This Is Not A Pimp-My-Rig Thread

[LeftEyeNine]

Yo.

I'm at the brink of getting myself a monstrous rig (at least on my standards) for the first time. However I'm concerned whether I'm making too much of an expenditure on particular components (if any). I've always wanted a rig that I could turn anything in "Options" menu to "Highest" without any doubt and that's why I'll be making such a serious spending. Yet I'd like to ask of you if you would name any of the components below is too early to buy, hence would be costing me dearly, please. Here goes:

• Intel Core i7-920 2.66GHz
• Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R
• Patriot PVT33G1600LLK Extreme Performance Viper 3x1GB DDR3-1600MHz CL8
• Samsung HD502IJ or Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB SATA300 7200rpm; 16 MB; NCQ
• Palit HD4870 Sonic 1GB or Palit GTX260 Sonic 896MB 216 SP Double Fan
• Samsung DVD Writer SATA
• NZXT Tempest + Cooler Master Real Power 620W

I'd also like your thoughts on the alternatives specified above and the rig as a whole as well.

Thanks in advance. You're one step closer to saving the world. I'll global-cool it.

Promise.


P.S. Sorry for the lame title. I'm at work. Tolerate.

[Furunculus]

i'm going to presume you are a gamer, if not sing-out because it affects the advice i'm about to give:

> first and foremost, the GPU is much more important than the CPU for games (and rapidly for encoding apps too), so i would spend 50% more on the GPU than you intend to spend on the CPU.
> with a rig that powerful you really want to be running 6GB on a Core i7 rig, especially since that motherboard has only four dimm slots so you can only get full triple channel on three sticks.

the CPU is great, as is the motherboard, but if your first wish from a new PC is to run games with the settings maxxed out i would give much more prominence to the GPU, which may mean choosing a cheaper motherboard and CPU.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I've never heard of Palit, any good? The HD4870 or the GTX260 are both the hardest hitting single cards out there these days though, so unless you put more in crossfire/SLI he can't do much better, I thought...

[Furunculus]

the AMD/ATI 4890 is due out in about four days time for about £250.

the nVidia 285 is the fastest signle GPU card available currently and costs about £300 at cheapest.

palit should be fine, most card resellers do nothing more than stick a brand badge on the nVidia/ATI kit they receive.

[LeftEyeNine]

Well I should say that the current level of expenditure is already banging at my limits. So I'd totally have to stay away from recommendations to push this rig further up. Thanks for your input though.

Yes, I'm a gamer, Furunculus, and yes 6 GB is a must...in the following days considering the size of my credit cards. ^^

And, dear AtPG, I'm not interested in the brands of high-end video cards too much to be honest. No matter what the brand may be, because of the chipset, the performance has to attain a certain spectrum anyhow I think. I'm not too much interested if it may be %5 worse than what, say, an MSI of the same chipset could do. As long as the brand is not notorious in general, it could be Palit or Goooogel or TWORG3D.

So shall I count your reactions as a "no, this rig does not contain anything overpriced for a gamer" statement ?

[Furunculus]

in that case i would recommend you pull yourself away from the idea of an i7 rig. :)

the money really is better spent elsewhere.
may be a C2D or a Phenom II.

[LeftEyeNine]

Yo.

Regarding the basics of economics ("scarcity of resources"), Teh orange wolf boss could only afford an Intel Core i7 920 D0 installed on a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UDR3 for now, from the list above. I got a kit of 2x1GB Corsair DDR3 and Zotac Nvidia 9500 GT for the complementary components.

However it's for certain that as soon as I can clear off the major part of this purchase, I'll be going for a beastie video card.

The question is: What should I look for in the video card market, in the following months ? Is there a new-gen coming this way that may shake prices or would you be able to recommend a certain video card that would still be a beast following the couple of months ahead ?

[Husar]

I'm largely with Furunculus here, the only reason to get a Core i7 is if you plan to upgrade the CPU in the future and want to keep the mainboard etc for many years to come, the Core 2s perform very similar to the i7 in most games and are considerably cheaper.
Graphics cards are where I always get angry, Whacker keeps telling me that NVidia keeps using their bad silicon in them so there is a high chance the thing will fail, however, Whacker is my only source of info for that.
NVidia cards use less energy for the same performance and have the benefit of CUDA and PhysX which are both somewhat new but seem to be coming up and make some games quite a bit nicer or in the case of CUDA make converting videos and other similar tasks much faster than even a Core i7 could.
However it would still be sad if the card then just melts away because of bad silicon.

I'm actually most likely going to buy a new PC this year as well but thought I could just as well wait for the new DX11 generation cards (which will, despite 40nm etc, probably eat even more energy ) and see what I do then once the prices have gone down a bit. Not unlikely that by then the Core i7 are a bit cheaper as well so in general I'm not sure whether right now is a good time to invest into a new rig, you either get something new, possibly buggy(I mean new steppings are introduced for CPUs to improve them , aren't they?) and overpriced or you invest into a platform that's discontinued and you won't get DX11 either.

Another benefit of waiting for three or four months is that you learn how to save money (the economists will be delighted to hear that ) and you will have more money once you actually buy the thing, yet may get it even cheaper which means you will have more money left for, say, a nice 5.1 system to go with it, or to buy a gf from brides.ru or so.

Well, that's my two cents on the matter.

[Beskar]

In 6months (9 tops), a brand new Processor range comes out based on the 35nm format compared to the current 45nm. Just to let you know.

Also, you should consider more ram. You should hit the 4gig mark, if you are having a 32-bit operating system, if you are going for a 64-bit operating system, get 4gig at least, however, I would recommend possibly hitting 8-gig and turning off paging file. This would run all your memory from the sticks only which will speed your computer and won't take up space on your hard-drive through virtual memory.

[LeftEyeNine]

Let's focus on the video card please. Thanks.

[Lemur]

From what I've read neither AMD nor Nvidia is going to introduce a new architecture for their vidcards this year. So what will be happening is clock increases, die shrinks, maybe sticking more cores onto a board. Nothing Biblical.

Take a long look at the 4870 and the 260, 'cause that's basically what we have for the year.

(Also, I would like to throw in my vote for stepping back from the I7, and going with an LGA 775 chip instead. Big money savings, no performance penalty.)

[LeftEyeNine]

(Also, I would like to throw in my vote for stepping back from the I7, and going with an LGA 775 chip instead. Big money savings, no performance penalty.)

Ouch. That hurt.

[Husar]

From what I've read neither AMD nor Nvidia is going to introduce a new architecture for their vidcards this year. So what will be happening is clock increases, die shrinks, maybe sticking more cores onto a board. Nothing Biblical.

That mirrors my fears, and going by the current rumours about doubling the ALUs and what not I'd guess even wirth a DIE shrink they're going to use even more energy and will come with 3 or 4 slot thick cooling solutions.

What surprised me a bit though is that from what I've seen, Nvidia cards are a tick faster and use a tick less energy overall, plus the additional physics and mathematics abilities and I'd clearly say go NVidia if it weren't for Whacker's scary stories which mister Whacker might want to comment on here as well just to be sure.

[Furunculus]

I am hearing a lot of rumours about the Radeon HD870, which will be a .40nm DX 11 card possibly with up to 1280 shaders (up from 800 with the current gen), and the rumours are saying July announcement.

I think this is credible, and will be about the same time as the 800 series AMD chipset.


If you wanted to buy right now on the budget discussed above i'd get the following:
AMD PII 945 socketAM3 - 180 GBP
AMD 790GX m/b - 110 GBP
nVidia 275 GTX - 270 GBP

If you were buying in August i would suggest:
AMD PII 955 socketAM3 - 180 GBP
AMD 800 series m/b - 150 GBP
AMD HD870 series GPU - 270 GBP

[Lemur]

Ouch. That hurt.

If I may be pardoned for hurting you further: Not only will an LGA 775 board be cheaper, and not only will a Core2Duo or Quad be cheaper, but you can populate your motherboard with DDR2 instead of the much pricier DDR3. Once again, cheaper with no performance penalty. The only reason to go with an I7 is if you have plans to swap out the proc withing the next two or three years.

[LeftEyeNine]

/hangs himself

[Lemur]

Wait, have you already bought the I7 components? If so that's not a big deal, and you have the option of upgrading your proc in a year or three, which is great. There's nothing wrong with the I7, and a lot that's fantastic. I'm only throwing this info out there in case you've yet to buy the parts.

[LeftEyeNine]

I've already bought'em, sire. Although the current rig somehow feels like there's something clogging up the flawless performance (such as more RAM, a better GPU or newer HDDs), I'm fairly pleased with what i7 can do.

This is the first time in my life that I can (almost) max out settings in games like Company of Heroes, HL2 (yeah it's oldened a bit but hey) or Colin McRae Dirt.

Thanks for your precious concerns.

Btw, should I go with changing my current OS (XP SP3 32-bit) to better benefit my rig? Say, Windows Vista or XP 64-bit ?

[Lemur]

Well, the next logical step would be to move to 6 gigs of RAM rather than 3 (I7 is optimal in multiple of 3, so a move to 4 or 5 gigs is out of the question), and taking advantage of the Windows 7 64-bit demo. You could fill the time between now and May 5th by finding and downloading Vista 64-bit drivers for everything and popping them onto a disc.

I would also recommend keeping your current XP install, perhaps creating a new partition for Win7, or slapping in a new HD for it. Should be good fun all the way around.

[LeftEyeNine]

and taking advantage of the Windows 7 64-bit demo. You could fill the time between now and May 5th by finding and downloading Vista 64-bit drivers for everything and popping them onto a disc.

Nothing wrong here, sire ?

[Lemur]

Pretty sure that Vista 64 drivers will work with Windows 7 64. At least, that's what the internets tell me when I listen to their tubes.