More help on deciding

[squallypie]

Firstly, for a 5850, is an athlon x2 435 enough or should i go for phenom x2 955 ( looking for the sweet spot on price/performance ratio )

Second, a good mobo with 16x single gpu and 8x/8x for crossfire + ability to oc the rana or the phenom upto 20% and supports ddr3? it has to be as cheap as possible too

Third, is 500W PSU enough for all the above? 5850 + DDR3 x 4GB + phenom/rana?

Fourth, will a single 5850 be strong enough to handle eyefinity in 3 monitors @ 1920 x 1080 ?

Fifth, The bulldozer cpus coming out in 2011, are they AM3 Socket based?



As i mentioned above, i want good price/performance ratio and my budget can range upto 800$

 

[banthracis]

1. Athlon II x3 is currently the sweet spot. $70 and for amazing performance.
2. Ga 790 ud4
3. Yes if it's got sufficient +12v rail amperage.
4. No, if you plan to max out settings and AA. Quadfire 5870's might, but I haven't seen any bench's yet.
5. yes.

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[skora]

Hey squallypie,

Reading that first question had me confused for a second. AMD uses x? for the number of cores on the CPU and II for second generation. So it should read Athlon II x3 435 or Phenom II x4 955. To answer your questions:

1. The 435 x3 OC'd shouldn't significantly bottleneck a single 5850. Look at the chart, the 5850 will be between the 4890 and the 4870x2. The tri core 720 BE doesn't hinder that at all. The lack of L3 cache may hit performance 5% or so. The 955 will be easier to OC and certainly won't effect the GPU. The other side of this equation is if you're looking at CF down the line, then I'd get the 955 as that might be too much for just a 435.

2. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157198&cm_re=asrock_870-_-13-157-198-_-Product
This is the cheapest board I'd buy at this time with CF support. You can go wit the 790 series for a little less, but it won't have USB 3.0 or Sata III for future upgrades.

3. If you're OCing, no, 500w won't cut it. I'd go 600-650w from a QUALITY PSU maker or else you'll be redlining your PSU and it will burn it out in short order.

4. Here's some benches of a single 5850 eyefinity.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1500480

5. Can't quickly find any official stuff on Bulldozer socket, so I'm not going add to speculation, someone else with more knowledge might be able to answer that.