Best High End for January

Shadow133

Shadow133

New Member
Hope this helps other people looking for parts on January.

I have a quite good computer with 2x 8800GTX SLI, C2D E8400, 8Gb DD2 ram etc. But since my setup is already 3 years old (and I didn’t spent any significant money on computers since then) I begun searching for new technologies to see just how far I can go by updating my setup.

Budget ~$2.800,00

I estimate to go shopping mid January.

Here is where I got so far:
BD-ROM
Lite-On iHOS104 BD-ROM
Cooler
Corsair H50 CPU Cooler
CPU
i7 960 or i7 920???
GPU
ATI Radeon HD5970 or wait for Geforce 300 series???
MB
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD7
PSU
PC Power and Cooling T12W or Antec TPQ-1200 or ???
Sound
Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional
SSD Drive
Corsair P128

1)Should I go with Intel i7 960 or i7 920?


2)Geforce GTX295, ATI HD5970 or other?



I personally don’t like ATi (bad experience in past, great experience with my Nvidia 8800). But the difference in performance btw the GTX295 and HD5970 appears to be brutal. However there are no information about when Nvidia’s next series will arrive in stores neither how much will it cost. Should I wait for the next Geforce series or go with ATi?


3)Bearing in mind that sometime I may buy another card (GTX295 or HD5970 or G300) I need a psu to support them in SLi. I am particularly interested in these two psu (PCP&C T12W and Antec TPQ-1200), there is a significant $300 price difference. Anyone can vouch for any of these or suggest another?


4)With the new PCIe 3.0 coming in Q2 2010, anyone risk a guess if this setup will be enough to play games in high resolution for the next 2~3 years?


Thanks!
 
The GT300 series is expected sometime around January-Februaury but I don't think there are any confirmed dates out yet. If you going to be buying in mid-Jan hold off a few more weeks and see if it comes out.

You'll get plenty performance already from any of those cards (The 295 and 5970). I don't see why you would need to go any higher than that. In fact, your current setup looks pretty powerful already.

i7 920 > i7 960
 
If your having someone build your pc go with the i7 960 since there probably gonna lock bios if not go with the 920 and overclock it.
 
If were you I would look at the Core i5 750 Processor over the Core i7 series. The Core i5 is presently $80 less expensive than the i7 920 and it is a very powerful processor. The Core i7 960 is way overpriced and not worth buying at all.

Intel Core i5 750 Lynnfield (2.66 gigahertz) Quad-Core Processor - $200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...5215&cm_re=Core_i5_750-_-19-115-215-_-Product

Here is a motherboard that will work with the Core i5 750:

GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3 Motherboard - $135
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...otherboard_Socket_1156-_-13-128-412-_-Product

Also take a look at the below Intel Solid State Drive. It has read speeds of over 200 megabytes per second:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10010790
 
The place I live in is a bit hot (70F avg, sometimes reaching 92F!), so not ideal to overclock a brand new cpu (even if it's water cooled). But I think I can squeeze in more RAM and a better CPU if I go with i5 750 or i7 920.

So, if instead of waiting for Nvidia's next technology I go ahead and buy a P55 mb and keep mine 8800's for a bit longer.

Will the new GT300 series be compatible with my board? Anyone have any idea of what kind of technology it will use (perhaps PCIe 3.0)?

And PSU, any tips?
 
PSU definately corsair
signature_smiley1.jpg
you cant go wrong!
 
Bodaggit23 said:
$2,800 budget, you don't have to "squeeze" anything.

Why would you "limit" yourself to a P55 chipset, rather than getting an X58?
Click to expand...

Why you say limit? Is there a drastic limitation in P55 chipset?

The Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3, for example, appears to support 16Gb 2200 Ram, USB 3.0, SATA 6 etc, (almost) same as the GA-X58A-UD7. The only thing I am unsure is about the SLi performance, and I plan to use SLi (two GPU's).

Otherwise, the performance difference between the two appears to be from 2~7% (tested here).

If you know about any limitations, please let me know, that's what I am looking for.

Thanks for the processor and psu tips. I will look deeper into that this weekend.
 
Shadow133 said:
Why you say limit?
Click to expand...

Because the P55 chipset is limited to 16 lanes of PCI-Express.

If you're not a gamer, there's no issue, and a single slot P55 board will be fine.

But if you ever want to run two graphics cards, you'll be limited to 8x/8x and some P55 boards don't even do that, they run the second card at 4x.


That's what I mean by "limiting".

Also, the P55 boards only run Dual Channel memory, where the X58 run Triple.
Not a limiting factor really, but still a factor. IMO.
 
Got it! Also, I also heard Intel is likely to launch another batch of processors Q2 2010 (gulftown) that will be compatible with 1366 boards. But the fact that X58 is better for Sli is enough to change my path back to i7.
So I guess I will try to get the best X58 mb available (with USB 3.0), a good 900W+ psu, DDR3 2200 ram and a i7 920 or similar 1366 processor. I will keep my two 8800GTX until next Nvidia series.
This way I can upgrade the cpu again in 2011 if I want and wait for the best GPU available this year.
 
Shadow133 said:
Got it! Also, I also heard Intel is likely to launch another batch of processors Q2 2010 (gulftown) that will be compatible with 1366 boards. But the fact that X58 is better for Sli is enough to change my path back to i7.
So I guess I will try to get the best X58 mb available (with USB 3.0), a good 900W+ psu, DDR3 2200 ram and a i7 920 or similar 1366 processor. I will keep my two 8800GTX until next Nvidia series.
This way I can upgrade the cpu again in 2011 if I want and wait for the best GPU available this year.
Click to expand...

I think you're on the right track. :good:

Here's an article about Gulftown:
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Six-core_Intel_Gulftown_is_now_Core_i7_980X/551-108131-581.html
 
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