What are some good programs for benchmarking a new computer?
Some games (RE5, for instance) have gaming benchmarking built in that you can use. You can do some encoding/transcoding on video files, I think 7zip has a file compression benchmarking utility.
I prefer the Samsung Spinpoint F3, as 1TB drives go, but WD makes a solid drive. If you're comfortable with them, and willing to pay the price premium, and don't need the possibility of RAID, then go for it.
Using aftermarket CPU cooling doesn't void the warranty. As long as you don't physically modify the processor (lapping it, for instance) you won't void the warranty by using aftermarket cooling. And honestly, even if it did, there's virtually no way they could tell. Now, if you were to use aftermarket VGA cooling, then you'd be tossing your warranty. My recommendation on aftermarket cooling would probably be an all-in-one watercooling setup, like the Corsair H60 or H70, based on the high-profile RAM heatsinks you're looking at. For moderate overclocking/remaining at stock I'd go with the H60. Pushing things harder would definitely be the province of the H70.
There's really nothing wrong with the HAF 912, cooling-wise, provided you're willing to add fans. If you want a solid mid tower, the CM 690 II has plenty of airflow possibilities, and a significantly lower price and size. If you really want a full tower, though, the HAF 932 Advanced is what you want. It's basically the 932, but updated (to be better). The stock setup for the 932 Advanced will work just fine for you, it's basically full up on fans out of the box.
Win 7 64 bit will handle 8GB of RAM no problem. It'll handle...crap I can't remember how much max. A lot. It's an exponential thing. Also, the motherboard will have no problem with that much RAM. Maximum supported on the Extreme4 is 32GB, iirc. I wouldn't buy that particular RAM, though, it's wickedly overpriced based on the higher speed and tighter timings. I prefer this option for 8GB of higher end RAM, as it meets the specs for Sandy Bridge chipsets (max RAM voltage is technically supposed to be 1.5V).
The XFX 650W unit you have is just fine for this build.
That pretty much settles it. I'll get the HAF 932 Advanced and the Corsair Vengeance instead of the HAF 932 and the Mushkin Enhanced Redline. I'm keeping the WD HDD, and my PSU now that I'm sure it will work with this setup.
I'm putting together a build right now. I've decided to go with an i7 2600k processor. I'm trying to figure out what motherboard to go with.
I see a lot of people here go for the Asus P8P67 PRO. Why should I take this compared to the EVO, WS Revolution or to take it to an extreme the ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0) (at a whopping $365 CAD)?
My budget limit is pretty high, I can go upwards of $3000 without a monitor if I want to. So basically I want to make a monster, but at the same time I don't want to needlessly waste money. So I'm not sure if its worth it to get something like that MAXIMUS. Are there other good brands I should look at or should I stick to ASUS?
I'm curious, in that picture there, what is that dongle thingy in the upper left side of the cables. It looks like some USB adapter but I just want to know.
It's a USB 3.0 adapter that ASUS includes with the P8P67 Pro, it's supposed to go on one of the expansion slots, but I took the slot cover off and routed it inside. The USB 3.0 front panel port on the 600T normally requires that you route a USB 3.0 cable out of the back of the case, but by re-purposing the adapter I kept everything internal.
Aside from the USB 3.0 thing, what about the deluxe mobo makes it $50 over the pro? I mean, the pro has usb 3.0 also, just not that slot.
I'm just curious as I build my wishlist for in case I do buy a new PC come christmas time.
I'm putting together a build right now. I've decided to go with an i7 2600k processor. I'm trying to figure out what motherboard to go with.
I see a lot of people here go for the Asus P8P67 PRO. Why should I take this compared to the EVO, WS Revolution or to take it to an extreme the ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0) (at a whopping $365 CAD)?
My budget limit is pretty high, I can go upwards of $3000 without a monitor if I want to. So basically I want to make a monster, but at the same time I don't want to needlessly waste money. So I'm not sure if its worth it to get something like that MAXIMUS. Are there other good brands I should look at or should I stick to ASUS?
If you can spend that kind of money, I would seriously wait until the socket 2011 boards and Ivy Bridge processors hit early next year. The Ivy Bridge chips will most likely feature the tri-gate transistors that Intel just bragged about, and will be designed for enthusiast/gamer instead of the current Sandy Bridge which really isn't meant to be enthusiast level (but outperformed previous enthusiast level hardware).
The ASUS Maximus boards are very nice. I have a friend who got that board recently and he raves about it. If I'm you, I wait till socket 2011 and Ivy Bridge, and build a monster then. My guess is the z68 boards will feature a chipset which supports triple channel, along with more PCIe lanes. I believe the sandy bridge chipsets are all limited to 32 lanes, but the old x58 boards had 40 lanes, and it's safe to guess the new z68 will have at least that much PCIe bandwidth, if not more.
Darkwyndre on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
I'm putting together a build right now. I've decided to go with an i7 2600k processor. I'm trying to figure out what motherboard to go with.
I see a lot of people here go for the Asus P8P67 PRO. Why should I take this compared to the EVO, WS Revolution or to take it to an extreme the ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0) (at a whopping $365 CAD)?
My budget limit is pretty high, I can go upwards of $3000 without a monitor if I want to. So basically I want to make a monster, but at the same time I don't want to needlessly waste money. So I'm not sure if its worth it to get something like that MAXIMUS. Are there other good brands I should look at or should I stick to ASUS?
I like ASUS a lot, and the P67 WS Revolution is the most reasonably priced board available with an NF200 (and thus x16/x16 PCI-E lanes). If you want to be absolutely sure your SLI/Crossfire setup has the best bandwidth available to it, then go with that board.
The EVO is mainly distinguished from the Pro by the addition of a few more back panel ports and dual LAN. And additional power phases. The Deluxe adds a few other doohickeys.
ASRock makes a few solid budget options, but if you can spend money on going with an ASUS or Gigabyte board, I would. I tend to like ASUS over Gigabyte, the layouts are usually better, and ASUS seems to be more generous with VRMs and power phases.
I'd go with a Z68 board, though, probably the ASUS Z68 Pro. As long as you don't need a x4 PCI-E slot, it's a really nice board.
I'm putting together a build right now. I've decided to go with an i7 2600k processor. I'm trying to figure out what motherboard to go with.
I see a lot of people here go for the Asus P8P67 PRO. Why should I take this compared to the EVO, WS Revolution or to take it to an extreme the ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0) (at a whopping $365 CAD)?
My budget limit is pretty high, I can go upwards of $3000 without a monitor if I want to. So basically I want to make a monster, but at the same time I don't want to needlessly waste money. So I'm not sure if its worth it to get something like that MAXIMUS. Are there other good brands I should look at or should I stick to ASUS?
If you can spend that kind of money, I would seriously wait until the socket 2011 boards and Ivy Bridge processors hit early next year. The Ivy Bridge chips will most likely feature the tri-gate transistors that Intel just bragged about, and will be designed for enthusiast/gamer instead of the current Sandy Bridge which really isn't meant to be enthusiast level (but outperformed previous enthusiast level hardware).
The ASUS Maximus boards are very nice. I have a friend who got that board recently and he raves about it. If I'm you, I wait till socket 2011 and Ivy Bridge, and build a monster then. My guess is the z68 boards will feature a chipset which supports triple channel, along with more PCIe lanes. I believe the sandy bridge chipsets are all limited to 32 lanes, but the old x58 boards had 40 lanes, and it's safe to guess the new z68 will have at least that much PCIe bandwidth, if not more.
I don't like the P67 Maximus board, it's not a standard ATX form factor, so unless you really want to run more than 2 GPUs, I don't think it justifies its demand that you have a big fucking case.
Z68 just came out, it's an additional iteration on the current 1155 Socket. The only thing it adds are SSD caching and the ability to utilize the IGP while having a discrete GPU. Sandy Bridge runs 16 PCI-E lanes, you need the NF200 to get 2 true x16 PCI slots. Z68 shares this limitation.
Socket 2011 will be Sandy Bridge-E chips, won't have the 22nm tri-gate transistors, and will be available before Ivy Bridge. It's the enthusiast chipset (socket 1366 analogous). Ivy Bridge will be on the 1155 Socket, with new chipsets (Panther Point) next year.
So now I need help picking out a video card(s). I don't understand the numbering process on these. for reference again, it's mainly for wow, but steam games are fun sometimes, so there's the ability to play graphic intensive games in the future to mind.
I don't really have a budget, but I'm not spending $600 in graphics cards alone. I've been able to pick up that 2500k and I'm looking at the asus 1155 pro atx board. Are 2 better than one? should I get a card with a bigger number for like 300 or 2 smaller cards? Do I even need a $300 card, or is there a recommendation for a good but not amazingly expensive card out there? What do those damn numbers mean? I'm LOST.
Every month, Tom's Hardware does a very nice "Best Card for the Money" article and on the last page is always a complete hierarchy listing. That'll give you a real nice general idea as to how cards compare to each other. If you don't really have a budget in mind, the HD6950 2GB are about the best reasonably priced card you can get (if $275 is reasonable to you).
TheCanMan on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
So now I need help picking out a video card(s). I don't understand the numbering process on these. for reference again, it's mainly for wow, but steam games are fun sometimes, so there's the ability to play graphic intensive games in the future to mind.
I don't really have a budget, but I'm not spending $600 in graphics cards alone. I've been able to pick up that 2500k and I'm looking at the asus 1155 pro atx board. Are 2 better than one? should I get a card with a bigger number for like 300 or 2 smaller cards? Do I even need a $300 card, or is there a recommendation for a good but not amazingly expensive card out there? What do those damn numbers mean? I'm LOST.
Unfortunately for consumers, the model names for graphics cards have nothing to do with the actual specifications of a card. For both AMD and Nvidia, model numbers are useful only to understand the relative power of a card within that series of cards. For example, within Nvidia's 5 series (model numbers in the form 5XX) the 580 is better than the 570, which is better than the 560 Ti. With AMD 6-series cards (model numbers in the form 6XXX) the 6950 is better than the 6870, which is better than the 6850.
Another problem is that these numbers can sometimes be confusing when taken with previous generation cards. On the Nvidia side, the 460 is actually better than the 550 Ti. The numbering convention might lead you to think "lower number, lower end card" but the 460 is from the previous generation of products, so its position in that lineup was analogous to the position of the 560 Ti in the current lineup. AMD is even worse. The 5870 is a better card than the current generation 6870. The 6950 and 6970 are better than the 5870, but the previous generation 5970 is superior to both of those 6-series cards, despite the similar nomenclature.
Your best option when buying a video card is to evaluate them based on performance, so reading reviews, hunting down benchmarks and comparing them. Depending on pricing, older cards can be solid bang-for-buck choices, or overpriced old tech.
My current favorite single card right now is the 6950 1GB. If you want to spend more, you're better off buying multiple cards, in my opinion. If you'd like to spend less, the 6850 and GTX 460 1GB are both solid options. Right now there are some 460 1GB cards on sale for as low as $170, which makes them a very compelling option.
I'd go with the 6950 1GB if you're willing to spend ~$250 and you don't like the idea of upgrading in the future by dropping in a second card for SLI/Crossfire. Otherwise I'd go with a 6850/460 1GB and plan on upgrading in the future with Crossfire/SLI when necessary.
My bet is that any of those cards would handle WoW just fine.
Putting together my first PC by myself was definitely a learning experience. So many things done wrong . . .
How wrong?
Well, nothing irreversible. CPU fan falling off multiple times was the biggest headache. Installed the front panel wiring wrong. General wiring problems, but those are fixed. Broke the cpu latch on the first MB. Etc etc.
So I'm starting to look into pricing for a MacPro-alike. Long story short, I'm dumping Final Cut Studio for Adobe CS5, so I'm no longer tied to MacOS for my work stuff. Plus, when I see demos/tutorials of adobe products, they're almost always on Windows machines, so I kinda get the impression that CS5 runs better on the PC anyways.
If I stay with the MacPro, I'd probably get the dual 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Xeon Westmere, so that's basically what I'd like to build out. Is there a big advantage to the Xeon over the i7?
I've browsed NewEgg a little bit, but all of the options for motherboards and processors & all that is a little overwhelming for someone who's been on a Mac basically his whole life.
I need lots of connections/ports (USB 2.0/3.0 & firewire 400 for cameras, FW800 for older drives, any other fast/awesome connections), and room for one of these, eventually.
I need an NVidia graphics card; CS5 uses "NVidia CUDA technology!" for video acceleration.
I need fast RAM, fast drives, fast everything. I don't want to compromise with Good Enough. I generally go about 4 years between computer purchases (got a PowerMac G4 in 2003, a MacBookPro in 2007, and am shopping again now...), so it has to last me.
Price limit is basically $Texas, since I'd be spending around $4000 for a new MacPro and monitor if I went that route. I'd really like it to be significantly less expensive than that, though, if it's at all possible.
jimb213 on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited May 2011
Wow. Damn. I don't know enough about workstation/professional computing...
So, one significant difference between a Xeon and a consumer level i7 is that the regular i7 procs can't be used in dual processor systems. The necessary programming/engineering/whatever is only used in the Xeon chips, at least that's my understanding.
What kind of work do you do, precisely? From your post I'm guessing serious video editing at least, but more precise info would be helpful (layman's terms, please!), as I'm currently cultivating my resources. Like, the kind of people who know from serious "for an actual like job thing" computing.
I prefer nVidia from my own personal experience. The 570 is a beast of a card at around $350. I personally run a GTX 580 with plans to get a second in the next few months for SLI ... I will be putting in a water cooling system for them though.
Wow. Damn. I don't know enough about workstation/professional computing...
So, one significant difference between a Xeon and a consumer level i7 is that the regular i7 procs can't be used in dual processor systems. The necessary programming/engineering/whatever is only used in the Xeon chips, at least that's my understanding.
What kind of work do you do, precisely? From your post I'm guessing serious video editing at least, but more precise info would be helpful (layman's terms, please!), as I'm currently cultivating my resources. Like, the kind of people who know from serious "for an actual like job thing" computing.
From what I understand, the Sandy Bridge chips have that video transcode feature which is supposed to help with graphically intensive applications.
Darkwyndre on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
Wow. Damn. I don't know enough about workstation/professional computing...
So, one significant difference between a Xeon and a consumer level i7 is that the regular i7 procs can't be used in dual processor systems. The necessary programming/engineering/whatever is only used in the Xeon chips, at least that's my understanding.
What kind of work do you do, precisely? From your post I'm guessing serious video editing at least, but more precise info would be helpful (layman's terms, please!), as I'm currently cultivating my resources. Like, the kind of people who know from serious "for an actual like job thing" computing.
From what I understand, the Sandy Bridge chips have that video transcode feature which is supposed to help with graphically intensive applications.
For video transcoding/encoding, yeah, but my bet is that, for his purposes, what he mostly needs is serious effing processing muscle, and workstation focused graphics.
Wow. Damn. I don't know enough about workstation/professional computing...
So, one significant difference between a Xeon and a consumer level i7 is that the regular i7 procs can't be used in dual processor systems. The necessary programming/engineering/whatever is only used in the Xeon chips, at least that's my understanding.
What kind of work do you do, precisely? From your post I'm guessing serious video editing at least, but more precise info would be helpful (layman's terms, please!), as I'm currently cultivating my resources. Like, the kind of people who know from serious "for an actual like job thing" computing.
Good to know about the i7/Xeon difference! That probably narrows things down considerably. It's funny... I've not been impressed with the multiprocessing capabilities of the MacPro I use at my day job (also video editing; but I do freelance on the side and am looking to scale that up a bit). If I run a render or transcode, it slows down the whole computer... everything chugs along... is Windows 7 better about that? (of course I'm not on Snow Leopard, so that probably makes a difference)
Anyways, yup, serious editing in 1080p 24 fps, and lots of motion graphics work in After Effects (and some special effects & compositing). AE is basically photoshop for video, so think about applying photoshop filters & effects 24 times a second. I also do a decent amount of multi-camera work, so that means multiple streams of HD video and audio running simultaneously, often with graphics & other stuff on top of that. So there's lots of stuff to process, and lots of data to move back & forth.
Also, when Red finally releases their Scarlet camera (aka the one that costs as much as a used car, not the one that costs as much as a new luxury car), I may jump to that, which would mean 3k or 4k raw video files (thus the Red Rocket card I linked to), so that's even more data-intensive.
Hope this helps! Please feel free to quiz me more! I'm not even sure what questions I'm not asking...
Alecthar: You just picked up an absurd PSU for your PC, but if I was building a PC that was more or less equivalent to yours, dual 580's etc, what would be a bit more reasonably priced PSU that is quality that would fit the needs? Overkill is great and all but $300 MSRP for a PSU is
2) Does Win7 require any sort of de-coupling from an installed PC? I.E. I have a copy of win7 I put on my old laptop that I'd probably just dump if I got a new PC and need to know if I need to get a new copy of Win7 or if I can just remove it from my laptop and use the license again? The laptop is natively winxp, the win7 is mine.
3) Do current CPU's come with adequate fan/heatsinks? Or do they come with them at all? Like if I bought a retail i7 2600k, would it have something functional out of the box or do I need to go and get something/better?
Alecthar: You just picked up an absurd PSU for your PC, but if I was building a PC that was more or less equivalent to yours, dual 580's etc, what would be a bit more reasonably priced PSU that is quality that would fit the needs? Overkill is great and all but $300 MSRP for a PSU is
2) Does Win7 require any sort of de-coupling from an installed PC? I.E. I have a copy of win7 I put on my old laptop that I'd probably just dump if I got a new PC and need to know if I need to get a new copy of Win7 or if I can just remove it from my laptop and use the license again? The laptop is natively winxp, the win7 is mine.
3) Do current CPU's come with adequate fan/heatsinks? Or do they come with them at all? Like if I bought a retail i7 2600k, would it have something functional out of the box or do I need to go and get something/better?
A retail 2600K will come with an adequate stock cooling solution, for stock clocks. Do not overclock your CPU on stock cooling or I will murder you in your sleep. That's a thread-wide announcement, people.
If you purchased a retail full/upgrade version of Win 7 (not OEM) then you should be able to install it on the new PC no problem. I believe the old activation will be automatically deauthorized at that point. If you have any trouble you can contact MS by phone and they can furnish you with a solution quickly.
You can probably get away with a solid 850W unit, though I'd prefer 950W if possible, give you a little headroom. The TX950 v2 is solid. Enermax has some good 900+ watt options, if you're looking for some modularity.
So now I need help picking out a video card(s). I don't understand the numbering process on these. for reference again, it's mainly for wow, but steam games are fun sometimes, so there's the ability to play graphic intensive games in the future to mind.
I don't really have a budget, but I'm not spending $600 in graphics cards alone. I've been able to pick up that 2500k and I'm looking at the asus 1155 pro atx board. Are 2 better than one? should I get a card with a bigger number for like 300 or 2 smaller cards? Do I even need a $300 card, or is there a recommendation for a good but not amazingly expensive card out there? What do those damn numbers mean? I'm LOST.
tom's hardware does a monthly chart for best graphics cards for budgets. I would probably go with a 6950 1 gig or 2 gig personally and those run 240 to 280 and those are more than enough for just WOW. Later down the road you can pick up a second one and run crossfire if you need more performance.
with rebates you can sometimes find the 6950 2 Gig for about 245 and here are a few good ones from newegg.
Hey guys. My video card just gave up the ghost (8800 GT) which is prompting me to consider an entirely new system; as I am dubious about cramming a 460 or 6950 into this one. (Power supply and case space, as well as running an old Q6600.)
My question is: this hardly seems like the time to buy. From my understanding, Intel Ivy Bridge should release soonish? And is the AMD 69xxx successor due soonish?
If anyone could give me some pointers, it would be much appreciated!
Scorched on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
Hey guys. My video card just gave up the ghost (8800 GT) which is prompting me to consider an entirely new system; as I am dubious about cramming a 460 or 6950 into this one. (Power supply and case space, as well as running an old Q6600.)
My question is: this hardly seems like the time to buy. From my understanding, Intel Ivy Bridge should release soonish? And is the AMD 69xxx successor due soonish?
If anyone could give me some pointers, it would be much appreciated!
Ivy Bridge is sometime 2012. Socket 2011 may be later this year, may be 2012.
I don't think the next series of AMD GPUs is due any time soon, but I could be wrong. They released the 6990 awful recently, though.
Honestly, though, it seems like it's always the wrong time to buy. When new tech comes out, it's really expensive, so you wait till prices drop, then you feel like you should wait till new tech drops...and so on unto infinity. At some point you just have to pull that trigger.
Ah, alright. I definitely can't wait too long. I have about six weeks of studio access left before I become a freelance artist; so while a 2-3 month wait could've stretched it with my laptop as a backup; I don't fancy waiting that long.
Will probably look into building a I5, and see if I can get a 5850 on the cheap so I can dump some excess money on 8 gb of ram. Should solve both my painting and gaming needs.
Honestly from what I've read about the current sandy bridge i5/i7 series, they're priced well and I would have a hard time imagining that they wouldn't be more than enough power for pretty much any user from intro pc to a high end gaming machine. I won't comment on workstation/productivity; xeon seems the way to go there.
But to me, honestly it really does seem like now is a great time to buy. The new intels are priced, imo, quite well, and you can get really powerful GPUs for good prices also, and even SLI/Crossfire solutions seem to be pretty dang reasonable.
Will new shinies and fancier graphics come out later? Sure, but as Alecthar said, when that new stuff comes out it'll be the premium price and not necessarily worth waiting for when you can enjoy incredible performance now in what you can currently get.
I wish I had the money to buy what I want. Priced out it's 2-2.5k, which is pricey but I want my next pc to be something that will last quite a long time with only potentially minor upgrades now and then.
EDIT: I should also point out that waiting doesn't always mean you'll get stuff cheaper. Or worthwhile cheaper anyway. I've mentioned before but my current core 2 duo CPU can be upgraded in my mobo to a core 2 quad, but it runs ~$300, and that price I could get a new sandy mobo and a decent i5 that outperforms that core2quad for almost exactly the same price and have way more future-proofing in it.
Ah, alright. I definitely can't wait too long. I have about six weeks of studio access left before I become a freelance artist; so while a 2-3 month wait could've stretched it with my laptop as a backup; I don't fancy waiting that long.
Will probably look into building a I5, and see if I can get a 5850 on the cheap so I can dump some excess money on 8 gb of ram. Should solve both my painting and gaming needs.
Thanks for the quick answers!
i5-2500(K, if you want to overclock at some point). P67/Z68 chipset for overclocking/upgrade potential, otherwise just go H67. I've found there to be pretty spotty availability on 5850s, but if you can find one in stock for under 200 USD, it'll be a fairly solid buy. Otherwise you'd probably be better off with a 6870.
Honestly from what I've read about the current sandy bridge i5/i7 series, they're priced well and I would have a hard time imagining that they wouldn't be more than enough power for pretty much any user from intro pc to a high end gaming machine. I won't comment on workstation/productivity; xeon seems the way to go there.
But to me, honestly it really does seem like now is a great time to buy. The new intels are priced, imo, quite well, and you can get really powerful GPUs for good prices also, and even SLI/Crossfire solutions seem to be pretty dang reasonable.
Will new shinies and fancier graphics come out later? Sure, but as Alecthar said, when that new stuff comes out it'll be the premium price and not necessarily worth waiting for when you can enjoy incredible performance now in what you can currently get.
I wish I had the money to buy what I want. Priced out it's 2-2.5k, which is pricey but I want my next pc to be something that will last quite a long time with only potentially minor upgrades now and then.
EDIT: I should also point out that waiting doesn't always mean you'll get stuff cheaper. Or worthwhile cheaper anyway. I've mentioned before but my current core 2 duo CPU can be upgraded in my mobo to a core 2 quad, but it runs ~$300, and that price I could get a new sandy mobo and a decent i5 that outperforms that core2quad for almost exactly the same price and have way more future-proofing in it.
I'm excited that you're going to join me in having a needlessly expensive computer, Dude. We should form a special club. Oh! "The League of Wanton Extravagance."
Ah, alright. I definitely can't wait too long. I have about six weeks of studio access left before I become a freelance artist; so while a 2-3 month wait could've stretched it with my laptop as a backup; I don't fancy waiting that long.
Will probably look into building a I5, and see if I can get a 5850 on the cheap so I can dump some excess money on 8 gb of ram. Should solve both my painting and gaming needs.
Thanks for the quick answers!
i5-2500(K, if you want to overclock at some point). P67/Z68 chipset for overclocking/upgrade potential, otherwise just go H67. I've found there to be pretty spotty availability on 5850s, but if you can find one in stock for under 200 USD, it'll be a fairly solid buy. Otherwise you'd probably be better off with a 6870.
I can find a 5850 OC for 120 pounds - the 6870 is 190, so yeah, definitely going for the 5850 then.
By the way, I am wondering exactly what happened to my 8800 GT. I left my comp on standby this morning when I went to uni as I normally do. Upon return, I found that my screen was cycling through analog/digital modes (obviously not finding the signal on the card.) Tested the screen and cables on different comps, which lead the to the graphics card being the issue.
Reseated the card; still does the same. Finally went to onboard graphics; and now trying to install/access my Nvidia drivers it states it can't find NVIDIA hardware.
It's a bit of a headscratcher for me really. I inspected the card when I reseated it; but one of the cooling fan screws is stuck so I didn't get a good look at the board. (Aside from the ridiculous amount of thermal paste applied by HP. It's literally smudging onto the PCB.)
I don't have the option of putting it onto a different mobo to see whether it's the PCI-E slot that is damaged or the card itself. Is there any form of troubleshooting I could still do to come to a better conclusion? I'd rather -not- upgrade at the end of the day as I was saving the money for courses now that uni is done.
Honestly from what I've read about the current sandy bridge i5/i7 series, they're priced well and I would have a hard time imagining that they wouldn't be more than enough power for pretty much any user from intro pc to a high end gaming machine. I won't comment on workstation/productivity; xeon seems the way to go there.
But to me, honestly it really does seem like now is a great time to buy. The new intels are priced, imo, quite well, and you can get really powerful GPUs for good prices also, and even SLI/Crossfire solutions seem to be pretty dang reasonable.
Will new shinies and fancier graphics come out later? Sure, but as Alecthar said, when that new stuff comes out it'll be the premium price and not necessarily worth waiting for when you can enjoy incredible performance now in what you can currently get.
I wish I had the money to buy what I want. Priced out it's 2-2.5k, which is pricey but I want my next pc to be something that will last quite a long time with only potentially minor upgrades now and then.
EDIT: I should also point out that waiting doesn't always mean you'll get stuff cheaper. Or worthwhile cheaper anyway. I've mentioned before but my current core 2 duo CPU can be upgraded in my mobo to a core 2 quad, but it runs ~$300, and that price I could get a new sandy mobo and a decent i5 that outperforms that core2quad for almost exactly the same price and have way more future-proofing in it.
It was really more of a future proofing issue. I'm not a huge power nerd. Obviously I'd love an I7, but an i5 will do more than fine. Still though, they do tend to flog parts of cheap when a new platform comes along.
I would never dream of upgrading on the core duo setup I have now. I almost had to do that in the PIV generation, when a new processor would run me 400 - and that was just to replace a faulty part. >.<
Edit: Got a question about troubleshooting my 8800 GT on the last post of last page if anyone is kind enough to offer a suggestion!
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Some games (RE5, for instance) have gaming benchmarking built in that you can use. You can do some encoding/transcoding on video files, I think 7zip has a file compression benchmarking utility.
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That pretty much settles it. I'll get the HAF 932 Advanced and the Corsair Vengeance instead of the HAF 932 and the Mushkin Enhanced Redline. I'm keeping the WD HDD, and my PSU now that I'm sure it will work with this setup.
Thanks for the info.
I see a lot of people here go for the Asus P8P67 PRO. Why should I take this compared to the EVO, WS Revolution or to take it to an extreme the ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME (REV 3.0) (at a whopping $365 CAD)?
My budget limit is pretty high, I can go upwards of $3000 without a monitor if I want to. So basically I want to make a monster, but at the same time I don't want to needlessly waste money. So I'm not sure if its worth it to get something like that MAXIMUS. Are there other good brands I should look at or should I stick to ASUS?
Aside from the USB 3.0 thing, what about the deluxe mobo makes it $50 over the pro? I mean, the pro has usb 3.0 also, just not that slot.
I'm just curious as I build my wishlist for in case I do buy a new PC come christmas time.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
If you can spend that kind of money, I would seriously wait until the socket 2011 boards and Ivy Bridge processors hit early next year. The Ivy Bridge chips will most likely feature the tri-gate transistors that Intel just bragged about, and will be designed for enthusiast/gamer instead of the current Sandy Bridge which really isn't meant to be enthusiast level (but outperformed previous enthusiast level hardware).
The ASUS Maximus boards are very nice. I have a friend who got that board recently and he raves about it. If I'm you, I wait till socket 2011 and Ivy Bridge, and build a monster then. My guess is the z68 boards will feature a chipset which supports triple channel, along with more PCIe lanes. I believe the sandy bridge chipsets are all limited to 32 lanes, but the old x58 boards had 40 lanes, and it's safe to guess the new z68 will have at least that much PCIe bandwidth, if not more.
I like ASUS a lot, and the P67 WS Revolution is the most reasonably priced board available with an NF200 (and thus x16/x16 PCI-E lanes). If you want to be absolutely sure your SLI/Crossfire setup has the best bandwidth available to it, then go with that board.
The EVO is mainly distinguished from the Pro by the addition of a few more back panel ports and dual LAN. And additional power phases. The Deluxe adds a few other doohickeys.
ASRock makes a few solid budget options, but if you can spend money on going with an ASUS or Gigabyte board, I would. I tend to like ASUS over Gigabyte, the layouts are usually better, and ASUS seems to be more generous with VRMs and power phases.
I'd go with a Z68 board, though, probably the ASUS Z68 Pro. As long as you don't need a x4 PCI-E slot, it's a really nice board.
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I don't like the P67 Maximus board, it's not a standard ATX form factor, so unless you really want to run more than 2 GPUs, I don't think it justifies its demand that you have a big fucking case.
Z68 just came out, it's an additional iteration on the current 1155 Socket. The only thing it adds are SSD caching and the ability to utilize the IGP while having a discrete GPU. Sandy Bridge runs 16 PCI-E lanes, you need the NF200 to get 2 true x16 PCI slots. Z68 shares this limitation.
Socket 2011 will be Sandy Bridge-E chips, won't have the 22nm tri-gate transistors, and will be available before Ivy Bridge. It's the enthusiast chipset (socket 1366 analogous). Ivy Bridge will be on the 1155 Socket, with new chipsets (Panther Point) next year.
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edit - I didn't even know about Z68 boards. Investigating now.
Same socket as the P67, just the addition of some new features that are nice to have. Worth the price premium over P67 in my opinion.
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a 32 bit operating system can address 2^32 bits of memory, equivalent to 4 GB
a 64 bit operating system can address 2^64 bits of memory, equivalent to 17179869184 GB (or 4 exabytes)
This many
I want this many RAMs
Yeah, that.
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You and me both, man, you and me both.
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I wonder how long it takes Newegg to sell 4EB of memory. Would it be measured in years?
I don't really have a budget, but I'm not spending $600 in graphics cards alone. I've been able to pick up that 2500k and I'm looking at the asus 1155 pro atx board. Are 2 better than one? should I get a card with a bigger number for like 300 or 2 smaller cards? Do I even need a $300 card, or is there a recommendation for a good but not amazingly expensive card out there? What do those damn numbers mean? I'm LOST.
Unfortunately for consumers, the model names for graphics cards have nothing to do with the actual specifications of a card. For both AMD and Nvidia, model numbers are useful only to understand the relative power of a card within that series of cards. For example, within Nvidia's 5 series (model numbers in the form 5XX) the 580 is better than the 570, which is better than the 560 Ti. With AMD 6-series cards (model numbers in the form 6XXX) the 6950 is better than the 6870, which is better than the 6850.
Another problem is that these numbers can sometimes be confusing when taken with previous generation cards. On the Nvidia side, the 460 is actually better than the 550 Ti. The numbering convention might lead you to think "lower number, lower end card" but the 460 is from the previous generation of products, so its position in that lineup was analogous to the position of the 560 Ti in the current lineup. AMD is even worse. The 5870 is a better card than the current generation 6870. The 6950 and 6970 are better than the 5870, but the previous generation 5970 is superior to both of those 6-series cards, despite the similar nomenclature.
Your best option when buying a video card is to evaluate them based on performance, so reading reviews, hunting down benchmarks and comparing them. Depending on pricing, older cards can be solid bang-for-buck choices, or overpriced old tech.
My current favorite single card right now is the 6950 1GB. If you want to spend more, you're better off buying multiple cards, in my opinion. If you'd like to spend less, the 6850 and GTX 460 1GB are both solid options. Right now there are some 460 1GB cards on sale for as low as $170, which makes them a very compelling option.
I'd go with the 6950 1GB if you're willing to spend ~$250 and you don't like the idea of upgrading in the future by dropping in a second card for SLI/Crossfire. Otherwise I'd go with a 6850/460 1GB and plan on upgrading in the future with Crossfire/SLI when necessary.
My bet is that any of those cards would handle WoW just fine.
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How wrong?
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Well, nothing irreversible. CPU fan falling off multiple times was the biggest headache. Installed the front panel wiring wrong. General wiring problems, but those are fixed. Broke the cpu latch on the first MB. Etc etc.
If I stay with the MacPro, I'd probably get the dual 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Xeon Westmere, so that's basically what I'd like to build out. Is there a big advantage to the Xeon over the i7?
I've browsed NewEgg a little bit, but all of the options for motherboards and processors & all that is a little overwhelming for someone who's been on a Mac basically his whole life.
I need lots of connections/ports (USB 2.0/3.0 & firewire 400 for cameras, FW800 for older drives, any other fast/awesome connections), and room for one of these, eventually.
I need an NVidia graphics card; CS5 uses "NVidia CUDA technology!" for video acceleration.
I need fast RAM, fast drives, fast everything. I don't want to compromise with Good Enough. I generally go about 4 years between computer purchases (got a PowerMac G4 in 2003, a MacBookPro in 2007, and am shopping again now...), so it has to last me.
Price limit is basically $Texas, since I'd be spending around $4000 for a new MacPro and monitor if I went that route. I'd really like it to be significantly less expensive than that, though, if it's at all possible.
So, one significant difference between a Xeon and a consumer level i7 is that the regular i7 procs can't be used in dual processor systems. The necessary programming/engineering/whatever is only used in the Xeon chips, at least that's my understanding.
What kind of work do you do, precisely? From your post I'm guessing serious video editing at least, but more precise info would be helpful (layman's terms, please!), as I'm currently cultivating my resources. Like, the kind of people who know from serious "for an actual like job thing" computing.
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From what I understand, the Sandy Bridge chips have that video transcode feature which is supposed to help with graphically intensive applications.
For video transcoding/encoding, yeah, but my bet is that, for his purposes, what he mostly needs is serious effing processing muscle, and workstation focused graphics.
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Good to know about the i7/Xeon difference! That probably narrows things down considerably. It's funny... I've not been impressed with the multiprocessing capabilities of the MacPro I use at my day job (also video editing; but I do freelance on the side and am looking to scale that up a bit). If I run a render or transcode, it slows down the whole computer... everything chugs along... is Windows 7 better about that? (of course I'm not on Snow Leopard, so that probably makes a difference)
Anyways, yup, serious editing in 1080p 24 fps, and lots of motion graphics work in After Effects (and some special effects & compositing). AE is basically photoshop for video, so think about applying photoshop filters & effects 24 times a second. I also do a decent amount of multi-camera work, so that means multiple streams of HD video and audio running simultaneously, often with graphics & other stuff on top of that. So there's lots of stuff to process, and lots of data to move back & forth.
Also, when Red finally releases their Scarlet camera (aka the one that costs as much as a used car, not the one that costs as much as a new luxury car), I may jump to that, which would mean 3k or 4k raw video files (thus the Red Rocket card I linked to), so that's even more data-intensive.
Hope this helps! Please feel free to quiz me more! I'm not even sure what questions I'm not asking...
Another question: Alecthar mentioned using this and I was curious if there is any real difference between that product and this one?
Literally, the only difference is the heatsink color.
The blue one would match the Asus series of sandy bridge mobos better right now.
They're the same price and exactly the same stick of ram.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Alecthar: You just picked up an absurd PSU for your PC, but if I was building a PC that was more or less equivalent to yours, dual 580's etc, what would be a bit more reasonably priced PSU that is quality that would fit the needs? Overkill is great and all but $300 MSRP for a PSU is
2) Does Win7 require any sort of de-coupling from an installed PC? I.E. I have a copy of win7 I put on my old laptop that I'd probably just dump if I got a new PC and need to know if I need to get a new copy of Win7 or if I can just remove it from my laptop and use the license again? The laptop is natively winxp, the win7 is mine.
3) Do current CPU's come with adequate fan/heatsinks? Or do they come with them at all? Like if I bought a retail i7 2600k, would it have something functional out of the box or do I need to go and get something/better?
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
A retail 2600K will come with an adequate stock cooling solution, for stock clocks. Do not overclock your CPU on stock cooling or I will murder you in your sleep. That's a thread-wide announcement, people.
If you purchased a retail full/upgrade version of Win 7 (not OEM) then you should be able to install it on the new PC no problem. I believe the old activation will be automatically deauthorized at that point. If you have any trouble you can contact MS by phone and they can furnish you with a solution quickly.
You can probably get away with a solid 850W unit, though I'd prefer 950W if possible, give you a little headroom. The TX950 v2 is solid. Enermax has some good 900+ watt options, if you're looking for some modularity.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-game-performance-radeon-hd-6670,2935-4.html
tom's hardware does a monthly chart for best graphics cards for budgets. I would probably go with a 6950 1 gig or 2 gig personally and those run 240 to 280 and those are more than enough for just WOW. Later down the road you can pick up a second one and run crossfire if you need more performance.
with rebates you can sometimes find the 6950 2 Gig for about 245 and here are a few good ones from newegg.
XFX HD-695X-CNFC Radeon HD 6950 2GB
SAPPHIRE 100312-2SR Radeon HD 6950 2GB
HIS H695FN2G2M Radeon HD 6950 2GB
edit: never mine already solved, guess page didn't looooooooooad all the way
guess while i'm here you can compare cards on tom's as well if you have questions about performance
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/benchmarks,123.html
My question is: this hardly seems like the time to buy. From my understanding, Intel Ivy Bridge should release soonish? And is the AMD 69xxx successor due soonish?
If anyone could give me some pointers, it would be much appreciated!
Ivy Bridge is sometime 2012. Socket 2011 may be later this year, may be 2012.
I don't think the next series of AMD GPUs is due any time soon, but I could be wrong. They released the 6990 awful recently, though.
Honestly, though, it seems like it's always the wrong time to buy. When new tech comes out, it's really expensive, so you wait till prices drop, then you feel like you should wait till new tech drops...and so on unto infinity. At some point you just have to pull that trigger.
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Will probably look into building a I5, and see if I can get a 5850 on the cheap so I can dump some excess money on 8 gb of ram. Should solve both my painting and gaming needs.
Thanks for the quick answers!
But to me, honestly it really does seem like now is a great time to buy. The new intels are priced, imo, quite well, and you can get really powerful GPUs for good prices also, and even SLI/Crossfire solutions seem to be pretty dang reasonable.
Will new shinies and fancier graphics come out later? Sure, but as Alecthar said, when that new stuff comes out it'll be the premium price and not necessarily worth waiting for when you can enjoy incredible performance now in what you can currently get.
I wish I had the money to buy what I want. Priced out it's 2-2.5k, which is pricey but I want my next pc to be something that will last quite a long time with only potentially minor upgrades now and then.
EDIT: I should also point out that waiting doesn't always mean you'll get stuff cheaper. Or worthwhile cheaper anyway. I've mentioned before but my current core 2 duo CPU can be upgraded in my mobo to a core 2 quad, but it runs ~$300, and that price I could get a new sandy mobo and a decent i5 that outperforms that core2quad for almost exactly the same price and have way more future-proofing in it.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
i5-2500(K, if you want to overclock at some point). P67/Z68 chipset for overclocking/upgrade potential, otherwise just go H67. I've found there to be pretty spotty availability on 5850s, but if you can find one in stock for under 200 USD, it'll be a fairly solid buy. Otherwise you'd probably be better off with a 6870.
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I'm excited that you're going to join me in having a needlessly expensive computer, Dude. We should form a special club. Oh! "The League of Wanton Extravagance."
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I can find a 5850 OC for 120 pounds - the 6870 is 190, so yeah, definitely going for the 5850 then.
By the way, I am wondering exactly what happened to my 8800 GT. I left my comp on standby this morning when I went to uni as I normally do. Upon return, I found that my screen was cycling through analog/digital modes (obviously not finding the signal on the card.) Tested the screen and cables on different comps, which lead the to the graphics card being the issue.
Reseated the card; still does the same. Finally went to onboard graphics; and now trying to install/access my Nvidia drivers it states it can't find NVIDIA hardware.
It's a bit of a headscratcher for me really. I inspected the card when I reseated it; but one of the cooling fan screws is stuck so I didn't get a good look at the board. (Aside from the ridiculous amount of thermal paste applied by HP. It's literally smudging onto the PCB.)
I don't have the option of putting it onto a different mobo to see whether it's the PCI-E slot that is damaged or the card itself. Is there any form of troubleshooting I could still do to come to a better conclusion? I'd rather -not- upgrade at the end of the day as I was saving the money for courses now that uni is done.
It was really more of a future proofing issue. I'm not a huge power nerd. Obviously I'd love an I7, but an i5 will do more than fine. Still though, they do tend to flog parts of cheap when a new platform comes along.
I would never dream of upgrading on the core duo setup I have now. I almost had to do that in the PIV generation, when a new processor would run me 400 - and that was just to replace a faulty part. >.<
Edit: Got a question about troubleshooting my 8800 GT on the last post of last page if anyone is kind enough to offer a suggestion!