1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Discussion in 'Building a new PC' started by ddp, Sep 13, 2010.

  1. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

    Joined:
    Jan 18, 2006
    Messages:
    4,523
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    68
    They do stress that fairly hard lol.
     
  2. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

    Joined:
    Aug 3, 2005
    Messages:
    7,895
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    116
    Sam,

    Put me down for 3 P5N-SLI failures. The sad part is the never really fixed it to work like it was designed to. The only one's who saw 4.0GHz out of the E4300, a 1.8GHz Intel chip, were the earliest buyers, and of course, the Media they conned with them, hyping the motherboard. Their second shipment was junk, using inferior board level components. They even managed to con Leo Laporte, the computer guy on the radio with it. Hundreds were sold on his say so alone. I don't know what the price was in England, but it was a $50 motherboard here, and became a struggle to OC past 3.2gHz.

    I got 3.6GHz out of mine on a GigaByte GA-965P-DS3R, the motherboard that saved GigaByte from going out of business. When they followed that up with an almost as successful P35-DS3R, GigaByte was back in business. Right about a year after I got the 965P, I bought the E6750, which had a 1333 fsb speed, the problem for me was the Canadian market board I had, didn't support a native 1333 bus, even though it said so on the box and in the manual. I worked out a deal with GigaByte to pay $50 and my 965-DS3R for a new P35-DS3R. It turned out to be a bargain. For the last 4 years, it's been being used daily in an office environment, and runs 24/7. It's still running strong, at 3.8GHz. Great motherboard.

    Russ
     
  3. Deadrum33

    Deadrum33 Active member

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2005
    Messages:
    1,930
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    66
    Anyone have suggestions for a proper CPU and graphics card for a gaming rig? Long story short, i have a friend that wants to make some cash by having people watch his game streams.
    Once we have a CPU, i will probably steer him toward whichever Gigabyte board he feels comfortable with feature-wise, i know he wants to teach himself "The Art of the Overclock" but doesnt want to burn up the hardware as he wants to build this beast to last some years.
    He thinks he wants to SLI 2 GPU's but i told him that 1 top of the line card usually works better than 2x midrange cards, i read that here awhile back is it still true?

    Thanks in advance.
     
  4. DXR88

    DXR88 Regular member

    Joined:
    May 29, 2007
    Messages:
    714
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    28
    if its strictly for gaming id go with the AMD 975BE or Intel i5, as for the SLI vs one powerful card, id say get the one powerful card now and SLI it later if need be. i haven't had any real troubles with SLI on Popular titles...just expect problems if you go outside the "Hot Now" Game Zone.
     
  5. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    Your advice about SLI is sound. Unless you're spending more than you can throw at a single GPU, crossfire/SLI tend not to be worth it much, as on the occasions it doesn't work, you get left with one weaker card.

    For overclocking, there is no 'art' to overclocking modern Intel CPUs these days, you just put the number in, hit save and you're done. The downside is that the first overclockable CPU of any worth is the i5 3570K, which is reasonably pricey, but certainly not out of the reach of people building gaming PCs.
    AMDs are far more complicated to overclock with, and there's plenty to learn about there if you feel so inclined, but while you'll save money, you'll never get even close to the performance offered by the i5 in anything but a very small selection (<10) of titles.
     
  6. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    One P5N-E SLI failure was enough for me. Incidentally mine was £70 (or $95+tax at today's exchange). I don't ever recall them dropping as low as $50 in the US, perhaps at the very end when they were about to be discontinued maybe.

    The P35C-DS3R that replaced it didn't stay very long as it was upgraded to an X38-DS4 with the idea of running crossfire (that never happened due to a fault with the board's PCIe controller from the outset). It's showing its age now (5 years in April), but apart from having shed one of the audio jacks and the onboard NIC, and now having quite a slow BIOS memory check (5-20s versus the usual 2) it's still perfectly stable in windows, although it's no longer used for overclocking.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2013
  7. Deadrum33

    Deadrum33 Active member

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2005
    Messages:
    1,930
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    66


    Thanks both for the fast reply!
    He wants a gaming rig first but says he wants to do anything with it. I will stay with Ivy Bridge but want to see his reaction to i7 3770k vs i5 3570k. He is the type to volunteer resources (boinc, folding at home) and multi-task so the extra i7 cores may do him good.
    Definitely an SSD for boot drive, some online benchmarks show Samsung 840 and OCZ vertex as being worth the money in that area.
    Any recommendation on GPU? I'm thinking I can talk him into a Radeon 77-- or 78-- so if anyone has opinions let me know.
     
  8. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    If you're multi-tasking with all cores, I can definitely recommend the i7 over the i5. Whether he's willing to shell out the extra of course is another matter.

    Swerve OCZ SSDs as they're still pretty unreliable. So far so good with the Samsung 800 series drives, but they're fairly new so mid-term and long-term reliability are as-yet unproven.

    The graphics card is the make or break for gaming, a good/bad CPU will run major titles faster/slower, but almost any modern CPU can play games to a reasonable extent, graphics are the fundamental, the more you can spend the better.
     
  9. DXR88

    DXR88 Regular member

    Joined:
    May 29, 2007
    Messages:
    714
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Nvidia is destroying ATI/AMD offering's. i'd lay down some cash on a GTX680.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2013
  10. DXR88

    DXR88 Regular member

    Joined:
    May 29, 2007
    Messages:
    714
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    28
    that's a load of crock, good sells pitch though.
     
  11. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    It's entirely true. The question is whether it actually matters, which is what I was getting at in my previous post. The fact that the Intel CPUs outperform the AMD CPUs in games the vast majority of the time is not questioned, what is, however, questioned is whether it's enough of a difference to actually notice in the real world. In a not insignificant number of cases it is, but it's far from every title.

    Not responding to the graphics comment, it's blatant fanboyism, nothing more.
     
  12. Deadrum33

    Deadrum33 Active member

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2005
    Messages:
    1,930
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    66
    Well, the GPU brand is AMD because my friend does all sorts of work with different open source projects and Nvidia has had a horrible track record with drivers and support of other OS than windows, and not a great reputation with windows.

    He chose the i7 3770k for CPU with this Gigabyte z77 chipset board

    Two things I am still looking into, SSD and GPU
    SSD he only wants a small boot device, no storage so our baseline is this Intel 330 series 60GB Any better ideas for <$100?

    GPU, he doesnt want the top tier because doesnt wanna spend $300-400 so we settled on this 7850 and realistically, he will be doing most his gaming on a 42" 1080p TV, streaming console games, not going crazy on PC titles. We settled on this card for price point, i can talk him into spending a bit more on this if a reasonable argument can be given (small bump <$100 in cost for more powerful card). If there are better AMD cards to be had for around that price let me know.

    He gave me cash to order things but I am waiting to hear about any issues with our choices before i do. Its been a long time since i had this much paper money in my hand staring at me, please help before i do something crazy with it...
     
  13. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    Nvidia's track record with Linux has actually been better than AMD's historically, but as of the present day, I think you may be right, AMD may be pulling ahead at least in certain areas - our linux-based thin client OS we deploy to convert old machines at work has proven far more successful on AMDs than on nvidias.

    If all you need is a basic small SSD, that's pretty much the ideal choice, I have no qualms with that. An HD7850 is fairly potent for 1920x1080, I run the HD7770 in my LAN PC at 1920x1080 and it can play modern stuff fairly well. Not 60fps on max settings of course, but still well enough, so an HD7850 would definitely be alright, if he's not playing top titles at max detail.
     
  14. Deadrum33

    Deadrum33 Active member

    Joined:
    Jul 23, 2005
    Messages:
    1,930
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    66
    If the want or need to XFIRE the 7850 arises in the future, would an issue be the fact the mobo's PCIE 3.0 x 16 slots are at 16x, 8x, and 4x instead of having at least 2 16x slots?
     
  15. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    No, it takes a LOT for 8x link speed to become an issue. A lot more than two HD7850s, I can assure you :)
     
  16. DXR88

    DXR88 Regular member

    Joined:
    May 29, 2007
    Messages:
    714
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    28
    AMD couldn't program a proper Driver Set if there existence depended on it. Nvidia still outperforms even if that performance gain is strictly software. while yes it did come off as bit fan boyish, you've not got much room to talk.
     
  17. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    No argument about AMD drivers being awful, but nvidia's are hardly excellent either. Still, this isn't really a performance issue, this is a stability/testing issue - the problems with AMD drivers are things like the corrupt cursor bug, catalyst control center not opening, and powerplay issues, and likewise the bugs with nvidia's drivers tend to be things like thermal control and game crashes. The reason performance occasionally varies wildly in nvidia's favour is through effectively bribing developers and other underhand business practices, so it's not something I want to give them credit for.
    This is pretty much where my negativity surrounding nvidia comes from - that and the fact they charge people a premium for the advantages listed above, yet produce substandard hardware, and pocket the difference.

    The cards themselves are (Geforce FX and GTX400 series excluding) largely well designed products, even if they don't have a particularly long shelf life, but the corporate attitude of nvidia stinks to high heaven, even making Intel look like good guys.
     
  18. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

    Joined:
    Jan 18, 2006
    Messages:
    4,523
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    68
    I agree on that. Nvidia have been playing corporate bully for years and abusing their clout within the industry to create artificial advantages. Decent product design aside, they're the jerks of the PC world.
     
  19. DXR88

    DXR88 Regular member

    Joined:
    May 29, 2007
    Messages:
    714
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Bully, Corporate Attitude, Under handed tactics, none of that matters. Nvidia still has the advantage they still squeeze out more frames a second than the competition for a gamer thats all that matters.
     
  20. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2004
    Messages:
    33,335
    Likes Received:
    7
    Trophy Points:
    118
    In some cases. That's certainly not a generally accepted rule...
     

Share This Page