Firing off into the distance to watch the bullet drop, when I noticed an echo come from one side. I little perplexed I looks around. 100m away to my left was a large factory (wood yard) The sound of my shots was reflecting off the large flat sided building, Amazing! DON'T USE CHEAP HEADSET! or tinny little speakers for that matter!
Screen How big?
Not sure there is too much to say here beyond what is normal for any gaming PC. Spend some cash here, go for a good maker with a descent warranty. It's down to personal taste, I like Viewsonic, and I'm very pleased with my 1920x1080 23inch monitor. Don't forget the more pixcels you have the harder you computer has to work.
Memory
This one is also much the same as any gaming rig, more more and faster fast! I would never build a PC with less than 4Gb of RAM unless it was for email and facebook!
PSU power the tower!
There is an expression, "never buy cheap paint" well here is another, "NEVER BUY A CHEAP PSU!" The modular ones are very much easer to fit and come highly recommended.
Case, where everything goes...
A lot a garbage is said about cases. It's a box, it's a box to put the important stuff in! Things it needs is good air flow, that normally means lots of holes and quite a few fans! it dose not need a window or neon lights! If you are the type of guy that has neon under his car then by all means fit some lights to your PC. Otherwise spend the cash on faster stuff!
Things to note about buying a case, PSU at the bottom of the case is a good idea just so long as your cables are long enough. (nice modular PSU)
Dust filters as also a good idea. Don't forget clean the inside of your PC regularly especially if you smoke! Sticky dust bunnys are a bugger to clean and need doing twice as often.
Mouse and keyboard, how you make stuff happen!
Again this is general PC gaming stuff nothing BC2 related. You spend a fortune on a new PC then use the old mouse and keyboard off your old Dell! Grrrr get a new high DPI mouse and a nice keyboard. Don't forget you are going to need a joystick if you want to get up in the air! Make sure it's one with twisting yaw control.
OS selection What type of windows...
I was running W7 64bit and was getting 60+fps on the beta. Then had to swap back to Vista32bit and lost 10+fps! I'm not sure if that is the difference between Vista and W7 or 32bit v 64bit. Lets just say if your building a new PC it's time to buy a shiny new copy of Windows 7 64bit to go with it!
I'm sure I have missed something but the wife is badgering be about going out so....
What's important and what's not!
Multiple Cores or Multi-threads, more is better
Four is better than two that's obvious but the two cores of an i5 are multi threading so as far as the game is concerned old school Quad or new i5 ??? not sure that would take some benchmarking to separate them. If your pockets are real deep than an i7 with it's four cores and multi-threading giving you 8 logical processors will kick butt big time.
Before we leave this topic one point worth noting, my old school quad (Q6700) is not being maxed by this game! so if you do own a new i7, that will be doing even less and not looking any nicer!
Graphics Cards, and the DX11 wow factor!
DirectX11 dose make a difference to this game. They have not implemented everything they could have. Barrels and other circular things still have flat sides are are not perfect circles. If they had goe DX11 crazy the game would look so much better. There is some DX11 especially the rubble, odd i Know but rubble is important to BC2! Look at a heap of rubble with DX9~10 and you have a hump with a picture of rubble like a blanket layed over the top. Look at it with DX11 and you get the same but there are bricks and blocks laying on top of the blanket.
Right now if you want DX11 you have to get ATI, nvidia will have their DX11 cards out later this year, but for now it's ATI's party! I have a middle of the road ATI5770 1Gb it cost me £135 quid and is doing very nicely. I would point out it is the lowest power G/Card I would fit to a new PC being built for BC2 play. (Max eye candy at reasonable frame rate) Powerful enough but with very little head room for the future.
Hard Drives, you need some speed or you will be late to the party!
Back when I was playing BF2 hard drive speed was important, well it is again with BC2! Slow hard drives with their long map load times mean people will be capping flags before you are selecting your weapons. Obviously solid state flash drives are the fastest you can readily get. They are expensive and small and there are concerns about life span. You can look at RAID as there are some other tricks to make your drives faster. If you are building a new PC make sure you get the fastest drives you can afford.
Sound, where did that come from???
DICE has done a lot of work with sound, it's one of the reasons you need a multicore CPU because DICE thinks everyone's sound cards are crap and is pushing the processing through the CPU. So you have built a nice PC the game is looking lovely than you put some crap cheapo headphones on! WTF!
The sound in this game deserves good speakers and lots of them!
I was on a map with a friend looking about before playing. Firing off into the distance to watch the bullet drop, when I noticed an echo come from one side. I little perplexed I looks around. 100m away to my left was a large factory (wood yard) The sound of my shots was reflecting off the large flat sided building, Amazing! DON'T USE CHEAP HEADSET! or tinny little speakers for that matter!
Screen How big?
Not sure there is too much to say here beyond what is normal for any gaming PC. Spend some cash here, go for a good maker with a descent warranty. It's down to personal taste, I like Viewsonic, and I'm very pleased with my 1920x1080 23inch monitor. Don't forget the more pixcels you have the harder you computer has to work.
Memory
This one is also much the same as any gaming rig, more more and faster fast! I would never build a PC with less than 4Gb of RAM unless it was for email and facebook!
PSU power the tower!
There is an expression, "never buy cheap paint" well here is another, "NEVER BUY A CHEAP PSU!" The modular ones are very much easer to fit and come highly recommended.
Case, where everything goes...
A lot a garbage is said about cases. It's a box, it's a box to put the important stuff in! Things it needs is good air flow, that normally means lots of holes and quite a few fans! it dose not need a window or neon lights! If you are the type of guy that has neon under his car then by all means fit some lights to your PC. Otherwise spend the cash on faster stuff!
Things to note about buying a case, PSU at the bottom of the case is a good idea just so long as your cables are long enough. (nice modular PSU)
Dust filters as also a good idea. Don't forget clean the inside of your PC regularly especially if you smoke! Sticky dust bunnys are a bugger to clean and need doing twice as often.
Mouse and keyboard, how you make stuff happen!
Again this is general PC gaming stuff nothing BC2 related. You spend a fortune on a new PC then use the old mouse and keyboard off your old Dell! Grrrr get a new high DPI mouse and a nice keyboard. Don't forget you are going to need a joystick if you want to get up in the air! Make sure it's one with twisting yaw control.
OS selection What type of windows...
I was running W7 64bit and was getting 60+fps on the beta. Then had to swap back to Vista32bit and lost 10+fps! I'm not sure if that is the difference between Vista and W7 or 32bit v 64bit. Lets just say if your building a new PC it's time to buy a shiny new copy of Windows 7 64bit to go with it!
I'm sure I have missed something but the wife is badgering be about going out so....
