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JustAnEngineer wrote:

Elsydeon wrote:

This system is strictly for gaming, I won't be doing any scientific computing, video encoding, and if I do, it won't be anything amazing or sophisticated. I also want the machine to be future proof for least the next 3 years and be able to play games of the future for the next 2 years. I'm looking to get a minimal 5850 card, or a 5870 for my build. Please let me know what you guys think. I'm gaming games like BF 2, Aion, SC 2, and some future DX 11 games that are going to come out like Guild Wars 2, and dragon age: origin 2. Resolution I will be gaming at is 1920, and on at least a 24 inch monitor. My budget is about $1200. Thanks for the advice.

You should be able to put together a nice gaming system for $1200.

$240+tax Dell UltraSharp U2311H 23" 1920x1080 IPS LCD monitor
or $450+tax Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" 1920x1200 IPS LCD monitor
$ 99 +7½ shipping -25 combo Asus M4A87TD/USB3 ATX 870+SB850 socket-AM3 motherboard
$155 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition quad-core 3.2 GHz socket-AM3 processor with HSF
$ 92 -5 code "EMCYWZV53" 2x2 GiB PC3-12800 G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ
or $ 81 2x2 GiB PC3-10600 G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT (DDR3-1333, CAS 9, 1.5 V)
$220 GeForce GTX 460 1GB
$ 75 1 TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3
$ 80 LiteOn iHES208-08 BD-ROM / DVD-RW with Cyberlink PowerDVD
$120 +5 shipping -20 MIR Antec Sonata III with earthwatts EA-500 power supply
$100 Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM
=======
About $1200.

Is it a fair assumption to make that he does not have an existing Windows license that he can reuse? It seems to me like he is replacing an existing system rather than making an additional system. Also, I am a bit tired. Is it $1200 with the 24" monitor or with the 23" monitor?

The PS3 will never move any games in the right direction of "cores" for two reasons. A. It is not needed as everything is mainly FPS based, and B. the Xbox 360 controls the "performance" console market no matter what anybody says. I do understand what you are saying, but I have a feeling quad-cores would be whats "recommended" for gaming rather than tri-cores if the Xbox 360 released with 4 cores.

Also do you really think a single GTX460 will give him 3 solid years of future-proofing?

Shining Arcanine wrote:

ingornace

This is no fun anymore. I am completely tired of Shining Arcanine coming in here and putting down others while spouting off a bunch of ignorance, flashing his computer science superiority, as if that means a damn thing, and completely and utterly refusing to google anything.

Google provides:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mul ... 80-10.html (april 2009)
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2 ... mes-need/9 (july 2010)

I'll just stop there. That's enough to say that games these days are clearly taking advantage of multiple threads. Games in the future will almost certainly extend their use of threading.

6 cores is a waste for gaming at the moment, for sure, but 4 cores is most certainly useful for a number of games. 3 years from now will games still rarely use more than 2-4 cores? I don't have a crystal ball. But I do know that opening up Firefox with 100 tabs as Shining Arcanine suggested (WTF?) isn't going to tell you a damn thing about that either unless 99 of those tabs were clicks from a google search.

SA, please stop making threads suck. Please?

StuG wrote:

Also do you really think a single GTX460 will give him 3 solid years of future-proofing?

There's no way to tell, but it's definitely well above the curve of games that are out now (excluding freaks like Mafia II). I know my HD 5870 is getting close to a year old now and isn't being pushed any harder by newer games than it was when I bought it.

The GTX 460'll probably be fine. The Radeon HD 3870 still plays games well enough, and that wasn't even that great of a card when it came out.

I really think that the GTX460 could give him 3 years, if you don't have a huge monitor like is used in the benchmarking and in year 3 your willing to not run everything have ultra high it might work out fine. For me at least graphics cards last 3 or so years because I don't have 2516 by whatever huge monitor, I'll turn down some settings, and I'm not into FPS.

I think if you pick up something that you can play most current games on with full res/details/AA, that'll usually give you 3 years if you turn details down on the newer games. The comp that I just replaced, I got in 2003 and got the video card in 2004 (for $150), and in 2007 I started playing WoW and it handled it fine - but at lower res/details. So as long as it'll handle most stuff right now, 3 years shouldn't be too much of a problem.

flip-mode wrote:

Shining Arcanine wrote:

ingornace

This is no fun anymore. I am completely tired of Shining Arcanine coming in here and putting down others while spouting off a bunch of ignorance, flashing his computer science superiority, as if that means a damn thing, and completely and utterly refusing to google anything.

Google provides:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mul ... 80-10.html (april 2009)
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2 ... mes-need/9 (july 2010)

I'll just stop there. That's enough to say that games these days are clearly taking advantage of multiple threads. Games in the future will almost certainly extend their use of threading.

6 cores is a waste for gaming at the moment, for sure, but 4 cores is most certainly useful for a number of games. 3 years from now will games still rarely use more than 2-4 cores? I don't have a crystal ball. But I do know that opening up Firefox with 100 tabs as Shining Arcanine suggested (WTF?) isn't going to tell you a damn thing about that either unless 99 of those tabs were clicks from a google search.

SA, please stop making threads suck. Please?

If you are not going to post something useful to the original poster, please do not bother. Morphine was quite clear that he wanted to bring the thread back on topic.

I haven't read much of the thread, so this is probably just repeating what others have said. But I typed it anyway.

The X6 probably isn't a good buy unless you know you're going to use those two extra cores. Most games still use two threads, and only a few produce more than four. If you do lots of video editing/encoding, that's another story. Or of you want to brag about owning a six-core processor, which is as good a reason as any to buy one.

Between Intel and AMD quad-cores:

Quad i5/i7
Pros: lower power consumption, perhaps slightly faster
Cons: no upgrade path, motherboard limitations (no more than 16 PCIe lanes total, pay more for SATA 6Gbps)

AMD X4 (and X6)
Pros: lower entry price, many upgrade options (pop in a Bulldozer next year...maybe)
Cons: power and heat, no way to get SLI support

FuturePastNow wrote:

AMD X4 (and X6)
Pros: lower entry price, many upgrade options (pop in a Bulldozer next year...maybe)
Cons: power and heat, no way to get SLI support

Aren't there registry hacks out there to enable SLI? Also, MSI will be launching one of it's mobos that can do both soon, too, if the rumors are true: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/08/18/ ... r-edition/

Shining Arcanine wrote:

If you are not going to post something useful to the original poster, please do not bother. Morphine was quite clear that he wanted to bring the thread back on topic.

Yeah, morphine already slapped my hand in private message about that, and, I honestly did not see his post directing us back on topic, so, my apologies to morhpine and the OP.

I'll just opine that as far as the CPU goes: 4 core, definitely; 6 core, of no use for gaming at present, but no one can tell the future.

Given the OP's budget, my first look would be to the i7-875K, but I haven't priced it out to see if that will indeed fit the budget.

flip-mode wrote:

Given the OP's budget, my first look would be to the i7-875K, but I haven't priced it out to see if that will indeed fit the budget.

The i7-875K is definitely a nice option. Whether or not the original poster can make good use of it is up to him. Fitting the budget would likely depend on whether or not the original poster needs to buy a new monitor and a new Windows license. If he needs both of those things, it could be a tight fit.

flip-mode wrote:

FuturePastNow wrote:

AMD X4 (and X6)
Pros: lower entry price, many upgrade options (pop in a Bulldozer next year...maybe)
Cons: power and heat, no way to get SLI support

Aren't there registry hacks out there to enable SLI? Also, MSI will be launching one of it's mobos that can do both soon, too, if the rumors are true: http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/08/18/ ... r-edition/

That's true, I hadn't thought of the Hydra boards. Multi-GPU systems don't really interest me, so I just added that to have another "con".

Honestly, I think that AMD vs Intel right now is a wash at the price points they share. You'll get a good system either way.

Hey everybody,

I really appreciate the replys and support and different point of views everybody provided for me. I had a feeling that I should go with Intel, but I just had to explore my option on the AMD side and understand more what sets them apart. I mean either way, its worth to know all your options before you begin anything so that you don't have regrets once you are done with your system build. Also to answer a few question, this build is actually another system, not to replace another system. At the moment my girlfriend and I are playing games together and she is using the system I build last year, I7 920 processor, with MSI eclipse motherboard which is giving me a lot of issues right now, hence the need to build another system, so that I can start troubleshooting that system and repair it to also replace the HP desktop I am using to play games, Its not really doing well since its a very limited desktop, small power supply, no room, and its just not worth upgrading. It was never meant to be used for extreme gaming anyways. Back to my case. I will also need another Windows license, since the one I got for the other PC is an OEM one. Monitor I am ok at the moment, I have a few spares, and I could just use the one that I'm currently using for the HP desktop I'm using for gaming. I once again do appreciate all the feedback, i feel like after reading all the replys, I am a bit more aware of the difference between the AMD processor, Intel and how gaming uses the muti core threading and what not to run the game.

Thank you All

If you don't need to buy monitor, speakers, keyboard or mouse out of your $1200, you could swing an Intel Core i5-760 and an LGA1156 motherboard like the GA-P55-USB3.

[deleted]

Elsydeon wrote:

Hey everybody,

I really appreciate the replys and support and different point of views everybody provided for me. I had a feeling that I should go with Intel, but I just had to explore my option on the AMD side and understand more what sets them apart. I mean either way, its worth to know all your options before you begin anything so that you don't have regrets once you are done with your system build. Also to answer a few question, this build is actually another system, not to replace another system. At the moment my girlfriend and I are playing games together and she is using the system I build last year, I7 920 processor, with MSI eclipse motherboard which is giving me a lot of issues right now, hence the need to build another system, so that I can start troubleshooting that system and repair it to also replace the HP desktop I am using to play games, Its not really doing well since its a very limited desktop, small power supply, no room, and its just not worth upgrading. It was never meant to be used for extreme gaming anyways. Back to my case. I will also need another Windows license, since the one I got for the other PC is an OEM one. Monitor I am ok at the moment, I have a few spares, and I could just use the one that I'm currently using for the HP desktop I'm using for gaming. I once again do appreciate all the feedback, i feel like after reading all the replys, I am a bit more aware of the difference between the AMD processor, Intel and how gaming uses the muti core threading and what not to run the game.

Thank you All

Is the license in the HP system trasnsferable to your new system? Also, are you a student enrolled in some sort of computer related class at your university? If you are a student in that situation, you might be able to take advantage of MSDNAA to get a few "free" Windows licenses. In reality, the cost is part of your tuition, but at least you do not need to pay extra for it:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/default.aspx