Is this system good enough for SINS?

yeah that will be fine but i suggest u up the video card this one is really really good for the price to performance ratio http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121266R

Eh...  I'd up the processors first.  2.2 will bottleneck a lot faster on sins than the 9600gt.  It grinds on my system from cpu utilization before I run into graphics issues and I've got a 7800gs up against dual 3.2ghz xeons.  If it were more capable in the multi processor support, I'd have more issues with the card, but running around medium detail it's not the first thing to go.

That card sounds good but I plan on SLI eventually so I with the P5N-D I'll need to keep the cards to single slot so I can support the other components that I need to. But thanks for the suggestion.

I know that the E2200 is a bit of a bottleneck but I have a budget of $1000 USD for ALL of the other stuff in my system like case, PSU, DVD, and evething else. So the E2200 is only there to hold me for a few weeks until I can afford Something like a C2D E8500 or C2Q Q6600.

just a thought, I'm no technical whiz here,

multi cored processors don't necessarily benefit a single-threaded game, correct?

ins't Sins single-threaded?

Don't forget you can always overclock your CPU with some decent cooling.

its not that hard.

just f.y.i.

I'm not sure if sins is multi-threaded or not but I will check here. Te system I had designed already had an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO aftermarket heatsink for some big overclocks.

I just checked and no sins is not multi-threaded but since it's singlecore I am assuming that that it uses a lot cache, the reason why I plan to upgrade to the E8500 or the Q6600 a little while after I get my system.

When I just tried see if Sins ran on singe or multicore I realized that on my little AMD Athlon 64x2 4200+ 2.2GHZ, that the first core was FULLY maxed out at 100% all the time. I think it was probably due to the fact that EACH core of my CPU only has 512K cache. I think sins needs lots SPEED and CACHE on one core to run smoothly So I will probably end up with E8500.

Well, I have a E6750 Core2Duo 2.66 OC'd to ~3.0 with 4GB RAM and an nVidia8600 gt oc2.

Sins doesn't even run on my comp that well, yet crysis was fine (multi-threaded) and

fallout 3 is fine (multi-threded)

Maybe it is just the way the games use the cores? I really don't know.

Maybe someone tech minded can clarify this for us?

Hum, maybe Sins needs both graphics and CPU power. I wonder if that 8600 of yours is bottle necking your system. It would be a cool experiment to up to a 9600 or 9800 card and see how Sins does then. But if not, it seems like my new system may be at a loss when it comes to playing Sins.

Ok, so I changed to a completely different config. here are links to the new and old.

Old Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131232

New Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188026

Old CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116063

New CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017

Old Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184

New Memory (2 packs): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104044

Old Hard Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152096

New Hard Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822135106

Old Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814141073

New Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822135106

You botched the link for the new video card.  Assuming you stayed there or went up, you should be just fine.  The 8600gt is a fairly wimpy card with comparable performance to a 7800, the 9600gt is not.

Mucho better processor, although you'll want to look into overclocking it.  Get a liquid cooled setup and you can push 4Ghz.

I'm not a fan of SLI at all. I think it more marketing glimick. If you think about it, the 2nd card never gives you twice the performance of a single card...yet double the price (2 cards). I rather buy one nice card and save $ and electricity and heat issues.

I also wouldn't buy a low end quad-core, I rather go with a faster duo core. Sins and 95% of programs/games don't use quadcores. Reviews have shown that a Duo e8400 beats Quad6600 hands down. Duo core will also have less heat issues. (I'm pretty sure sins can run smooth on max with a E7200)

Definitely like the nvidia9800gt or 9800gtx or the new ATIs 4850s or 4830s with aftermarket fans not stock fans(they run too hot). I sure you'll be fine with 9600gt or equvalent with sins on max settings.

Unless you don't store music and vids on the harddrive and don't mind upgrading to a bigger one in the future, I would go with a harddrive bigger than 80gigs. Samsung Spin point F series is good.

I make sure whatever heatstink you use fits into the case and fits into the motherboard. Some heat stinks have low appendages. My system has the

Sunbeam CR-CCTF 120mm "Core Contact Freezer" CPU Cooler - Retail but i learn that the cheap fan is a little loud for my taste. By any brandheat stink with core contact...(where heat pipes directly touch CPU)

with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131299

I had to bend the lower portion heatstink fin up a 2mm to fit.  My only complaint about this motherboard...is the audio jack with vista is sensitive, keep saying jack plug in and not in, but the sound is not interruppted.

SLI is not a marketing gimick if your MOBO can utilize it.

I bought the 8600 because, back when i got it, for the price it wasn't bad.

Plus i have a true 32 pipeline MOBO so i can use 2 true pci-e 16x

Which is why i went 8600.

Plus, my CPU only clocks at 60-80% usage when running sins, and the graphics, less.

No heat issues, all around noarmal temps, normal voltages.

Don't know why its sloooow.

EviliroN:the only think I can think of is that your 8600gt isn't optimized by nvidia for sins, unlike the more popular games like fallout, crysis. You should have able to run sins on the 2nd to highest settings smoothly...unless you using a big monitor with high resolutions.

I thought the 9600 was good; and pretty cheap too. here is the new link. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127333

I can't afford liquid cooling with this system (but I wish I could).

Hum this ia large and long post. SLI is not a marketing gimmic. It does work it seems to work better with every generation of new Nvidia cards. It worked with a scaling of 1.3X performance on the 8000 series and 1.8X perforamnce on the 9000 series cards.

Thanks for the advice on the CPU. But I'm going to be using this computer for the next 3-4 years at least while I;m paying of loans so I will be able to make minimal upgrades at best so the more future proof I am the better. I will decide what CPU to get at the time I buy my computer.

I hope the 9600GT will be sufficiant. But I hope to be able to go SLI in the future but I will be paying off loans so I don't really know. Although I might go with an EVGA 9800GT because after the rebate, it's the same price as as the 9600 and it's single slot. But that also means more heat build up. But I'm going to be using the antec 900 so not a big deal really.

And about the Hard drives, this is complicated. I have decided to go with an 80GB drive for my OS and basic windows programs like IE Explorer, Media Players, Office Programs, and Adobe. I will end up using 2 Samsung 320GB hard drives later on. I'm going to RAID 0 on the 2 Samsung Drives. The samsungs are going to be for things like games and other programs that don't need to slow the OS drive down. Then I'm going to eventually add in later on a 640GB storage drive for things like Install files, internet videos, web docs and EVERYTHING else.

An dI ckeck that my aftermarket heatsink will clear my case (antec 900) and it will. Thanks for the advice though.

I'm not saying SLI doesn't work, I meant that it just doesn't work well enough for the money in my opinion.

I know what you mean. But I think a ~1.8X average when scaling two 9000 series cards is good enough to warrant money being invested in SLI, at least for me.

Just to let you guys know this game does not need a super computer to run it... I can run it fine Max settings (1600x1200 no AA or AF) on my 4 year old laptop

3.4 GHz P4
ATI Mobility radeon 9700 (128MB)
2GB DDR400

...

Also I run it on my when I’m at home on my desktop which is about 2 years old at Max settings with no slow down (1920x1200 4xAA, forget AF setting)

AMD64 X2 4800+ (2.4 GHz)
2 GB DDR400
2x GeForce 7950GT (512MB/ea, SLI)

So the PC you are building will run sins just fine...but really if you plan on playing any other games that come out in the future... you might just spend the extra cash on a faster CPU and GPU... Also you are wise to get an SLI board for later upgrading... I’d say get a GF9800GT...

@DarkStar

I’d say I am a believer in SLI because I can run Fallout 3 @ max Settings (2xAA, 6x AF, 1920x1200) @ 30-60FPS... I think that’s pretty good for cards that are 4 generations old...

Wow Death_Masta, that's pretty impressive. I find it hard to believe the that you can play Sins at make max with 128MB of video. and P4 Processor. Specs are the ABSOLUTE MINIMUN sins reccommends to run the game.

Although your desktop sounds quite decent. If you stuck a 6000+ processor in there that would be a h*ll of a system. (Well at least compared to my system).

I wonder if the fact I am running on an upgraded HP is having an effect on my perforance if what you say about your laptop being able to play sins with no trouble is true.

A word of advice, many 9600 GT cards have loud, noisy fans and cooling issues, especially the model with the small fan. If you can afford it, I would highly recommend the sapphire 4850 512mb dual slot card. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102770

It's worth the difference in price in my opinion. Ultra high settings on most games, except crysis, which ofcourse is also dependant on the rest of the system.

Fallout 3 runs fine on old machines because it was primarily developed for the 360, which itself is several generations old as far as video cards go

Now to the issue at hand.. Sins does need both cpu and gpu power. The graphics card is easier to deal with, because you can turn off some of the advanced settings to give an easy and noticeable performance boost. The CPU is harder - every unit in Sins has its own mini combat AI. When you start playing huge maps with 9 AIs and everyone starts maxing out their fleet cap the CPU can easily start to choke before the graphics card does. Lots of units, large map so the AIs have to do way more calculations all adds up.

All in all, I would say if you're not building a system to run FPS games (that rely on the graphics card more than the cpu, especially since AFAIK physics is handled by the graphics card now and not the CPU) and instead for a game like Sins, the CPU should be more of a priority than a graphics card.

On the issue of SLI - I've not found a single game (besides the original Crysis, Crysis: Warhead does much better) that didn't run well at max/near max on a single 8800gtx, and that's far from top of the line card anymore

Heh, that 3.4Ghz P4 is why he can run it just fine.  Like I said, my dual 3.2Ghz Xeon setup starts grinding the game down before the 7800gs kicks in the frame rate drop.  When you get that regular pausing, that's the AI routines going OH SHIT WE'RE GONNA DIE!

When it's showing you 50% cpu utilization in task manager while playing sins, you've tapped out the main core on a dual.  The other stuff uses your second core squat.

Interesting. So is the E8400 or E8500 good enough because of what I know right now, that is the best processor for games. Lot's of cache and speed. I like to play FPS a lot too though so that's why I plan on using SLI. 

Hey, where did all of the useful replys go. I still need help choosing my system.