The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

lol, i had a feeling this would happen. its the syndrom many of us have done, set a budet, and then say, tis only this much extra, only that much, and in the end BAM!!!

ok so what is the ammount you would be wanting to spend?

 

To answer your question, I think the new budget is $500 for mobo,cpu,hsf, and memory.

You see, Shaff, it's all your fault. You suckered me into it. lol

Yeah you're right BAM! The budget is blown.

Everybody has been telling me the same thing, but when you put that $307 system together IT HIT ME BETWEEN THE EYES lol. I was working with pennies because I was throwing it into a dead P4. Now that I'm not planning to do that anymore, the budget is going back up toward the $800 Estuansis was talking about a couple weeks ago.

1. So let's work backward from the graphics card, 4870 with 1 gig, about $300.
2. Add to that about $100 for this PSU I found. So that is $400 so far.

(How do you guys like that PSU, and what specific 4870 1 gig does anybody like?)

3. Now the mobo, cpu, hsf, memory combination we have so far runs about $252 assuming I can still get the $85 6750 from the guy boozer found. This included the $27 arctic freezer 7 and for $37 2 gigs of geil memory with the red LED dragon eyes! (Sounds cool!)

Now realistically, I don't want to bottleneck the 4870, and remember, eventually that's going to be two 4870s, the gfx power of Sam and Estuansis.

So, instead of $250 for mobo, cpu, memory, hsf .....SHOULD WE BE LOOKING MORE LIKE A TOTAL OF AT LEAST $500? WILL THAT GET US A LOT CLOSER TO AVOIDING A BOTTLENECK BY DOUBLING OUR MOBO/CPU BUDGET?

By the way, for an extra $37 shouldn't we think in terms of at least 4 gigs of memory? That pushes our memory budget to $75? Is geil still good - do we want something faster? If the red dragon is still good, that leaves $425 to not bottleneck the gfx cards. So we're still at the 3rd part of the system:

3. Staying mainstream core two duo, how should we best spend $425 between mobo, cpu, and hsf, to not bottleneck two 4870s? Abuzar, what are some good used part buys out there right now. Everybody join in - shaff, you're the moderator. LOL Thanks all!
-Rich

 

right, firstly, perfect PSU, i would go with a modular, but im a cbale tidy freak

also im sorry for suckering you into it, i know how u feel, i get buyers remorse all the time, even for something for £10!!

can your case accomodate a 4870?

1GB sounds good, and the PSU will eat it up and spit it out, and ask for seconds, possibly 3rds

as for specific cheapest with 2-3years warranty, id suggest this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127389

$500 for the CPU/mobo/RAM/HSF:





COME ON NEW EGG COME TO THE UK!!!!

also will your case be wide enough for the tuniq tower?

also you can substitute the E8500 for the Q6600.

expect the E8500 to hit 3.8-4.2GHz.

youll also want to "obtain" vista 64 and each 1GB card will be mapped on the RAM to 1GB, therefore 2GB will not be enough!

 

It'll be more than 8000 3dmarks with a 4870. I managed to get nearly 13,000 out of it with my old E4300. Use an E8500 and you'll probably break 15,000. Two of them, well...

Now that the HD4870s are actually fast enough to make use of the extra memory, the 1GB versions are roughly 10% faster on average, but in certain scenarios they can be up to 30% faster when you really are using much more than 512MB of memory (note, basically just Crysis and GRiD with AA)

 

umm should fresh orange juice taste fizzy?

 

Not really, no.

 

im guessing i just drunk a nice glass of off orange juice

 

Perhaps, it tends to go a bit sour when it goes off.

 

lol

You guys are so damn random.

P.S. Wasn't that guy selling a used P5Q-E for 75 bucks?

 

Hey Shaff I was just kidding about suckering me into this - you did a great job of opening up my eyes, and now it's full steam ahead!!

Boozer, the used p5qe the guy was selling was a one gpu mobo - that's the only problem.

Man, shaff, that is another beautiful pricing setup you've created under $500. I have been going through this stuff all night. I have one change for you, but I totally agree on the Wolfdale 8500 - the price point is so much cheaper than the 8600, and hardly any more than the 8400. That is going to kick ass!!!

But, first, shaff, so we can all read this page normally without a lot of sideways scrolling, could you do me a favor and edit your post and replace your super humongously WIDE graphic with this chopped up one below? Hahahaha (you probably know how to do it but I just tested - if you right click on the picture below and select properties, you will get the path, which you can copy and paste in when you edit your post - Pleeeze! lol)



I am sure the 4870 board will fit - if not I'll make the room - my case is about 19 inches long - how long is the card?

My case is about 7.5 inches wide - the normal size - I measured my psu and the corsair psu is the same size - so how tall is the tuniq?

Ok - for the big change. I want to add $70 - that is cheating of me because it puts us over budget by $55 making a $550 mobo/cpu/hsf/memory budget. But I decided I love the Asus p5Q3 Deluxe - the one that newegg is out of stock on right now. I can find it all over town for about $210 or so. Comparing the boards side by side you can see the quality difference - it has sinks on the VRMs and many more discrete modules, mosfets, etc. - probably much better for fine-tuning the overclocking. Also it supports DDR3 1600, and 1800 and says it will overclock the memory to 2000.

But you have to get the approved memory on the current QVL list. So we will end up paying a lot more than $100 for memory if we want the fastest. I am going to need your help on the memory because to get all the way up to 2000 looks pretty expensive, like $350!!!
-Rich

 

Haha you're quite right Rich, Shaff's post works fine at home obviously, but I'm usinga uni computer and it completely ruins the page!
A $200 board though? on your budget that's just unnecessary, for the sake of using overpriced DDR3 or gettinga few more mhz out of the CPU it's a waste of time. Especially if you're going to add a second graphics card the money would be far better spent getting an X48 board like the X48-DS4.

 

Yes, Sam, I'm finding that for sure, the DDR3 memory is super expensive, especially all the way up to 2000. I was on a site, [H]Enthusiast that was talking about the 4870 and edge detect AA, and they mentioned using this type of asus board and fast processor to make sure not to bottleneck the 4870. So I figured, "great" but I see that the memory is VERY expensive. But maybe I don't need the DDR3 all the way up to 2000. I think I can get it up to about 1200 or so, for about $200 for 4 gigs, up from the $100 we had budgeted.

But of course everything has to work together - there are lots of compromises. I was reading something yesterday about how GDDR5 won't be taking over for a while, because another type - maybe it was DDR3 - is starting to experience major price drops as motherboard manufacturers start to use it more.

I'll pull up the board you recommended in a minute.

 

That's a load of rubbish, PC2-5300 doesn't even bottleneck a 4870X2.

 

Also, I would get a Q6600 instead of an E8500...

 

Well Boozer, the Q6600 is just about the same price as the 8500, but that's the old thing about quad versus core 2 duo. I remember reading, not too long ago, in anandtech about that subject - maybe 6 months ago - and the conclusion was: If for the same money as quad, you can get faster core 2 duo, then that's the way to get the best bang for the buck, because not that many games actually took advantage of the quad architecture. Has that changed? We can get 2.6 quad, or 3.16 core duo, for $10 more. I don't know how they compare to each other on over-clocking. Why do you recommend Q6600?

Sam, that is good to know about the lack of bottlenecking. Does that also apply to crossfire? Hey that gigabyte board is beautiful - looks just as nice as the asus, and uses cheaper DDR2 1200 memory. It doesn't however have the newer p45 chipset, and at about $220, I found a $25 cheaper just as nice deluxe Asus "hiding" on newegg, the Asus P5Q Deluxe, which is their p45 chipset, 1600 fsb, crossfire, and DDR2 1200 memory. It's only $195, about $55 more than the non-deluxe version of the same board which is missing the vrm heat sink, and which also doesn't have the multitude of discrete components - mosfets, whatnot, that all the deluxe boards have.

The funny thing is I passed right by it as I went up the price list of Asus boards, because I was looking for "crossfire" on the expansion slot information. My guess is nobody knows the board is over there on Newegg, because when you go to the product web page, you find that whoever wrote it up left out all the expansion slot information on the spec sheet. Under Features you will find crossfire.

The funny thing is that at $244 Newegg has a bundle with the exact same P5Q Deluxe and a sound card, and on the web page for the combo the spec sheet lists all the expansion slots, 2 pci-e 2.0 x 16, crossfire support at x8, etc. etc. and crossfire therefore is also one of the features that shows up on the big price-sorted list of asus boards. When I found the bundle, I wasn't smart enough to just go back to look for the same board, unbundled. I didn't see crossfire, so that was it, no suspicion that they would ever accidentally leave out information so important to their marketing. I have never caught Newegg in a screwup like that before - have you? P5Q Deluxe web page missing expansion slot info.

So Shaff, as you can see I want to bump the brilliant build by $55, which takes us to $540, and substitute the Deluxe version of the Asus board you picked out - price is $194.99 on newegg. I see that you DID go to faster memory at 1066 up from 800. Now keep in mind that for the same price we could get the P5Q3 Deluxe board, with DDR3, which Newegg is out of right now, or for $159, the non-deluxe version of the DDR3 board. On DDR3 they go up to 2000, but very expensive memory. Is there something about DDR3 that makes DDR3 1066 faster than DDR2 1066, or does the 1066 mean they are the same speed? Edit: I read a couple more articles - the faster DDR3 has slower latencies, but if you get can afford to buy the DDR3 that is faster than DDR2 - for example if we got DDR3 1600 versus our DDR2 1966, we would be able to overclock by more. But anyway, the cost difference is horrendous, and if Sam thinks there won't be any bottleneck even with crossfire, then for sure no point dumping in the extra cash.

One more thing: Yes, the 4870 at 10.5 inches is fine - my case is about 20 inches long. But width-wise, my case is a standard 7" wide. The Tuniq is 6" wide. Do you think it will fit? I kind of doubt it. Do you have any other type of cooler that isn't so tall?
-Rich

 

Rich's call at the end of the day. With one 4870, the E8500 wins. With two, the Q6600 does.
Rich, the X48 and P45 are both new, the X48 is actually a better chipset, the P45 just overclocks slightly further. I think you're getting confused with the older X38 that I use.
Crossfire's bandwidth is limited on P45 so you will get degraded performance, it isn't on X48, so what you see is what you get.

 

if you are insistent on going crossfire, a Quad will do wonders as the CPU is guzzled when using crossfire, ordinarily, ask anyone, im a dual man, very stubborn at that , but for crossfire, it need a big CPU over head.

i would suggest the Q9550.

that sound card is what i am about to get, for gaming music and videos, is simply put, fan bloody tastic.

sam, alots of tests have put P45 CF vs X48 CF, nad have come to a conclusion that the P45 was worth the money more, due to its better OCing, and the fact that there was about 5% on avg difference in frame rate.

also the X48 has a 90nm procces IICR where as the P45 has 65nm.

rich, PLEASE do not get DDR3, as the only good chipset for intel board atm (not counting i7) is the very good 790i, BUT you will then need to go for SLI, which if you want to do, sounds good, but your an ATI fanboy

before everyone flames the 790i, its become a brilliant chipset, at beginning it was a POS, but the problems have gone,a nd its the best nvidia chipset since Nforce4.

alsoo please do not go DDR3, as the FSB has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 10.6GB/s and DDR3 easily execeeds this, and so goes unused. this leave just higher latencies with the DDR3 over DDR2, even with the extra speed and it completing clock cyles twice on the falling and rising cycles of the memory, leading to a quad pumped effective speed, the FSB kills any advantage.

if you really want to be overkill, then IMO wait for i7

you, our P4 APG upgrader, can be our i7 guinepig

 

The 790i still uses like 50% more power than the P45, the 780i used almost double. Avoid them both, regardless of whether they've improved or not, I don't trust them, I don't trust any chipset that uses as much power as an HD3850 graphics card.

Also, the difference between the p45 and X48 overclocks in the REAL world I'm sure is no more than 5%, I'm willing to bet it's less. So you can't get to 6Ghz with an X48, I couldn't care less, it's not stable regardless.

 

Well, yes I could be the nehalem guinea pig - that would be fine with me. I might as well get a new case for this whole bit - I see that the case I have just barely accepts the 4870 - I would have to relocate a hard drive most likely. It won't take the Tuniq in terms of width, there would be a noticeable bulge in the side of my case, Lol.

I just read that Nehalem could be coming end of this year - well that is soon upon us. So I guess maybe that's a good strategy - I will be the Nehalem guinea pig. Hah! Good idea! Thanks,
-Rich

 

The HD4870 is standard extended length, so will fit in almost any mid tower case. Tower coolers, however, are more problematic, especially for Coolermaster cases as they're narrower than most.