I7-930 vs i7-960

For $470,its not worth it at all.Stick with i7 930.
and 8GB RAM is more than enough for today's games/apps.But since you are getting a X58 system,I'd recommend going with 6GB Tri Channel instead.Its cheaper and offers the same performance in almost all games/apps.

Thanks, Maziar. I'll go with the i7-930.

8 GB is the lowest number of GBs of RAM offered in this config. (9 GB is a $60 upgrade).

Is 9 GB Tri channel better than 8 GB dual channel?

You can get the 8GB and upgrade later yourself.But if you don't,then IMO for $60 its worth it because you get Tri-channel RAM plus an extra GB of RAM.

>>IMO for $60 its worth it because you get Tri-channel RAM plus an extra GB of RAM.

That's what I thought as well. Thanks.

The only thing stopping me from pulling the trigger on this purchase is that microcenter has an 8100 (step down from the 9100) with the major difference other than the CPU being a 350 PSU vs a 525 PSU. (http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml...).

I read on another forum that the i7-930 is "much slower" than the i7-870 and subsequent googling has me even more confused  

With the 9100 I spend $1700+ and get an i7-930.
With the 8100 I spend $1000 and get an i7-870 in a machine in which I don't have as much flexibility to upgrade the GPU (important to me), due to the PSU.

Oy.  

I don't know where you have read that but its wrong.
i7 870 is only 100MHz faster which isn't noticeable in almost all games/apps.

Thank you, Maziar.

I think going with the i7-930 machine, which would enable me to get a GTX-460 GPU, with 9 GB RAM, is the way to go....

>>Its better to build yourself but if that's not an option for you then go for the i7 930 machine,its got great specs  

I really don't have the know-how to build myself and a friend who is a builder and I couldn't agree on specs. He is completely anti-Intel and Nvidia, and I'm something of a Photoshop power user, which means Nvidia is pretty crucial, based on what I read here. I'm pretty CPU agnostic, but...

Also, I didn't want to rely on a "friend" if something goes wrong that I can't handle.

I considered the 8100, but decided to pull out all the stops.

So now I'm waiting for the 9100 w/the i7-930, 9 GB RAM. I'll install an EVGA GTX-460 SE. The machine will have a SG 1TB HD and I'll add a 1TB WD Caviar Black and a 2 TB WD Caviar Black. And I'll have a 2-yr warranty, for what that's worth.

This will replace a Dell 8400 w/ XP SP3 (3.4 GHz, 3 GB RAM, EVGA GeForce 8600 GT).

I expect it to be a considerable upgrade.  

Thanks for all your help, Maziar...

dg

Its a common misconception, but photoshop benefits nothing from Nvidia cards; in fact the only Adobe product that works better with a Nvidia GPU is Premiere that supports CUDA to a very limited degree.

I would really suggest you do it yourself, its really not that hard and you can be a lot more flexible. This guide can pretty much lead you all the way: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/274745-31-step-step-g...

AMD builds aren't bad for your needs though, a 1055T + HD6850 and 8GB of ram would have buttery-smooth Photoshop performance while being quite a bit cheaper than a i7 setup.

Fine,your new rig will give you a huge boost in performance compared to the older one.
Hope you enjoy it

And Timop is right about PS.

Best answer selected by dg27.

This topic has been closed by Maziar