Building a new desktop PC, what do ya'll think?

[KicknAsphlt]

for the war of ATI vs Nvidia. ATI is a good company, dont get me wrong, but i personally have had nothing but problems trying to set the damn things up, drivers are a B to install for whatever reason. Maybe i just got the unlucky pain in the ass ones idk. as for price and performance though ATI for whatever reason has always been the more expensive but yes is a better performer, so i just answered my own question. Nvidia is great bang for the buck cards though and the fact that this car is rolling with the cuda technology and they are advancing that technology even more and increasing its performance through drivers every month im happy lol. The war is the same when it comes to AMD vs Intel, intel is said to be a better performer but yet AMD has the cheaper price, Intels also seem to run hotter and AMD cooler. dont get me wrong i like intel but we trying to keep on a budget here and the cpu selected is actually part of a combo deal, easy to OC and a fast processor "think it compared to the Intel I7 if i remember" but like you said about maxing out cpu's, its hard to do now days but its good to have the extra amount of cpu for games that are CPU dependent like Bad company 2 and GTA IV "ports" lol. As for the gigabyte board i think you were just on a shit wagon cause i personally have used a gigbyte i bought for like 25$ used from a friend, and that was almost 4 years ago lol still running hard and gets used almost 24/7 as a TV entertainment PC for our netflix and crap. And the reviews on this board seem to be very good to. But defects do happen no matter the part and sometimes you will just end up with a DOA, if thats the case and you get it from newegg contact them first then the manufacturer.

and last but not least, asus is very good lol i love them. So far the only part i have ever had to replace on any of the computers i've ever built which is about 5-6 has been memory "corsair" which was a DOA, i didnt even send them out till 2 years after getting it lol but they still took it because they hold good on there lifetime warranty.

And adam its up to you on the PSU if you want to go with a corsair i'd say do it, because nothing beats a pretty velvet bag lol. But they are a great company overall and a brand im familiar with

---------- Post added at 03:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:05 PM ----------



asus and Nvidia boards are the SHIT! lol but expensive

I think you have things a bit backwards -- ATI is good, but most games are written for Nvidia instruction sets, so you get better performance with Nvidia cards. Go check most of the 3Dmark benchmarks and reviews on both cards, you'll see that Nvidia spanks ATI in most cases. The same with processors; AMDs are the ones that run hotter, not the Intels...plus, there were recent comparisons between the Phenoms and Intel Core i# processors, and the intel chips spanked the Phenoms with fewer cores.

Here's my take on the OP's build -- Get a more reliable power supply, Antec, Thermaltake, Corsair, etc., and for the love of god, DO NOT get a Gigabyte board! I'll back up the earlier post saying they're POS motherboards....I've had one. The thing had memory issues from the start, and when I called Gigabyte to see if they'd repair the board, they blamed the memory issues on the AMD processor, since the memory controller is on-chip these days. Needless to say, I'll never buy one of their boards again. As stated, if you can swing it....ASUS is the way to go...but if not, shoot for ABIT, MSI, Epox, etc.

 

[northwestsupra]

Yes I know that the core i7 beat on compairison but it is also a lot more for it. The ati which I don't support and don't personally use isn't a bad company. But I prefer nvidia. I could have sworn that amd ran cooler. Well Adam its again your call on the motherboard or if you want we can look into Intel supported boards.

sent from my ultimate droid

 

[Murd]

Yes I know that the core i7 beat on compairison but it is also a lot more for it. The ati which I don't support and don't personally use isn't a bad company. But I prefer nvidia. I could have sworn that amd ran cooler. Well Adam its again your call on the motherboard or if you want we can look into Intel supported boards.

sent from my ultimate droid

I'm with Northwestsupra, the i7 is ALOT more and if you want to stay in budget you'll have to skimp elsewhere. Unless you're compiling code, converting video, folding@home or something VERY processor intesive, the AMD is fine and in your price range. I also stick with Nvidia, but thats more of a personal preference. Both companies make excellent video cards. You've already decided to swap PSU, which I think is a good idea, the only other one is the motherboard. I've seen Gigabyte boards do fine for a long time, but ASUS has always been rock solid for me through years of PC building as a hobby.

 

[northwestsupra]

LOL my first Asus board caught fire at one of the memory pins. Not overclocked or anything. Computer was beeping so I pulled the memory and swapped their positions and resat them. Turned on then FIRE. But I don't judge Asus on that. I still love them. Plus that was back in the and Thunderbird series day lol

Thanks murd for being on my side. He is just trying to play a couple games. No need for a monster machine but a build budget pc

sent from my ultimate droid

 

[northwestsupra]

can you do sli on a crossfire ready board? just saw this on the asus that it has a built in ATI "which we know is gay" lol as anything on-board sucks. But my knowledge in SLI and crossfire is very limited besides x2 cards and a cable connecting them lol

---------- Post added at 12:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 AM ----------

also adam in total if we swapped to a asus board with the corsair PSU it totals out to $817.54 after shipping.

 

[honestabe]

also adam in total if we swapped to a asus board with the corsair PSU it totals out to $817.54 after shipping.

That sounds fine to me. The $800 budget isn't set in stone, it's a rough number. If I'm over $50 I'll be fine. And yeah, I'm just going to be playing a few games. The biggest thing I'll do is play something like DiRT 2 on the max settings (which it looks like this PC should be able to handle no problem). I'm not into the whole online game thing like WOW, so what you've designed will be more than enough to meet my needs. Besides, should the need ever arise to upgrade, I'll easily be able to do so in the future (unlike with my current PC). But I doubt I'll need to do so. I'll do a mild overclock (3.7 GHz sounds fine to me). It's not like I'm doing anything crazy like editing movies constantly or creating animations.

 

[Murd]

can you do sli on a crossfire ready board? just saw this on the asus that it has a built in ATI "which we know is gay" lol as anything on-board sucks. But my knowledge in SLI and crossfire is very limited besides x2 cards and a cable connecting them lol

---------- Post added at 12:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 AM ----------

also adam in total if we swapped to a asus board with the corsair PSU it totals out to $817.54 after shipping.

Sorry, good catch. Here's a couple NVidia chipset boards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131636
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131637

Wasn't thinking of it as my current board is an X58 and supports both.
Most boards don't require that you connect them with a cable anymore. Check the manual to confirm this for the specific board though.
Really though, SLI isn't necessary for the most part. Most systems only see about a 10% increase to FPS.
Another consideration, I don't know if they've fixed this yet or not, but you can't run SLI and have dual monitor support. I honestly haven't kept up to date on this since my last SLI system made my 2nd monitor worthless while gaming.

 

[honestabe]

I don't plan on running dual monitors, so that's not an issue for me. Ummm, what's SLI?

 

[Murd]

I don't plan on running dual monitors, so that's not an issue for me. Ummm, what's SLI?

Scan Line Interleave. Was originally brought to the home PC builders by 3DFX back in the day with the voodoo cards. NVidia bought thier IP a while back and slowly integrated it into their cards.
Basically it lets you hook up 2 (or more) video cards at once to get better performance. Different technologies did it different ways, I think the original one let each card scan every other line, then there was another than scanned 1/2 the screen while the other card did the other half. Not sure how they do it now but thats how it started.

Cliffnotes: 2 video cards at once, increasing performance.

 

[honestabe]

Ah, cool. Yeah, I doubt I'll run SLI. Especially with what I do with my PC.

 

[honestabe]

Kai suggested this video card. It's not that much more.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131374
PowerColor AX6850 1GBD5-DH Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

 

[A. Jay]

Just throwing it out there, if you only need let's say 400mb of graphics card ram, a 512mb card will be faster than a 1gb card. Something to do with memory chips being slower when they're more "dense".

Edit: just saw that the card has GDDR5 memory, so nvm lol

 

[Kai]

I think you have things a bit backwards -- ATI is good, but most games are written for Nvidia instruction sets, so you get better performance with Nvidia cards. Go check most of the 3Dmark benchmarks and reviews on both cards, you'll see that Nvidia spanks ATI in most cases. The same with processors; AMDs are the ones that run hotter, not the Intels...plus, there were recent comparisons between the Phenoms and Intel Core i# processors, and the intel chips spanked the Phenoms with fewer cores.

Here's my take on the OP's build -- Get a more reliable power supply, Antec, Thermaltake, Corsair, etc., and for the love of god, DO NOT get a Gigabyte board! I'll back up the earlier post saying they're POS motherboards....I've had one. The thing had memory issues from the start, and when I called Gigabyte to see if they'd repair the board, they blamed the memory issues on the AMD processor, since the memory controller is on-chip these days. Needless to say, I'll never buy one of their boards again. As stated, if you can swing it....ASUS is the way to go...but if not, shoot for ABIT, MSI, Epox, etc.

There is no such thing as 'written for nVidia instruction sets' - there are only two ways to code for graphics cards: DirectX or OpenGL. When you code a game, you write it with one library in mind - not both. As both ATI and nVidia cards support OpenGL and DirectX, the only difference is how these two differing architectures process the data (down entirely to the drivers you use). Some features will be supported in hardware on one card, that another might not have - nVidia took an age to get into the DX10 game, preferring not to concentrate on features, but simple brute force. nVidia really are making crap right now. The fermi architecture is hot, power hungry and not brilliantly efficient. AMD/ATI aren't the king of brute force with the current gen (although we'll see when the 69x0 series is released in a week or two), but they do provide 90% of the power, for less money. They also use less power, and run cooler. AMD/ATI have a much, much better midrange selection than nVidia currently, and a lot of nVidia's recent releases were merely renamed G92 GPU's (G92 = 8800GTS-512, 9800GTX, GTS250 etc) as they didn't have anything they could put on the table :/

I buy cards not for their brand, but the features they provide at a given price point, and the relative performance they offer. I'd rather buy a Radeon 6850 than an GTX460.

 

[Kai]

Just throwing it out there, if you only need let's say 400mb of graphics card ram, a 512mb card will be faster than a 1gb card. Something to do with memory chips being slower when they're more "dense".

Edit: just saw that the card has GDDR5 memory, so nvm lol

Again, not true. It might have been the case a few generations ago - but it's a non-issue now. 1GB cards have memory thats just as fast (and in some cases, faster) as a 512MB card. Games are being increasingly written for large texture sizes, so the moment you turn up the eye candy - you've filled the buffer, and you're paging out texture info to the hard disk. Of course, this all depends on whether the GPU is up to the task of processing it quick enough. Pointless to have a low-end, budget GPU with 1/2GB of memory, as the textures & polygon info will take so long to process anyway, that the amount of framebuffer you have, is rendered moot.

 

[Kai]

Comparison between the GTX460 768mb and the Radeon 6850:

Shaders

GTX460 = 336SP's
Radeon 6850 = 960SP's

Pixel Fillrate

GTX460 768mb = 16.2 GP/sec
Radeon 6850 = 24.8 GP/sec

Texture Fillrate

GTX460 768mb = 37.8 GT/sec
Radeon 6850 = 37.2 GT/sec

GFLOPS

GTX460 = 907.2 GFLOPS
Radeon 6850 = 1488 GFLOPS

Memory Bus Width

GTX460 768mb = 192-bit GDDR5
Radeon 6850 = 256-bit GDDR5

Memory Bandwidth

GTX460 768mb = 86.4GB/sec
Radeon 6850 = 128GB/sec

Max Power Consumption

GTX460 = 150watts
Radeon 6850 = 127watts

Now, use those figures and work out which is the better deal

 

[honestabe]

Ok, I'm going with Kai's suggestion. That's a hell of a difference for just a few bucks more.

 

[A. Jay]

Again, not true. It might have been the case a few generations ago - but it's a non-issue now. 1GB cards have memory thats just as fast (and in some cases, faster) as a 512MB card. Games are being increasingly written for large texture sizes, so the moment you turn up the eye candy - you've filled the buffer, and you're paging out texture info to the hard disk. Of course, this all depends on whether the GPU is up to the task of processing it quick enough. Pointless to have a low-end, budget GPU with 1/2GB of memory, as the textures & polygon info will take so long to process anyway, that the amount of framebuffer you have, is rendered moot.

Ah, ok

 

[northwestsupra]

Comparison between the GTX460 768mb and the Radeon 6850:

Shaders

GTX460 = 336SP's
Radeon 6850 = 960SP's

Pixel Fillrate

GTX460 768mb = 16.2 GP/sec
Radeon 6850 = 24.8 GP/sec

Texture Fillrate

GTX460 768mb = 37.8 GT/sec
Radeon 6850 = 37.2 GT/sec

GFLOPS

GTX460 = 907.2 GFLOPS
Radeon 6850 = 1488 GFLOPS

Memory Bus Width

GTX460 768mb = 192-bit GDDR5
Radeon 6850 = 256-bit GDDR5

Memory Bandwidth

GTX460 768mb = 86.4GB/sec
Radeon 6850 = 128GB/sec

Max Power Consumption

GTX460 = 150watts
Radeon 6850 = 127watts

Now, use those figures and work out which is the better deal

GIGAFLOPS FTW!! lol big difference, man i need to get up to date with things lol i didnt really even bother to look at ATI cards figuring they would be to much anyways

---------- Post added at 04:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:30 AM ----------

There is no such thing as 'written for nVidia instruction sets' - there are only two ways to code for graphics cards: DirectX or OpenGL. When you code a game, you write it with one library in mind - not both. As both ATI and nVidia cards support OpenGL and DirectX, the only difference is how these two differing architectures process the data (down entirely to the drivers you use). Some features will be supported in hardware on one card, that another might not have - nVidia took an age to get into the DX10 game, preferring not to concentrate on features, but simple brute force. nVidia really are making crap right now. The fermi architecture is hot, power hungry and not brilliantly efficient. AMD/ATI aren't the king of brute force with the current gen (although we'll see when the 69x0 series is released in a week or two), but they do provide 90% of the power, for less money. They also use less power, and run cooler. AMD/ATI have a much, much better midrange selection than nVidia currently, and a lot of nVidia's recent releases were merely renamed G92 GPU's (G92 = 8800GTS-512, 9800GTX, GTS250 etc) as they didn't have anything they could put on the table :/

I buy cards not for their brand, but the features they provide at a given price point, and the relative performance they offer. I'd rather buy a Radeon 6850 than an GTX460.

maybe he was stating how some games have the NVIDIA the way its ment to be played logo on loadup or a game like mirrors edge where it was more designed to work best with nvidia due to the physX integration

---------- Post added at 04:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:32 AM ----------

haha this is turning out to be a interesting project when we order this thing and put it together we will make sure to post pictures lol

 

[Kai]

PhysX is barely used - its a gimmick, usually shoehorned into games because nVidia give them cash to do it. Same reason the 'way its meant to be played' crops up in games. nVidia sponsorship, and it's implied bias towards 'working better' on their products, even though the software is usually device agnostic. There are some embarrassing cases of TWIMTBP backfiring, where AMD/ATI cards play the game better than a competing nVidia product.

Remember, AMD bought ATI back in '06, and has only just phased out the ATI brand, bringing everything under the AMD logo.

 

[KicknAsphlt]

Yes I know that the core i7 beat on compairison but it is also a lot more for it. The ati which I don't support and don't personally use isn't a bad company. But I prefer nvidia. I could have sworn that amd ran cooler. Well Adam its again your call on the motherboard or if you want we can look into Intel supported boards.

sent from my ultimate droid

Not saying he SHOULD go with the Intel, but was just pointing out that they outperformed AMD...that's all. Also, every AMD I've used has run hotter than equivalent Intels....which is also a reason I think most notebooks run with Intel vs. AMD.

---------- Post added at 03:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:55 PM ----------

can you do sli on a crossfire ready board? just saw this on the asus that it has a built in ATI "which we know is gay" lol as anything on-board sucks. But my knowledge in SLI and crossfire is very limited besides x2 cards and a cable connecting them lol

---------- Post added at 12:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 AM ----------

also adam in total if we swapped to a asus board with the corsair PSU it totals out to $817.54 after shipping.

AFAIK, SLI and Crossfire are two completely different (but similar) technologies. They work the same, but the instruction sets are different, so I'm sure the boards aren't cross-compatible.