I am thinking of ordering the following system today. Please let me know if you have any comments. There is no graphics card as I will be using my x1550 until the HD4870 is released. I also already have a 24" monitor (thanks to work).
I considered the e2160, but have read that the e7200 should overclock a little higher and that the 3MB of cache vs 1MB will make a bit of a difference in games and some applications. From what I have read, the 6MB cache on the e8xxx series gives about a 10% increase clock for clock over the 3MB e7200. I am presuming a 1MB cache will drop performance further (I think the sweet spot is somewhere around 2-4MB). I also like the lower power requirements and the other slight enhancements.
I would be looking at pushing the e7200 to a 400MHz FSB and am presuming I can drop the multiplier from 9.5x to 9x or 8x if needed (would give me 3.8GHz, 3.6GHz and 3.2GHz, respectively). I may upgrade to a quad core late next year if I need the extra cores.
If you know of a cheaper, good PCIe 2.0 16x motherboard, let me know. I need a 2.0 board as I believe the HD4870 will start pushing the 16x 1.0/1.1 slot (the review I read shows a slight bottleneck at 8x PCIe 2.0 / 16x PCIe 1.1 on the high end cards right now). Currently, my preference is the GA-EX38.
Also, advice about RAM would be appreciated. I am looking at spending around $100 or less on RAM. The way I understand it, just about any decent DDR2-800 RAM will be sufficient.
Only thing that really stands out to me is the PSU, only because it seems like it might be a little overkill. On the flipside, you give yourself plenty of headroom to add in an extra GPU or more drives later on down the road. Most people will also probably tell you to switch the HDD out for a Seagate 7200.11. I can't comment personally on this, but it seems to be the HDD of choice right now.
I'd go with a sata dvd drive too instead of IDE. You could also give the onboard sound a shot and always order the sound card after if you're not happy with it.
buy.com always seems to have the best price on Corsair PSUs for some reason. The 750TX is currently $95 after rebates. You could probably get by with a 650TX ($70 after rebates) and still have enough juice to power a 2nd video card, though if you want to play it safe and leave more headroom with the 750TX that's not necessarily a bad thing.
"Now if the 4870x2 was actually notably faster than the 280 for about the same price, then I might even take a chance on it. However, that won't be the case."-robx46
