3D Games & 3D Movie System?

[speedyp]

Spurred-on by my recent success at building a desktop for my son, I’m now considering another system. I was wondering how practical it would be to build a system that would:

* Play 3D bluray movies and 3D games at high quality settings

Research is steering me towards the new nVidia 3D system which includes glasses, drivers & software to drive the next generation TV’s with HDMi 1.4 at some point in the future.

Meantime, I’d use an lcd monitor, and I understand this must have 120Hz to work properly: So far the Acer GD245HQ, 23.6 inch, 3D monitor, 2 ms, HDMI & DVI-D, 1920x1080, 80000:1, 120Hz seems like a good bet?
Link: Newegg.com - Acer G245Hbmid Black 24" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 80000:1 Max (ACM) Built-in Speakers

The graphics card will need to be nVidia, but not all their cards that support 3D gaming also do 3D bluray decoding onboard.

I’m considering the GeForce GTX 460 Graphics Card, but I get confused as there are a bunch of manufacturers all making this model.. Asus, Msi.. Evga...

Is this card a good choice for what I have in mind? And are all GeForce GTX 460’s the same???????
Link: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/g...gddr5_review/7

Any thoughts on a cpu to go with this? I’m hoping the gpu will have enough muscle to deal with the 3D graphics so need a processor to support it.

And for those of you who saw my previous build, don’t worry, I’ve got a (hopefully) more realistic budget for this project of around $1800 which will include a case & proper power supply

Cheers

[David M]

Gaming is going to have a much greater demand on a system than playing movies. There can be a number of differences in the hardware between what you might find in a media computer and a gaming computer.

You will need to decide where the computer is to go. Is it going to be a media style case like this this... Newegg.com - LIAN LI Black Aluminum PC-C32B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case and sit inside your media cabinet or is it going to be a regular tower style case?

Its a bit of a compromise between quiet and fitting into a stereo cabinet for movies and between there being enough power to play graphically demanding games. A tower style case with all its fans may be too noisy during a movie.

There are ultra quiet CPU fans, ultra quiet graphics cards, ultra quiet PSU fans and special drives designed to be quieter and to handle the additional heat of a smaller media case. These components may not be the most suitable components for playing games. But if you don't mind having a potentially noisy gaming computer to also play your movies then that could work as well. The difference between a gaming computer and a gaming computer suitable for storing and playing movies is that you will want a Bluray player and a graphics card that has an HDMI out port.



As far as 3D goes, I would wait for the standards to work themselves out, wait for the technology to improve, wait for the prices to come down, wait for the choices to improve and wait for more 3D content to become available. There are also a couple of competing standards. I would not try to guess at this point which standard will become the winner.

Quite often the consumer gets burned when they jump into a new technology this soon. In this case 3D for the home. You will always have the option to buy hardware in the future after the technology matures some.

This is what Roger Ebert says about the technology in its present state... "3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension."

3-D is darker and blurry on a television. It worked on the big screen for Avatar but its not working for home use, yet.

[glc]

The GTX460 is getting excellent reviews. One note - the 1gb versions are superior to the 768mb versions in every respect. Preferred brands are EVGA and Asus. This one has a lifetime warranty:

Newegg.com - EVGA 01G-P3-1371-AR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

EDIT: Aren't you in the UK? If so, let's all stop using Newegg links, and what's the budget in GBP?

[speedyp]

Thanks for your thoughts on this David.

What attracted me to this initially was seeing a demo of the new Panasonic 3D system - we were totally blown away by the quality & depth. And terrified by the cost, with the TV, glasses & bluray player coming in at around £2,500. So were curious to know if we could put together a similar system which would also deliver a good 3D gaming experience, for less money

I realise there are a lot of competing technologies and standards on the tech. But the industry appears to be pushing ahead with the shutter glasses, with many new models just launched and many more on the way. The tech can only get better and the prices lower.

It's my understanding that the nVidia 3D view setup, which includes their glasses, drivers, GPU and 3rd party software for 3D bluray movie support will also work with any of the new 3D ready TVs on HDMI 1.4 when it makes sense to buy one.

I also realise that ATI plans to launch their own version, but it's not available yet.

Still curious to have a go at putting something together...

Maybe over-emphasised the need for quiet. Most likely it will replace the old family PC in my office. Nothing we build could be noisier than the current 2TB external drive I'm using to store our media on

[speedyp]

Originally Posted by glc The GTX460 is getting excellent reviews. One note - the 1gb versions are superior to the 768mb versions in every respect. Preferred brands are EVGA and Asus. This one has a lifetime warranty: Newegg.com - EVGA 01G-P3-1371-AR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Cool - thanks GLC - 1GB EVGA it is then

[David M]

You might want to look into the noise level of the GTX 460, which could possibly be louder than your hard drive. You probably don't want to have to listen to a noisy graphics card (if that's the case) during a movie. I did notice that card has an HDMI port.

[speedyp]

Originally Posted by David M You might want to look into the noise level of the GTX 460, which could possibly be louder than your hard drive. You probably don't want to have to listen to a noisy graphics card (if that's the case) during a movie. I did notice that card has an HDMI port.

Thanks David, I will look into that. Don't know if there's automatic software that will respond to load and maybe keep the fan noise down during less stressful tasks (like playing movies)... I might have to turn up the surround sound a notch or two

Just checked the noise aspect out & it's looking pretty good
Link: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-460-review/13

Any thoughts on a sensible processor / mobo to go with this?

[speedyp]

Originally Posted by glc EDIT: Aren't you in the UK? If so, let's all stop using Newegg links, and what's the budget in GBP?

@ £1200(ish) but that has to cover:
nVidia 3D kit & monitor - Bundled for @ £400
GeForce 460 card - £190
CPU & processor - Budget @ £120 for both?
4GB branded ram - £75
Case (nothing special but not rubbish) - £25
Power supply 450W - 500W with 2 X 6pin pcie for gpu - £60?
320GB SATA 7200 / 16MB hard drive - £35
Any Bluray drive (2X min) - £40
Powerlink Ultra DVD 10 + Windows 7 - £145

[glc]

180 quid for CPU, motherboard, and PSU?

Antec Basiq 550 Plus is about 50. An Asus P7H55-M SI is about 60. A Core i3-530 is about 80. That's as close as I can get you with current technology Intel with components that I trust. Someone else is going to have to address AMD.

[speedyp]

Originally Posted by glc 180 quid for CPU, motherboard, and PSU? Antec Basiq 550 Plus is about 50. An Asus P7H55-M SI is about 60. A Core i3-530 is about 80. That's as close as I can get you with current technology Intel with components that I trust. Someone else is going to have to address AMD.

Close enough - thanks mate.

[speedyp]

Decided to go with the shiny Asus monitor instead of the Acer. Other than that, think I'm good to go. Planning to order tomorrow, so scream if I've made any mistakes (other than trying out a 3D gimmick

Cheers


GPU - EVGA GTX460 – 1GB £171
Scan.co.uk: 01G-P3-1465-ET - 1GB EVGA GTX 465, 40nm, 3206MHz GDDR5, GPU 607MHz, Shader 1215MHz, 352 Cores, HDMI/DVI

Monitor – Asus VG236H + nVidia 3D kit bundle
Link: Scan.co.uk: 23" Asus Bundle VG236H Black Wide LCD 3D Monitor, 1920x1080, 100000:1, 400cd/m² + Nvidia 3D Glasses


CPU - £82 Core i3-530
Scan.co.uk: BX80616I3530 - Intel Core i3 530 Dual Core Clarkdale 32nm, 2.93GHz, 4MB Cache, 73W, Integrated GPU @ 733MHz, Retail

Motherboard - £62 Asus P7H55-M SI
Scan.co.uk: ASUS P7H55-M SI H55 Express, 1156, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2200(OC), SATA 3Gb/s, mATX, OnBoard VGA

4 GB RAM - 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) £75
Scan.co.uk: CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 - 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, XMP, 1.65V


Hard Drive - 320GB Hitachi 0A38018 Deskstar 7K1000.B, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache £35
Scan.co.uk: 320GB Hitachi 0A38018 Deskstar 7K1000.B, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ

Blu ray Drive - £50 (£47 overclockers)
SH-B083L/RSBP - Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Player 8x BD-ROM, 16x DVD-ROM, 48x CD-ROM Read, LightScribe, Retail
Scan.co.uk: SH-B083L/RSBP - Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Player 8x BD-ROM, 16x DVD-ROM, 48x CD-ROM Read, LightScribe, Retail

Power Supply - Antec Basiq 550 Plus £50
Scan.co.uk: BP550PLUS - 550W Antec Basiq Plus, Modular, 120mm Fan, ATX12V version 2.2, PSU

Case - Asus TA-8J1, Black Midi, Tower Case £20
Scan.co.uk: Asus TA-8J1, Black Midi, Tower Case,w/o psu


Software
Powerlink Ultra DVD V10 - £60
Windows 7 Premium - £82

[speedyp]

Now that this system is up and running, I thought I'd just wrap things up and share my 3D experience with you.

The build itself was straightforward, and I was installing Windows and drivers within a couple of hours of unpacking the components. Buying the components from ScanUK & Overclockers, everything came in on budget (£960 + software)

I followed the spec in my last post, with a couple of exceptions:

For the GPU, I went for the EVGA GTX460 1GB superclocked edition.

I'd also seen mixed reviews about the Acer monitor, regarding normal desktop performance, so I went for the most recent Asus model instead. For 1080P gaming, movies or desktop work it looks amazing. It also benefits from a handy preset selector for games / movies / standard desktop & night time modes. Some might not like the shiny black screen, but we thought it looked cool

So, does the nVidia 3D Vision system deliver the goods?

Yes! Running the simple 3D test in the nVidia display panel, the spinning logo really does seem to leap out of the screen right in front of you
With limited games testing, we also found some of our old games like Need For Speed & Far Cry 2 worked really well in 3D, giving most of your games a whole new lease of life.

We also bought "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" to test out the 3D blu ray function. Again everything looked really, sharp, with nice 3D effects. The PowerDVD software can even add 3D effects to normal, 2D content and this worked much better than expected. We had a lot of fun playing scenes from our favourite movies and our own family videos.

If I'm honest, I really don't see me buying a bunch of extra 3D glasses and sitting down with the family to watch movies on a PC monitor... but it's nice to know that if we ever decide to buy one of the fancy new 3D plasma TV's or projectors that this system should just plug right in via HDMI 1.4. I think if this technology has an immediate use, it's probably for games.

As my second ever system build, I've really enjoyed the experience. I got a real rush from having all the bits arrive, and then putting them all together and making something that works. I think I may have found a new hobby. Although I can't afford to keep building stuff like this!

So thanks again one and all for your advice, support & encouragement -
I'll see you inside the machine

Cheers