System Compatibility

[Chinny]

OCZ ZX Series 850W Fully-Modular 80PLUS Gold High Performance Power Supply compatible with Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3 i5 i7 and AMD Phenom

Antec Lanboy Air

Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Internal 12XReadable and DVD-Writable Drive with Lightscribe SH-B123L/BSBP *2

AMD FX-8150 FX 8-Core

Sapphire DIRT 3 EDITION Radeon HD 6950 2 GB (graphics card)

Corsair Memory Vengeance 16 Dual Channel Kit DDR3 1600 MHz 240-Pin DDR3

ASUS Crosshair V Formula AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Republic of Gamers Series Motherboard

Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB Desktop Hard Drive

If you wouldn't mind telling me if these all would work together, and if there are any better parts for a relatively sane price, I would appreciate it greatly.

 

[blazorthon]

Don't buy an AMD processor for a high end gaming machine or even a mid range one if you can avoid it because they can bottleneck your system. If you must get an AMD CPU then your best bet is probably the quad core Phenom IIs with a good overclock.

Get an Intel i5 2500K CPU and a Z68 motherboard instead if you have to buy soon. If you can wait a few months (three at the most is the expectation) for Intel's new CPUs and AMD's and Nvidia's new video cards then I would recommend waiting because you will get substantially more bang for your buck then.

Also, how many RAM modules are in that 16GB kit? if they are 2x8GB then it will be probably be between two and four times more expensive than a 4x4GB kit or two 2x4GB kits.

If you you can wait a few months before buying then I highly recommend doing so because by then Intel's new Ivy bridge CPUs, Nvidia's new Kepler graphics cards, and the rest of AMD's new southern Islands graphics cards will be out. You will get significantly more performance for the same price and by then your budget might even have been able to increase a little to afford even more.

 

[g-unit1111]

Don't buy an AMD processor for a high end gaming machine or even a mid range one if you can avoid it because they can bottleneck your system. If you must get an AMD CPU then your best bet is probably the quad core Phenom IIs with a good overclock.

As an AMD user I definitely agree with this - if you want to get the FX wait until they have all the issues ironed out. Most motherboards won't support FX out of the box. You have to install an older CPU, flash the BIOS and then install the new one.

Get an Intel i5 2500K CPU and a Z68 motherboard instead if you have to buy soon. If you can wait a few months (three at the most is the expectation) for Intel's new CPUs and AMD's and Nvidia's new video cards then I would recommend waiting because you will get substantially more bang for your buck then.

I'll keep saying this until I'm blue in the face but Ivy Bridge isn't going to be the deal breaker everyone thinks it is. It's just going to be a few new CPUs with higher clock speeds - it's not really going to have any new features that Sandy Bridge doesn't already have and it's going to use the same Z68 and P67 chipsets that are out now. The only reason it would be worth waiting for is if you're going to be using a PCI-e 3.0 video card. But that's about it. There's not going to be a whole lot that's worth waiting for, and if you keep waiting for new stuff you'll never be satisfied with what's out there now.

Also, how many RAM modules are in that 16GB kit? if they are 2x8GB then it will be probably be between two and four times more expensive than a 4x4GB kit or two 2x4GB kits.

Plus not all motherboards can support 8GB chips yet - check the QVL from the manufacturer to confirm that it does.

 

[blazorthon]

Don't buy an AMD processor for a high end gaming machine or even a mid range one if you can avoid it because they can bottleneck your system. If you must get an AMD CPU then your best bet is probably the quad core Phenom IIs with a good overclock.

As an AMD user I definitely agree with this - if you want to get the FX wait until they have all the issues ironed out. Most motherboards won't support FX out of the box. You have to install an older CPU, flash the BIOS and then install the new one.

Get an Intel i5 2500K CPU and a Z68 motherboard instead if you have to buy soon. If you can wait a few months (three at the most is the expectation) for Intel's new CPUs and AMD's and Nvidia's new video cards then I would recommend waiting because you will get substantially more bang for your buck then.

I'll keep saying this until I'm blue in the face but Ivy Bridge isn't going to be the deal breaker everyone thinks it is. It's just going to be a few new CPUs with higher clock speeds - it's not really going to have any new features that Sandy Bridge doesn't already have and it's going to use the same Z68 and P67 chipsets that are out now. The only reason it would be worth waiting for is if you're going to be using a PCI-e 3.0 video card. But that's about it. There's not going to be a whole lot that's worth waiting for, and if you keep waiting for new stuff you'll never be satisfied with what's out there now.

Also, how many RAM modules are in that 16GB kit? if they are 2x8GB then it will be probably be between two and four times more expensive than a 4x4GB kit or two 2x4GB kits.

Plus not all motherboards can support 8GB chips yet - check the QVL from the manufacturer to confirm that it does.

When I said substantially more bang for your buck I was referring to all the new tech not just Ivy bridge. Yes Ivy isn't a huge leap in performance but it is a huge leap in performance per watt so the power usage was brought down substantially. This means that the low end coolers may be able to handle significantly higher overclocks than they can with Sandy bridge (which is admittedly already very good) so the end performance can be substantially higher anyway. Granted this isn't because Ivy is so much faster but because it uses so much less power and thus generates so much less heat but it still results in more performance.

For example, the some of the cheap Cooler master Hyper 212 coolers might get an i5-2500K to around 4.4GHz safely enough but an Ivy bridge equivalent CPU (I don't remember the Ivy replacement numbers for the 2500 chips) might hit a few hundred MHz more with the same coolers. Combined with a considerable increase in per clock performance this can be a decent bump in performance.

Like you said it might not be enough to be a deal breaker but I think the improvements are good enough to be considered.

 

[g-unit1111]

When I said substantially more bang for your buck I was referring to all the new tech not just Ivy bridge. Yes Ivy isn't a huge leap in performance but it is a huge leap in performance per watt so the power usage was brought down substantially. This means that the low end coolers may be able to handle significantly higher overclocks than they can with Sandy bridge (which is admittedly already very good) so the end performance can be substantially higher anyway. Granted this isn't because Ivy is so much faster but because it uses so much less power and thus generates so much less heat but it still results in more performance.

For example, the some of the cheap Cooler master Hyper 212 coolers might get an i5-2500K to around 4.4GHz safely enough but an Ivy bridge equivalent CPU (I don't remember the Ivy replacement numbers for the 2500 chips) might hit a few hundred MHz more with the same coolers. Combined with a considerable increase in per clock performance this can be a decent bump in performance.

Like you said it might not be enough to be a deal breaker but I think the improvements are good enough to be considered.

There's improvements for sure, but after how disappointing the FX-8100 was I'm not taking anything Intel or AMD says seriously until I see some real numbers. The thing is having +-.2GHz on a CPU isn't really going to make that much of a difference in terms of how your computer will handle games and everything else. What will really make the difference is your GPU, I would honestly invest more in the GPU than say waiting for what Ivy's performance will bring to the table.

 

[blazorthon]

I think the difference will be well above 200MHz, I'm thinking at least 400MHz and probably a little more. Yes it's not a significant gaming increase but it helps other things too. Waiting also means that AMD's affordable video cards and Nvidia's cards will both probably also be out.I agree that the video card is much more important than the CPU in performance (so long as you have a decent CPU) but just looking at the 7970 and benches of the 7700 cards I can say with good certainty that AMD's 7700/7800/7900 cards are more of an improvement over the previous 6000 cards.

Yes the FX processors were a huge disappointment so far and I agree that the video card should be the larger investment but the newer products are definitely the better investment and not just by a small margin.

Also, consider that the Bulldozer arch isn't quite the failure it has been made out to be. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, hit huge frequencies to offset it's low performance per clock. The problem is just that it takes a lot of power and makes a lot of heat to do this but it has been proven that Bulldozer hits huge frequencies. If the former AMD chief employee is to be believed then Bulldozer's biggest performance problem is caused by the automatic designs in performance critical parts that were previously hand-designed for optimal performance. If AMD fixes this then performance is claimed to be able to jump about 20% while power usage drops about 20%, making the FX line actually good processors.

 

[g-unit1111]

I think the difference will be well above 200MHz, I'm thinking at least 400MHz and probably a little more. Yes it's not a significant gaming increase but it helps other things too. Waiting also means that AMD's affordable video cards and Nvidia's cards will both probably also be out.I agree that the video card is much more important than the CPU in performance (so long as you have a decent CPU) but just looking at the 7970 and benches of the 7700 cards I can say with good certainty that AMD's 7700/7800/7900 cards are more of an improvement over the previous 6000 cards.

I'm for sure waiting for those cards but it will be a while before they start to trickle out. The 7770 is going to be a brand new GPU from the ground up from what I've been told and I'm waiting to see what that brings as it's going to be AMD's value line (like the 6790 is now).

Yes the FX processors were a huge disappointment so far and I agree that the video card should be the larger investment but the newer products are definitely the better investment and not just by a small margin.

I agree that when you buy a system you should get the newest hardware you can.

Also, consider that the Bulldozer arch isn't quite the failure it has been made out to be. It did exactly what it was supposed to do, hit huge frequencies to offset it's low performance per clock. The problem is just that it takes a lot of power and makes a lot of heat to do this but it has been proven that Bulldozer hits huge frequencies. If the former AMD chief employee is to be believed then Bulldozer's biggest performance problem is caused by the automatic designs in performance critical parts that were previously hand-designed for optimal performance. If AMD fixes this then performance is claimed to be able to jump about 20% while power usage drops about 20%, making the FX line actually good processors.

I'm not saying Bulldozer was a huge failure. It's a good concept but the execution of it was very poor. AMD should've had the BIOS issues ironed out with the board makers before releasing. I think once AMD gets all the issues ironed out that it will be at least somewhat competitive with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge. But until I see some actual numbers I'm not believing anything Intel or AMD says.

 

[blazorthon]

Don't distrust Intel for AMD's screw up. Intel has thus far lived up to their hype with Sandy bridge and Sandy bridge E and they will probably do the same with Ivy bridge. Also, AMD has more or less lived up to their hype in the graphics at least even though (like you said) they screwed up the execution of their FX chips.

Intel said Ivy bridge will be generally be 10-15% faster while using 20-25% less power and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise because of their recent track record.

Nvidia has been very quiet about their new cards so I have no way to guess at how well they will do besides looking at how they did in the past.

Yes the 7700/7800/7900 cards are all based on AMD's NGC architecture. The 7770 is almost as fast as the 6850 while having a slightly lower TDP than the 6770 so you can easily see the improvements there, especially with the 7970 compared to the 6970. Other improvements include huge GPGPU improvements for those NGC cards and a huge tessellation improvement too.