Reply With Quote
lol okie state
Ok, so after much, MUCH deliberation on what to do, ordering stuff, pricing, deciding whether to build/replace/revamp, I have decided to buy a new cpu.
Part of the pricing process was I have this GREAT HP laptop I use when I deploy all the time, mainly as a 17" DVD player. I was planning on giving that to my kids, because they always want on mine or wife's computer to play their nickjr.com or disney.com flash games. Unfortunately the laptop has ME on it, so it isn't compatable with the new Flash 10 games all the sites run. Therefore part of my rpicing was to get a new OS for the laptop and hope I could USB Wireless it or even just buy them a laptop to hookup and run.
Buying a new cpu will get me out of building and worrying if I'm doing it right or even if what I buy is too high tech for my old MB. It will also save me the buying or attempting to update the old laptop. I can simply give my current cpu to my kids to play on. If I spend 500 bucks for upgrades and 400 on a laptop for the kids (or 100 for the OS, 30-50 for nice wireless USB stuff, then hope it works) I'm spending plenty already; I might as well no get what I want.
I have it narrowed down to two. The first one is much cheaper but is AMD and ATI. The second is few hundred bucks more and less CPU (3.0 to 2.66) but nVidia and Intel (both of which I trust more). Keep in mind I will also have to pickup a new monitor and speakers (of which I really don't care I'll get whatever is cheapest and give to kids since mine are very adequate).
The Intel for 1280:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883227146
The AMD for 1089:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883227154
There are also more listed in the gaming page of newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...38&name=Gaming
Any suggestions?
lol okie state
put ubuntu linux on that laptop and never look back!
I should note that you can freely download the Windows 7 Release Candidate and use it until now through March or June. Although Linux will run better than ANY operating system out there (short of the more hardcore programming systems like NetBSD), Windows 7 flies on the laptop I just put it on. It's a thought, at least.
Also: Check out www.cyberpowerpc.com
They usually have really good deals for a custom built computer and they're going to be cheaper than most manufacturers. Good ratings too, a friend of mine built a very hot custom rig from them and it came in the mail in perfect condition.
Edit: Of those two, I like the AMD more. The i7 processor will kick it's ass, but for now I'm staying away from any nVidia cards on the market, after both myself and THREE of my friends had 8800 GPUs go down on us with the same error, all of which were said to be our fault by nVidia.
There's a 3.2 that has 4G of DDR3 with a 4870 vs the 8G of DDR2 on the 3.0 with 4890 for 10 bucks cheaper.
Is DDR3 worth it?
No. If you're gaming, the 4890 is an absolute BEAST. The 4870 is what I have and is by NO means a slouch (will run Crysis on high), but the 4890 is by far more impressive than the DDR3 ram, unless you don't game.
Thx much.
I think I have decided on another option. i7 with 6G DDR3 and a GTX 285 1GB.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883227146
285 vs 4890 thoughts?
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards....=605&card2=608
Stay away from nvidia IMO. Their cards are both larger, consume more power, and more expensive this generation (with a couple exceptions). ATI has been pricing their cards very very well and they also perform just as good.
Note that a 4870 is going to have 50% of the cost of the 285 but ~83% of the graphical power. Tom's hardware had an article recently about price points and basically ATI is delivering close results for a much lower cost.
If cost is no issue then it's a coin toss. Both the 285 and 4890 are great. If you can grab a 4890 on the cheap, go for it. I expect nvidia will retaliate soon because as their cards are currently priced, you'd be dumb to buy nvidia if you need to save cash.
That's a great system. A 285 is faster than a 4890, I think. However, I'm not going to be buying any nVidia products for a while, because my 8800 burned out due to a factory defect (3 of my friends had theirs go down with the exact same way) and nVidia wouldn't own up to it under ANY cir stance.
I love my 4870 and haven't had a SINGLE problem with it thus far. Fingers crossed on that.
EDIT: It appears that the fastest card(s) you can buy right now are two 4890s in Crossfire, which are actually faster than anything else by a huge performance margin. So that's something to ponder if you want to upgrade in the future.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...4890_CrossFire
I downloaded the new Ubuntu version 9.04. I made a live CD to try it out and I like what I see. I also want to try out Debian. I read that Gentoo is difficult to work with. I'm also curious about Slackware because it is most similar to the Unix system.
Quite frankly, one of the things I am looking at is the space. The i7 with the 285 has a ton of expansion slots (at least 2 and looks like 3) while the AMD with the 4890 has zero slots available.
If I do want a 2nd card in the future I can't with that MB.
Usually you're better off upgrading cards than going SLI in the future. SLI is usually more practical in the here and now, unless you're talking under a year from now for your upgrade. The next GPU that comes out will likely perform at the same level as two cards SLIed right now.
Also, I'm not sure how SLI works on a 285, because as I understand it, it's actually two 260s put on one card. Hmmm.....
If I got a 2nd Hard Drive specifically to run my game from (everything runs off of main cpu - OS, antivirus/firewall, net connectivity, etc), would that make any difference in system performance?
depends on if you raid the ....
if ur going to run sli/crossfire setup, look at the motherboard and make sure there are 2 PCI-E X16 slots, then you will fully utilised both cards at x16 speeds each,
instead of
1 pci-e x16 + 1 pci-e x8, cause in sli/cross setup the cards will run at x8 speeds only....
Not 2 GPUs; 2 hard drives.
If I get a second hard drive to put nothing on but my WoW game, will that increase performance? In other words have absolutely everything (OS, firewall, network, etc) on the main drive then just have a plain 150G drive to have my WoW on; will that do anything at all?
Next, why do I need to buy:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229107
for $1300 when I can buy:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229095
for $900 and then add a 4890 of my own:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161276
for $170 making it a total of $1070 and the same exact other specs as the $1300 one?
Doesn't that seem like a better idea?
2 HARD DRIVES has to be identical if you want a RAID setup, which is more efficient then having 2 seperate drives....
If I only play WoW and WoW isn't coded for quad core, only duo, should I spend the money on a cheap 2.66 i7 or go with the 3.3 duo core?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
