I need someone else perspective on what to do

[akashic]

I'm looking for some perspective on what you guys would do not really a build idea ad i've more or less decided. I've supplied newegg links, though that is NOT the place i'm gonna buy from (i don't have anything against them i'm simply just from a completely different country )


I've already got a case keyboard, etc. the stuff listed below is what needs an upgrade by now.

The AMD "Core"
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130275 (cheapest AMD870 chipset motherboard with USB3.0)
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145218 (cheapest 1333mhz 4gb kit)
HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395 (75% of the Spinpoint F3 price)
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004 (before you suggest another just fine cheapers PSU this is the cheapest "quality" psu in my country)

the two different options with the AMD core
CPU1: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103871 (cheapest quad-core CPU)
GPU1: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500169 (the cheapest 1gb version of the GTX460, and as a bonus it comes with nitro OC thingy no extra charge)

or

CPU2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808 (cheapest quad-core Phenom)
GPU2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127512 (cheapest GTX 460 768mb version)


Then i know there propbly is those would recomend me getting an Intel i5-750/760 so i've posted a build that is posible within budget

The Intel build
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115067 (the I5-750 is at the same price as the i5-760)
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130240
GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102858
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145218 (cheapest 1333mhz 4gb kit)
HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395 (75% of the Spinpoint F3 price)
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004 (before you suggest another just fine cheapers PSU this is the cheapest "quality" psu in my country)

Note: When i say it is the cheapest it is the cheapest looking at the overall deal, it is posible that one item isn't the cheapest, but compared to the other items it makes it the cheapest overall deal.

 

[dndhatcher]

For most games, the GPU is the biggest concern so your builds are listed from best to worst gaming performance. The athlon with the 460(1gb) is the strongest gaming system.

 

[akashic]

That was kind of what i was thinking, the bigger/faster the GPU the better gaming experience, but where i am/was just not sure is the whole L3 which is missing on the Athlon, and would it be worth throwing the L3 away for those last 256mb ram on the GPU. Especially considering that my resolution is 1440x900, which i forgot to mention in the original post.

and yeah, the Intel build kind of suck for gaming compared to the other two builds, but i felt i had to give an example of what one of those would look like on my budget(it is actually abit above my budget, but not by alot) just so people could see that it wasn't because i was an AMD enthusiast

 

[23mike]

[strike]Maybe someone else can comment with more authority, but I believe there is or was an issue with the 7200.12 Seagate drives. Seems like it was some kind of firmware issue. [/strike]

I don't know what kind of deals you can round up, but I know from watching drive prices at Newegg for the past 3 months or so, I've seen drive prices trend down and right now, within any given month, you find prices around $60/TB (1 TB drives) and sometimes less (WD Black and Spinpoint F3).

You can get green drives even cheaper and of course in the 2 TB size, you can get prices down to $50/TB.

The prices do bounce up and down though...just a little patience (week or two) and you'll see the best deals for that time period, if your store offers those kinds of deals.

 

[jsc]

23mike, the Seagate problem was with the 7200.11 drives. By all reports, Seagate has fixed the problem in the .12 drives.

 

[akashic]

Right, the 12 series should works just fine, it seems that the problems they had with the 11 series have been fixed as JSC said. As i said in the original post, the price of the baracuda 12 and spinpoint f3 is roughly 75% (295DKK vs 380DKK, DKK is "my" currency)

acording to the research i've done basicly the best HDD(NOT including SSD drives) is the Spinpoint F3 and the Baracuda 12 is not that far behind (like 2-3% overall preformance).

Basicly the problem is the choise between the 256mb extra GPU memory vs the 200extra base MHz and the 6mb L3, and i know that with overclocking i can get it to 3.2ghz and posible be really lucky and get a propus chip so i might be able unlock the L3 but you should never really buy something and expect something else.

 

[23mike]

23mike, the Seagate problem was with the 7200.11 drives. By all reports, Seagate has fixed the problem in the .12 drives.

thanks, I'll edit my post...no desire to pass on faulty info.

With regard to my original post, the 1 TB Seagate Barracuda has dropped to $54.99 with discount as of today (on Newegg). Just goes along with my original statement that drive prices bounce around a lot and a little patience can pay big rewards.

 

[23mike]

What are you planning to do with the system exactly? This months revised $2k system provides a lot of insight into building a good overall system versus focusing on one area.

 

[akashic]

What are you planning to do with the system exactly? This months revised $2k system provides a lot of insight into building a good overall system versus focusing on one area.

It is mainly going to be used for manager games, my VERY old system have had some trouple playing Fifa10 and it can't play fifa11 also football manager 10 wasn't running great, so i'm expection some problems with FM11, Pro Cycling Manager is unable to run aswell, but what can i expect from 6 - 6½ year old system i also do a bit of light video editing, which is short video projects, only made 3 ~5min videos this year so its not the main uses it is mostly just removing the extra fottage and adding small sound effeckts and such. I also do, not that often either, some video re-encoding (dvds to phone)

2k$ is well above my budget, using a direct currency exchange rate my budget is roughly 825$ and i am only using newegg as a reference, i am not planing on buying the hardware from Newegg as i'm rather sure newegg doesn't ship to Denmark, even if they do it would be really annoying if i needed something repaired

But as said in an earlier post the question really just is if anyone had any info regarding the 6mb L3 cache and 200MHz vs the additional 256mb video memory unfortuneatly i can't get both if i new HDD now aswell, if i go a bit over budget i could go with both the Phenom II x4 955 and Zotac GTX 460 1gb but with an old sata1 HDD ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152015 ) and the posibility of an upgrade by Q1 2011 (3-4months from now) truth be told that is the one i'm leaning towards, but i'm thinking the system might just be limited by the slow HDD and i would just be anoyed having spend that "much" money on a system and getting little if any preformance improvement

 

[23mike]

Understand totally about the budget constraints. My point in referencing the article is more what it says about component selection than the specific build and how a well rounded system is typically a better choice than focusing on a specific component.

I think that you can build a system which will meet your needs for the next 4 years very capably within your budget (based on prices here--no idea if you can get equivalent deals, but hopefully).

I built an AMD based system that I'm satisfied with for around $900 this summer...but, I think I could have gotten more bang for buck going with an Intel based system.

I chose AMD because I thought AM3 was going to be supported in the next generation processors, but, I was wrong .

It's still a very capable system for my needs and should serve me adequately for next 2 to 4 years.

The one thing we know is that components like hard drives, video cards and memory can be easily upgraded and better components will come along at lower price/performance in the near future--these are the areas to skimp on if any at all.

So, to your question, you cannot easily upgrade the L3 (basically a new system build) versus upgrading a video card. Most cards will perform adequately even if at lower resolution/detail and the next generation cards due out in the near future will drive prices down.

 

[akashic]

Right i misunderstod what you ment with the article then my bad, i did use the 1k SBM article as a reference going down one step in CPU, GPU and PSU two on either CPU or the GPU, unless i skip the HDD for "now"

Considering that both AMD and Intel is just about to release new CPUs and sockets, i do understand why many people are keeping that in mind, but what i've seen there won't be anything really impressive released till Q4 2011, the first releases is just for servers and offices PCs(compared to what they release later on) and then the enthusiast releases will be Q2 2012 or so, therefor i am not considering that as i am not planing on doing any "major" upgrades till i get a compleatly new system. Perhaps i will get one of those new CPUs then, so in my case it doesn't matter that i "only" getting the old AM3 or 1156/1366 based motherboard+CPU.

I get your point about the not beeing able to upgrade to L3, but i wouldn't say it is much harder to upgrade the CPU then the GPU, obviously there could/will be some limitations with the motherboard, but then again there is also GPU limitations based on how good the PSU is. HDD and memory is easier to upgrade there is no argument there which is also why i was considering skipping the new HDD at first.

 

[dndhatcher]

The L3 cache made very little difference in gaming performance. There is an article in the Toms CPU Articles section within the past year comparing Athlons to Phenoms to intel CPUs. The extra MHz will make some difference, but probably not as much as the GPU increase. Any of the builds you listed should be good for your needs. Dont stress too much over trying to hit some hypothetical perfect combination. No such thing truly exists.

 

[akashic]

Best answer selected by Akashic.