http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=13962607

This is what I will order soon! I have built this off of recommendations from others and my own snooping, Massassi's turn now to comment/suggest any changes!

NOTE: KVM isn't part of the computer, that's a separate thing I'm buying cause I need a VGA signal switcher for something else.

AMD and Intel seem to have the reverse relationship right now that they did in the P4 age- notably the speed and power of their processors.

Um cool, why amd instead of intel?

The only thing that might be iffy is the SSD but I don't have any experience w/ that brand/model so I dunno

Yeah I was wondering about that too, a friend recommended that specific processor line to me, and I didn't know much generally about CPUs so I restricted my own searching to CPUs in the same line. I'll ask him about it.

[Edit: He said AMD is cheaper. Which, from the little I looked at Intel, seems to be true. Anyways this proc I'm getting is about 8x as powerful as the one I have now so I think I'll be good.]

I picked out an SSD because I/O performance of WinXP is driving me nuts and I want to be SURE that I/O speed is NOT a problem. I know Vista and up have I/O priority which will help greatly by itself but I just wanted to go the next step.

for the record, mzzt, I'm probably never buying an AMD processor again. After that Phenom bug there were some pretty disturbing revelations about how they engineer their chips... or, to be more precise, how they don't engineer their chips. I really question their reliability.

Hmm ok, my friend has convinced me to switch to an i5 for $30 more. He says it has "auto-overclocking" and so it'll be the same clock speed...

it's called Turbo Boost

Details?

I Googled it, basically they pushed the chip out the door with a bug that made them have to patch 'em with a 10% drop in performance below reviewers' chips.

My friend picked out a new mobo and video card (he says nvidia is better with intel) and they look fine to me so check out the list again Massassi!

Also I saved like $100 by using nVidia for the video card so I switched to an i7.

The reason I mentioned the SSD was because the cheaper ones w/ certain controllers were/are really bad and generally if you go SSD people will recommend either an OCZ or Intel drive (Intel just released their budget X-25V for $130 (40GB) if you want to look it up).

Also, SSDs are best paired w/ W7 cuz of W7's inherent SSD-handling stuffs like TRIM and ... stuff.

(I am not very knowledgeable about SSDs so yeah.)

The TLB race condition bug. AMD uses automated theorem proving for their FPU algorithms and simulation testing. The last time I checked they weren't using model checking yet, because they use a homebrewed VHDL IIRC (CAPITAL LETTERS).

Intel's been using model checking ever since the Pentium FDIV bug, where they accidentally left out something like 15 entries from a lookup table. As far as I can remember Intel hasn't had a showstopping bug since then.

serious question mzzt please don't get offended: is this a troll thread or something?

NVIDIA is good if you're planning on using 3D Vision. Otherwise, ATI is the better buy right now. The cards connect through a totally standardized and generic interface so it doesn't matter what processor you have at all.

No really I am ordering a new computer! I did mention it in FGR's thread. And I value feedback from people who know more about hardware than I do. I have a friend who knows a bit about this stuff picking out components for me but I want second opinions from Massassi.

I think I'll go with nVidia because of the price difference in the cards, assuming what my friend told me was true about it being the same level approximately.

Here's the ATI card I was going to get: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16814125300 if anyone missed it and wants to compare to the nVidia card now on my list.

IIRC the 260 is generationally equivalent to the 4xxx ati series, the 5xxx series being newer, and nVidia hasn't released the equivalent yet.

still, AFAIK, ati right now is still most bang for your buck.

The 5850 is significantly better than the GTX 260. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the GTX 285 is the closest in performance to the 5850 (and the 5850 still edges it out in most things). That and the 5850 is a DX11 card, 260, 285, etc. are only DX10.

Even if you consider that the 260 is overclocked 25% AND is $100 cheaper AND that DX11 doesn't really mean much since games have yet to take advantage of DX10? I think I'll be OK for a while with the nVidia...

5770 for 160$ is my Video Card, fast as **** and really good.
My processor is an i5 750 and it works wonders.
Feel free to ask about either, I have personal experience.

Yeah for OS drive, I would recommend a SSD that supports TRIM or garbage collection. Without that, performance will degrade overtime unless you manually consolidate all free space and use some sort of wiper utility to Secure Erase the unused space on a regular basis.

I currently have a GTX 260 c216 and would recommend that you get a 5850 if you're building from scratch IF you plan to play games at 1920x1200 or 1920x1080 <_< I can juuust about max out most games at those resolutions but there are always areas where framerate drops and it bugs me because it is usually the AA (and not other settings) that is the killer and without AA jaggies are really evident and lowering the resolution makes the game look like crap

Pretty sure my 4890 is faster than a GTX 260 (around GTX 275, from the benchmarks I had found) and a 5850 will destroy my 4890.

Personally, I would go for a Core i5 and a 5850 over a Core i7 and a GTX 260.

The GTX260 Super Overclock Edition performs on par with a 4890 / GTX275.

I loved my GTX260, I had a OC edition one with 625mhz core clocks- but I had to lower it to stock speeds due to an odd bug in Source engine games (Screen would turn all 1 color and hard lock). But that was under Vista and a few Forceware driver revisions ago hopefully its fixed now.

I agree with the i5 + 5850 suggestion unless MaZZ is doing something that benefits from HyperThreading.

And he isn't. The best you'll get is an utterly microscopic performance gain if you're running a whole bunch of threads and get a billion cache misses a second.

Your mouse has too many god damn buttons.

Edit: And your keyboard is ugly.

I'm going to reiterate what the rest said:

Stop being a numskull and get an ATI card. Get rid of the pitifully small SSD if you have to. The SSD isn't going to do you much good since it's so small (thus only really fitting Windows and a couple other things on it), and doesn't support TRIM.

AMD hasn't been a great manufacturer since the AMD Athlon/Barton XP chips. Intel is still holding strong, but as everything in business, it'll switch back when AMD gets tired of losing money.

haha, num(b)skull

I lost pretty much any respect I had for AMD when they decided a couple years ago that instead of trying to compete with Intel after the Core 2s came out, they'd be satisfied by lagging behind and just trying to sue Intel/get other people to sue Intel.

numbskull is a variant spelling of numskull.

No it doesn't.



I like the keyboard, it has some interesting features I may use or that I can turn off and completely ignore, just like the media keys on my current keyboard.



I'll consider the ATI, but my friend says the more powerful CPU is the more important tradeoff and I think I agree, even if I don't use HyperThreading. My current monitor is only 1280x1024 anyway and I intend to use this system for gaming and keep background stuff to a minimum (I can keep all that on my old PC). Might get a new monitor somewhere down the line.

SSD card sold out, is this one any better? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167025 It has TRIM!

Seems to have lousy write speed but a) Boot times and loading times will be fast which was my sole concern anyway and b) my friend seems to think that random writes will be faster for a slower sequential write stat. Anyone know anything about this?

[Edit: Updated my wishlist with an i5, 5850, and the intel SSD with trim. Man the cost on this thing keeps creeping up. I changed my mind on the CPU since plenty of games are still single threaded so the CPU isn't as important as the GPU.]

Much better than your prevous pick, Intel is the industry standard right now. The 40gb version is brand new so I dont know if you will find many reviews on it but it excels at random 4k read/writes which is exactly what you want for an OS SSD. Remember to set SATA controller to AHCI mode in bios, will save you a little headache later

$1337... nice

Glad you changed your mind about the ATI card. The GPU is MUCH more important than the CPU for gaming, even if it were a multithreaded game.

Yes, a CPU is something you buy every 3-4 years and the GPU every one or two.

Unintentional, but yes, I noticed it.



Current pace here is 6.5 for the CPU and like...4 or 5 for the GPU.

It's a pretty reliable model.

bwa bwa bwa

And that fits in a 2.5" drive slot!

I guess the back is supposed to stick out of the case a bit.