Onboard vs separate

[citanest]

Hi there, I am considering upgrading my system but don't know if I should just go onboard to save money.
This is what the store recommended:

amd phenom II quad core black edition 3.4ghz
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series DDR3 1600MHz (PC3-12800) 4GB (2x2GB) Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL)
Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H Socket AMD3 AMD 890GX + SB850 Chipset ATI Radeon HD 4290 Graphics with HDMI Dual-Channel DDR3 1866(OC)/1333/1066 MHz 7.1- Channel HD Audio Gigabit LAN 6x SATA 6Gb/s+2x SATA3Gb/s 2x USB 3.0+16x USB 2.0 ATX

However, I am not sure if I should go 8gb of ram or go with a separate video card instead of onboard.

I rarely game now. But if I do, I will be playing SC2, WC3, Call of Duty. twice a month?
I do manipulate a lot of large photo images. I process them from raw to jpeg. About 12Meg per photo.

I go with AMD for because it is cheaper for the same performance.

Oh, I do not like fan, so I want the system to be as quiet as possible. So, adding the video is going to create more noise.

Any input or comments are welcome.

 

[COLGeek]

For your purposes, you can certainly live with using the integrated GPU. Performance won't be stellar, but you don't seem to need that kind of performance.

The good thing is that when money is available and you decide to do so, there are many passively-cooled options that can meet your needs while increasing performance over your planned integrated solution.

Your call. Good luck!

 

[Pallimud]

If you are fine playing SC2 on low graphics settings.

That setup has dedicated 128MB of RAM for your graphics card, which is pretty low. Your system will create virtual ram for it to compensate but I doubt you'll be happy with the game graphics quality.

If you get a quiet graphics card, you won't really hear it above your case fans, for sure not when idle, and only a little while gaming.

 

[mailpranshu]

Ok. Let me set the parameters first.
1. Casual gaming
2. Rendering and photo editing
3. Low fan noise

Your config is not balanced.

The first thing is that your on board graphics will choke whenever you try casual gaming. As a rule of thumb:
high end cpu+high end board(890 or X58)<< mid end cpu + mid end low gpu

Are you planning to overclock? Whats the point. You will never the the boost anyway. Instead buy a non BE phenomII X4. You will save money there. In fact even a X3 will do. Games dont use more than 3 cores and most editing softwares are not optimized for more than 3 core utilization.

Instead of a 890G mobo buy a 880G mobo. You will save 40% cost on your board.

Use the money saved to buy a 1GB card like the 5670/4670 or GTS 450. If you compromise on the graphics video rendering will be a B!@(H. Zooming in and enlarging will be slow.

Most of the new cards are very quiet. The 5 series is very slow at idle. At full load volumes though pick up but you wont even notice it over the machine guns.

Hope you found this useful.
You can always add more RAM after a couple of months to smoothen out the experience.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Please dont listen to what a store reccommends. They label systems as gaming systems and stick the fastest cpu with a slow ass gpu that can barely run games. They really dont know whats going on. Get a phenom 955, 4gb ram is plenty at the moment, get a dedicated video card ati 5670 or better. Games and onboard graphics dont go well together, even if your just playing every now and again, it doesnt really matter. Just because I play fallout 3 once or twice a week (due to a busy family schedule) doesnt mean i should suffer with slow ass integrated graphics. Casual gamers need decent cards too, it will make the whole experience more worth while.

 

[citanest]

I love all of you.
Thanks.
I found some deals on core i5.
I think I am leaning towards i5 760 quad with p7p55d-d and asus hd5670 1gb.
Keeping the g.skill 4gb.
this will still be within budget.

What do you think? Should I go 8gb?
I tend to have 5-8 apps running at the same time.
outlook, ie, itune, adobe lightroom, word, excel
background: dropbox, mobileme, multiple antivirus and malware etc.

would 4gb be sufficient?

 

[Pallimud]

Nice, I have a similiar system, running the i5 760 with the Asus p7p55d pro. I opted for 8Gb of ram.

Do you need 8gb? Well, as an example I am using 2.8GB (3.4GB with SC2 mimimized) of ram as I'm typing this. All I have open is Firefox, Steam, Skype, and some programs in the background (running windows 7 64-bit).

Personally I'd go for 8GB, because a game can take up 1-2GB (SC2 while just in the home screen takes 700MB) and you don't want to have to close things or use virtual memory.

Bottom line, if your budget can afford it, do it now and save the hassle of having to replace chips later. Ram is super cheap at the moment and doing 4 cards (dual channel x2) is faster than just 2 cards alone.

 

[citanest]

Nice, I have a similiar system, running the i5 760 with the Asus p7p55d pro. I opted for 8Gb of ram.

Do you need 8gb? Well, as an example I am using 2.8GB (3.4GB with SC2 mimimized) of ram as I'm typing this. All I have open is Firefox, Steam, Skype, and some programs in the background (running windows 7 64-bit).

Personally I'd go for 8GB, because a game can take up 1-2GB (SC2 while just in the home screen takes 700MB) and you don't want to have to close things or use virtual memory.

Bottom line, if your budget can afford it, do it now and save the hassle of having to replace chips later. Ram is super cheap at the moment and doing 4 cards (dual channel x2) is faster than just 2 cards alone.

wait a minute. you are suggesting that I can do 4x2gb? So basically, I will be buying two 2x2gb because I don't think there are 4 matched 2gb available. I thought this will hurt the performance.

2x4gb is very expensive. It's 3 times the price of 2x2gb.

 

[Pallimud]

Your board has 4 RAM slots, running in dual channel mode. When you install your memory, you will see the slots color coded, the matching colors work together (dual channel mode).

Filling each of those slots is the best way to go. Having just 2 filled vs having 4 filled, even if the amount of RAM is the same, actually gives you less performance.

So, yeah, purchase 4x2gb. You might have to get two packages of 2x2gb. NewEgg was having some super deals recently, so make sure to look around.