So... I got me a few new things... BIOSTAR TA990FXE AM3+ AMD 990FX AMD FX-4300 Vishera 3.8GHz (4.0GHz) (can be OC'd to 4.4) TOSHIBA PH3200U-1I72 2TB Already had 2x8GB of ddr3 that I couldn't use on my current setup because, fuck if I know. It works on others just not my current board. Now I am trying to figure out what to put on the CPU besides the stock fan which is reported to be as fine but, I want something a bit better. I wonder if my current noctua would fit on it.
There were several factors, they may not be good reasons but, nonetheless... I thought it over and the thought of getting another intel really pissed me off. I bought my current cpu(intell Q6600) several years ago... its still the same fucking price since then. Fuck you intel for not lowering prices of old ass shit. I originally was just going to upgrade the cpu on this MB but, noOOOoo it costs a fucking arm and leg to buy shit 6 years old. Go look up old amd prices... stuffs got low ass prices. Price per compute power. Upgrade ability(sort of the same as above). I can buy 2-3 amd cpu's for same price as 1 intel cpu. Thus I can buy this cpu now even though its not top of the line and upgrade to another that is closer to the top of the line later(unless they no longer use am3+) and still pay less then then one intel cpu. I consider intel as gamer enthusiast(aka rich people with cash burning holes in their pockets like trickster? Or people saving up for a long time to buy. Should a computer need a loan like a car??) equipment. Low wattage for its compute power. Nice and cool room is nice and cool room.
That's because you're trying to buy CPUs for a socket that is no longer in production. Because it's more than 6 years old. They haven't lowered the price because they don't set it any more, it's just a case of there not being a supply any more.
:eek: how did you know are YOU a wizard too ? Also amd setups are fine for most needs, not only cpus but motherboards are often a lot cheaper too so you can get a cheap setup or just upgrade more often for the same money. For the most part the new ones are also more energy efficient so even more cash saved for the next build. Might have changed with the newest generations I dont really follow the development any more. Ofcourse im running intel because I needed massive power for some programs at the time I build it. I always enjoyed having some more cash for after market cooling bolting on some cooling block monstrosity was always fun. Filling strange liquids on the water cooling system with syringes. cutting hoses, fitting Hard drive bays with heatpipes and shit. I wanted to cast a huge passive cooling tower in aluminium where you would bolt on the motherboard to the cooler because it would be more than 50kg. Never got it done and now I dont really have the enthusiasm or energy to do shit anymore. Also cant seems to find joy in any games for long everything just seems so bad. I cant even think of a single title im looking forward to.
For JGF's build, I grabbed a $200 3220 mobo-ram bundle. That 3220 will run circles around any CPU for LGA775 (and that's part of the reason why I suggested it...). It's a bad idea to upgrade your CPU only. Starting at Haswell, Intel is expected to start selling some socketed CPU-mobo combos. At Broadwell, they will only sell socketed CPU-mobo combos for every Tick moving forward. Everyone is up in arms about it, but it's really not a big deal.
LMAO. Not gonna say my 2009 775-build is still very on a par with most current i7-3xxx builds, but the C2Q 9550 @ 3.4 takes a dump on most first gen i-5 cpus. You can't generalize the performance of socket 775 stuff. It had P4's, C2solo, C2D, shitty C2Q q6600 and the brave q9650. I'll wait for haswell.
Laugh at actual facts. If we equalize cores and clocks, Ivy Bridge destroys Penryn. Once we double the Penryn's cores, we see that the 3220 really does have trouble keeping up, but only on these very CPU-intensive workloads. Most of these tasks are performed with a GPU in a realistic setting. Where are the benchmarks for realistic workloads? Gaming playthroughs? Browser timeruns? General usage? For quite some time, it's commonly known that these most common tasks no longer stress the CPU. That's why you can get by with a <2GHz dual core CPU in an ultraportable sipping less than 20W. But where can we find benchmarks for gaming, browsing and general usage? Why GPU and SSD reviews! That's why a gamer needs to worry more about his SSD and his GPU than his CPU. Picking the right GPU and SSD have the most influence on the tasks that a gamer will do, not the CPU.
Honestly I didn't expect this much good information. My primary reason for just buying off the shelf is my desire to not buy mismatch components. Maybe things match better now but I do remember the days when everything had to match perfectly or you toss parts that just don't fit. I'll price out quality components taken mostly from this thread, and list them. Right now the only games I play are Empires and occasional Left For Dead. But that is mostly due to them working well with my dual core 1.8Ghz laptop. Other games I've tried run like crap due to the low performance video card. Video - would be HD 1080P, dual monitor - one is a 4x5 of lower resolution. But maybe I'll get dual 21" 1080P monitors. Do any of the new display cards support three monitors ? I do know CPU performance is not as important at video card performance for gamers. I like quad core since I tend to have ten things open at one time. Although during gaming I'd shut them down. I don't need a flashy case but think the Terrarium is cool. Next two days I spend on TAXES, so I'll start digging in next week. JGF
The Q6600 was an awesome CPU, first quad-core for the masses and 20% overclock without problems. Fucking q9650 snobs...
There are too many free resources (i.e. us) to mismatch a build. Modern GPUs can drive three monitors, but they would have to be the same resolution (i.e. 1080p) if you wanted to use them all at once in a game. This may be tough to answer, but do you have any ideas about the games you would like to play? If you want to play Crysis 3 on three 1080p displays, then you're absolutely going to have to spend every cent of that $1500 budget on a parts to put together an appropriate machine. For that money, you cannot buy a boutique machine that could provide satisfactory performance in that situation. But if you're a little less ambitious, then there's wiggle room. A ~$300 GPU could definitely pump out Empires and many modern games at respectable quality across three 1080p monitors. You also need to watch out for the select few CPU-intensive games out there. Most of these are strategy games like Civilization or Starcraft. However, the few nature of the pacing of these games means that frame rates don't really matter. Windows is pretty good at this kind of thing. A properly behaved idle application will sit in RAM, but shouldn't consume many CPU cycles. I hate falling back to personal stories, but I always run Empires at 1280x720 on a 9400M with Chrome and Office in the background. Chrome will swallow plenty of RAM, but no cycles from the CPU. Once more, the reason that I have to share personal experience instead of empirical evidence is because no one cares enough to measure this stuff. Reviewers already know that the CPU just doesn't get stressed by most games and general usage so they won't waste their time benchmarking it. If that isn't convincing for you, you can look at timelines for CPUs. In the next few years, integrated GPU performance will absolutely skyrocket. The <$100 GPU market will not exist. What about the CPU part? Get cuddly with four cores because it's staying like that for a while. Intel & AMD aren't pushing many-core CPUs in their roadmaps because users just don't need them. CPU requirements have topped out.
Intel at least has been improving peak FP performance with Sandy Bridge (256-bit) and Haswell (FMA) (so that's a 4x theoretical peak increase) instead of adding more cores to get to the same FP performance plus (I assume) more overall performance.
Spartacus - great contribution of information - thank you ! Awesome video setup. I think I would run one monitor for gaming - and maybe upto 32". Is anyone running large monitors. There is a cheap 60hz 40" 1080p monitor on sale - but that may be too big. I don't want to have to move feet aware from the monitor. I currently run dual monitors - but only one for the game. The drawback is that if I click off the game monitor, my game minimizes, which happens to me all the time during the game - costing me upto 30 seconds getting back. I may switch to single monitor when gaming - but something bigger than my current 20". You guys have convinced me to build a system. I'll post here with results and peer review what I think I have learned and issues I run into. This may help others who want to build a system. This is already a great resource for information. Keep it coming. What I'll need to do is break down the components and decide what is good and should be avoided. Like I said I do like ASUS, but what about: Case, CPU Fan - should this come with the CPU? I used to toss those and buy a better fan. Way back when guys were experimenting with water cooling. What is happening now? Video card - this thread did address that - anywhere from a 670-690. But what about the other video processors - any worth considering ? Motherboard ? Back when I knew about this shit, NVideo was king and was making NFORCE motherboards which had a fairly decent video processor built in. Does this happen anymore ? Should I expect a plug in video board ? Also video sockets used to be different - AGP, PCI Express, ... What is happening now ? Hard drive is easy - not much has changed there. I'll just re-use the internal terabyte drive, and the external USB 3 - three terabyte drive. MICE - any innovation ? What is preferred or is a regular USB mouse OK ? What am I missing ? Six months ago I knew nothing about GPU's or shader cores and how video cards worked. I know a tiny bit more since at my job, I'm team lead on a new project and I am helping choose the hardware for that new device. So I've been invited to meetings with video and processor component manufacturers to see what will be here within one to two years. Amazing shit is coming. The focus is on going lower power, higher performance to enable tablets to run longer with better performance. More processing done on multiple cores - some 256 cores, and multiple shader cores for special effects. Imagine splitting the screen up into 256 segments with one processor working on only one segments. All of a sudden huge images are managed easier. They have gotten processor size down and using lower power. Just freaking amazing shit is happening in GPU land. Some of the cool stuff will only see tablets since you need to be up in the 10 million unit area before they would even consider selling those processors to you. JustGoBuildItAndIWillCum
I'm sure Spartacus can add much more to this conversation AMD's 7950, 7970, and 7970 GE have as good or better performance and price/performance than the 670 and 680 AFAIK (I don't know about any recent price drops) and from what I've heard, also overclock better. Bandwidth isn't everything, but the 384-bit bus of the 7900s gives more bandwidth over the 256-bit bus of the 670/680, 7950: 240 GB/s, 7970: 264 GB/s, 7970 GE: 288 GB/s 670: 192 GB/s, 680: 192 GB/s which benefits at least the 7970s in some games (like Crysis). However the 7970s seem to use more power at load than the 680. Also if you're considering a 690, it's probably worth considering a Titan too. Same price, lower performance, but more consistent performance since it's a single GPU instead of SLI. PCI Express has moved to revision 3.0.
Arguably the Hard Drive has undergone the biggest change in the last few years. Anyone in their right mind runs their core OS and games on an SSD. I don't mean to be rude but some of the questions you're asking at this stage should maybe act as an indicator that building your system yourself might not be the greatest idea.
