I've built quite a few different rigs using the latest and greatest parts but lately I've been curious about how good a PC using parts that are 2,3,4 years old would run the current gen games.

To make things more interesting, I want the PC to be powering 3 monitors at 5870x1080 bezel adjusted resolution as well as 1 non surround 1080p monitor, and I am using Windows 8 Consumer preview.

Parts I had before this building this PC:

Asus M3N-HT Deluxer mobo (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/M3NHT_DeluxeMempipe/) - one of the best gaming mobos in 2009, capable of 3 way SLI.

Phenom II x4 940 BE - Fastest AM2+ CPU AMD made

6 GB of DDR2 800 memory

950W Rosewill PSU

120 GB Vertex 2 SATA II SSD

Parts I aquired for this build:

2X Galaxy MDG GTX 580 - http://ncix.com/products/?sku=67644

2X OCZ Agility 3 120 GB SATAIII SSD

Corsair Carbide 500r case - http://www.corsair.com/carbide-series-500r-mid-tower-case.html

Zotac Geforce GT 430 'PCI' video card (for the +1 monitor and physx help) - http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500221

USB 3.0 PCIe expansion card

The Setup

OCZ Vertex 2 as boot drive, OCZ Agility 3 in RAID 0 as gaming drives - I am getting 300-400 MB/S read speed on the RAID 0 which is decent considering it's a SATA II mobo.

GTX 580 SLI powering 3 23 inch monitors at 5870x1080 in surround and GT 430 powering the additional 22 inch Win 8 'metro' interface monitor

Slight overclock on the CPU and memory (3.2 Ghz on CPU and 460 mhz on memory)

Benchamrks

I only tested a few games but I am pretty happy with what I see. I've attached a few screenshots I took, they have been scaled down but you can see frame rates in the corner.

Crysis 2 completely maxed out - 45-55 fps

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-SSHgRfdgyjA/UCiMjxKgjfI/AAAAAAAAAsw/zfTvKsI724w/s800/Crysis2%25202012-08-13%252001-02-24-78.jpg

Hard Reset completely maxed out - 60-80 fps

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-yApGzSd_j5c/UCiS-9_wGyI/AAAAAAAAAtY/eE5eKWWzPBg/s800/hardreset%25202012-08-13%252001-36-10-29.jpg

Sonic Generations completely maxed out - 35-60 fps (35 WTH?)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-6p2VENvLc7I/UCiVCci2N-I/AAAAAAAAAts/cOK5U3SUpfc/s800/SonicGenerations%25202012-08-13%252001-45-10-82.jpg

Mafia II completely maxed out with Physx on - 60-90 fps

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-w1upciyEM0M/UCiYGYGQTeI/AAAAAAAAAuA/A3na85q0j0E/s800/mafia2%25202012-08-13%252002-00-02-77.jpg

FEAR 3 completely maxed out, SLI disabled due to issues - 40-70 FPS

Conclusion

First of all, Window 8 is awesome. Everything worked without any issues.  I plan to get a 4th touch screen monitor for the Metro interface while keeping my 3 monitors for surround gaming.

You can easily make a 3-4 year old PC a gaming machine if you add a beefy video card. I also did benchmarks on the CPU VS GPU and in every gaming situation above, GPU was the bottleneck.If you have a quad core CPU and even DDR2 memory interface, you don't need to get the latest i5 or i7 to play the latest games on a single screen. Having a fast SSD setup to load games from and a good video card will make all the difference on 1080p + resolutions.

Below is Crysis 2 CPU/GPU utilization. CPU - 40 to 60% GPU - 100%. Still headroom on the CPU but GPU can't go any faster.

CGI-Quality said: Glad to hear you got Win8 up and running with your games without any issue. Newell had me worried there for a bit!

I don't know what he's on about...actually I do know. He is scared shitless that with Windows 8 store, steam is going to lose revenue.

On the gaming perspective Win 8 was an absolute joy.

Imagine having 3 monitors on a stand with standard desktop environment while having something like this below in the middle for the Win 8 metro interface.

If you have a legit copy yes :)

Great performance. I get similar performance from my spare rig :)

You must have a pretty badass spare rig to get 50 fps on Crysis 2 maxed out with 3 monitors at custom 5870x1080 resolution. :)

Pretty solid case so far. Not a lot of fancy, 'look at me' stuff, but everything you need or want is there...

I ran in to a first case where GPU isn't getting to a 90-100% utilization. Skyrim...
On max, GPU is running 60-70%, CPU 70% and I'm stuck at 40-50 FPS. Can't really tell what's the bottleneck to be honest. Maybe the memory controller and maybe it's just not a game that works well in SLI surround environment...

Weren't you going on and on about how you're done with 3 monitor gaming. Now you're doing 4 monitor gaming?!!!!!! You just couldn't leave well enough alone.

Haha, well no I am not doing 4 monitor gaming. 3 monitor gaming + 1 touch screen monotro for Windows 8 tiles and browsing.

Also I am not sure I am drawn to this cause of the games. I have these 3 monitors sitting here and I use them mostly for work...but I figured what the hell, may as well give myself a challenge of running the latest and greatest games with slightly dated hardware.

I'll probably play Max Payne 3, little Wii emulation and then get bored again... ;)

Well not that part ;)