AMD with am3+ board... SB i52500k... Hear me out.

[exxil3]

I'm looking into a long awaited rig build and have a few questions....

It has been, so far, without Question... that the new SB chips dominate the numbers in gaming. Price to power ratio the i5 2500 is just unbeatable amazing for gaming... blah blah. etc, and etc.

My question is though.

Wouldn't the Phenom II x6 processors black edition be a better buy since grabbing a better motherboard is cheaper as well as the cpu itself?


for example... AMD chipsets offer the PCIE x16/x16 setup at a fair price... while a LOT of the 1155 boards i saw withi the same price range did Not offer this. The few i've found were between 280-300+

I'm torn between going with an am3+ board and a x6 (which leaves room for the Bulldozer) or an intel setup... which leaves room for a possible ivy bridge upgrade.

My main focus with this computer is going to be gaming as far as performance goes
However, I also video edit with pinnacle, as well as use protools/reason/cubase/ableton (which is why i'm leaning towards the hexacore setup)... I'm really taking everything about the bulldozer chips with a grain of salt. I've heard Nothing about price yet.

******
I don't want to start a brand war, which most posts like this do immediately; If you have an opinion however, please back it with some links of words of wisdom

Simply a "i5 2500k." Won't help

 

[GhislainG]

You already know that the i5-2500K is faster than the X6 in games. If you're not in a rush, why not wait for the BD release? Then you'll have the choice to buy the solution that best meets your requirements. BD's performance won't be known until it's released and benchmarked, but that should happen this quarter.

 

[exxil3]

not really in a rush to be completely honest. Given my price range i want to build the best workstation/gaming rig possible

I know hybrids lose on one end or another... That is why the hexacore sounded like a good idea... As for as the BD goes, I'm concerned about the price. If it those my build way off budget I'm hoping it at least forces prices on the current chips down

 

[beenthere]

Yes AMD is always the best performance/value CPU choice. Buying over-priced CPUs and mobos - for bragging rights is naive.

If you're building soon then I'd suggest a Gigabyte AM3+ mobo and either the 1100T or one of the new Zambezi/Bulldozer CPUs. I'd estimate the price diff to be ~ $150. more for the Zambezi which is reported to be ~50% faster than the same clockspeed Phenom II. Either AMD option will perform well so you can't go wrong price wise with AMD.

 

[GhislainG]

If you get an X6 now and AMD releases a more powerful BD for the same price, then you'll regret getting the X6 and you'll lose money if you sell it. The best that could happen is lower prices on existing processors, but that may not happen. After all AMD have to make profits in order to pay for R&D on that yet to be relased BD.

 

[pat]

Question here is: Is the Hexacore fast enough? I means, the i5 may be faster, but if it gives you 130 FPS and the other 120 FPS, would that matter? I think that editing could benefit from more real cores than hyperthreading, but I cannot say that for sure.

From there, I will go for the better price CPU/mobo and put more memory for editing and faster HDD.

 

[timburr]

it goes like this BD is bein priced at an i7 2600k rite arounfd that 300$ range wich makes me wonder if an 8 core is bein priced at a quad??? and the i5 2500 smashes amds 6 core? uve got the answer rite there amd tryd to beat intel with brute force insted of using SMT and im willing to say that BD will prolly perform as well or maybe slightly better than i7 quad however that is in gaming amd is gonna have an edge on other task.....ive had the 1100T and it was good the hurricane hit got insurance money and replaced it with a sandy bridge build cause of the future sandy bridge E chipsets and ill have to say i think i like this i5 2500k better at gaming but i can notice a lil differance in hudge mutitasking software like auto cad for some reason just dont run as well!?

 

[exxil3]

I too hear the chips may get pricey....

But then again an octocore processor seems fairly future proof as far as multitasking goes.

I'm holding off on my gpu's so this gives me room to spend a little bit more on the cpu/mobo/ssd combo that i'm looking at.

 

[timburr]

I too hear the chips may get pricey....

But then again an octocore processor seems fairly future proof as far as multitasking goes.

I'm holding off on my gpu's so this gives me room to spend a little bit more on the cpu/mobo/ssd combo that i'm looking at.

yeah and another thing whenn i had the 1100 games like GTA and Dirt 3 had certain points were it just lagged like 27FPS and i thought it was my GTX 570 but then when i rebuilt my rig with the i5 2500k it seemd to really live up my GPU almost as if the 1100 was bottle neckn it on some sceens but if ur on a tight budget id go with amd but just so u no i spent 1200$ on my new rig and that included everything but the same case i have

 

[exxil3]

@Timbur

You see... That is what i'm afraid of... My buddy gets amazing fps with the setup i put together for him... Single card 6870 with an x6 black edition... No OC...

He isn't too into benchmarks and doesn't understand the numbers... So on a practical application.... where i'm not going to be flexing my e-peen via a screen shot... I want to land on the best possible option.

Good fps (as opposed to amazing)... Smooth rendering

Yet the ability to Work. and work Well...


I'm pretty much looking for a "Work harder, play hard" kinda rig lol... Usually it is the other way around.


i compensate with 2x 6870's running in x16/x16 xfire lol. I don't even want to play the games that would cap that

 

[timburr]

and go for the new egg combos!!!!! u get way better deals than if ordering everything seprate plus more shipping fees that way!

 

[timburr]

well id go with AMD even tho im a intel guy cause at the very sec SB 16x16 mobos are so freakn costly but the ivy bridge and sandy bridge E are suppose to fix this but yet to get another cpu and mobo for a true 16x16 is gonna be an easy 500$ but on the other hand lower end amd mobos that support 16x16 often scale poor

 

[timburr]

and just so ya no SLI and CF usally dont even brake the 8x bus speed

 

[exxil3]

MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

I did find this... Which is now pushing me towards the SB waters lol...

a lot of the newer mobo's dont have too much feedback...

All of the large number reviews are on "4 egg ratings". 16%-25% HORROR stories from some of these boards.

 

[timburr]

look if ur gonna get a SB mobo the best reviewd one and its the one i have is the biostar TP67XE and i no biostar isnt a major company but for the sandy bridge build biostar has put all those top guys to shame no joke look at the reviews

 

[exxil3]

I've seen too much of a difference in performance between 8x/8x and 16x/16x....

My buddy ran his 5770's in xfire on a previous board that died on him... after the new slots, his games ran Much more fluid than before... Again never asked about fps... But he is one that cries about lag if it ever does happen... he's been pretty effin' quiet lol

Yeh. Both builds aren't breaking bank for me... Since i won't be buying my gpu's until later it gives me room to breath in between spending haha

 

[timburr]

hahah i gotcha well the diff between 8x and 16x is greatly affected by cpu PSU ram lol but yeah man if ur not gonna do ne heavy gaming and ur lookin to use heavy multi tasking software go with that 6 core and also just as a refrance my GPU util 1300MHz=13x ive never seen it actually use all of the PCIe banwith

 

[exxil3]

agh... just don't want my gpu setup to be capped by the cpu...

the ram will be 16gb at 1866 for the amd

or 16gb at 1600 for the sb setup

the psu is a 1k watt

just to pick the right cpu -_- :/

 

[timburr]

holy *** man what kinda price u lookin to spend on this CPU cause with ur setup the rite cpu and gpu ull have an amazing build rite now my benchmarks are superb and this is what i got

azza solano case
antec 750 earthwatts PSU
biostar TP67XE mobo
i5 2500k CPU
8GB dual channle ram@1600mhz
and GTX 570 with GTX 260 max core for physx

 

[timburr]

and im pussing that i5 on air to 4.6 Ghz

 

[exxil3]

well my last build...

monitor included

came out to 2 grand... (the case was a little flashy, but i have customers that come into my office so i can't have a spaceship with lights and fans the size of my head)

I went with the nzxt white case... about 160ish out the door there

but this is me pulling out all the stops for a one time buy


Pretty much my setup is either A

SB2500k/z68 16x/16x mobo
Single 120gb SSD
WD Caviar black 1.5tb storage (i'm planning on juggling world of warcraft between harddrives to avoid capping out on space) (i pvp occasionally between clients lol)
hd6870 x2 xfire
16gb 1600 ddr3
1k modular psu

or...

phenom2 x6 black (slight clock tweak)/ equal to sb build mobo
Same parts except for the memory... 16gb @1866...

SO i know i will be able to game without boundaries... I'm sure of this... However I don't want to be bottlenecked by the wrong cpu on a setup like this the weakest link will drag the system down

 

[bearracuda]

agh... just don't want my gpu setup to be capped by the cpu...

the ram will be 16gb at 1866 for the amd

or 16gb at 1600 for the sb setup

the psu is a 1k watt

just to pick the right cpu -_- :/

Well, I always used to look at parts by "how far do I want to go with this part, and will other parts handicap it?" but after reading tom's for the past 2 years, it seems to me that your #1 priority in hardware selection should be balance, not firepower. If any one part in your build is far beyond or behind the others, you're going to end up capping something. It'll still work, but if you're looking for the best value, you need to have a well-balanced build.

It looks like you're going to be getting 16 gigs of RAM at a high clock, 2 6870s, and a 1k watt CPU. Those are top of the line parts. If you're going to grab those, I wouldn't recommend either CPU you mentioned. I'd say go for a full i7. If I'm not much mistaken, you can get better gaming -and- non-gaming performance out of an i7-2600k than the phenom, and get close to the i5-2500's gaming performance while breezing through threaded applications. It's $295, and given your budget concerns, it sounds like you could afford it.

If you have your mind absolutely set on a Phenom II hexacore or an i5-2500, I'd recommend moving down to a single 6870 with 8 gigs of RAM and a 750 watt PSU. And if you plan to use non-gaming threaded applications with it as well as gaming, I'd recommend the Phenom II 1055T, and that you overclock it. (This is assuming you're comfortable with overclocking) The reason I recommend the 1055T rather than something higher in the line is that the entire line seems to have the same overclocking potential regardless of what clock they start at.

I'm on a comfortable overlock of 3.5 GHz with a 1055T right now, turbo-core disabled. And that's a very mild overclock. I was able to get it to 3.7 stable without even touching the voltage. (Under 40c, even, and these guys can go up to 59c) I do mostly 3D rendering and video games. I have yet to see any hiccup in performance. I had a 5770 for a while and Final Fantasy xiv ran VERY smoothly on medium settings. I have yet to try it now that I've moved up to a 6870. (My cooler is a coolermaster hyper 212 plus, btw)

If you were looking at gaming ONLY, I'd have recommended the i5-2500, but the performance you can get out of a 1055T with overclocking for anyone who's doing more than League of Legends and 4chan is just too good for the price, imo.

 

[exxil3]

the ram i stacked at 16gb for my video editing

You pretty much touched on every point i had made in my last post about what my main concerns are. Thank you for taking the time to write that


So you're saying BOTH the phenom II and the 2500k wouldn't be able to let those parts breath correctly?

 

[timburr]

i just wait till bulldozer comes out and grab the i7 cause of the price drop history shows us

 

[timburr]

and the i7 over i5 just gives u the simulation of 8 cores will still only having 4....