Gaming/HTPC Rig on the budget

[Guest]

Hi, im building probably my first AMD system , im saved up for an PHENOM II X4 965BE Proc. , a gigabyte GA-790FXTA-UD5 (rev. 1.0) and 8GBs Kingston DDR3 Ram, now the question here is im planing to use ATI 5870 Crossfire then i saw some thread that u can use an nVidia Card just for physx processing does that mean that i can just get a cheap GT2401gb just for the PhysX then let the CrossfireX 5870 take on the load ? and how do i do this does it need some special software? oh and is the CORE i7-920 for P55 is it worth the jump in price? i mean i want to keep it cheap but is it really worth it without the QPI for the X58 Bloomfield based chipset?? Thanks for the advance and speedy reply

 

[MadAdmiral]

Refer to the link in my signature.

First, you don't need 8 GB of RAM. 4 is more than enough.

Don't bother with the PhysX if you don't play games that use it heavily.

You really, really don't need to Crossfire the 5870. It will be good to go for several years down the line.

The i7 is probably not the worth the price increase, but the i5 definitely is. I recommend the i5-750 ($195) and Asus P7P55D-E Pro mobo ($190).

 

[Guest]

well im anticipating Battlefield BadCompany 2 and Crysis 2 thats why i wanna use CrossFire and PhysX Card but i only thought at first that ATI is for AMD boards only and if u put nvidia i may develop a problem but i wanna knw that how can i do this? since i may or may not get it dpends on my mon on how can i convince here to get me some more cash worst case scenario 2 5770s.

 

[MadAdmiral]

There is no issue with ATI/Intel or nVidia/AMD. I still don't think it's worth it to have a dedicated PhysX card, as to my knowledge, there aren't many games that heavily use it (the only one I can think of off the top of my head is the new Batman).

I wouldn't Crossfire right away. If you have the money for 2 5770s, just get 1 5850. That will leave some options for upgrades later on.

 

[Guest]

hmm ok thanks for the advice im getting the 5870 by the way will ati make an 5870 2gb like the GTX 285 2gb ? i dont want to get the 5970 due to price and power usage and shere size.

 

[MadAdmiral]

They already have. It's called the HD 5970. The 5970 is two 5870s in one card, just slighly downclocked.

 

[Guest]

so is it worth the upsize ?

 

[MadAdmiral]

Depends on the resolution your playing on and the games you play. Both are great cards, and super powerful, just the 5870 might need to be upgraded in 3-4 years, while the 5970 won't need to be. That assumes that something doesn't drastically change, such as the next DirectX becoming mainstream by then.

 

[Guest]

Well thanks for the advice, last question . what make should i get the only available here is POWER COLOR ATi , Palit ,ASUS , MSI & gigabyte and theres saphire but i cant seem to find it off the shelf though.

 

[MadAdmiral]

What ever is cheapest or available. Brand doesn't really matter.

 

[Guest]

ok thanks again you've help me so much ,hope that i can return the favor in the near future