Buying/assembling a new computer.

Being a newcomer to a forum has nothing to do with it really, it's about what you know, the facts.

With that kind of mentality then the OP might as well just settle for a Phenom II 965/cheap Motherboard and RAM then?

the difference would be hardly noticeable while gaming and the money saved could pay for a SSD as a boot drive

If I was OP, I'd either get an i5 and save money over an i7 OR get something like a 930, 950 and go all out. It'd be a push, but with GW2 not being out yet and prices always dropping. He/she could probably just about manage it.

A fairly cheap LG DVD Writer will get you by (£20) with the single black caviar (just to cut costs).

I personally run two black caviars in raid, with an SSD for boot - but if you're cutting costs, you don't need raid and an SSD. I also got mine at a time SSD's were not a bad price (they dropped for a bit :s).

For a case, you can spend anything. I don't have much knowledge to do with these honestly. I have a really cheap one, other than that, I go silverstone. My case is about £200, but again - you really don't need to be spending that much when you have a budget. Perhaps someone can shed some light on some €100 cases?

You could put in a really dirt cheap GFX card or even second hand, until GW2 is out.

Taking debates personally is not on the agenda in tech. You debate with facts, not ad hominem BS. I won't stand for this. I have cleaned up this thread, and I expect it to stay logical, intellectual, and no snide or offhand remarks about a person or their personality. If I have to clean this up again, it will be alongside infractions. First and only warning.

Back on topic: My wall O' Text response will be below this one.

If purchasing an SSD, it would be advised to wait until December when 28nm NAND fabs drop prices by 40-50%.

You wanted to debate me, so be it. I believe the merits of the P55 chipset far outweigh any perceived deficiencies it has. That said, this is my rebuttal and additional points of clarification to make that claim.

Vast majority of gamers know nothing about virtual machines, let alone how to set one up and utilize it.

Let me point out something that apparently was overlooked… price. The 980X is an unrealistic CPU, with no upgrade path and lackluster performance for its price. If you are doing nothing but encoding, data mining, or archival, and have that kind of money to spend on just your CPU, sure! The point is, people don’t.

X58 CPUs are more expensive for marginal performance gains. The most expensive P55 CPU is the Corei7-870, and here in the US it’s the same price as the 860 ($289.99 USD on Newegg today). That Corei7-870 can match the Corei7-950 in most benchmarks, and has a much much more aggressive turbo mode. That makes it superior for the vast majority of gamers, because games are not highly parallelized. A lot of people don’t like to overclock or are afraid to do so, or they simply don’t know how. You cannot expect everyone to overclock, and Turbo Mode still benefits overclockers in that it enables their CPU to run above their base overclock when in dual or tri core mode (thanks to power gating).

This is bologna. AMD has a clear upgrade path, Bulldozer. Intel has none. For that reason alone, AMD is a much more viable path right now. Current 890FX boards can accept the first Bulldozer CPU, Zambezi. Bulldozer will, without a doubt, perform at par with Sandy Bridge or better than it.
Considering this happens to be my exact area of expertise, I can tell you the price on the Corei7-980X will drop 100, maybe 150. Why? Fab cost, binning, and of course the advancement of manufacturing facilities to 22nm spins. Doping material cost/effectiveness and logical layout all play into chip pricing. The Corei7-980X is expensive to make as it is, and Intel doesn’t make many of them. Thus… pricing will remain what it is now, with perhaps (and this a big perhaps) a 100-150 drop. Though, again, that drop is unlikely. Intel must recoup fab loses by pushing consumers to new fabs, widening their margins per 1000 units sold. They don’t drop prices on old CPUs, they just phase them out to new and better chips, which are generally cheaper to both you, the consumer, and Intel.

• To your first point, Turbo Mode doesn’t just up the multiplier on Intel chips… the DiEG design they have allows them to “power gate”, which literally shuts down 1 or 2 cores and ups the voltage and multiplier to the remaining cores. This results in higher clock frequencies at the same TDP and thermal envelope.
  
• To your second point: While the Corei7-9xx chips are generally better overclockers, most gamers will never see those overclocks. It takes very specific boards with specific RAM (hello and goodbye Elpida…RIP) to achieve phenomenal overclocks. It also requires a very robust cooler to properly overclock the 9xx series chips, because let’s face it, they run HOT.
  
• To your 2.1 point… very few users need 6GBs of RAM, and triple channel is useless unless core count rises to 6 or more (aka the 980X). My P55 setup has more RAM bandwidth than an x58 setup in triple channel running a Corei7-965 Extreme (and by quite a margin I might add); that says something. 6GB kits of good (read: low latency) RAM are also expensive, yet again raising the price entry barrier of the x58 setup to enthusiast levels.

Simple answer? NO That is redundant, considering the price difference. You are comparing a 1000 dollar CPU to a sub 300 dollar CPU to claim that x58 is superior. The fact is… at sub 300 dollar points, the P55 is a far better choice for most mainstream gamers on a constrained budget, PERIOD.

On the second point: There are cheaper options than Lynnfield, but they perform no where near as well. The difference in performance between mainstream Lynnfield and Bloomfield chips is almost insignificant, and at dollar to dollar level comparisons, Lynnfield chips generally outperform their Bloomfield brethern (ie Corei7-860 vs Corei7-930 and Corei7-870 vs Corei7-950) Below you will find many CPU bound benchmarks proving this. Don’t dispute these aren’t valid benchmarks, as they come from Anandtech, who happens to be the best review site on the net. I’ve also provided you with a huge range of different game engine designs here. The 980x is included for comparison, and as you can see, it certainly doesn’t warrant its 1000 premium price in regards to gaming.



There is a reason for that… price vs price. You compare models that are nearly equally priced, not that are at the top of each respective tier. What you are asking is the same as comparing an Ati HD5970 to a GTX460 and saying that nVidia loses completely, rather than saying that a GTX460 compares to an HD5830 in price, but destroys it… are you seeing the comparison issue here?

In summary:

Price to price point, Lynnfield CPUs offer better value for mainstream gamers. The advantage of 2 PCIe 16x slots is irrelevant, considering no GPU now (nor in the near future) will be able to saturate the 8x PCIe 2.0 bus. In addition, triple channel memory only benefits the CPU if it has 6 or more cores (and really 8 is where it absolutely starts to matter) Entry cost for equivalent performance is undoubtly higher with an x58 setup. The motherboards are more expensive, the CPUs are more expensive in performance to performance comparisons when looking at gaming, and to top it all off, P55 setups will last longer thanks to less heat, causing SiDeg. These are facts, not opinions.

I never did. Here are enough benchmarks for any sane person to make a good comparison, not cherry picked in the least (and including the precious Corei7-980x.

I seriously don't think you're grasping the point I am making. I am not arguing with: The P55 platform is better for people with X budget that will only use X amount of ram and have a fetish for X colours and only like the numbers XXX to be a part of the CPU and will only use two cores of their computer and generally only 32bit. I am not arguing with a specific target market that apparently you had in your mind but you did not feel like informing us. I was not calling that nonsense... This is what I said was nonsense:

In that statement on the first paragraph, which I said was nonsense. Do you see gamers mentioned? Do you see price mentioned? Or rather do you see a sweeping nonsensical statement that P55 is GREATER than X58 followed by a new sentence CLARIFYING there is -nothing- conditional about this statement and "That is all."?

With that said can you BEGIN to understand why I said it was nonsense and therefore can you BEGIN to understand why I did not bother to argue with it, until you persisted the argument and you persisted going off topic?

Also, you are over the OP's budget in your suggestion. Seriously the P55 is GREAT for people on a budget, but I'd be inclined to suggest i5. If you are going to go the route of an i7 CPU

You can not logically claim that the 870 CPU is superior to any of the 9x family, given that the 920 is 30% CHEAPER, the 950 is FASTER AND CHEAPER and the 980X is faster but obviously because it's intels top model, the prices are through the roof and not even worth mentioning.

So either you want to rephrase your original statement and THEN I discuss that. In which case, it's pointless to argue with what I am saying.

I didn't want to debate with you really, I wanted to help the OP. You'll spill nonsense and unless I counter it, someone might be ignorant enough to believe it. Also, I'm going to keep repeating, I was arguing with your original point. I don't care what you thought you meant, what you thought you wanted to say, I argued with what you did say.

Irrelevant.

Again, I was arguing with your original statement. You have not refuted my point. I did not OVERLOOK price, because your original statement made no mention of price. Quite the reverse in fact, you made a new sentence CLARIFYING there was -nothing- conditional about the statement and "That is all, proving my point that price is irrelevant.

If you want to argue about price, sure, that's another argument altogether. You quoted the 870, I'd rather a 950, or 920 or a 930 (they're all considerably cheaper).

Stop talking about US prices. The OP is not from US. So that's irrelevant. Again, I'll repeat, the 920/930/950's are cheaper than the P55 equivalent. Any other comparisons are rather apples with oranges, given the differences in the CPU's. P55 was clearly orientated for people with a lower budget in mind.

OP had explained to me in a PM that he/she won't be upgrading. He/she is also from Dublin. So arguments regarding USA and upgrade paths are entirely irrelevant. If you wanted to help the OP, you would have gathered this information. It seems you just wanted to prove a personal vendetta which failed because you're forgetting the original statement you made.

I get discounted prices. Pro-gaming has/had its benefits, heh. You don't have the relevant information to prove to me that I will pay 100, maybe 150 less.

My bad, I didn't explain myself much. It doesn't overclock RAM and what not. I wouldn't use it for stable overclocking of a CPU anyway.

Remember that with 4 cores you can easily turn hyperthreading off (for gaming). Temperatures are fine. They run hotter than say, a duocore, but they're designed to run quite hot anyway. It doesn't take very specific boards with very specific RAM and a very specific cooler to overclock. This is pretty much out right nonsense...


Again, the OP is in europe. I don't think you know much about the pricing of european products; furthermore, your statement (and I'll keep repeating it) was that P55 was greater than x58, PERIOD. No mention of price, got it? Do you get that? Please answer.

Regarding RAM, users can find the need if they wish to. Same as me with 12GB RAM. I'm sure some think that's absurd. I've found many uses for it. 4GB with windows eating up what it does, I'd use that in no time.

You were comparing a 250 pound CPU with a 190pound CPU. Oh I can't do the same? LOL. Ridiculous. And again, your statement made no mention of price.


Price to price point is irrelevant to the argument we are having.

I guess it's just a coincidence that you picked Fallout 3 then and not Crysis Warhead or Left4Dead.

Can't see the 950 (just curious how it does, more than anything).
Shame winrar is 32bit.

Regardless though, as any sane person can see, X58 has won. So your statement that P55 is better?

Yeah, nonsense. Regarding prices, which is a different argument altogether, you are generally always going to pay exponentially for things slightly better (hello ferrari? ).

Stop wasting my time please?

Anyway, for other people (non relevant to this argument) some other benchmarks can be found here, if anyone wishes to see:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-980x-review/11
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/100?vs=107
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/142?vs=99
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=107

920 vs the 870. 870 being 32% more expensive and 9% increase on those tests. So that's obviously not worth it for anyone interested in prices or OC. I know it's slightly off topic, but if the "owner" of the forum writes nonsense / goes off topic in his own forum, then I'm sure he won't begrudge me of that.

Look, Intel is a US company. If Europe wants to screw with your pricing, that's your problem. Perhaps find a shop that isn't nickel and diming you on inferior products?

The Corei5-950(960) shouldn't be cheaper than the i7-870... end of story. Your shops appear to be screwing you over, yet again. Europe never ceases to amaze me in how much it fails in regards to economic pricing on computer parts, but that's neither here nor there.

And actually, my statement was directed at the OP, not you. So I will stand by what I said, P55 > x58. If this OP had a higher budget, I wouldn't have mentioned that now would I have.

Stop treating me like a child, and pushing the legit benchmarks from the most well respected review site on the net to the side. It's becoming really irritating.

I will not stand for you belittling me in every other sentence of your posts, be that with veiled sarcasm or thinly veiled direct insults on my intellect. Quite frankly, I am extremely well educated in this area, and I take great offense at the suggestion that I am anything but.

If you want i7-950 benchmarks, find them yourself. Those were the most recent benchmarks containing the Corei5-660 up to the Corei7-980x. Anandtech doesn't typically test too many various models that only jump up in clockspeed in every article they put up, since it's clear that a clockspeed increase will result in a marginal performance gain.

Yes, it is. I picked the top game on the list, stop nit picking so damn much. I'm sick of it!

OH PS: Winrar 3.8 is 64bit. It's been 64bit for a while now... way2go.

I could give a rats ass about the other information. My statement is factual, and cannot be debated. I was in the fab business for 2 years, please stop while you're ahead.

So let me get this straight... you want to nitpick on the wording of a single comment of mine and start an all out debate war over the merits of a chipset, but if I single out one of yours, it's not relevant because a single poster isn't upgrading? Oh okay, that's clearly fair and balanced... oh never mind, it isn't.

Let me quote you again...

You didn't mention the OP's plans, you didn't mention any reasoning behind this statement, so the statement at face value is blatantly wrong, since AMD is currently a vastly superior choice if you plan to have future value on your PC (courtesy of Bulldozer) Intel is a greedy, rotten company at their core.

I'm not playing this word picky choosy game anymore. Tell your euro stores to stop being greedy assholes and overcharging MSRP by huge margins. In addition, don't post on the merits of technology of which you have no idea what you are talking about (aka price reductions on CPU families over time) Your personal discounts are irrelevant in my statement, don't bring them into this, as they only apply to you, and no one else. I can get a free workstation every 2 years, but I don't go around voicing that as it only applies to me, no one else.

Thanks.

Pardon me, but if you have issues with the way I run tech and have for almost 3 years, you can either PM me about or contact an admin. Nothing I posted was nonsense, as I backed up my claims with solid evidence and facts. Coupled with my extensive knowledge in this area, I do believe I have formed what would considered a very solid argument. Nothing was off topic.

Additionally, if you believe yourself to be more knowledgable and better suited for the position, I'm sure JR, Kvinna or Inde will happily replace me with you. Either way, this isn't the place to discuss such matters, so knock it off.

Hate to double post, but this need its own.

Dawn Angelheart...

Here is a build that will be more than enough for you. It's very similar to a couple builds on the first page. It's perfectly within budget and will offer you tons of performance at your price point.

Also, should you decide to upgrade the CPU in 2-3 years, you will absolutely be able to put an AMD Zambezi 8-core CPU into this motherboard with no additional changes.

Case:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/177749

Motherboard:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220141

GPU:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/232853

CPU:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/204933

HDD:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804

DVD-RW Drive:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145450

RAM:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/180490

Total price? £836.99 with shipping.

This computer will go above and beyond what you want to use it for, guaranteed. You can overclock the 1095T like crazy (4GHz is easy to reach, but you'll want to buy a semi decent cooler to go above 3.6GHz) If you want, you could save some money and go with the AMD PhenomII X4 955 found here:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190673

The RAM has very tight timings and is very fast, so the AMD will be able to fully utilize the available bandwidth potential.

The Gigabyte GTX460 is amazing overclocker, and warrantied to do so. nVidia encourages an overclock of at least 800MHz on the core. They run icy cool, use very little power, and are whisper quiet even at full load.

Coolermaster makes excellent cases and powersupplies. Both should last you years.

And again, the 890FX boards are compatible with AMD's upcoming Bulldozer chips, so you'll be able to upgrade should you decide to in 2-3 years. You won't absolutely have to though, as the AMD PhenomII X6 is an amazing CPU, especially for the price.

The shops I've found are respectable. Doesn't matter if Intel is a US company or not, the OP is from Dublin.

Every shop screws everyone over. Not relevant to discussion... "shouldn't"? Lol. Says you?

Liar, your statement was directed to Undead Cheese: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...6&postcount=24

Regardless, you mentioned the i7 870 anyway... If you wanted to prove P55 is better for the OP, you should have said that, instead of "P55 > X58. That is all", you should have picked an i5 to be honest. I am no mind reader.

I don't think you understand. You go over budget, then you compare apples with oranges. You quote pounds, where euros should be used. You criticize when I go over budget, but it's ok for you to do it.

You constantly contradict yourself. Over and over. Either you want to argue that P55 is better for the OP and you want to use valid reasoning, or you want to argue something else. I went with what you said. I am not wrong, because I was just arguing with what you said. To say you would pick the 870 over any 9XX model, that's completely illogical. Really it is.

Not interested in this personal talk.

Hear-say.
Found them, and on Anandtech's site.
My bad. I thought winrar 3.9 and above was 64bit. Sorry, if I am wrong. No need to word it like that, just because I made one error. You say I speak to you as if I am a child, and then you act like one, nice. lol.
Rofl.
No, I never wanted to debate. Let me quote myself again:
You then persisted, not I. I'm also not nitpicking with words. You were very clear in what you said, that P55 is greater than X58, period and that you would pick the 870 over any 9XX.
Maybe they'll have a rotten core? (Those with knowledge will understand the humour in this).
lol
lol.
Knowledgeable...

The OP is from dublin. They use Euros...
Not pounds £££ but euros €€€.

I am from England. I do not shop in euro stores, I shop in English stores, with GBP.

The OP is't going to be overclocking, and isn't going to be upgrading (stated in PM).

i5 machine:

AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition 1090T 3.2GHz 9MB Cache 125W Retail Box Processor £228.79 http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=109 vs i5 750 (they don't have the 760).

Radon Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz @ 4.00GHz Overclocked Bundle

Bundle Specification
- CPU: Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz @ 4.00GHz
- Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard
- RAM: Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel
- Cooler: Akasa Venom CPU Cooler (Upgrade options available)
- Artic Silver 5 Thermal Compound

£406.23 inc VAT
GeForce GTX 460 about £170.
Case + PSU / £130
Western Digital Caviar Black £50
DVD RW / £15

£771.23 roughly or about €925.

That will be a LOT LOT faster than the build mr.experienced posted and it's in budget, unlike his.

I was under the impression the England was part of Europe, and part of the EU.

"euro stores" or "europeans" are generally when refering to: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia (Slovak Republic), Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City and those with a European currency. We use Great British Pounds.

Consider it like me calling you an American because you're in north America. Or debating with America and giving them Canadian dollars for build prices. Obviously England is in the continent, Europe and apart of the EU. We don't use euros though and we don't like to be associated with other Europeans. It's offensive to us. So either he wants to argue the prices of Euro stores with Euro currency, or he wants to argue with English stores, with GBP.

I'm not sure which, but I find it confusing because the OP is not from England, he/she does not use GBP and the only reason I'd see someone mentioning GBP is if they're from Great Britain.


- Case: Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
- Power Supply: Corsair Extreme 600W
- CPU: Intel Core i5 760 2.80GHz overclocked to 4.00GHz
- Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard
- Cooler: Titan Fenrir CPU Cooler
- RAM: Corsair Dominator 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
- Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
- Graphics Card: GTX 460
- Sound: High Definition 7.1 Onboard Sound Card
- Optical Drive: 22x DVD+RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter

Can get this for: 704 British pounds = 847.038772 Euros
Well in budget.

Hey err, I just read on winrar site. I blindedly believed you and appologised before and perhaps you are still right but on rarlab.com it says:

So are you sure winrar 3.8 is 64bit? You may well be right, I just thought it was 32bit. I guess I should have kept my mouth shut before saying that lol and spoke to friend first.

*EDIT*

might be better to drop to the Phenom II X4 955 and get a Corsair 60GB SSD (Read 285MB/s Write 275MB) and the system price would be about the same yet still have the upgrade path for the future and have lightning fast desktop performance with only a few fps difference in games

I tend to agree with you; however, 28nm NAND will bring about significant price drops in relation to unit density in November, so an SSD can certainly wait until then. 40-50% price drops are absolutely worth waiting 2 months for.

Yeah, he has spoken for me because I gave him the information after he Pm'd me looking for more Detail on how to help me with the computer I wanted.

Looking at all options is being a wise consumer. Having all the facts is as well. I would encourage you to lookup AMD's upcoming Bulldozer and make a judgment call on the merits of it. I'd be happy to discuss it in our IRC channel with you if needed/desired.


I've let this silly thread carry on long enough. If the OP has further questions, they may create a new thread, or use PMs to ask whom they choose about what they choose.

CLOSED