The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Very nice you're keeping AMD afloat single-handedly Russ, but in all honesty, he asked if the CPU was any good, and sure, it's fine, but nowhere does it say his budget is Limited to 100 dollars, and if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well...

 

ORIGINAL POST in question:

I think that Sammy answered the question and gave his opinion on the AMD processor and then recommended an alternative cheap solution in Intel. His response follows.

I don't think that AMD has caught up with Intel yet and it seems that Intel offers a cheap solution to most of the AMD choices. I like AMD and will always look at them for builds and opportunities but Intel is still the leader.

What I've marked in RED everyone should read. OP, me, and all that read this thread!!!

I won't comment on the "recession" as it will just fuel the fire for BS...

....gm

 

Russ, rick never sad he was ONLY looking to spend $100, and he said he wanted to build a PC for his granddaughter. He never said he wanted to ONLY build AMD, he said a PC.

You know something; I understand now why you used to get fed up of hearing about ASUS motherboards, because thanks to you the 780G board loving is getting tiring as well. For the money Intel can’t be beaten right now. Every few posts you go on about it. Trust me we understand, you’re a fanboy okay.
I cannot believe you said Sam disrespected Rick when Sam has earned on this forum to voice his opinion, and he is an expert on speccing someone something for a price. In fact, with that line I believe you are heavily disrespecting Sam. He is the one with the tens of thousands of posts helping people in the PC threads, looking for new ones every day, helping every newb and noob alike. I know personally I have a short fuse, I wouldn’t be able to do what Sam does, I do my own things on more specialist forums with more learned people, where as Sam, on aD where there are A LOT of first time builders and children, helps to an extent would have push most people over the edge. Each of his builds is much thought out, and he doesn’t let bias hold him when he is helping, even though I and he may argue between us on msn ! If there is one person who has a right to post any spec he thinks is worth it, is Sam. Yes we have heard about your job and the billions of builds you do for your customers, but Sam lives in the now, not speccing to build things which will just suffice in work, where you are a specialist, but he specs so many different types, with loads of different budgets.
He was just helping rich spend his money the best. If someone was going to buy a $300 nvidia GPU, even if they say they only want nvidia, but ATI for $300 easily out classes it, then they should know about it. it’s not about disrespecting the person, so don’t give them the ATI option, it’s about maximising his choices with the best for the money, and if Sam thinks it is the best for the buck, them IMO I’m right behind him, because he has earned the respect of thousands of aD users giving them the best bang for buck.

Most of the newbs, they do not visit the PC building or OCing stickies, as I’m sure as I asked my brother, who is 13, which is around the age of the newer builders, he said it’s just too much, a person would feel out of place trying to join into the convos, which was exactly how I felt at first 2 years ago, so they make their own threads, and you go see how much Sam, and for the last year boozer as well have been helping. He is a king for the community, so please do not go trying to make him feel bad or putting him down, when he did nothing wrong.

Had I done this and you said it to me I would have ignored it, as I really cannot be bothered, but Sam is very respected, and on the PC forums everyone knows if Sam's in your thread your privileged, but they won’t know who Russ is, as Russ doesn’t help this part of the community. Neither do I, I admit, but I’m not biting the head of the one who does help. Mods can see for themselves that what Sam does really speaks for itself, and didn’t need me, but it had to be said, and if I was out of line I accept any punishments coming my way.

 

I wasn't pointing out anybody in particular, and I said that. I was just using an example from a while ago! Sam's was not the only answer to Rick's question either!

As far as the AMD thing goes, I would like one a little faster than the one I just built. A low power AMD Athlon X2 5400B 2.8GHz Socket AM2 65W for $84 would do nicely on that BioStar MB. I think I might like that even better than my E6750! And it will certainly be easier to cool! The 4400+ 65w I built had a single case fan, a 120 I took out of one of those failed Coolmax PSUs that I didn't have to send back to newegg. with the stock AMD cooler it only ran 35-36C in a 30C/87F very warm room. It's the same with OxiMoron 36 was it. It takes 6 fans to cool mine that well even at stock speeds. There's a very small difference in temps from stock 2.66, and 3.55GHz. Maybe 2 degrees! Put a Freezer 64 on that puppy and a rear exhaust fan and it should cool very well. Add an Enzotec NB cooler, and it should be great at staying cool, and maybe overclock it a bit. Remember I'm already getting a performance boost of 15% or more, just with the 780G MB! It should perform very well with my 1066 Dominators. The 4400+ only had DDR2 800 memory, so it will be even speedier. Costs me $150 to find out!

Here's a pretty good article on the 780G chipset. Good reading!
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3258

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Shaff, that was very eloquent! At first I was a little concerned, it sounded somewhat strong in tone, but the "tribute" to Sam was well delivered and unquestionably highly deserved. Don't be so humble about your own good deeds, since that brilliant $400 build you did for me on the graphics thread helped me to finally put the nail in the coffin of my p4 foolishness, I now need some help from you to finalize the new build - but don't recommend water - I'm not there yet.

You finished off talking about being willing to accept any punishment due you - please, for heavens sake, creaky, loco, none is merited, but at the same time, shaff, let's be careful not to be too strong in our tone. Agreed?

Like our worldwide friend and Russ' and my new President, Obama, I want to try to always see things from the other side. And like Russ, I'm also down here in SoCal where the economy is a bi**ch - we all go down to the Salvation Army soup kitchen near the train station in San Juan Capistrano every night - that's how we're making it Lol. (Russ make sure you clip the coupons and shop at Stater Brothers the discount supermarket. I found out about them in that big strike we had two years ago and they are cheaper. For example every two months the price of london broil drops to the price of dog food, $1.97 a pound, and so I stock up the freezer a couple of months worth lol)

I digress. So what IS Russ' point of view on this? Is he still getting up every morning with the noisy alarm clock in an aluminum ashtray in a porcelain tub, with a few pieces of dynamite thrown in? LOL. That would make me cranky too - just kidding Russ.

What motivated the little lecture? I have to agree, first and foremost, 100%, with your point, Shaff, that Sam is a wonderful resource. I check with him on most stuff, and the breadth and depth of his knowledge is staggering! For sure he gives greatly to the community. My noobness can attest to that! Not enough words of appreciation can be spoken along those lines.

In fact, along those lines, at this time, as a noob, I honestly would like to express my appreciation to all of you dudes, even you shaff No seriously, your willingness, all of you, shaff, sam, rob, creaky, gm, rick, boozer, russ, cincy - oh that's rob - everybody - it's a damn nice thing that you do donating your brains and ideas to move us all along forward on the path toward technical enlightenment.

That gets me back to where, maybe, I think Russ was coming from. Greeny broke down the dialog and analyzed it very well - I think there perhaps was some misunderstanding. I don't believe for a second that Russ was intending in the slightest way to be disrespectful to sam, even though he did trash silentpcreview and ran his own benchmark, goddammit!

What I think is that, putting myself in Russ' shoes - correct me if I'm messing this all up Russ - I think that Russ is not simply just a fanboy of AMD but also, from the way he describes it - they really have come up with some kind of wild fantastic little board there - a board that does some things Intel boards just don't do.

Now for me, on a personal level, that little board wouldn't be something I'm interested in shaff, because the only thing that counts for me is that when you come around the Cod4 corner in Downpour with your shottie, I want to know that my p90 will spray you with 50 rounds before you even think about reaching for the trigger, lol, but for a lot of the people that Russ is building for - it sounds to me like THAT particular little motherboard can do backflips - and I haven't exactly heard the same features he described in regard to intel boards.

For example: The last thing he said. The on-board graphic chip is able to pair up with an actual video board! WTF! When did THAT get invented? For intel, correct me I'm wrong ya'll - that's virtual HERESY! I'm wayyy more than impressed! :O

So what I'm saying Shaffaaf, is that, if Russ is seeing genius on a small scale, subtle benefits accruing to AMD's partnership with ATI - ATI being the graphics solution that I have to admit I am a big fanboy of, sam too - if that is what is going on, and so Russ wants to shout it out big time, I can see that there might be a little bit of frustration when it appears that everybody automatically says: "Well if you're thinking AMD, how about this Intel solution over here."

You know, he's got a point. After a while that would begin to p*ss me off too! But on the other hand, of course, everybody should know all the options, as you eloquently stated.

It's funny - I raised sort of the same issue to Sam when I saw the video on spider - all the controls you have that allow you to overclock the phenom. It looked pretty impressive, but sam told me that the price/performance ratio still favors Intel for now. Well, that's okay. AMD surged ahead with 64 bits, when Intel stumbled on overheating P4s, and had to get their Israeli colleagues to rethink the whole bit about having a logical path about an inch wide and a mile long to increase the branch hits and boost the clock rate. So now, AMD has to get the phenom jazzed up a little - their ATI brothers ought to be able to help with that.

I, for one, wouldn't mind picking up a complete AMD/ATI solution if the synergy was really there and the performance was at least close to being as good if not better, like it hopefully WILL be. For a while there, nvidia was dominant - the balance of power ebbs and flows. Now speaking of Obama, the dems are back - oh sorry creaky, no politics. YES SIR!

At the end of the day - company's lives ARE at stake, as Russ pointed out, and we certainly don't want a world without ATI/AMD, totally dominated by our Crytek-bribing shadow-mucking shader-faking green rivals, do we Sam? Oh that was HARSH - just kidding Nvidia! Not really. LOL

So that was a spirited discussion for sure! Let's just all continue to be as respectful as we would want anybody to be with us, and if we think somebody is being slighted unfairly, let's be very careful about our tone, righto? An onboard graphic chip that can pair up with a video card - unf**ing believable!! (I can't get banned for words that have asteriks them - f**k no, right?) LOL Gm doesn't think it's appropriate for me to c**ss like that, asteriks or no asteriks. Well that's okay, you probably didn't save me any damn birthday cake, did you? Just having fun mates. Thanks again.
-Rich

 

The HD3200 onboard is very good, no question. However, when compared to a genuinely fast radeon card (and an HD4670 can be had for 80 dollars), it's nothing, and hybrid crossfire, nice idea as it is, will offer you negligible gains simply because the real card is ten, maybe even up to twenty times as fast.
Additionally, AMD CPUs seem to conflict with HD4000 series cards. Bit of an oversight on AMD's part that, and unfortunate, but if you're really going for a gaming system, you'll want an Intel processor. It's not fanboyism, it's just the truth. Witnessing how much of a difference having a decent processor makes, the not insignificant differences between the X2 and Core 2 really do show up.

 

Fanboy!!

Just kidding. Well, maybe at least they're moving in the right direction. I guess the idea is that, if you get the 780 board, for many families you will be set - you can do your video encoding, play a few minor games, boost it up a bit with a 3000 series card, and you're screwed if you want a 4000 card. Hahahaha.

The anandtech article is totally fascinating, and those guys were impressed with the little card - even excited by it which they admitted was the first time they have gotten excited about on-board graphics in a long time.

Well - let's hope AMD keeps moving in that direction and begins to develop some serious competition.

 

I'm ripping a DVD currently, and all I can hear is the sound of a fan, and a little sound from the DVD reader. When I first installed it XP did some constant access attempting to figure out what kind of HDD it was, which produced some noice, but otherwise very quiet.

 

first of the year build... not even thinking of I7 im hopeing these prices come down even more..yes i still want the E8600 EO stepping

 

I didn't realise there was anything but E0 for the E8600...

Rich: It being the best IGP is right, but yet, it's still very slow indeed.

 

very nice. what cooler for the CPU do you have?

 

ACF 7 pro. im not sure yet if im gonna get the hdd seeing i have 4 right now.

 

harvrdguy,
Thank you, you said it all for me sir! Moving in the right direction is exactly what I was talking about. This is fascinating and cutting edge technology here! The point Sam made about the Hybrid Crossfire is true to a point. The fact that the on-board will not be wasted, but put to good use may be a negligible gain, but at least it will no longer be a loss! In fact Anandtech says that the improvement is about 60%! The on-board alone can handle an impressive list of games better than the 7600GT I have now. Even Crysis will play on it, within the limitations of the on-board video of course. Just the fact that you can buy a MB with On-board Graphics that will do that speaks volumes for the future of integrated video graphics. It's long been a dream to have a one chip computer where you chose the chip by the options you want, with the CPU, Video and chipset all on one chip. This is just one more step towards that end It's certainly a large step in the right direction. It also opens up gaming to people who only occasionally play games, not to mention the Breathtaking graphics when watching a DVD Movie or playing games! At $65 for that Biostar MB, it's basically free too! If AMD can do the same thing with chipsets for i7, as I expect they will, AMD will be firmly back in business! Go AMD!

Russ

 

how does it still compare with nvidias new 9400 IGP out?

 

Sam,
Not as slow as you would think though! I fully expected much less performance than I got with the 4400+. To say that I was surprised by the performance would be an understatement. It's funny, I can sit down and work with a slower Intel, and I can't wait to get back on my own rig. I can't say that with OxiMoron! I use it often and it's a perfectly comfortable machine to use, and I'm never sitting there wishing I was on My C2D. It's slower, for sure but still remarkably quick. It's also extremely smooth, in places where the Intels seem kind of clunky. It multitasks well, and the DVDRB/CCE times are close enough to my main rig that I don't fuss over them! I accept the slower speed and expect it, but somehow AMD has pulled all of this together in such a way that you never really notice that it's slower, so it doesn't have me longing for my C2D. It somehow manages to appear faster than the numbers would indicate!

Russ

 

What perhaps has been forgotten is that up until the Core 2 Duos AMDs were competitive, whereas Intel's previous CPUs weren't. Going from a core 2 to an AthlonX2 or Athlon64 is a bit of a downgrade, but going from a core 2 to a Pentium D or P4 is much more of one.

As for hybrid crossfire, a truly powerful card like the HD4670 or HD4830 would probably see a 5-10% gain at best from it.

 

Sam,
Again, it's still an improvement rather than something that becomes useless with the addition of a 16x PCI-e card! It's not wasted!

Russ

 

True, but if I remember rightly, you can save as much power as a card like the HD4550 uses by getting a board without the integrated chip, 20 watts saved is 20 watts saved. (Yes, the HD4550 only uses that much, makes the 250 the 4870X2 uses seem criminal!)

Also, for the record, I've just hooked my headphones up to my integrated sound - wow. I thought the electrical interference of onboard sound was a thing of the past. Seemingly not, a good set of headphones reveals all that background noise like you wouldn't believe. It's like listening to the fan in my old Thermaltake PSU again! lol

 

Hmm, I recently got the Sennheiser HD 280PRO headphones as I needed something quality to use when I want to practice or write arrangements without interfering with the rest of the house. My sound is clear as a bell through the headphones! My MB has the Realtek 889A HD Audio.

Russ

 

the thing is if you are going to be gaming, then getting a c2d and a 4850 would be a much better outlay than getting an X2 and hybird CF. hybrid CF and SLI elude me. im not sure what market they are going for as getting a crap GPU + crap on board doesnt exactly make for good gaming nore do you need a discreet card for office/HD watching. Its basically useless.