Hi there!

OK, I know that for most of you this is not really new, but for me its been very very exciting, I never thought I would build my own little computer...

Of course I have several people helping me, from professors, to brothers, father, and of course people from this lovely forum.

Not sure if I am allowed to post several pictures, I will be posting picutres every week till the whole project is complete, if not allowed just let me know, and I will delete all my posts in this thread!

[Week 1]
All this was a bought a while ago, to be more precise, 3 weeks and half ago, it took a long time to do the homework, study and read reviews about computer parts, especially the mother-board.

Everybody said and agreed that I should stick with intel, and since I wanted a powerful computer for protein simulation, I got the best processor I could, a little Q9550.

On the same day I went to two different stores, one to see intel motherboards and the other to test and see the nvidia boards.

Since I was already exchanging emails with Matrox TripleHead2GO crew for a long time before taking the decision of building my own machine, I decided to go after nvidia graphics card (and nvidia motherboard), since only nvidia can offer enough resolution to feed 3 22" monitors (I have 2, still need to buy one more).

So yes, I decided to go nvidia+intel solultion, hopefully I didnt make a bad choice!


nForce 790i Box...


Some of the parts 790i+stock cooler+q9550


n790i detail

the board you go with is an odd choice i suppose, as you only need two graphics cards to display what you want. on pair is enough, as long as they're dual head. SLI wont be an option, you want multiple displays.

just from a cost POV, running an SLI setup through a triple head to go setup is ridiculous, as you could get everything you need out of two cards with out it. i've only seen one other rig go for triple display for gaming, and that was absolutely ridiculous and not worth it in my opinion. they ran the same thing, but older, in terms of triple head to go.

but at the same time, while you say nVidia, well, i'd say that while the green machine of nVidia can make things happen, when you compare numbers to ATI, i think ATI is starting to take over. 280GTX vs 4870x2...it's pretty obvious which one is going to win. Stream processors seem to be dwindling in nVidia, while core speeds are flying, memory speed is up there too.

either way, good for you for building a computer! i think more people should.

Hello Bonestonne,

Actually, I am seriously thinking about getting a Matrox TripleHead2GO, so I can still use all the 3 cards together.

I know the cost for nvidia is higher, I took that into consideration when I was choosing the motherboards, however, only nVidia can (up till now) give me 5040x1050 screen size with TripleHead2GO, and thats what I will use for my little simulation and studies, and some games, games are secondary in my case.

I do not think I will need 3 cards, 2 is more than enough, but the price difference from a 750i to a 790i is nothing.

I was always a ATI, Dell and Intel fan, and I still have one, and I pretty much use it daily till I finish building the computer I really need for my studies.

But I was very disappointed with ATI when i took the computer to my university lab, and we could not get 5040x1050 into 3 screens, thats exactly what i wanted for nuclear medicine and protein simulation study, so right at that moment, I decided that it was time for a change.

You can even check this: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re ... 92678.html the 6th post from top to down.

Also here http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wi ... und_Gaming you can see that it works with SLI, if you google "triplehead2go sli" you will see that it works perfectly!

Anyways, thank you for your input! I know deep down that in the end I will spend a lot more money with nvidia solution then ati but as long as i can do my research/study it will be worth every penny!

The Matrox Triple Head option is interesting. I assume you are buying 1680x1050 22" 16:10 LCDs. So, nVidia can drive a 5040x1050 display? I seem to remember GTX 260s running out of memory at much lower resolutions.

I have to wonder how useful three LCDs really are. I have been using 2 20" 1680x1050 displays at work for a year or so, and I didn't really like it all that much. It caused a lot of eye strain. I now have a single 24" 1920x1200 display at work and find it more useable.

I have been using a 32" 16:9 1366x768 LCD TV at home for gaming and that works just fine with high AA (16xCSAA works well on my 9600GSO). The relatively low resolution is not a factor in games.

Personally, a 42" 1920x1080p LCD TV would probably be much nicer for gaming than three 22" LCDs cobled together.

And I would prefer a 30" 2560x1600 LCD for 2D work, before I would move to multiple low resolution displays again.

At least look at getting smaller higher resolution displays. Acer has a 19" LCD with the same number of pixels as your 22" LCD. There are now 21.5" LCDs with 1920x1080 resolution.

oh, i'm sure it'll work with SLI, i've seen it done myself, only, that was on 3 19" LCDs...but that person was using a pair of 7800's in SLI.

for today's cards, i don't think you need a stretched SLI setup. but when it comes to gaming, well, i guess that's just how it works. i let my secondary display go blank when i'm gaming (it's also the LCD that's dying in my case).

at my school we have one Mac Pro running a single 23", another two Mac Pros each running a single 20" all for video editing. at the same time, we have one XPS 710 running a single 24" at 1920x1200, which is just as good. here at home i'm running a pair of 17" for a resolution of 2560x1024, which is fine for what i do, i can hardly imagine ever needing something twice as wide, there's wayyy to much moving around, at times i'll catch myself wanting a third screen to move a large text document to while researching something, but i have next to no desk space with just two 17".

i'd probably look into a single 30" before 3 22"...i'd find two 22" enough anyway and save the money for a dual head to go rather than a triple.

very off topic, and more of a question because i don't do it myself, but are you active in CPU folding at all?

Hello QuietOC,

Ya nvidia can drive a 5040x1050, I´ve seem a gtx 280 running perfectly and beautifully.

For my usage, since im not a hard core garmer, the 260 is good enough. And having the possibility of adding another one or two 260 gives me more possibilities if I ever fall in love with games.

I bought the samsung 22" (T220) for $270 each, so monitors are quite chap now a days! a 30" is a lot more expensive, around $1000+



Bonestonne,

For a desktop, daily usage, I do admire the beauty of the macpro with that nice looking 30", even an imac with 24" is very nice, but macpro is far more expensive then a regular pc, and I am not really sure that I would be able to run all the programs I need in it

I am not active in CPU folding, not because I dont want to, its just because I still haven´t assembled my new computer yet, I have all parts, inclusive the case and everyhing, but I saw this topic here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... ht=tsunami and I have asked for my dad´s help to do the same mod with the case fans, except that i dont want the xmas blue glow effect, as a matter of fact I have ordered two more Nexus fans.

I am just doing more research before putting it all together because I am afraid that removing the original thermaltake fan and using a 800 rpm nexus fan might overheat my new baby.

We have been reading this article here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article695-page1.html however we still have to decide if the nexus fan is enough or not, so far, we could not get anyone to answer that question for us, so I can see more testing in the future.

But as I said I will be posting the progress every week, from the parts I´ve bought, to the case mods, to the final assembly.

Then yes, I will joing Folding @ home!

THank you for your input!


-----------


Edit:

I bought 2 of Noctua NF-S12 1200 120mm x 25mm 17 dB(A) Quiet Case Fan to use in place of the thermaltake fan.

That EVGA 790i board is still one of my favourites in terms of outlooks.. However I'd prefer an Intel chipset (now that some of them also support SLI) over that one for likely better stability. Also I recall those 790i-boards having issues with overheating chipsets with large graphic cards, so depending on the GPU-card cooler, make sure you still have enough airflow around the south bridge(?).

3*22" sure sounds nice, but it's just such a HUGE setup I can't even imagine using one myself for any real work. But that's just me and if you've tried it out yourself then I guess it's the way to go. Looking from this side of the pond your prices of 30" screens seem dirt cheap, here even the cheapest 30" screens will set you back closer to 1500 € (~$2000)....

Anyway good luck with the build!

Hello Jipa,

In my research, I noticed that intel motherboards do not accept nvidia SLI, only ATI.

And ATI cards do not give me the resolution i need to run 3 22" monitors.

Thats why I bought the nvidia solution.

As for overheating, I heard it is only for overclocking, I will not overclock, there is no need! And also I want my computer to "run" for a life time and not to shorten it´s life spam.

Either way, the vendors, and the forum, instructed me to buy a big CPU cooler so i bought the thermalright HR-01 plus and a nexus PWM fan to keep it cool.

Thank you for your input!

Whoops my bad, SLI is only officially supported on X58-boards and those are all(?) Nehalem and cost a fortune. I'm just being rusty after being unable to follow the stuff for the last half a year.

Mac Pro's are not worth a penny that you pay for them, we're lucky to get them on grants and out of the budgets. But we still have Crossover to help us over the gaps we have.

*whoops, wrong one*

Well, about the heat you might worry about, well, as easily as my one Delta 120mm fan can keep my rig running cool at 98CFM, I've got my PSU working, pushing out barely any warm air, I have a fan on the CPU, and I have one one slightly faster fan on the exhaust position. Let's not forget the 92mm fan I put onto my Accelero S1 for my 9600GT. It's not the speed of the fan, and it's not it's CFM rating either, it's simply where you put it. while you might not want to replace a 1200RPM fan with an 800RPM fan, that's not really what matters, air is still going to move, it's what's around the fan you're replacing. And very simply, with the motherboard you're using, as long as there is a fan near the exhaust area, you've got nothing to worry about. the VRM's are covered all around the socket, and any exhaust fan will provide the breeze you need to keep them cool.

Ouch I wouldn't have done that! Here's my thread at Fans & Control on my first PWM fan which is the Nexus 80mm PWM fan: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=51561

I am very certain you bought a bigger model probably, the 120mm one. Well believe it or not I tested the Nexus 120mm PWM fan just a few days after I posted that thread on the 80mm one at my friend. Unfortunately my friend was cheated (Nexus website lists lowest possible noise and highest possible airflow values) and he bought in total 4 of those fans and a PWM splitter for connecting the fans. Well, the 120mm PWM fans suffer from the same problems I listed in my thread for the smaller 80mm fan and the only difference is that the Nexus 120mm PWM fan is only slightly quieter than my Nexus 80mm PWM. Not much only slightly. A very tiny slightly.

I know it isn't a gaming rig, but I think you didn't do your job well in choosing all your parts. The CPU is a great choice, but for the motherboard you should have preferred a workstation solution. Also speaking of Matrox, instead of rigging up gaming oriented graphics cards in SLI what you want is maybe a multi display solution from Matrox. Ok I know Matrox is expensive, but if that is the case then why not checking out NVIDIA Quadro NVS solutions? I have had the Quadro NVS 285 in a dual display setup and it was awesome! For instance the Quadro NVS 440 uses a single PCI Express x16 slot, but can provide four DVI outputs for four displays at a maximal resolution of 1920x1200 for each display (that is 1920 * 3 = 5760 <- more than you need, right?). Also a single NVS won't cost that much compared to two GTX's. Here's the comparison chart: http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_14605.html

Make sure you get loads of RAM for your setup because I know that protein simulation or virtual chemical processing can take a lot of memory.

Jipa,

Hmmm. I dont know... The Intel solution I´ve check was X48, if I am not wrong, I could SLI with two ATI, but I dont remember anymore! :p

Bonestonne,

I agree with you. While I find Mac´s sexy, cute and space saving (in most cases) I would not pay the price for a MacPro. Well in the past, not a very long time ago, I had an iMac flowerpower, then I had a powerbook g4 12", that was all my experience with Mac´s. Expect while in HS... They are great flawless machine, those that you turn on and forget.

But industry is packed with PC software, big labs, companies, and research companies use PCs, so why should I worry about a mac?

I just bought two Noctua NF-S12 1200 rpm, they cost $20 each, but after reading the forum I believe that is more than enough to substitute with original Thermaltake fans. So i got that covered, I hope!!

LodeHacker,

I followed the forums, and informations I read here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article842-page1.html so I bought the HR-01 Plus, with a Nexus 120mm PWM fan.

Since I never had the chance to "hear" different fans, and since I already bought the nexus, I will try it and see how it performs in my case. If it is bad, I might try another brand, I heard noctura is pretty good.

Somehow I am starting to believe what my friend said, that fan noise is pretty much personal. And that makes sense too, the same way women can hear better (higher frequencies for a longer time in life) than man, I believe that being able to hear a "noise" is subjective, most probably a musician, that have a highly trained hearing could detect noises, whinning, a non trained person might not hear a thing!

I am starting to believe that personal testing is the key!

The problem is, good fans costs around $20, while its not a HUGE ammount of money, testing and "hearing" 10 fans will lead to a significative ammount of money.

BTW, I read your thread and it made me pretty "sad" that I choose Nexus PWM for the cpu cooling solution.

Hey Kate, look some things first:

I am a musician. Many might think I'm just a hobbyist but no, I have had real musical education and I have learned to play by ear, so I can determine the pitch of a sound better and I believe I can hear quiet sounds louder than most people.

Ohh why didn't you ask someone to verify it's the same fan! Bad luck I guess, because the fan mentioned in the SPCR article is the Nexus 120mm Basic and not the PWM one. I favor the Basic series more and they are cheaper than the PWM series. Don't shoot yourself down though, you didn't make a bad decision, it just could have been better.

---

Less on fans and more on the technical side. Tell me what made you think a gaming platform will suit industrial use better than a workstation platform? For instance you should have bought the ASUS P5K64 WS. It's the best you could have chosen for your needs as it has four PCI Express slots for graphics cards. Put in a business grade graphics card like a NVIDIA Quadro NVS with dual or quad display support and you have what you need for less than what you need to pay for a couple of GTX graphics cards. I know that protein simulation and virtual 3D chemistry takes up a lot of memory, been there too in a small project. Trust me, the graphics power of gaming cards only apply to... well... games; in any CAD or other industrial application there is absolutely no gain for the specifications listed for a graphics card oriented towards gaming. An NVIDIA Quadro NVS was able to drive dual displays for me with virtual 3D chemistry applications and CAD at great speed, and the card was passive; no active fan cooling so they not only consume less power but also generate less heat.

Also, with ATI cards there is the possibility of chaining multiple cards in CrossFire. NVIDIA is there to aid with SLI. However trust me, none I whom I know in the graphics industry such as CAD and drawing use any gaming cards in SLI. In fact most I know use Matrox cards. I know most Matrox cards are plain basic and suck for gaming, but the potential lies in the applications which it was designed to drive like CAD.

So for your needs a better solution would be a workstation motherboard like the ASUS P5K64 WS, lots of RAM (preferably more than 4GB, might make a big hole in your wallet because the ASUS P5K64 uses DDR3 memory. In that case the other workstation motherboard which uses DDR2 and is great is the ASUS P5K WS). Finally you need a business grade graphics card designed for CAD, because protein simulation is similar to CAD. If you have the money, an accelerator card is going to make a big difference in the performance of your project (we're talking about NVIDIA Tesla, but this should be considered only if your application supports it and you are going to do your thing for a long time and you're a rich woman!)

Ok but to the actual problem: you've already bought the stuff. Have fun in making the PC complete, I'm sure it will work for your particular application, but sooner or later you will notice it wasn't the best and most efficient build for your needs.

I would have avoided the Noctua. It's just been proven and re-proven that Noctua fans simply do not create the static pressure needed for most computers. The Scythe S-Flex or even the Slip Stream. In most current reviews no one has put a Slipstream against a Noctua, and considering that I don't have either, it would be hard for me to do it.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=39810
^ that compares the S12 to an S-Flex. While there is debate, it's just a fact that the Noctua doesn't give much pressure. For any case that has heatsinks with tight fins or anything that generates a massive amount of heat, I'm not sure the Noctua could perform. Given a lower wattage application, such as a very low power HTPC, the Noctua would most likely perform very well, because not much pressure is required to cool the case.

As for other Noctua models, even I've wanted some, but then finding that other models, such as the P12 are simply too loud.

It's hard to say what the reigning champion is in terms of fans, but I think Scythe still holds it, be it the S-Flex or the Slipstream. By mere numbers alone, the Slipstreams seem to create less noise, while moving much more air, be it blade design, blade number, or even the hub designs.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article83 ... html#SS-SH
^the SPCR review of all SS fans, starting with the most powerful. While there are many other fans, it's hard to say that any other fans are on the same level as the Slipstreams, and Noctuas are just another name now, clever designs, but much to be desired from performance.

Dear LodeHacker,

Thats a very interesting point of view, I do appreciate what you are saying and I already knew I didnt make the right choice, when I was buying the stuff and some people said "wow.. a girl gamer!" LOL...

However, I consider myself a "lite" gamer, I do enjoy MMORPGs, and since I have all the parts needed for an extreme gaming machine, I might try something different, maybe some kind of simulator? Flight? Cars.. I dont know, I might try to find real real simulators other than plain racing, flying games.

I bought 8GB of DDR3, from Corsair, I knew I needed lots and lots of memory, and people said 8Gb is more than enough.

You are right when you say that I already bought everything, the problem is that I trusted too many people BEFORE getting to know good forums and talking to the right people.

So now i am stuck in this situation, and more problems arouse, like noise, heat, and some other things that are out of the scope of this post.

Just now I realised the "wonder" and the beauty of building your own machine the need to adjust, changinge and look for better parts. I really enjoy to learn new things, I still believe that we learn new things everyday, and there are always good and exciting things to learn.

Up till now, my focus was medicine, medicine, medicine... Then all of a sudden I could get in touch with a totally different world, diferent people, diferent ideas. There is a certain beauty, computer afficionados, and actually technology afficionados see technology and computers in a way most people do not.

Trust me I´ve learned a lot more in this forum, then I could have ever learned in my whole life about computers and parts.

Thats alone, is worth the effort!


Bonestonne,

I decided to buy Nexus fan, because Thermaltake states that their fan is 1400rpm, and the BEST and noise-less fan i could find with good reviews in the forum, and the one that is recommended by SPCR, was Noctua.

So I decided to give it a go!

I read this article here:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article695-page4.html

Anyways, I really loved your input, I will try to finish all the modding and the computer assembly after new year´s. Ill be posting more pictures soon, and let´s see how the fans I bought will perform..

If I dont like I can always ebay it, and buy better and/or more silent fans!

Kate, I love your optimistic way of thinking. I truly admire it that you can think globally and not only locally. It is good to think that actually there are no countries, but there are continents. The same can be applied here.

However what I also wanted to point was that a workstation platform can be adapted to either do industry grade work or anything else. Take me as an example, I have built a digital audio workstation basing on a workstation platform. I could have gone with any other average motherboard to build a PC dedicated to music production, but then again the small plus points of the workstation motherboard are really wonderful. I like to think in the way that I will do something differently in the near future, so I always look for components which can be later upgraded easily.

How do you define "lite gamer". It's very subjective of you to say so. Lite can be for someone to play older games or maybe web-based Flash games or even play high end games while denying that it is hardcore gaming. For example I continued with the Quadro NVS even if I upgraded all other PC parts because I thought that a PC for music production will never see the need for gaming. I was slightly wrong. I was able to play recent games with the Quadro NVS, but the frame rate was on a satisfactory level and not as fast as it could be. Well I checked places like eBay and was very lucky to get a GeForce 6800GS with a ZALMAN VF-900 Cu cooler installed for a MERE 25€!!! Yeah and now I can enjoy my favorite games with a fast frame rate.

The key to success is find a versatile platform and adapt it to what you need now and then adapt it later to what you need tomorrow. I am really glad for having bought the ASUS P5K WS motherboard. Any time I could make it a file server, an extreme gaming platform or like it's currently used, a digital audio workstation.

There's still hope. You have a lot of enthusiasm and you aren't that much off the scope so you can make the turn to the right direction. I believe in your skills, all the best to your studies! Best regard, LodeHacker.

P.S. You don't mind if I send a sample of my music to you once in a while? A little feedback would be good, but be warned that I make trance music only Thanks in advance!

Hello Lodehacker,

It is always great to hear (or read) encouraging words, from everybody that I ask, when I tell about the things I bought for this machine, I get frowned upon, for some reason or another.

Well, lite gamer as in... I play Final Fantasy XI Online, actually I play that since 2004. And with such machine I would like to try different types of games, I am not a shooting-game person, I honestly do not like that type of gaming...

However, I would like to try simulation games, maybe racing, maybe fligh-simulators, maybe something a bit more real than second-life or a very real mmorpg, things I could never find but I would trully enjoy.

I will get in a subject that is VERY out of the scope, one example... for me... There will always be differences in gender, and no MMORPG take that into account, they make male and females with the same potential, and it is very wrong, nature made us different, and those differences are the ones that makes life fun!

So ya, I would love to try some simulation games, I´ve read about a certain rFactor, even tho my focus is not racing, I am willing to try. Maybe even flight simulator, that could be fun! Who knows, it will be a workstation and a playing machine.

Please feel free to send me your music, I´d love to hear it! Also, I kinda like trance, dance, techno music... Believe it or not, I bought the Kraftwerk DVD.... But hey I also listen to BSB, Shania Twain, Celine Dion...

Sorry for going a bit off-topic, but wait a second Kate...

Woman + Energetic + Optimistic + PC tinkerer + Final Fantasy fan + NOT shooting-game person + Globally thinking + Trance lover = Angel?

Honestly you are a person I have never ever met. We're the same! I don't like shooting games either, and I play Final Fantasy games as well (waiting for XIII with excitement!). Hey I tell you something: realistic graphics in an MMORPG = no no no. Don't know what your tastes are in that sector, but once you play Ragnarok Online I'm sure you won't look back

Kraftwerk... AWESOME! I know a few women who have the Kraftwerk DVD, but none of them are... you know... intelligent Music taste is something special it's nice to see someone who listens to something specific and occasionally to something else that just sounds good. Can't stand people who listen to "everything" yeah sure I made a test with a few types like that, gave them some old sk00l Goa Trance to listen to and they took off the headphones before the beat was really kicking in

Ahem ahem back to the subject... I see you did not focus on a workstation platform in the beginning and that purposely. You knew you're going to make it a gaming machine as well, didn't you? I prefer playing RPGs on consoles, but hey if you have the parts to assemble a gaming rig then why not shut down that PlayStation for a while and just enjoy life? So in this aspect you did a great job in choosing something that fits in between the different platforms. What I mean with this... well not only graphics cards use PCI Express so by having a SLI capable motherboard you are making your PC future proof just in case you want to get something more exotic like an accelerator card for PCI Express. I have a question though, can you explain in more detail on how your PC will be wired up at your work place? So as we're talking about protein simulation are you working purely in software or do you have some special hardware that translates molecule information into PC readable data so you could further analyze the proteins? I'm not that familiar with this sector of virtual chemistry

Oh and sorry for the long post, you got me in the mood to write lengthy stuff

Here is the example of running out of memory at a mere 2560x1600:



The ability to drive the display is seperate from the ability to play games on it.

Hello QuietOC,

For some reason ATI does not work with 5040x1050 needed with triplehead2go and 3 22" monitors, even in their forums people discuss about it.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview. ... did=102520



You can even go to the matrox website and run their wizard and test yourself here: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/suppo ... /gxm/home/

If you have ATI it will not tell that you are capable of 5040x1050, however with series 7 and 8, andthe new 200 series it says 5040x1050 capable.




LodeHacker,

Im not saying realistic graphics, Im talking about realism. Women are weaker than men, at least then most men... Nature made people different from each other every single human being is unique, however in a game environment all the characters have the same abilities, can do the same things, and will evolve pretty much the same way, "jobs" or "class" apart, of couse.

The ability from listening to everything comes from listening radio station, so, we kinda get used to listen to everything.

I wanted a "mixed mode" machine, one that would be powerful enough for my protein simulation and also be able to deliver good gaming performance.

Also, I am a medicine student, it will be hooked in my own room... LOL
I am a resident, and I do enjoy what I do, so I guessed that studying the field that I am interested into will be good in the future!

It should show the interactions of the protein molecule, from transporters to very simple protein types, its hard to explain in few words, if you are really interested read this:

http://www.mpibpc.mpg.de/groups/de_groo ... index.html

Its been great to chat to you! And again i do want to listen to your music

I am not disagreeing. The nvidia cards can output a 2D picture at 5040x1050. The problem is can said card output 5040x1050 pixels in 3D. That would likely benefit from more memory, but maybe the 896MB on the GTX 260 is enough. Most people don't need much video card memory (my 384MB card is fine for me), but your intended output might be a good candidate for >1GB per GPU.

Hello QuietOC,

I dont know.. I just followed what I read! :p
So I went to nvidia solution!

This post is most probably more than slightly off-topic, sorry for that.





I don't know much about MMORPG's, I'm more into FPS games.

In FPS games, it's about levelling the playing field, so all players have the same chance in winning/succeeding in the game. It doesn't matter what model you pick (this is only cosmetic) and all players start out with the same "health".
There are still differences though - even in FPS games, where hand-eye coordination plays a big part and this skill has to be trained, there are also differences in the "intelligence" of a player in regard to tactical and strategic gameplay.
It's not set in stone that a player who hits almost every shot wins from a very strong strategical player - in fact, the strategical player has an advantage most of the time. Most FPS games are a bit like chess on steroids, perhaps: you need to act quickly, but more importantly you have to think even more quickly.

Hm, this didn't start out to be an essay... Personally, I like the fact that every player, male or female, has an even chance of winning, and it comes down to aiming skill, strategy, anticipating another player, etc. These traits are unique for every person as well (even though you can train them for a part), but fortunately these differences won't keep female players winning from male players.

Perhaps the above is not at all relevant to MMORPG's, but at least in FPS it's not about realistic muscle power, the power of the mind is what counts
...It might not be too much fun playing a game as a female character and being put at a disadvantage because of the character you picked...?

I was thinking of something along those lines. (Sorry, off-topic again.. )

I'm not into MMORPG's; but from what I read the companies are trying VERY hard to keep the "balance" between classes and races, often changing some stuff with patches to keep them equal.

If you made a female character weaker (physically) than a male; then people would be at a disadvantage playing a female, and I don't think it would be fair for them. The game's maker might give females a "plus" to compensate for this (like higher intelligence, wisdom or charisma; just examples) - but then people who play male Mages or Healers will be at a disadvantage against their female counterparts.

I would also like to see more realism in games; but realism doesn't always mean more "fun". (Imagine you got a critical shot by an arrow in your arm, and could never use a shield or two-handed weapon again.) I'm sure this has been argued many times, so I don't want to go too deep.

I think a good option would be allowing the player to change some of their stats during character creation; and, by default, taking a few points off female chars' strength and constitution (sp?) and adding those points to the other stats. This way, if the player wants to play an Amazon he/she can just take these points back and put them on strength, and if he wants to play a male Mage he'll take some points off strength and put them on intelligence. And everyone has the same "total points", at least in the beginning.

I'm not sure how the character creation works on WoW; I just wrote what I had seen from some other games. Also, I know that the use of English in this message wasn't perfect; sorry.

Hello Spookmineer,

I agree with you! however there are differences in players, but there are no differences in the character itself.

In MMORPG world, strenght, stamina, wisdom, intelligence, or whatever stats can actually "change" your in-game performance, independently of the player skill.

The difference in gender should exist in game, as it exists in the real world.


Hello Pixel,

hmmm.. your nick, reminds me of Wii´s Paper Mario... I miss having my pixel, after you finish the game you receive a "cover" lol...

Anyways, I think stats should not be fixed, it should be just like Everquest where you could add points to whatever stats you want.

The differences could not only be in strengh, or stats wise. But the history for genders could also be different.

Think Female warrior? female barbarian? Lets think in history, women tend to be weaker than men, however we are not smarter than men, I like to say that we have exactly the same capacity, only the way we think is different, because we see the world differently.

Its like a world for a 5"2 is different than a world of a 6"2, likewise the world for a blonde is different than the world of a brunette. We all have differences, we all acquire fenotypes differently, and we learn different things in life. Every single human being is unique.

So why not explore this? They could make the story plot different for gender, for race and class... I wouldnt mind playing a weaker character, because that would reflect myself better, I am 5"2 125 pounds, in real life wouldnt be able to be a warrior...

Ok, MMORPGS are pure fantasy, I play a White Mage, Bard, Red Mage ans Summoner, all suport class types, because thats what I like, and thats what I immagine me doing if the fantasy world was real.

If i wanted to play a big warrior, I would take a Galka (ffxi race), not a female hume!

I believe all the real differences in characters should be explored further, maybe devs could study more about differences in gender, its not only physical strengh, and I believe that women do not want to be considered more attractive, more intelligent or anything like that.

Maybe stats would be equal, but things capped in the end? or maybe make a totally different story plot for genders? Or something very crazy like having two cities, one for females and one for males, and as the game progresses they end up playing together?

Yes, the real world is very complex, and it might be very hard to program, but I do believe that one day we will have a MMORPG with more realism!



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Happy 2009 for all!

Hi again,

Different plots / quests / solutions per gender (also per race maybe) could work.. I have seen some examples of this in Baldur's Gate (where your romantic life was, obviously, according to your gender) and Fallout2 (though I think not all female-specific quests / solutions might appeal to everyone..).

Sorry for digressing off the topic. And, by the way; Happy New Year everyone! (It's 2009 here already... )

Hi Pixel,

nothing to worry about! Happy 2009 for yourself!

Btw, I called the vendor, and told him I wasnt really happy with Thermaltake Tsunami, I went to his shop, and I returned the Tsunami and bought an Antec P182, hopefully this will be quieter than Thermaltake!

Now im happy!

Hi, I guess I'm new to this thread but the premise interested me. I just recently helped a friend of mine pick components for a low end graphics workstation. I decided to have him go Nvidia due to their implementation of parallel computing on the GPU which may or may not be important as time goes on.

Nvidia's CUDA definitely has a step up on AMD's solution in both practice and acceptance, and this is an advantage that hasn't been discussed yet.

I do like AMD's offerings, especially for my multimedia systems. But I will stand behind the Nvidia decision for this kind of work.

And as far as realism in RPGs is concerned, I think it will eventually become the case as the gaming audience becomes more diversified and the platform becomes more sophisticated. Obviously nobody (I use the term loosely) wants a game world in which all men are knights and all women are wenches. Thankfully, the game world is imaginative. So there are several things that can be done to level the playing field while keeping gender specific traits (even though in the real world there will always be a class or position that has a clear advantage). The main problem is that most games are created by men and played by men. Female gaming industry numbers, both developers and audience, are pretty high but even so make up a relativelysmall section of the population. Few blockbuster games can really be non-gender and far fewer are targeted toward a female adult market. I'm not saying that games where gender plays a meaningful and positive role haven't or won't exist. But the entrenched structure of the gaming industry inhibits the move towards this gaming differentiation.

That was my rant, hope you enjoyed it.

Hey Kate and all. I'm experienced with MD simulations. I've found that it's not very memory intensive, so 8 GB should be plenty (well, it is, but memory is hardly every the limiting factor). I run 4 GB on my rig and I've never run out of memory, even with two instances of energy minimization running simultaneous.

Feel free to PM me if you have any question wrt MD simulations. btw, I'm a master student in the computational quantum biophysics/computational protein chemistry field.

Which OS are you going to run? I suggest you better run a 64-bit, or else all the RAM is no good.

Hello Trandy1001,

I liked your "rant"

Ya I read about CUDA, not sure if it will work for me, I dont know if CUDA is aimed for medical research or maybe protein simulation.

But I decided to go for nvidia because of CUDA implemantion, that MAYBE could work for protein simulations and also because I want to maybe try out some games!

For MMORPGS, well you are right, however in MMORPG segment there are a lot of women playing, and I do believe this type of games will improve in quality as computers become more and more powerful.

And it will be amazing if one day we could have more realism in this type of games!



Strid,

Yes I bought the Vista Ultimate 64Bit. Ya I will definetly message you!
Feel free to message me yourself!!!