Pre-built rigs

Long time lurker.  I am getting ready to buy my first DS rig and the prebuilt  920/GTX 280 Antec case model seems to be perfect for me to putz around in WoW and LOTRO.  I have two questions, however:

1) I am also considering upgrading from my 19" CRT to the ACER 22" LCD that DS sells. What is it's resolution? Will a 280 be enough to push it? 16xx is perfectly fine for WoW, LOTRO, and I assume, D3 later on in the year.

2) I can't help but notice that all of the pre-built systems have stock cooling and no OC.  This seems so odd to me, as DS prides itself on it's quality OC work.  Can I get a v8 added to the $1779 machine? Or if not feasible, can it be OC'ed with stock fans? What would the results be, give or take? Of course I want the best rig I can buy for the price (which is, admittedly on the small side) but the difference between the pre-built price and a custom machine with a v8 and OC is $300. Is it really worth it for the improved CPU clock speed?

Thank you in advance for any advice you may be able to offer.

I too have been tempted by pre-builds in the past, but found it odd that DSO doesn't OC them. DSO's OCing is one of THE reasons I like this company.

Let me pass this over to our team. I will get us to overclock all the systems.

We just made some changes to the pre-builds just now. We changed the power supply of the low-end versions to the 750W to ensure a strong upgrade path for an additional video card, etc..

Edited by Alex - 17 Feb 2009 at 1:54pm

I cant wait to get my system so that I can play LoTRO on full everything!!

Originally posted by DST4ME Great one Alex @rev, for wow can't use sli, all major new games will need 2 gpus to run them at high settings.

Edited by Rev. - 17 Feb 2009 at 7:31pm

Originally posted by Alex We just made some changes to the pre-builds just now. We changed the power supply of the low-end versions to the 750W to ensure a strong upgrade path for an additional video card, etc..   Now, if you pick a pre-build with the following CPU, the overclock results are below:   i7-920 = 3.33GHz i7-940 = 3.60GHz

Originally posted by Rev. Originally posted by DST4ME Great one Alex @rev, for wow can't use sli, all major new games will need 2 gpus to run them at high settings.   No sir.  Not on a 19" moniter you don't.   Go read up on some reviews.  SLI and Tri-SLI on a 19" moniter is only good for your ego and looks good in a sig.   No one running with a 19" moniter needs mutiple GPUs even for Crysis Warhead.   The OP said he plays on a 19" moniter and is concerned about WoW and LoTRO and maybe D3 later.   Even at 22" (moniter I had before I upgraded).    He doesn't need muliple GPUs for what he wants.   My 1x GTX 285 plays everything I through at it :)

if your resultion is above 1600 x 1050 or above you will need sli

the OP is asking about a 22" , nobody was talking about 19inch, the topic discussion is for a 22"

crysis warhead even at 1280 x 1024 sees lot of improvment in sli



Edited by DST4ME - 17 Feb 2009 at 10:25pm

But Crysis Warhead is such a cool game. 

Originally posted by Kryhavoc Well, if you don't play any first person shooters, I can understand that.  Crysis Warhead is currently considered the most graphics intensive first person shooter and you can bet other companies are just going to up the ante down the road.   I predict that between 6 months to 1 year from now, there will be first person shooters that will make the graphics in Crysis Warhead look like difference between 32bit graphics and 64bits graphics in the old days.  The game companies just keep putting out more intensive games to match the hardware that keeps coming out.

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Hehehe, you don't like people disagreeing with you do you?

Edited by Rev. - 18 Feb 2009 at 10:41am

Originally posted by Betareflex Long time lurker.  I am getting ready to buy my first DS rig and the prebuilt  920/GTX 280 Antec case model seems to be perfect for me to putz around in WoW and LOTRO.

Honestly DST is right. Im running a Crossfire(well sorta) on a 1680x1050 22" monitor and I see a major difference between single and dual. Single gpu working on COD4 max settings i will run around 45-60 fps. With both GPU's working on it I get 85-91 constantly.

The tech's at DS are not always right. WHEN i was looking into buying one one of the tech's told me that a 1000W would EASILY run dual 4870x2's. I did some research and a 1200W is recomended. Just saying.

a 295 GTX is a dual card and a sli card, it is basically 2 x 260, same with 9800 gx2, thats a dual card also and can run high resolution on hi settings.

Edited by DST4ME - 18 Feb 2009 at 5:55pm

Originally posted by DST4ME a 295 GTX is a dual card and a sli card, it is basically 2 x 260, same with 9800 gx2, thats a dual card also and can run high resolution on hi settings.

Edited by Rev. - 18 Feb 2009 at 6:14pm

The OP is getting ready to order a prebuilt with the "i7 920/280 GTX"

Edited by Rev. - 18 Feb 2009 at 6:54pm

I don't know if it was because Sli tech was new, but to me, it was more trouble than it's worth. XFX said that I had to flash the Bios, because I got the 2nd card later on, and I had no idea how to do that, then I ended up needing a new psu that supported Sli, because I apparently had power issues.

BTW: This was when the Geforce 6600 came out.