What GPU should I get? Fermi or wait for Kepler?

[llguitargr8]

I am about to put together my first gaming build. It's semi-high end. I want to put 2 560 Ti's in SLI, but since I won't be building until around summer time, that will give me a good chance to see reviews and reception on Kepler, which I think is supposed to come out around May?

Does anyone know if the prices should stay the same for a 660 as a current new 560, or did they not release prices yet? Also, do you guys think it will be even worth it? I also plan to go for the i5 3570k for a processor and a Z77 board.

Other components:
Case- HAF 932
CPU Cooler- Noctua NH-D14
Hard Drives- 2 Seagate Barracuda 500GB RAID0
System Drive- Crucial M4 128GB SSD
RAM- 8GB (will decide on what kind when I know what board I'm getting)
Monitor- Asus 23" 1080p
PSU- Corsair 750W 80+ gold

I want to keep my build under $2000

Thank you in advance, and thank you to this forum as a whole! Community taught me so much!

 

[regularguy290]

since you're not in a hurry to get it built it would be smart to see how kepler performs and how they will be priced. if you wanted it built this week then there is no reason to wait, the 560Ti is very capable and good value.

 

[geofelt]

There is just speculation at the moment about kepler.
Here is one supposed leak about specs and prices:
http://englishseries.blogspot.com/2012/02/nvidia-kepler-series-specifications.html

My take is that at less than the top end, kepler will be price competitive with amd across the line.
Because 28nm will be cheaper to build, I expect prices could be the same, or lower than today's offerings for equivalent performance.

At the very top end, I would be surprised if kepler did not retain the top single gpu crown, and will charge a premium price for it.

I think your plans are good.

 

[llguitargr8]

There is just speculation at the moment about kepler.
Here is one supposed leak about specs and prices:
http://englishseries.blogspot.com/2012/02/nvidia-kepler-series-specifications.html

My take is that at less than the top end, kepler will be price competitive with amd across the line.
Because 28nm will be cheaper to build, I expect prices could be the same, or lower than today's offerings for equivalent performance.

At the very top end, I would be surprised if kepler did not retain the top single gpu crown, and will charge a premium price for it.

I think your plans are good.

I looked at that link, and the 660 Ti would be more expensive than even the 2GB 560 I have chosen now? Obviously, this isn't a definite price, but I hope it's a little less than that. And do you think the 660 Ti SLI should be good enough to run any game (like Crysis or Battlefield 3) 1920x1080 highest settings, or should I get the 680, or 2 580s SLI?

 

[geofelt]

If you will be gaming on just one monitor, then plan on using a single good graphics card. Today, a card like the 7970 will run anything well at high settings. Today's GTX590 or 6990 are overkill. Kepler and 7990 will be more so.

Only plan on sli if you are planning on triple monitor gaming.

 

[Guest]

People seem to forget about the growing number of 120hz monitors out there.... triple monitor, or if you are running 120hz.

 

[TOTATOTA]

I am about to put together my first gaming build. It's semi-high end. I want to put 2 560 Ti's in SLI, but since I won't be building until around summer time, that will give me a good chance to see reviews and reception on Kepler, which I think is supposed to come out around May?

Does anyone know if the prices should stay the same for a 660 as a current new 560, or did they not release prices yet? Also, do you guys think it will be even worth it? I also plan to go for the i5 3570k for a processor and a Z77 board.

Other components:
Case- HAF 932
CPU Cooler- Noctua NH-D14
Hard Drives- 2 Seagate Barracuda 500GB RAID0
System Drive- Crucial M4 128GB SSD
RAM- 8GB (will decide on what kind when I know what board I'm getting)
Monitor- Asus 23" 1080p
PSU- Corsair 750W 80+ gold

I want to keep my build under $2000

Thank you in advance, and thank you to this forum as a whole! Community taught me so much!

Hi bro, i am admin of "Bench2PC" (englishseries.blogspot) .. Your PC Will Rocks, But You Must Wait till AMD 7850 be there on April .. it wouldn't be a heavy drop in prices but may be little .. So Just Wait until that ..if you planned on sli 560 ti 448 core sli would be better than Gtx 580 or any card with the same price & i don't believe nvidia any more after "Fermi" Or GTX 9800/GTS 250 so don't wait until kepler released cause the cards will be lower than they announced ..but You Sould Look on another Cpu Cooler Noctua is good but Water Cooling like Antec 920 or Corsair H70 ... i5 2500K @ 5 or 4.6 with ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 .. if i5 3570k & Z77 not released

 

[jyjjy]

Why bother with RAID if you already have a decent sized SSD? Gold PSUs are really not worth the extra money.

 

[llguitargr8]

Why bother with RAID if you already have a decent sized SSD? Gold PSUs are really not worth the extra money.

The SSD is meant as a boot drive. I was told by my good friend that two 500gb hdds in raid0 would be quicker than a single 1tb hdd.

 

[llguitargr8]

Hi bro, i am admin of "Bench2PC" (englishseries.blogspot) .. Your PC Will Rocks, But You Must Wait till AMD 7850 be there on April .. it wouldn't be a heavy drop in prices but may be little .. So Just Wait until that ..if you planned on sli 560 ti 448 core sli would be better than Gtx 580 or any card with the same price & i don't believe nvidia any more after "Fermi" Or GTX 9800/GTS 250 so don't wait until kepler released cause the cards will be lower than they announced ..but You Sould Look on another Cpu Cooler Noctua is good but Water Cooling like Antec 920 or Corsair H70 ... i5 2500K @ 5 or 4.6 with ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 .. if i5 3570k & Z77 not released

After a bunch of research, articles and these forums, I've come to the conclusion that one shouldn't go for liquid cooling unless the whole system is liquid cooled, and that the Noctua is a great cooler for overclocking.

 

[geofelt]

The SSD is meant as a boot drive. I was told by my good friend that two 500gb hdds in raid0 would be quicker than a single 1tb hdd.

Your friend is mistaken.
A SSD will be 50x faster for the boot/os drive than any hard drive made.
Raid-0 will give you nice sequential benchmark numbers, but that is not what the normal desktop user does.
Raid-0 is good for sequential operations on large files. The os does mainly small random reads and writes.
A 1tb drive will have denser platters than a 500gb drive. Denser platters give you more data per revolution, making a 1 tb drive faster than a 500gb drive.
For the normal desktop user, there is no value in raid-0
For more on raid-0, read this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1371/2

A good air cooler will be simpler, quieter , cheaper and just as effective in cooling as a pre-assembled liquid cpu cooler.
Even a $30 cooler like the CM hyper212 or Xigmatek gaia will do the job well, short of any attempt for a record level cpu overclock.

Noctua is one of the best coolers, mainly because of the excellence of it's fans.

 

[llguitargr8]

Your friend is mistaken.
A SSD will be 50x faster for the boot/os drive than any hard drive made.
Raid-0 will give you nice sequential benchmark numbers, but that is not what the normal desktop user does.
Raid-0 is good for sequential operations on large files. The os does mainly small random reads and writes.
A 1tb drive will have denser platters than a 500gb drive. Denser platters give you more data per revolution, making a 1 tb drive faster than a 500gb drive.
For the normal desktop user, there is no value in raid-0
For more on raid-0, read this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1371/2

A good air cooler will be simpler, quieter , cheaper and just as effective in cooling as a pre-assembled liquid cpu cooler.
Even a $30 cooler like the CM hyper212 or Xigmatek gaia will do the job well, short of any attempt for a record level cpu overclock.

Noctua is one of the best coolers, mainly because of the excellence of it's fans.

Sorry if I wrote that confusingly, but I meant that the SSD was ONLY intended as a boot drive, and the HDDs were to be storage. Sorry for any confusion, and thank you for the RAID info. I still don't really understand it, nor its advantages/disadvantages.

 

[geofelt]

Sorry if I wrote that confusingly, but I meant that the SSD was ONLY intended as a boot drive, and the HDDs were to be storage. Sorry for any confusion, and thank you for the RAID info. I still don't really understand it, nor its advantages/disadvantages.

If you don't understand it, then raid of any kind is not for you.

Raid-0 is of value on only a few very specific applicatiions. You need an application that reads or writes data consecutively in large blocks with overlapped i/o. That means that it will read data into the app before it needs to process it. That is what synthetic benchmarks do.
raid-0 has a down side in that if one member of the array fails, or the motherboard fails, the whole array fails and is not recoverable. Not common. but it happens.

I would stick with one 1tb drive for storage. Defer the purchase if you can because hard drive prices will be much lower later in the year.

 

[jyjjy]

The main point of a storage drive is, well, storing things. Usually music/movies/etc. Speed isn't really much of a concern but capacity is. A 2tb drive can be had less than you would spend on 2 500gb drives.

 

[llguitargr8]

If you don't understand it, then raid of any kind is not for you.

Raid-0 is of value on only a few very specific applicatiions. You need an application that reads or writes data consecutively in large blocks with overlapped i/o. That means that it will read data into the app before it needs to process it. That is what synthetic benchmarks do.
raid-0 has a down side in that if one member of the array fails, or the motherboard fails, the whole array fails and is not recoverable. Not common. but it happens.

I would stick with one 1tb drive for storage. Defer the purchase if you can because hard drive prices will be much lower later in the year.

Yea, when my friend told me to go for a raid setup, I was skeptical because I didn't know anything about it. I just figured he knew what he was talking about, which I'm not saying he doesn't, because he has his own rig. 2 60gb SSDs raid0 and 2 500gb HDDs raid0. But thank you for that info! Now, do you think you could direct me towards a good 1 tb (or 2 if you think it is worth it) hard drive?

 

[jyjjy]

This is a good deal at current prices:

http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=66010&vpn=ST2000DM001&manufacture=Seagate&promoid=1078

 

[geofelt]

Only you can decide worth.
Here is a link on component return rates which might help you:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

 

[llguitargr8]

Only you can decide worth.
Here is a link on component return rates which might help you:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

According to this, they say that 2tb drives are risky. What's your take on this data?

 

[jyjjy]

Only you can decide worth.
Here is a link on component return rates which might help you:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/810-6/components-returns-rates.html

Interesting article but the version you link is outdated. This is the most current version I believe:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-returns-rates-5.html

 

[geofelt]

Interesting article but the version you link is outdated. This is the most current version I believe:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/843-6/components-returns-rates-5.html

Thanks for the update. I am surprised that it not even more current.

 

[geofelt]

According to this, they say that 2tb drives are risky. What's your take on this data?

I take it with a grain of salt.

Everything fails, so you have to be a bit unlucky.
Most of the time the failure is right out of the box, so if you buy from a good retailer you can return it, and no harm is done.

 

[llguitargr8]

I take it with a grain of salt.

Everything fails, so you have to be a bit unlucky.
Most of the time the failure is right out of the box, so if you buy from a good retailer you can return it, and no harm is done.

So in other words, just go for it, and if it needs returning, just send it on back? Now, how will the PC react to a failed hard drive? I've never seen it happen before. Will it just blue screen?

 

[geofelt]

So in other words, just go for it, and if it needs returning, just send it on back? Now, how will the PC react to a failed hard drive? I've never seen it happen before. Will it just blue screen?

I don't think I have ever had a hard drive fail either.
In most cases you will get some warning, like extended times to do things.
Modern hard drives have a recording capability called s.m.a.r.t which records statistics, including relocated sectors and retry counts. When you display them, all the good numbers are highlighted in green.
Your first clue is likely to be when the pc fails to boot.
Really, do not worry much about a mechanical failure.

If you have anything worth rescuing on your pc, protect it to some sort of external backup.
Loss by accident, malware, fire is probably more likely than a hardware failure.

 

[jyjjy]

Usually when a hard drive fails it simply is no longer readable by the computer. If you have Windows on the drive, yeah, you will get a blue screen and on reboot it will tell you no bootable drive found. A storage drive failure shouldn't cause any operational issues other than being inaccessible.

 

[llguitargr8]

Would you guys say that HDD or SSD failures are common?