GPU Dilemma (1 Viewer)

[RDX]

Ok ive decided to go with the 5870s. One XFX 5870 to be exact as i cant afford two atm.

What do you think of this system:

Intel Core i7 930
EVGA X58 SLI LE
6GB 1600MHz Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 Triple Channel RAM
XFX Radeon 5870
Enermax 85+ 1050W PSU
Samsung 2949HS 23.6" Monitor

And a couple of HDDs, optical drive, G15 and Coolermaster Sentinel mouse

Total cost approx $3000 (including OS)

Yeah it's pretty good, not sure if you really need a 1050W PSU but ok.. I have an Asus 5850 myself and am pretty happy with it.

 

[abbeyroad]

Ok ive decided to go with the 5870s. One XFX 5870 to be exact as i cant afford two atm.

What do you think of this system:

Intel Core i7 930
EVGA X58 SLI LE
6GB 1600MHz Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 Triple Channel RAM
XFX Radeon 5870
Enermax 85+ 1050W PSU
Samsung 2949HS 23.6" Monitor

And a couple of HDDs, optical drive, G15 and Coolermaster Sentinel mouse

Total cost approx $3000 (including OS)

ditch the i7 and go with the AMD Phenom II x4 965, the i7 is $120 extra for a mere ~20% increase in performance. same with the triple-channel DDR3 1600; negligible difference between trip-channel, dual-channel, DDR3 1600 and DDR3 1333 in games and real world applications. unless you're going have your rig on 24/7 computing pi, or are looking to crazyclock your cpu to 4+GHz(watercooling and what not) and want to squeeze every little drop of performance out of your system so you can brag about it on some forum to increase the size of your e-penis, DDR3 1333 would suffice.

Also, You don't need the 1050W psu unless it's powering a server, for a single gfx card build, anything above 650W is a waste. The samsung is only 23.4", not a true 24" monitor. Go with Acer H243Hbmid instead, better specs, great color, use it myself.

SLI/Crossfire is a waste of money, you're paying 100% premium for an increase of only 20%-30% in performance at best. Either buy something mid range like the gtx260/Radeon 5770 to tide you over till the next gen or buy the best card you can afford now. the 5870 is a solid choice.

from msy:

AMD Phenom II x4 965 $214
Asus M4A79T-Deluxe $217
Kingston 2G DDR3 1333 $62 each (buy as many sticks as you want, though 4G is sufficient for now.)
Seagate SATA 1TB/1.5TB $89/$129
Asus ATI Radeon 5870 $519
Samsung SATA Blu-Ray Combo $124
Corsair TX750 PSU $159 (750W gives you enough headroom for about 12 LED fans, 4 SATA drives, and 3 DVD-RW/Blu-ray.)
Cooler Master HAF922 case $159 (for reference feel free to pick your own case)
64 bit Vista Home Premium/Ultimate $69/99
Logitech MK700 keyboard combo $85



which adds up to $1759 plus $350 for the monitor(how much I got mine for) puts us at the 2100 mark. Maybe you can buy a second monitor, a 27" even.

Congratulations, I just saved you $900, why don't you send me something nice.

 

[ohexploitable]

^

I'm pretty sure 20% is a big difference...

 

[abbeyroad]

wrong. The difference is insignificant in real world applications and gfx dependent games; you will not notice the 20%. It's only noticeable in synthetics benchmarks, scientific programs that crunch a lot of numbers, multimedia/encoding, and physx heavy games, in which case he'd still save 30 bucks by getting a GT240 for use as a dedicated physx card. He can even buy a GTS 250 with the $120 saved, which is heavily recommended since he's running ATI, it can double as a great backup card in case the 5870 ever get fried.

And again the i7 930<Phenom II 965 speaking from an economical standpoint; you're paying a 60% premium for an increase of roughly 20% in performance that is inconsequential in gaming. unless you're using your pc to encode porn in HD or discover the cure for cancer you'd be pretty stupid to choose the i7 over the 965 tbh.

oh the things that people will do to increase the size of their e-peniz.

 

[SnowFox]

wrong. The difference is insignificant in real world applications and gfx dependent games; you will not notice the 20%. It's only noticeable in synthetics benchmarks, scientific programs that crunch a lot of numbers, multimedia/encoding, and physx heavy games, in which case he'd still save 30 bucks by getting a GT240 for use as a dedicated physx card. He can even buy a GTS 250 with the $120 saved, which is heavily recommended since he's running ATI, it can double as a great backup card in case the 5870 ever get fried.

And again the i7 930<Phenom II 965 speaking from an economical standpoint; you're paying a 60% premium for an increase of roughly 20% in performance that is inconsequential in gaming. unless you're using your pc to encode porn in HD or discover the cure for cancer you'd be pretty stupid to choose the i7 over the 965 tbh.

oh the things that people will do to increase the size of their e-peniz.

Who the hell needs an i7 for gaming?


Stick with my Pentium Dual core 2.9GHz any day lol.

 

[Gibbatron]

I know all about the perforance gains and losses of different cpus and such. Atm im going with i7 because the motherboard im going to get is insane. My mate has one and its awesome. Im also going with 1600mhz ram because im planning to overclock in the future. Im also planning to get another 5870. And no this is not about me being able to increase the size of my e-penis i really couldnt care less about that. im not going to be posting any benchmark results or anything, i just want a high performance system that will be future proofed for quite some time.

The other reason im going th i7 is because they overclock really well, and my mate has a similar pc running and i7 920 and a 5850, and when he plays crysis he really cant get above 30 fps (at very high, 1920x1200), which is primarily due to the cpu bottlenecking the system as ive seen other benchmarks with the same card getting like 50 fps with faster cpus; so im after a fast cpu that i can easily make faster, cause i want to be able to play crysis 2 at least at high at max res

Im also aware that the samsung is only 23.4" made a typo before. Im still undecided as to the screen. Ive also dropped back to a 850W PSU to save costs.

 

[SnowFox]

Get a AMD and google unlocking cores.

 

[RDX]

Wait you have ATI gear

Yeah, Easy choice at the moment, ATi's GPU's are very well priced and perform a lot better than equivalently priced NVidia GPUs at the moment.

Im also aware that the samsung is only 23.4" made a typo before. Im still undecided as to the screen. Ive also dropped back to a 850W PSU to save costs.

I'm pretty sure even a good brand 750W will suffice.

 

[shuttle_bus5]

Fucking lol at RDX on 2 red boxes

 

[RDX]

Yeah ATI are the fucking bomb they are amazing and eyefinity is the *BEST*

My mate has a 6 display eyefinity set up, 6 24's he looks like a fucking god

lol, I'm on 22" dualies at the moment, 2 Samsung 2243's.

 

[RDX]

The BenQ GW2400's are the dualies I rock. They are *phenomenal* I think like 2ms grey to grey

When I upgrade my PC next I'll probably try to get 2 27s or something. Even though it might be a bit of an overkill.
What's the reso for the GW2400s? 1920x1080 or 1920x1200?

 

[Gibbatron]

I'm pretty sure even a good brand 750W will suffice.

It would, but im planning on adding a second 5870.

Also thinking of going a BenQ G2420HD monitor.

 

[Gibbatron]

it's 1200 not one of those 1080p scam artist machines

Whats wrong with 1080? Is 16:10 much better than 16:9

 

[abbeyroad]

I know all about the perforance gains and losses of different cpus and such. Atm im going with i7 because the motherboard im going to get is insane. My mate has one and its awesome. Im also going with 1600mhz ram because im planning to overclock in the future. Im also planning to get another 5870. And no this is not about me being able to increase the size of my e-penis i really couldnt care less about that. im not going to be posting any benchmark results or anything, i just want a high performance system that will be future proofed for quite some time.

The other reason im going th i7 is because they overclock really well, and my mate has a similar pc running and i7 920 and a 5850, and when he plays crysis he really cant get above 30 fps (at very high, 1920x1200), which is primarily due to the cpu bottlenecking the system as ive seen other benchmarks with the same card getting like 50 fps with faster cpus; so im after a fast cpu that i can easily make faster, cause i want to be able to play crysis 2 at least at high at max res

Im also aware that the samsung is only 23.4" made a typo before. Im still undecided as to the screen. Ive also dropped back to a 850W PSU to save costs.

lol don't know what you're on about cpu bottlenecking. I have a Athlon x2 5200+ and a shitty gtx 260 and I get 30+ fps consistently at 1920x1080 on very high in crysis and the 5850 is meant to be on par with the gtx 285. there's definitely something else going on with your mate's build/os.

haha even after my cost analysis you're still going crossfire. If you can't max a game with a single card you won't be able to max it with a second. But whatever man, it's your money and I couldn't care less if you wiped your ass with it.

 

[abbeyroad]

Who the hell needs an i7 for gaming?


Stick with my Pentium Dual core 2.9GHz any day lol.

Pentium Ds run hot and are inefficient.

 

[Gibbatron]

lol don't know what you're on about cpu bottlenecking. I have a Athlon x2 5200+ and a shitty gtx 260 and I get 30+ fps consistently at 1920x1080 on very high in crysis and the 5850 is meant to be on par with the gtx 285. there's definitely something else going on with your mate's build/os.

haha even after my cost analysis you're still going crossfire. If you can't max a game with a single card you won't be able to max it with a second. But whatever man, it's your money and I couldn't care less if you wiped your ass with it.

That is exactly my point. He is running windows 7 on an evga x58 sli le with 6 gb 1600Mhz ram and an i7 920 with a 5850. There is no way that its the build or OS causing the fact that he cant really go above 30fps. Its the slow cpu thats holding him back. If he was to overclock it he would have no problem.

Also, you dont know what your on about about crossfire. I have checked the reviews, im not just going crossfire cause "crossfire is cool" or anything. Two 5870s actually gives a significant performance increase over just one. 2 5870s are faster than one 5970 in game, and because i will have two it means i will be future proofing my pc for more graphicly demanding games.

If i was to got gtx480s (which i not even considering anymore, btw), i would on average get 85%+ scaling. The 5870s seem to give about 70%-80% generally.

 

[abbeyroad]

That is exactly my point. He is running windows 7 on an evga x58 sli le with 6 gb 1600Mhz ram and an i7 920 with a 5850. There is no way that its the build or OS causing the fact that he cant really go above 30fps. Its the slow cpu thats holding him back. If he was to overclock it he would have no problem.

Also, you dont know what your on about about crossfire. I have checked the reviews, im not just going crossfire cause "crossfire is cool" or anything. Two 5870s actually gives a significant performance increase over just one. 2 5870s are faster than one 5970 in game, and because i will have two it means i will be future proofing my pc for more graphicly demanding games.

If i was to got gtx480s (which i not even considering anymore, btw), i would on average get 85%+ scaling. The 5870s seem to give about 70%-80% generally.

ahahhahaha you don't know much about computers do you? the Athlon x2 5200+ is a first generation dual core cpu from AMD that is about 4 years old, it does not have the 8MB L3 cache of the i7 and runs on ddr2 while the i7 920 is the latest generation quad core processor running on ddr3 that is anything but slow. The fact that I get more fps with a 4 year old dual core cpu and a gfx card that is half as expensive as the 5850 shows that the problem does not lie with your friend's cpu/gfx card but rather his build/os and drivers.

The core frequency difference between the 920 and 930 is 140MHz, even if the 920 is bottlenecking the gfx card, the 140MHz won't make a difference. Do you even know what cpu bottlenecking is? in short it's when the graphic card can process more instructions than the cpu can send therefore the graphic card is constantly waiting for the cpu to catch up while the cpu is running at 100% capacity, causing system slowdowns, hence the term "bottleneck". It only manifests itself when you pair off a very slow and old cpu with a top of the line graphic card. It doesn't happen because lulz da quad core is nut fast enuf iz 140MHz slower lulz lulz.

and if you have actually checked the reviews like you said and really look at the numbers instead of just going "lulz this bar is longer!1 crossfire rulzzzz1", you'll see that crossfire/SLI give a performance increase of only 35%-45% in current gen graphics intensive games such as crysis and metro 2033 for a 100% price premium. The gain is only notable in older, less demanding games such as far cry 2 etc in which a single card can easily attain 60 fps by itself, thus rendering the improvement inconsequential, since most LCDs are limited to display no more than 60 fps (their refresh rate). if you can't actually see the fps you gain from crossfire then what's the point?

Crossfire/SLI is justified if and only if you're going to game on a 30"+ monitor at extreme resolutions(2560x1600 and up) or across multiple monitors using eyefinity and what not; that's where the advantages of Crossfire/SLI become apparent. Outside of extreme resolution multi monitor gaming, they're a waste of money. And you'd be kidding yourself if you think that you're future-proofing by going crossfire, a next gen mid-high range gfx card will always trump a last gen high range one in crossfire/SLI.

 

[Gibbatron]

What do you think of this then:

Intel core i5 661 @ 3.33Ghz
EVGA P55 FTW 200 Motherboard
4GB Corsair Dominator GT 1600Mhz DDR3 Dual Channel RAM
ASUS Radeon 5870 1GB V2
Thermaltake ToughPower XT 775W PSU
Samsung 2443BW+ 24" monitor

And all the extras: hdds, optical, keyboard, mouse, CPU cooler, Windows 7

Already have a case and headset

 

[ohexploitable]

Just go here:

Gaming Configurations

 

[Teclis]

I'm just going to put some things out there...

a 5970 is a brilliant card... it however is bottlenecked by the latest core i7 985 6 core overclocked to 4.4Ghz on air...

Yes I did just say that... 4.4Ghz on air with 6 cores

If you wanna a future proofed card... that's your goto I reckon. I've moved from a GTX 275 to a HD5970... and it was a good move.

I'm running this system.

Antex 900 (but I would go the 902)
Gigabyte GA-EX58 - UD5
i7 920 Overclocked to 4.0Ghz
Coolermaster V8
G.Skill Falcon II 64GB SSD
2x 500GB Seagate HDDs in Raid 0
1x 1TB Seagate
Disk Drive
Asus HD5970
6GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM

So far It's chewed through everything I've thrown at it without overheating or freaking out (a couple of Windows issues, but none hardware related) This includes high end gaming, recording and editing of video

It's served me well for 9 months so far

As much as I like intel... the only thing worth buying from them at the moment is an i7... if you're going less, then go an AMD. The i7s are brutal and overclock like nothing else... but apart from that, yea...