In about a month I'm looking at a new PC

[sithdemon]

So I started working here about a month ago. and in a month I should have enough to blow on the new guts of a PC

http://www.canadacomputers.com/

it was hard enough not to buy as one of their customers, now I'm staring down the vidcard section everyday, I've sold 7900s and 7950s (yes even 2 at a time), like they were hotcakes on the side of the road, during rush hour. This is mostly due to oblivion.

So what I need is defenetly 5 parts.

CPU,RAM,MOBO, 1 Vidcard (for now), power supply.  

I'm going to get a hard drive at some point, perhaps with these, but it'll be the extra treat if I do. plus I figure I'll need to format when I get this stuff anyways. plus we have these perpendicular drives, that apparently access data faster.

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=010282&cid=HD.96

money wise I know It'll be about a thousand or more. My only problem is I'm not totally sure what to go with. I'm not brand loyal, but I like reliability, and fairly cheap prices for performance.

by sept the conroes will be out, but intel motherboard selection is ass. however they finally have SLI and crossfire. AMDs, have been slashed so much so that picking one up would save money, that I could blow on other parts (namely vidcard).

SLI or Crossfire? SLI seems to offer a bit more performace, however crossfire means I don't need to worry about getting the same card. and AMD bought, ATI, so will crossfire get some performance boost on amd boards? or will both mature and keep pushing up power, while intel flounders on chipset improvments?

So I'm looking for suggestions, benchmarks are nice, but personal experience is better. I'm not brand loyal, but I am used to AMDs, asus motherboards, and nvidia cards at this point, but a strong argument could swing me another way.

[RedTornado]

Seeing as how AMD's rival to Intel's latest won't be coming out for another 6 months, I suggest going Conroe. Crossfire does not gain or loose performance on AMD/Intel because of the merge between AMD and ATI. If anything, Crossfire is in favor of Intel simply because before the AMD:ATI deal, ATI and Intel were good buddies. ATI's RD600 will be the last ATI chipset for Intel for years. After that, ATI chipsets will be AMD exclusive...but that's not to say Crossfire won't run on Intel boards. Intel has great chipsets that can run both Crossfire and SLI...despite the fact that one (or both) might not be officially supported.

By September, when the Core 2 Duo's are more readily available and you're ready to buy, the motherboard selection will no doubt be much more acceptable.

So....I suggest something along these lines:

-Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
-A motherboard utilizing the Intel 975x, ATI RD600, or nVIDIA 590 Intel Edition chipsets. We can give you a more definate answer as to which chipset will be the winner as the time to buy draws nearer
-I've had both a 7800GT and I currently have an X1900XT and have used both nVIDIA and ATI. In my personal experiences, I prefer ATI over nVIDIA. The X1900XT can be BIOS flashed to an XTX...so it provides more bang for the buck, if you ask me. nVIDIA tends to have better raw frame rates per clock, but ATI has better image quality.
-For RAM, you going to need DDR2. Corsair is the leader in that. I'm not recommending them because of their reputation as a good RAM manufacturer, there are more of those (OCZ, Mushkin, G.Skill, Buffalo, TeamXtreem, etc.). Corsair was the first that started developing DDR2 and now it shows. However, as a specific part, I recommend the G.Skill 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 "HZ". For 2GB the price can't be beat..

[MindlessOath]

the conroe is great, however intell only turned its side over a slight tad, but they are still the same crap place... they just did something good, i doubt it will last.

the conroe is good, but its not exactly GREAT for games.  hell its not bad, but if you look at www.hardocp.com they suggest its about the same for the amd in games as it is for intel.  

they dont try and see how CPU dependent the tests were so we dont have the 100% full story, but from what you can see they are dead even, meaning TAKE THE CHEAPEST of the two. conroe should me more expensive and amd is making price cuts left and right.

nvidia/ati, i dont friggen care anymore, that is until vista comes out and ati release there new R600 which SHOULD blow nvidia out of the water ten fold.

with amd and ATI connected now (just about) it would be fortune to go with them, however there current lineup is still just amd and ati as seperate compaines.

nvidia is evil in my opinion, i hate jen husin or whatever his name is, evil!

[sithdemon]

Thanks mindless, I'm glad to see that in game performance on the conroes isn't the be all and end all. Though if they are cheap enough it might be interesting, however aside from the AMD Athlon 64 FX-62, all the AM2s, are pretty damn cheap, already. Well I can't wait for vista or a R600, though it might be nice to have a motherboard that can handle a good dx10 card. Also I realise ATI has slightly better image quality, however when the frames suffer, it means turning off or scaling down options. Nvidia cards are frame rate monsters, which counts alot more in a multiplayer game, where your only seeing the game world as a blur.

Red tornado- see the lack or real strong support of sli and crossfire being gone is why I'm probably not getting a intel board. These guys charge a royalty to amd and nvidia to put chipsets on their boards, and now that ATI is part of AMD, I don't see a bright future for intel chipsets, unless nvidia decides to ditch AMD, and just make intel chipsets. But from what I've seen at the store, there are 10X as many AMD sli boards options, and they move damn quick. So I think Nvidia will be sticking more to AMD for now, as long as it gets treated fairly compared to crossfire.

Also whats a good power supply, one customer told me that antec true power is the way to go, because the watts are constant. However the max its offered in is 550 from my store, while the ocz game stream comes in 600w and 700w.

[MindlessOath]

i like OCZ and pc power and cooling.  i dont recomend anything else.  however i seen good reviews from antec neo power (i belive thats what its called) but i never heard of any good reliable reports from antec.  

wattage isnt any major advantage... if your using sli or crossfire then up the wattage abit. but the antec should be suffeciant for any system.  the more stuff you add the more watts you need, but the major deciding factor is the quality and strength of the psu - so go with something better if possible.

nvidia seems to be still telling developers to use FP16 which is faster but doesnt look as good.  thats the main reason of nvidia's blistering fast speeds and less quality.  

for vista ready the new chart they have made is basically get a lot of memory and a really good grfx card... so if you have pci-express on your motherboard and upgrade to a new grfx card later.  get a gig of memory and buy annother gig later. etc. the gfix card has to produce hdmi signal and decode the highest hdtv signal 1080p or something.

intel has sli but its not worth it. amd has sli and crossfire. intell has crossfire and the new ATI RD600 chipset (this is the motherboard chipset - not the video card chip). seems to rock the boat!  so if you want to go with intel, get that new chip and a crossfire setup (hell just get one card and upgrade to annother one later on) and you would be good.

if you want nvidia for sure - then of course AMD is the only choice (wise choice!).

[Lazerblade]

AMD is the most obvious choice for raw power when it comes to gaming. And considering the software that the average consumer uses, I'd stick with them. If you're doing post-production work or looking to run a rendering farm for video processing, Intel may be the way to go but for the cost your performance increase will be minimal. nVidia used to be my vidcard of choice as well- I shunned ATI due to reviews and user input. This opinion was skewed by loyalty, as I can now see, because now I run an ATI and am very happy with the performance and support.

By the end of the year 2GB of RAM will be the standard for gaming. If you're going to skimp anywhere, don't let it be on RAM. More games perform better with the RAM boost than with a mere CPU boost.

In my opinion, getting the fastest AMD CPU you can afford AFTER you've picked up 2GB of DDR2 and at least 1 screaming vidcard, a mobo that supports dual vidcards, and a minimum of 500W PSU, is your best bet. You may want to consider dual SCSI with RAID support as well, for faster loading and virtual RAM boosts. Your optical drives are transferrable, and until Blu-Ray becomes a must I wouldn't dump any cash into a newer or faster burner. I'm not quite up on brand names, but I do rely on tomshardware.com and various gaming magazines to tell me what performs best against what.

Good luck, and make sure you keep us posted.

[MindlessOath]

ya, he suggests hdd... if your going to be gaming, DONT skimp on this at all. size isnt everything! get serial ata for sure for any of the hdd's you use! dont transfer your old IDE's over - mabe for a file backup or something, but dont use them for games or system!

i suggest a RAPTOR, i have seen its might and it IS very powerfull.  i have used lots of scsi drives too, and they are great too, SCSI160 or SCSI320 but the problem with these is that the raptor costs less and gives the same performance for the everyday tasks your going to do, plus the scsi card and or motherboard with the scsi will cost a butt load more.

raid honestly isnt something most people should deal with unless its scsi raid, so make sure you know that the onboard raid (IDE and SATA) is just marketing ploy, they just use cheap codec chips to do this job and its less performing than most.

[RedTornado]

Yeah no problem sithdemon. I think you should re-evaluate your perspective about Intel chipsets though. they can run both crossfire and sli and all Intel world records are achieved on Intel chipsets.

Now I understand if you don't agree with my suggestions. I am a bencher, so I go after what gets great bench scores and esspecially what has the best overclocking potential. I love to overclock. I've used dry ice many times to overclock...as well as phase change (basically a refridgerator), H2O, and air. My next project is to get liquid nitrogen. I review hardware for an internet review site and I've held the world record for a single X1800XL on a single core Intel processor in 3D Mark 06 (i'm not sure if that record is still holding, as I've moved on).

So anyway, I can see why you'd disagree that my suggestions are the best ones for you. I look at computers in a different light besides a money pit.

[sithdemon]

Red tornado- I think I'm just a little bias towards AMD, especially because they don't make ATI or Nvidia pay to make their chipsets. their boards are also newer to the whole SLI and crossfire game, so I have some doubts. Plus if I do go ATI, there's no questions about going AMD, especially in the long run. And if I go Nvidia, I'm going to want to see a FEW Sli/core duo boards before I get into the whole conroe fiasco.

lazer dka- Oh I already have 1.5 gigs of DDR 400. if I had a better vidcard I would have put more in, 2 gigs is already the standard, with higher settings for doom 3 based games, BF2, and oblivion.

Mindless- I might get a raptor drive, though with enough ram, and a 16 meg cache, and perpendicular SATA2 drive, I don't think the odd time it needs virtual memory, will totally kill my frames.

[MindlessOath]

ohh i dont think it will kill frames at all... but you will notice a huge differnce.  

perpendicualr drives also dont perform to much better than the regular drives, just so ya know.  they are only slightly better.  but it does help and SATA2 is great aswell.

new amd and intel systems both run DDR2 just a FYI.  more bandwidth but also with that there is more latency and latency is bad, it seems to improve the amd systems at the same speeds only by about 5% to 10% at the most.

[sithdemon]

Oh I'm aware of DDR2, I'm aware that I can't get a 800mhz stick on it's own, and matched pairs start at $300 cnd.

I'm also aware that we just recived our core duo 2 stock, and are selling it soon.

[Aramis]

So....I suggest something along these lines:

-Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
-A motherboard utilizing the Intel 975x, ATI RD600, or nVIDIA 590 Intel Edition chipsets. We can give you a more definate answer as to which chipset will be the winner as the time to buy draws nearer
-I've had both a 7800GT and I currently have an X1900XT and have used both nVIDIA and ATI. In my personal experiences, I prefer ATI over nVIDIA. The X1900XT can be BIOS flashed to an XTX...so it provides more bang for the buck, if you ask me. nVIDIA tends to have better raw frame rates per clock, but ATI has better image quality.
-For RAM, you going to need DDR2. Corsair is the leader in that. I'm not recommending them because of their reputation as a good RAM manufacturer, there are more of those (OCZ, Mushkin, G.Skill, Buffalo, TeamXtreem, etc.). Corsair was the first that started developing DDR2 and now it shows. However, as a specific part, I recommend the G.Skill 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 "HZ". For 2GB the price can't be beat..

I'd actually go with the E6300. Less cache, lower processor speed, and you save about $100 (U.S.) The cache difference has been shown to thus far offer a whopping 3% at same clock speeds. Price/performance ratio starts slipping there.

Going with a mobo now would be the Intel 975. They have more features and such for overclocking. Waiting would be the nVidia.

Vidcard- I'd only go Crossfire/SLI if you're gaming at over 1280x1024. Most single-card solutions can handle that now. SLI is the way I'd go if I were to build a multi-gpu pc (and this is coming from someone that's had ATI for years). ATI's Crossfire requires a very expensive Crossfire edition card. It's not as good a solution as it looks.

I have a Dell 2007WFP (20" widescreen LCD) that I'm going to eventually go SLI with because the native resolution is 1680 x 1050. If you don't have that kind of situation, I wouldn't recommend it. Add to that good old Direct X 10 is down the line, and spending a ton of $ on multi gpu's begins to be a waste.

Ram? Eh, I've always liked Corsair. It works in all my builds, it works well, and it has good timings. I would definitely look at 2 gigs matched (1gig x 2) to run in dual-channel and of course with Conroe you'll need DDR2.

I can say all this because I've been watching the market pretty closely myself.

*edit* Matched pairs at $300?!? You don't have to go top-end with Conroe. It's been shown to do pretty well with lower speed ram than the 800. Of course, if you're going to overclock, get that, but otherwise you can go 667 or whatever.


Also, hate to tell all you AMD fan-boys, but it's pretty established that Intel's Core 2 Duo takes all performance crowns, including price/performance. Search Tom's, Hardocp, or whatever your favorite is and you can see the benchies. Now, with AMD's price-slashing there's some good treasures there, but I would only go that route if I already had the mobo and ram to go there. To suggest AMD for a NEW build is just holding on to old beliefs.

There's no doubt that AMD held the gaming crown, but that has changed. I'm sure it'll change again, but if you're building now, go Conroe.

[Aramis]

the conroe is great, however intell only turned its side over a slight tad, but they are still the same crap place... they just did something good, i doubt it will last.

the conroe is good, but its not exactly GREAT for games.  hell its not bad, but if you look at www.hardocp.com they suggest its about the same for the amd in games as it is for intel.  

they dont try and see how CPU dependent the tests were so we dont have the 100% full story, but from what you can see they are dead even, meaning TAKE THE CHEAPEST of the two. conroe should me more expensive and amd is making price cuts left and right.

nvidia/ati, i dont friggen care anymore, that is until vista comes out and ati release there new R600 which SHOULD blow nvidia out of the water ten fold.

with amd and ATI connected now (just about) it would be fortune to go with them, however there current lineup is still just amd and ati as seperate compaines.

nvidia is evil in my opinion, i hate jen husin or whatever his name is, evil!

Hardocp's tests were a really poor way of looking at the Conroe chip. They're not cpu-bound tests. Since they're bound by the gpu, of course they're all about even. Hell I could throw a p3 in the mix and it'd come out the same.

Also, the E6300 is only about $199 US right now, and it should drop in the coming weeks. Seeing as how it outperforms AMD's top-end in some benchies, you're definitely looking at a good processor there.

I will agree that hardocp's tests are good for one thing- if you look at what you CURRENTLY have, it may not make sense to upgrade. However, that will change as games get more demanding and gpu's advance (dx10). I lost a lot of respect for the manner in which hardocp dropped that story- they made themselves look really foolish and one-sided. I still visit the site every day, but I take what they say with a grain of salt.

[RedTornado]

Going with a mobo now would be the Intel 975. They have more features and such for overclocking. Waiting would be the nVidia.

The 965 is a good chipset too and all the 975 boards are over $200 (except the MSI on ewiz.com, but it's BIOS is EXTREMELY buggy at the moment). Even some ASRock boards are doing pretty well and will be sufficient for non-overclockers.

ATI's RD600 is more anticipated than nVIDIA's 570/590 SLI Intel Edition. Supposedly, it's overclocking optimized and some previews have displayed a bit of what's to come...

G.Skill's PC2-6400 HZ is fantastic RAM and 2GB of it goes for $235 on newegg...a very decent price for the performance/potential (at least when overclocking). The TeamXtreem PC2-5300 on tankguys.biz for $257 is also a very prime candidate for overclocking at a modest price.

I agree with you about [H] tests too, btw. I've seen better ones.

ATI is releasing their R580+ GPU (X1950XTX) in a couple of weeks. Shamino of VR-Zone posted a pre-NDA review that I got to read before it was taken down. It was beating the nVIDIA 7950GX2 in every test except 3D Mark...but you don't game on 3D Mark (except 06...haha) so it doesn't really matter. The GDDR4 at 1000mhz (2000mhz...2GHz effective) really makes a difference! I'd highly recommend waiting for it to release. It also has a new cooler that is quieter than ATI's latest on the X1900's.

[MindlessOath]

huh? hardocp tests with real world performance, what your going to see in the test. if you see something wrong in that, then its kind of WEIRD.

i could see if someone else was doing what they were doing and comming up with differnt results, but how can you go wrong with what they are doing?  they come up with what YOU will see in games.  its not a buncha bullshit synthetic tests which tell you a buncha possible outcomes that you MAy or maynot see.

real world benchmarking is the way to go. sorry, but i know its differnt but people are going to have to see how much sense it makes and the old ways are out the door, no more 3dmark junk.

and ya, i think conroe is good, i still dont like intel as a compainy but they have a good chip on hand and i would buy it!  but right now im not going to. and if i had an amd - it wouldnt be to far behind, your talking about minimal gains unless your doing video work and 3d work (in some applications).  server performance is up with conroe - looks promising - howoever adding more amd cpu's will show a better performance than adding more conroe cpu's - because of the onboard memory chipset.

anyways... im just defending hardocp and the reason why i have posted it.  they have loads of editorials why they do this and it makes perfect sense, unless your stuck on the old ways.

amd's future - amd will be making 65nm chips using SOI and DSL technologys... this means a 16% GAIN JUST USING DSL ON 90nm chips - when its 65nm process we will see how much more of a gian is had.  this makes chips cooler and able to reach higher clocks on normal air cooling  (which also means great overclocking too ).  this is subject to come in this year some time - but we dont know any dates of yet.

amd also has 4x4 which i dont see very promising but its defintaly not bad - two cpus each with two cores and systems possible around 1000$, not bad - amd has yet to release more info on this, but they can also support 2 four core cpu's once released.  this is just catchup while the other processors are being manufactured, and after those are made 4x4 will take a better performance boost also.

dont get me wrong still... im defending amd yes, but intel still has a good chip on there hands, do i think intel could do something like this again (doubtfull - but we will see).

ATI also has some cards that dont need a master card. i think it was an x600. i dont really care about crossfire and or sli, i think the theory is dumb.  pay way to much money for something that is going to be overcome by ONE single chip for less money (more likly) within 6 months time (possibly less - depending on the brand you go for).  ati's new chips are more than likly not going to need any special master chips either.  that solution they used was because shareholders were pissy about sli's technoly and ati didnt have anything, so they created something comprible - and it was better than sli - then nvidia decided to fight back and do some work on there much needed techology.  the advantage of sli or crossfire is that it will give you higher resolutions and higher aliasing levels, not necessarly more frames because at this point the CPU is being the limiting factor.

ati and amd have joind and were looking at better laptop solutions from the two - to compeat with centreno where amd has been overthroughn by intel time and time again.  ati and amd will possibly also make a solution for onboard video chips to plug into the amd motherboard likle annother CPU. which sounds neet, but then we have to see how they incorperate memory into the deal - use shared memory is obvious for some lower end motherboards, and mabe onboard GDDR4 on the logicboard would be great too, but up the price alot of motherboards, its all a big worm and nothing is slated for at least a year (i would say 2).

[sithdemon]

Update: As the date comes closer some interesting questions have come up.

Firstly, the technicians at work, say that alot of AM2 boards act up, and a too twitchy to bother with.

However, I was also thinking about ATIs colour quality, and if that translated to 2D photoshop stuff even. Because if thats the case, I might literally have to go against the grain, since I'm weaker in the colour department in art, and having the best range of full colours in photoshop would be a clincher. Even if it means frames suffering, a touch, in games, cause it's not nvidia. and returning a few AM2 motherboards (or getting the techs to get one running for me). This part is something I'm going to have to do some serious digging with. Any concrete insight would be a big help.

If it's not the case, perhaps even a conroe and nvidia board.

[Aramis]

Red- I'll agree with you on the 965 chipset. I've learned some more about it and it's solid too and seems to be doing well in oc'ing along with the others. I'd personally still wait till an sli board came out but that's just me.

Mindless, I like Hardocp. I go there every day to read up. However, they're biased towards AMD, just like some folks says sites like Toms is biased towards Intel. However, that particular bench that you're pointing at wasn't good journalism. They painted a picture to make it look like Conroe had a smaller impact than it really does/will. One thing to keep in mind is that once dx10 cards hit, I'm pretty sure that being gpu-bound is no longer going to be an issue, and we'll see Conroe take the lead even more so. It was just kind of dishonest/misleading journalism. They still write great articles and have a great site that I go to first for hardware info.

As far as crossfire/sli, you should only be looking at that with a 20" + widescreen. That means higher native resolutions (1680x1050 and up) that are going to show the ability of crossfire and sli. Outside of those type of monitors (usually LCD) a one card solution is definitely sufficient.

*edit for spelling and grammar fixes*

[sithdemon]

As strange as it sounds looks like I'll be going Intel and ATI.

I should be getting the P5W DH, and a x1900 XTX this week. a Core 2 duo 6300. 2 gigs of corsair 800mhz. Antec true power 2 or trio 550w, or just a 480w. a western digital 250 gig drive. Creative x-fi platinum.

Now hopefully everything installs okay!

[MindlessOath]

huh? because you think they are amd bound? lol, thats the worst peice of poo i have heard of... why because the fact that intel wasnt doing as well as you and others wanted them to do? because every other site wasnt showing the same results?  lol.

they showed exact figures and the same way they did them, its not bad jurno at all.  

and most of these tests are not GPU bound at all... they are CPU BOUND , meaning you have to have a faster CPU, not gpu... hello, that throughs your arguement right out the window.

im just defending - i still think that both are great but im still defending the article at hardocp - not hardocp themselfs (mabe alittle )

[Aramis]

As strange as it sounds looks like I'll be going Intel and ATI.

I should be getting the P5W DH, and a x1900 XTX this week. a Core 2 duo 6300. 2 gigs of corsair 800mhz. Antec true power 2 or trio 550w, or just a 480w. a western digital 250 gig drive. Creative x-fi platinum.

Now hopefully everything installs okay!

Good on you. That looks like a really solid setup that outta last you a long time. The only thing I could possibly recommend at this point is that if you're going to overclock to get an aftermarket CPU heatsink/fan. There's a lot of good ones out there- biggest thing is to make sure it'll fit in the case you choose.

That's really close to the setup that I want to build soon. I'd personally go with the x1900xt and OC it to save some money, but there's nothing wrong with the xtx.