The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

no new page bugs so far

 

Shouldn't your last post have directed us here DDP?

 

Wow, 4th edition, this thread's seen plenty of action!

 

I know the AMD Building thread was messed up too, but they fixed it a few days ago. The Nero scan thread seems OK. I'll have to check the overclocking thread! That AMD Price thread where I told that Troll off, hangs back at page 1, but it doesn't have 2 full pages yet!

@Shaff! Please take note that the Troll hasn't been heard from since! ROFLMSOAO!!

Russ

 

Yah, it looks like you scared him off russ LOL!

I wonder what ever happened to Rawstyles. He was a funny guy LOL!!!

I may not be building a complete new system for a while. My case is nearly timeless(HAF932), My PSU is dependable *knocking on wood*, my board shows no signs of degradation. Other than an 8Gb - 16Gb ram upgrade, and a possible 6, 8, or 12 core next year, I'm happier than a fly in $h!t LOL! Perhaps a GPU upgrade though too. Depends on what kind of games release. Although maybe my buddy will have me build his system come tax time. He's got a friggin 1999 system. The poor thing is running XP, and has a P3 chip. I think its a mere 800Mhz. Makes my mothers old computer look like a super computer.

 

With both the Q9550 and i5 to play with, it'll be a long while before I buy another CPU upgrade, even if Bulldozer is a complete domination.
Graphics needs to come relatively soon, I'm likely to be buying a pair of HD6970s in the not too distant future. However, first and foremost, now the SSD is done, will be redundant storage for my server, an eventual 8GB RAM upgrade, and little stuff like fan controllers and cables.

 

Sounds about like my boat 2 Phenom II processors really is enough horse power for me currently. Sure would like quicker BD encoding though. I can see myself tinkering in less than a year
Would really like at least 1 SSD.
And of course my GTX 260 is becoming yesteryears news LOL! While it can play most games at a fair rate (To me), future games will require an upgrade. And I would like a more fluid experience If I have to spend 400+ dollars...so be it
And I can think of ways of using 16Gb of ram. I'll likely be contemplating that much ram before I purchase it. 8Gb definitely, 16...not so sure yet.

 

Yeah 16GB's still a bit pricey really, I think I'll get away with 8 for a while first

 

Oman7,
Only problem was I almost got a ticket from the SPCA, for Neutering without a license!

Russ

 

you say this omega, but the upgrade bug qill hit you, then you will be itching, and there is only one cure!

 

Ahh yes. I know the upgrade bug well. He's caused me many itches! ROFL!!! I have a feeling no matter what, bulldozer is gonna be the biggest itch of all

 

My wallet suffers from that about every 2 years

Even though I have an i7 I'll have a nasty itch once bulldozer and SB are out lol.

 

I have no upgrade itch for CPU whatsoever at the moment, even with impending Bulldozer, but I am still expecting great things of the architecture. At the moment I'm effectively expecting AMD to take the lead, and anything less than that will surprise me
I'm very itchy for the HD6 series though, and am routinely tempted by people selling HD5 series cards cheap until I realise still just how poor value they are. FPS per £, the best I've come up with so far is 55% improvement (two 5970s) for £790, which is 46% more than I paid for my pair of X2s, so an improvement in FPS per £ of a very poor 6%. That's after 2 years and a month, and using ebay!

 

honestly i did say from day one i didn't like the 5 series, but there's only one thing to blame that on and its nvidia. Lack of comeptition. Tbh im not looking forward to the 6 series as much as the 28nm series.

 

You can't really blame the HD5 series for being the trendset for a new generation. Unfortunately, lack of competition from nvidia for such a long time gave the accepted price for the new cards to be on a 1:1 with those for the previous generation. More than, in fact, since the original HD5 series pair were faster than anything that had come before.
nVidia have had their ups and downs with the 4 series. the 470 definitely a down, the 480 a down but still a card that can take the single GPU lead at all costs, something they're famous for. The 460 definitely an up, but the 450, hmm, more of a down for me.

Agreed on the 28nm series. The HD6 is just a refresh of the HD5 to gleam all the performance possible out of 40nm. The beauty we have here is that nvidia's architecture has already used all of the TDP you can get away with on 40nm, so to improve performance any further, all they can really do is restore the GTX480 to its original 512 shader specification, and go over the 300W mark and make it an ultra-high end GPU.
ATI are well below spec for maximum power drain on their single GPUs, with the HD5870 at only 188W of the allowable 300, so the HD6 series will be AMD expanding Evergreen into a Monster GPU die like the GTX480, but since the HD5870 isn't very far behind with its current small die, it should overtake the GTX480 clearly...in theory.
That of course doesn't allow for any dual GPU configs, and what the HD6990 is likely to be is two HD6 series GPUs that equate to HD5870 level performance, so effectively we'll be getting a reference version of the Asus Ares or 4GB 5970. Hopefully better priced.

This therefore means that it's definitely going to be the best option to go with two single GPUs unless you can afford two duals but only have two slots, as the HD6 series will allow the TDP to near maxed out using one GPU, thus maximising performance without relying on crossfire before multiple slots are used.
The HD6770 is going to be the exact same as the HD5770, and why not? It's not like Southern Islands is a completely different design for a GPU, with no process refresh, may as well extend the range downwards.
The HD6870 however, supposedly isn't going to be the same as the HD6870. I'd be interested to see how that compares. I'm willing to bet it'll probably be a slightly reduced TDP affair with the same shader power but reduced spec in other areas. Sort of like an HD5850 but at HD5870 clocks, instead of the reverse. Maybe. Pure speculation here on my part.
The HD6970 will be a flagship behemoth likely to draw 250W or so, but have a performance output, from what I've seen from prelim benchmarks, being a clear 25% above the GTX480 in a bias-free scenario like Crysis.
How much ATI are likely to charge for it given the GTX480 is still a meaty £360, who knows. I'm hoping they keep it £400 or below, so a pair of 6970s becomes a possible buy.

Northern Islands, I'm not sure exactly what they're planning for it, but I suspect the giants of the HD6 series will have the refresh applied and form mid-highs for the HD7 series. Then maybe, they'll work on a 28nm giant, or perhaps, just use the scaled down HD6970 as a basis for a dual card, the HD7970 maybe? Anything's possible I suppose.
Largely thanks to TSMC's blunders though, 40nm, which is now approaching 3 years old, is still hampering progress, and I don't think we'll see a single GPU approach 3.0x the HD4870's capability until 28nm. At least with HD6 we'll see 2.0x, maybe 2.5.

 

Truly unfortunate. I forgot to purchase the damned WD20EARS. Well, hopefully it's not damned LOL! But I'll have to go 2nd day air to get it here by friday now...
Probably worth it though. It sees less hands when it flys directly to portland. Plus just having the priority label, promotes care. I certainly treat such packages with the utmost care

 

I don't if.I'm late on this but did ya'll Boys know that CoolIt Eco came out with a new radiator style for top end cooling customer was complaining about side panel fan touching the rear radiator mounted on the back and they decided hook it up to a top side one...

http://www.guru3d.com/article/coolit-c240-alc-eco-review/

 

Will,
I saw it but it was too case limited. You almost have to have a Bottom PSU case, with the right spacing for the fans and radiator on top, otherwise you will have to drill holes, something you do not want to do with the motherboard installed! I would also prefer to have a rad that big, mounted on the back of the case! It also has to be one loud mother, with 4 fans! Dang! Those 1366 i7s do get hot, don't they!

9500GT came today from MSI. Hopefully the third one will be the charm. I'll have to wait until my motherboard gets here from GigaByte first though.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Ooh, subtle dig there Russ
To be frank, even a good 120mm tower cooler can handle even 130W CPUs when overclocked quite considerably, let alone something like an H70 or CoolIT Eco, let alone a big rad like that. Realistically those are the sort of things you only need if you're cooling a chipset and graphics card(s) as well.