<$1200 build, i5 760 or i7 930? SC2 and Excel Models

[mphmaster]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: this week

BUDGET RANGE: <1200, less = better

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: starcraft 2, huge excel models, possibly more intensive gaming in the future

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, os

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA

PARTS PREFERENCES: Intel i5 760 or i7 930, maybe SSD in the future, would like a quiet PC

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe (if necessary- would rather have a reliable, quiet PC)

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Would like the option in the future, unless it is not cost effective

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1080p


Main question is whether I should go with the i5 760 or i7 930. I work with large excel models, not sure how much the hyperthreading will help. My other concern is future proofing and future SLI/crossfire setup. I have heard from some people that the i7 scales better with SLI/crossfire than the i5. I have also heard that Intel will be updating their motherboard chipset in a year anyway, so a drop-in CPU upgrade two years from now is unlikely.

I am thinking of going with the 5770 to begin with for starcraft (this is good enough for 1080p at ultra, right?). Also considering the gtx 460 1gb or the 5850, or the gtx 470. My gut feeling is to go with the 5770 to tide me over with starcraft, and in 6 mo when I'm bored and possibly get new games, I could either get another 5770 or get a better single or dual GPU setup. I've heard that single 5770 and 460 gtx aren't that great for 1080p for today's games.

Here are the two builds I am considering:

i5 760
asus p7p55d-e pro (chose this because i might want a SSD in the future)
Crucial 4GB 2x2GB dual channel
radeon 5770 1GB
Silverstone 750W
Samsung spinpoint 500MB
Lite-On iHas124
Antec Three Hundred

(not sure what fans I need or wireless card)

if I get the i7 930, I would get:
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
Crucial 3GB 3x1 triple channel


Again, main two questions:

(1) should I get the i7 for future SLI scaling and future-proofing (the i5 mobo already has SATA 3 and USB3) and for hyper threading.
(2) any other video card recommendations for someone who will play starcraft for the next 6 months and maybe more intensive games later.

Regarding the budget: not a hard cap, but I don't want to waste money if it won't help much with performance or future proofing.

Thank you!

 

[MadAdmiral]

To start, the scaling issue is basically non-existent. The X58 chipset has 16x/16x lanes for the PCIe 2.0 slots, while the P55 has 8x/8x. What that translates to in gaming terms is a 2-4% performance difference, which is practically never noticable. It's not worth the $200 price increase from the i5 to the i7.

Here's what I'd get:

CPU: i7-930 $290
Mobo/GPU: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R and HD 5850 $490. Went with the 5850 because the budget will allow it. It will certainly handle most games at 1080p.
RAM: Corsair XMS3 3x2 GB 1600 mhz CAS Latency 7 $150 after rebate. 3 GB is way too little for an i7 build. I wouldn't do anything less than 6 GB.
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 TB $60. Because it's cheap.
PSU/Case: XFX 650W and Lian Li PC-K62 $130 after rebate

Total: $1,120

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Well, if you get a second in six months then multiple graphics cards are okay. If you tried to add a second card two

There's no such thing as future-proofing. You can attempt to plan for the next year or two given certain information. But that's about it. Even in this stage it's been announced that intel will be releasing two new sockets to replace both currently on the market. So while the current stuff is not dead like socket 775 is already, they will most likely not allow anything new either.

May I ask what you're upgrading from? That could allow for a cheaper build, like you said you were open to. An AMD one would be pretty cheap in comparison, and most likely will have better drop-in upgradeability. You could also go with their six-core.

 

[mphmaster]

Thanks for the reply. Those are some pretty good combo deals.

I didn't know the samsung 1tb was so cheap now- ill go with that.

My questions are:

(1) If you don't think the increase in performance warrants the price for the i7 930- are you recommending it because it is more future proof / better with excel? If it is not needed, I would rather save the money- interested to hear your opinion.

(2) Is the gtx 470 better than the 5850? Or are you recommending it because of the combo deal and they are about the same?

(3) Will 650W be enough with crossfire and another SSD drive? I'm not familiar with XFX, are they pretty reliable?

(4)I know you don't have a crystal ball, but do you think the graphics cards will be good/cheap enough 6 months down the road to wait for something better rather than buying the 5850 now? I know my budget is $1,200, but I'm still cheap.

Thanks again.

 

[MadAdmiral]

1.) I think the i7 would help with Excel. I'm not 100% positive. That's why I suggested the i7. AMD's X6s would be good too.

2.) Barely. However, it runs very hot, requires a lot of power and doesn't really give you that much. The only nVidia card that's out right now that can be recommended is the GTX 460. All the other ones should be avoided.

3.) Yes. XFX is gettin great reviews right now. They're pretty new, but I haven't heard a bad word about their PSUs yet.

4.) I'd stick with a single GPU for now. You could get equivalent performance for less, but I'm looking more long term. If you immediately (and 6 months is pretty immediate) add a second card, you're dooming yourself to shelling out a large amount in a number of years. A single 5850 should be powerful enough (it can handle almost every current game, excluding Crysis, at max details and 1080p resolutions) for several years (2-3), and after that you have the option of throwing a second one in for really cheap. I don't really expect prices to fall drastically over the next 6 months. The cards aren't that old.

 

[mphmaster]

Well, if you get a second in six months then multiple graphics cards are okay. If you tried to add a second card two

There's no such thing as future-proofing. You can attempt to plan for the next year or two given certain information. But that's about it. Even in this stage it's been announced that intel will be releasing two new sockets to replace both currently on the market. So while the current stuff is not dead like socket 775 is already, they will most likely not allow anything new either.

May I ask what you're upgrading from? That could allow for a cheaper build, like you said you were open to. An AMD one would be pretty cheap in comparison, and most likely will have better drop-in upgradeability. You could also go with their six-core.

I think your first paragraph was cut-off

I hear you about the future proofing; I'm leary of spending too much for what 'might' happen.

My current system is a p4 2.4Ghz, 500mb ram, 40GB HD, GeForce? 128mb, i think. I beleive the motherboard is an ABit IS-7.

 

[MadAdmiral]

You're going to see a massive jump in performance regardless of what you build. Here's an AMD option that should be close in terms of performance to the i7 and have an upgrade path:

CPU/GPU: X6 1090T and HD 5850 $561
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H $140
RAM: G.Skill Eco 2x2 GB 1600 mhz CAS Latency 7 $103

Total: $994. You could even up the RAM to 8 GB if the Excel stuff you do is that intense...

EDIT: Just noticed I didn't include an optical drive. Here's a cheap SATA DVD burner for $16 with promo code. That makes the total for the Intel build $1,136 and the AMD build is $1,010.

 

[mphmaster]

1.) 2.) Barely. However, it runs very hot, requires a lot of power and doesn't really give you that much. The only nVidia card that's out right now that can be recommended is the GTX 460. All the other ones should be avoided.
quotemsg]

The lower power and temp would seem to make it worth it- I was biased by the latest THW graphics guide that came out. I've heard some people on this forum say that they expect NVIDIAs drivers to be better in the future and I beleive I've heard people say that the NVIDIA cards scale better in SLI (vs ATI in crossfire), especially on an intel platform (in other words, 2x gtx 470 > 2x radeon 5850 on a new intel platform). Not sure if this is true and if the difference is negligable, i would go with the lower power option, all else equal.

Here are some links on Excel performance I found:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2832/14
(makes me think hyperthreading is worth it for excel 2007)
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24520639-Excel-How-do-I-use-ALL-Core-Processors-when-running-this-macro
(looks like excel 2010, which I will be using, only can use 2 cores at the same time)


This last link makes me lean towards the i5 platform (still thinking intel vs. AMD). If excel 2010 can't really take advantage of the hyperthreading and games aren't much better on the i7, it seems like the i5 is the way to go for me.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

My first paragraph was indeed cut off. I thought I finished it with "If you tried to add a second card two or more years from now, you'd probably be better off selling it and buying something newer than adding a second card"

And yeah, that's why I asked what you were using, it's old enough that anything will be awesome in comparison. Especially hard drives, man are they faster.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.460542
alternative for CPU/GPU. For the mobo you could also find a nice 870 chipset mobo for about $100 if you wanna ditch crossfire altogether.

Edit: None of those links mention the 6 core AMD CPU. Hyperthreading is no replacement for more real cores. I would bet that this one would do better. Gaming isn't much better from the AMD build either.

 

[mphmaster]

Thanks everyone for all the help.

I think I'm going to go with the i5 setup based on my preference for intel (maybe this isn't fully rational) and the fact that i7 doesn't seem to help much for gaming or excel, and doesn't help future proof that much.

Anyone know any good combo deals for a good i5 760 build?

It seems like the Asus P7P55D-E Pro is the way to go for me but open to any suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[MadAdmiral]

The i5 is even worse for future proofing. The i7 can at least jump up to six cores.

Also, I believe you're a bit mistaken on what the i7 can and can't do. The i5 and i7 are basically equal in gaming performance. Part of that is the i5's great turbo feature where any unused cores are shut down to allow the others to be automatically overclocked. Since games don't typically use more than one or two cores, that allows the i5 to operate at higher speeds without changing the defaults. However, the CPU matters very little for gaming. For a pure gaming build, the CPU is often downgraded significantly to afford a bigger GPU, which does matter. In fact, most CPU gaming benchmarks are conducted with settings that artificially make the CPU work harder in order to better show the differences. In the real world, a better CPU will likely only mean a performance gain of 2 or 3 frames per second. Where the differences between CPUs actually matter are the CPU intensive tasks (such as number crunching, encoding, rendering, etc.), and the i7 is vastly superior for those tasks.

I would say you're two best options are the X6 1090T (the AMD build I linked above) or the i7-930. Both of those builds have a good mix of CPU power and GPU power, which gives you the best performance for a mixed purpose build.

Judging by the graphs you posted, I'm thinking that Excel tends to prefer more physical cores (i.e. the X6 is better than the i5) more than it likes hyperthreading (i.e. the i7 over the i5). The reason I think this is the case is because there isn't a massive difference between the i7 and the i5. If hyperthreading was incredible useful, there would be a bigger gap. That gain could easily be due to the higher speeds of the i7. All of that leads me to think that the X6 would beat the i7 when using Excel.

I also want to talk about the SLI vs. CF debate. Right now, SLI scales better than Crossfire. What that means is when you add the second GPU, you have a higher performance gain. I believe it's something like 75% for SLI vs. 65% for CF. However, the amounts change with every driver, so it's hard to really say what's better. Also, CF scales better over a larger amount of cards. nVidia's scaling drops off considerably after the second card, down to something more like 60%. ATI cards stay relatively the same.

The other problem with SLI right now (excluding the GTX 460) is that it requires a lot of power and generates a lot of heat. Dual 470s take a good 850W PSU to run, while dual 480s shouldn't be used on anything less than a good quality 1000W unit. By comparision, dual HD 5970s (the biggest GPU out now), with each one having two HD 5870 cores on a single card (i.e. Crossfire already, so Quadfire), can be run off a good quality 850W unit, with room to spare. That's a huge difference in terms of expense, heat and power.

CPU brand doesn't matter past the fact that AMD boards don't natively support SLI, so you pay a premium for it. However, that's just because AMD owns ATI...

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

And owning ATi is why their main chipsets are pretty good.

 

[mphmaster]

Here are some more benchmarks i found that include some excel performance- i5 750 is included, but not the i5 760.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/phenom-ii-x6-1090t_8.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/269-amd-phenom2-x6-1090T-and-1055T/page6.html

Looks to me like the 1090T is about the same as an i5 760 for excel performance (at least excel 2007, who knows about excel 2010 which looks like it only supports two cores).

I care about excel performance, but most of the time I spend in excel is at work. Not sure I'm willing to pay $200+ for an i930 & ram & motherboard for 20-25% better excel performance. The more I read, the more it seems future proofing can't really be done after 2 years. Even if the i7 is more future proof, either processer will probably be good enough for games and excel and will not be able to drop-in upgrade.

It seems like the i5 760 might be the best build for me given the lower price and power required compared to the 1090T.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

That's why I mentioned the cheaper Phenom II x6. I don't think there really is a power difference. If excel 2010 is really limited to 2 cores it might also be better to go for a x4 955 and overclock.

 

[kawasaki_kinger]

intel 930 290$
asus p6x58d pre 290$
ram 3*2gb corsair 1600 170$
vga 5850 1gb sapphire toxic 330$
ocz 850w 75$+ case atx 50$
hard WD caviar black 1tb 95$