Happy Day, and a question for the puter/IT/gamer geeks

[bubbleheadchief]

Got word my retirement request was approved, Jan 11. AND I got my final uniform allowance (which I obviously don't need to buy uniforms with) so I got the okay to buy/build a new puter from the wife....any suggestions as far as chip/vid card? I am more than likely going AMD just dont know if I should go with phenom II quad or hexa...I am thinking quad as X6 is so new, just dont know which quad to get.

 

[supraman]

Sorry dont know crap about ATI boards. Love Nvidia though, my board went bad and i had to replace it yesterday 470 GTX !!

 

[TSD]

How much do you have to spend and I will get back to you.

 

[LordKOTL]

The question always begets--what are you going to use it for.



Gaming Rig? Yes, get the best fastest hardware you can.



Media Center--go light on the processor/Video card and spend your money on disk/storage--the average HD hockey game takes about 18GB/game if recorded and with a couple of Terabytes of space you could have a nice video library at your fingertips.



As for which graphics card--if you're going with a media center, I'd err towards ATi/AMD. A lot of their video cards come with a sound processor onboard and directly pipe out audio directly over HDMI. Nvidia's cards requide a SPDIF cable passthrough from the sound card/onboard sound to piggyback it onto the HDMI out.

 

[bubbleheadchief]

[quote name="TSD"]How much do you have to spend and I will get back to you.[/quote]

I'm looking to spend about $750

 

[supraman]

[quote name="bubbleheadchief"]

I'm looking to spend about $750[/quote]



If that is the case, find a card that costs 500 dollars and buy it. You'll be happy with it 500 seems to be the price for new top of the line cards.



with the extra 250 buy some games and enjoy

 

[canucklehead]

[quote name="supraman"]



If that is the case, find a card that costs 500 dollars and buy it. You'll be happy with it 500 seems to be the price for new top of the line cards.



with the extra 250 buy some games and enjoy[/quote]

he want's a full comp... not just a card.

 

[bubbleheadchief]

[quote name="canucklehead"]

he want's a full comp... not just a card.[/quote]

I actually have several set-ups at about 750....full computer....just unsure which if I rather go with the quad or hexa chip...leaning towwards thre Phenom II quad, and the only other tru issue is the card.....reight now looking at a evga 250 GTS, 1 G

 

[LordKOTL]

[quote name="bubbleheadchief"]

I actually have several set-ups at about 750....full computer....just unsure which if I rather go with the quad or hexa chip...leaning towwards thre Phenom II quad, and the only other tru issue is the card.....reight now looking at a evga 250 GTS, 1 G[/quote]

In all honesty, until programs are coded to *really* take advantage of parallel computing, I'd stick with the quad core. That should be enough for even the ,most serious gamer's needs.

 

[supraman]

[quote name="canucklehead"]

he want's a full comp... not just a card.[/quote]



whoops misread. My bad.

 

[bubbleheadchief]

No biggy, was just thinking, If I had $750 to spend on a video card, why the hell would I worry about the rest of it???????

 

[TSD]

[quote name="bubbleheadchief"]No biggy, was just thinking, If I had $750 to spend on a video card, why the hell would I worry about the rest of it??????? [/quote]





do you just need the box? or do you need the monitor keyboard bla bla?

 

[BiscuitintheBasket]

[quote name="bubbleheadchief"]Got word my retirement request was approved, Jan 11. AND I got my final uniform allowance (which I obviously don't need to buy uniforms with) so I got the okay to buy/build a new puter from the wife....any suggestions as far as chip/vid card? I am more than likely going AMD just dont know if I should go with phenom II quad or hexa...I am thinking quad as X6 is so new, just dont know which quad to get.[/quote]





From the benchmarking that we were doing in June (to help determine what we want to purchase for fall), I would recommend going with an Intel proc that is similarly price (or even ~$50 more), that the AMD you would be thinking about. Not that I have anything against AMD, but right now, the bang for buck is fully in Intel's court...and that is not always true.

 

[BiscuitintheBasket]

On and congrats on the retirement. On January 12th, 2011 you will be able to look at Porn on the interwebs during the day and not worry about an Article 15 (or whatever you squids call it).

 

[jakobeast]

Yeah, congrats on the retirement. I thank you for your service, and will thank you again in January, and anytime you want it.

 

[Ymono37]

[quote name="jakobeast"]Yeah, congrats on the retirement. I thank you for your service, and will thank you again in January, and anytime you want it.[/quote]



He means, "orally."

 

[bubbleheadchief]

[quote name="Ymono37"]



He means, "orally."[/quote]

Okay....how did I know it would be you going there?

 

[Ymono37]

[quote name="bubbleheadchief"]Okay....how did I know it would be you going there?[/quote]

Because... I've... been... there?







Seriously though, congrats on the retirement. It's something I don't think my generation will get!

 

[roshinaya]

Go with the component that gives the best bang for the buck right now. Future-proofing is useless and buying the most expensive GPU card is isn't always the best option as the odds are that newer future ones will be cheaper and better than the expensive card you buy now. AMD is a good choice if you are on a budget, but I'd go with a Intel i5 750 or 760. The Intel's are good on synthetic benchmarks but in the end there is little difference in the real world between an Intel and a cheaper AMD.



Right now getting a CPU with a 6 cores is overkill as the most cores used by games today are 2 or 3 and by the time you need 6 cores there will be much better CPUs available. 4gb of RAM is also sufficient and the speed of it isn't that important in the real world.



As a GPU I'd recommend the NVIDIA GTX 460 1GB card, which currently offers the best bang for the buck, what brand doesn't really matter, but the Gigabyte version of it has gotten good talk, is quiet and cool. The other NVIDIA cards using the Fermi architecture are notorious power hogs and can double as space heaters. What GPU you should get depends on what resolution you will play in. The GTX 460 is good enough for playing in 1920x1080 (HD).

If you are buying a whole new case make sure to have a quality PSU. Corsair, Seasonic and the Earthwatts units that usually come with Antec cases are all known to be good brands. A shitty PSU is the only component that could fry your whole system.



I recently got myself a new gaming rig with a AMD Athlon II x3 440, GTX 460 1GB and 4GB RAM and it runs games (granted, I am a few years behind, so I am talking about games such as Bioshock, Mass Effect 1 and 2) fine with full resolution and high settings.

 

[TSD]

AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core

139.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103809



ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO/U3S6 AM3 AMD 785G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

109.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131627



Sunbeam AC-9B-HUVB Blue Clear Acrylic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

79.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811166032

(case is a personal choice, but there are plenty of good options in the 50-100 dollars range, and a completely clear case like this one is fucking pimp).



ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm Fluid Dynamic CPU Cooler

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

35.98

(I have revision 1 on my core2 system, works great, no issues in 4 years) Stock CPU fans are barely adequate.



CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified PSU (may not need this much wattage, but corsair is a great PSU brand)

109.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139006



Crucial 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model CT3KIT25664BA1067

140.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820148246

(matter of taste and what you want, ive used both basic crucial ram, which is great as well as performance ram like the corsair dominator sticks in my current PC, I honestly couldnt tell you a difference) the board supports 800/1066/1333 DDR3 ram so the amount/speed is personal tase, doubt you would see a difference in 1066/1333. DDR3 is triple channel, so you want to have at least 3gb, distrubute evenly into the triple channel slots.





XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

169.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150447



Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive

69.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148374



LG DVD-RW

17.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827136180

(things are so cheap right now doesnt really matter)







Total 855.91



Overspent by a 100 bucks. but you could probably downgrade the Proc/Mboard/PSU probably dont need 6gb ram, I wouldnt skimp too much on the video card. Also, if you do more digging for deals, you can probably shave 100 bucks off the cost.



and I dont know what you already have and intend to salvage from your old system (HDD's, DVD-rw, case, windows etc)