Building a Mid-Range Gaming Machine
Today we are looking at something a bit different than usual by looking at the performance of a mid-range gaming machine using NVIDIA graphics cards. If you are building a new gaming PC for the holidays, a birthday, or just because you want one and are planning to use NVIDIA graphics cards this is a story you should consider before you start your build.
There is a lot to consider when building your own gaming PC with a myriad of different components available. In this story, we are going to look at a solid mid-range system that anyone can build easily. One of the biggest factors to consider for a gaming machine is the graphics card or cards that you will use. The NVIDIA 8800 GT 512MB graphics cards are one of the greatest performance bargains for graphics cards to ever ship for any graphics card maker.
We are going to look at the performance of a solid mid-rang gaming machine today using a single 8800 GT 512MB and a pair of 8800 GT 512MB graphics cards in SLI. When building your gaming machine using NVIDIA products you will do well to keep an eye on future upgradability. Even if your budget won’t support a pair of graphics cards, do yourself a favor and get an SLI capable mainboard so you can upgrade easily in the future.
The mainboard I chose for this system is the ASUS P5N-E SLI mainboard that uses an NVIDIA 650i chipset. This board supports both single and SLI graphics cards and uses Intel LGA775 processors with front side bus speeds of up to 1333MHz. It will even support quad-core processors. However, in my opinion a better choice for a mid-range gaming machine is the Intel E6750 dual-core for its price and performance. This board will not only support a second graphics card for future upgradability, but it will support future 45nm Intel processors as well so you have fantastic upgrade path. The thing you need to take away from this when choosing a mainboard is to get an SLI capable board where you can upgrade as future games needing more performance are released without having to foot the expense of a new mainboard to run SLI.
One other thing to consider when building an SLI ready gaming machine is the power supply that you choose. You will want to be sure that you get an SLI capable PSU. For this mid-range gaming machine a solid 750W power supply will do the job nicely. That will provide enough power for single graphics card gaming and future SLI gaming as well.
System Components and Pricing
Before we get into the performance numbers comparing single card gaming to SLI gaming with the NVIDIA 8800 GT, I want to do a complete rundown on the components used in this machine along with cost figures. You could choose different components than I and save a few bucks or pick components that are more robust and spend a bit more. The power supply I am using here is of superb quality, but costs more than many other 750W units on the market. The components and prices of the test machine are as follows:
- CPU- Intel E6750 Retail Box with Fan $189.00
- Mainboard- ASUS P5N-E SLI $124
- Graphics Card- NVIDIA 8800 GT $288 (double for SLI pricing)
- OS- Windows Vista Home Premium $281
- RAM- A-DATA Vitesta 2GB DDR2 800 $67
- Chassis- Antec P182 $149.99
- Hard Drive- Seagate Barracuda 250GB $66.99
- Power Supply- PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W $169.99
With the list as above, the total price of components comes to $1336.96 for the single card system and $1624.96 for the SLI system. Again, you could spend half as much apiece on the chassis and PSU to shave a bit off the price of the system and use a less expensive OS as well.
Performance & Benchmarks
Now we will get into the performance aspects of the computer. I don’t normally test components on Windows Vista, but this time I used Vista because I think many gamers will be looking to play DirectX 10 games on their computers. To test the system I used 3DMark06, Bioshock, Crysis, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The first test up is 3DMark06.
3DMark06
I ran 3DMark06 at default settings in the NVIDIA control panel and at default settings in the application. A single NVIDIA 8800 GT scored as follows in 3DMark06:
- Total 3DMarks- 10773
- SM2.0- 5097
- HDR/SM3.0- 4966
- CPU- 2376
- Return to Proxycon- 41.778
- Firefly Forest- 43.175
- Canyon Flight- 46.882
- Deep Freeze- 52.436
- CPU1- 0.571
- CPU2- 1.203
To compare my normal test machine, which has much higher specifications, running a PNY 8800 GT with the same clock speeds as the cards in this mid-range machine scores 12812 3DMarks.
After running the single card numbers, I ran 3DMark06 at the same settings with an additional 8800 GT in SLI mode. The test machine with a pair of 8800 GT graphics cards scored as follows:
- Total 3DMarks- 12401
- SM2.0- 5293
- HDR/SM3.0- 7055
- CPU- 2346
- Return to Proxycon- 41.627
- Firefly Forest- 46.595
- Canyon Flight- 81.623
- Deep Freeze- 59.470
- CPU1- 0.744
- CPU2- 1.185
Adding a second 8800 GT in SLI added significantly to the performance of the test machine in 3DMark06. You could also overclock these graphics cards to squeeze more performance from the system.
Bioshock
The next test up for the system was Bioshock. I ran Bioshock at a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 all settings on high with shadows maps with DirextX10 setting enabled. I recorded frame rate data with Fraps on a single player game starting where you first exit the bathysphere and ending where you find the remnants of the flooded party in the bar. The test machine on a single 8800 GT:
- Min- 24 fps
- Avg- 44.041
- Max- 61 fps
I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the system handled Bioshock on a single 8800 GT at high levels of detail. Adding the second 8800 GT in SLI I recorded frame rate data again with Fraps at the same start and stop points.
- Min- 31 fps
- Avg- 44.233 fps
- Max- 61 fps
At first glance, what we see here doesn’t look like much of an improvement with a second 8800 GT in SLI on Bioshock. However, the minimum frame rate has moved from a sometimes sluggish 26 fps to a fluid and ideal 31 fps minimum. The golden number for many gamers is frame rates over 30 fps.
