I7 920 build for $840 (40 back in rebates) + tax/ship

[inmytaxi]

microcenter has the i7 for 229.

gigabyte x58 mb for 204 (20 rebate) mc

ocz gold ddr3 1600 3x2gb 100 (10 rebate) or ocz plat 1333 3x2 90 (20 rebate) no ship zipzoomfly

generic dvd drive 20 newegg (ide) usual price i think

seagate 7200.12 500 gb hd 60 newegg no shipping

newegg pny gtx 260 170

ocz 500w sxs powersupply 60 (10 rebate) newegg no ship

reuse an old case, stock cooler (small price to pay)

don't tell anyone what's inside

 

[xthekidx]

Why wouldn't you tell anyone what's inside? The i7 is mostly for bragging rights at this point, the PII 720 or Core 2's will do just as well as the i7 in everything, save for video encoding and 3d rendering.

 

[inmytaxi]

Well, that's not really true, the i7's kick the *** outta my e8400 in many games.

they're close but people spend an extra $100 to get from the 260 to a 275 for a similar increase in performance, and a similar amount for a pretty case or a high powered p/s that isn't nec. or a cpu cooler that's flashy.

Why not do it for the i7 and skip the bling?

 

[sharken]

now you know better than that....

 

[xthekidx]

Ok well maybe not just as well but pretty darn close, the GPU is almost always the limitation in games (which is really all that anyone cares about anyways ), especially after you overclock, the CPU matters very little except in highly threaded games, which are few and far between. And especially when you compare quads to quads, I think you would have a tough time telling the difference between an overclocked i7 and an overclocked Phenom II 940, and with a $200 price tag difference between the CPU+MB+Ram, I think bragging rights would be the only point in splurging for an i7

 

[inmytaxi]

The diff. bet a 940 and a i7 920 is $40, MB is up to $90.

The memory is $35 more (1066 4gb vs. 1333 6 gb), but you get 50% more.

That ain't $200.

 

[xthekidx]

It depends on what items you chose, you have to make a fair comparison. I think its a waste to go with the GA-EX58-UD3R MB because you lose 2 ram slots, I think that the P6T should be considered the base motherboard to use as it comes with the full set of features, and I consider the GA-MA790X-UD4P as the PII build equivalent. Add $40 to your comparison for that on the i7 setup. Or you can look at it the other way, the UD3R is the bottom of the pile for i7 motherboards, so if you went with the bottom of the pile MB for PII, like this one then the price difference is about $120 for the motherboard either way you look at it. And not everyone lives by a microcenter, so they cannot take advantage of the good deal on the i7 since it is available for in store pick-up only, so add $50 to that price.

Here is how I see it:
i7 920(280)+Asus P6T(240)+6gb 1600mhz Ram(90)=~$610
PII 940(190)+GA-MA790X-UD4P(110)+4gb 1066mhz Ram(60)=~$360
So maybe I was conservative in my $200 estimate of the difference in price between the two builds.