The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

That might be a better comparison, but I thought the UD4 was a better match to the UD3R than the UD3. Also i7 has triple channel memory which may make a decent performance difference a couple years from now. 280$ is still enough to make me reconsider though.

Last two questions, then I'll shut up make my decision. If I understand your post correctly, 1156 won't be seeing any cpu's with more then 4 cores? There is no point in some one like me getting a 6-core cpu now, but I can say with almost complete confidence (assuming the current trend continues) that I'll want at least a 6-core cpu 3-5 years from now.
If you were going to keep this socket type till 2015, would you recommend 1156 or 1366? Despite my desires to update every 2-3 years, common sense usually wins and I typically keep the system as is for much longer. Heck, I had a 1Ghz P4 with 128MB of DDR RAM till 2007 as my only computer lol. The only reason I'm upgrading now is because my current system has issues I haven't been able to solve and I no longer wish to spend any more money trying.

TIA,

redmaw

 

Not especially, and in any case, the UD4 is a European model by the looks of things, you get the UD4P in the US. Triple channel memory won't change anything performance wise. In encoding/rendering applications it has a benefit of a fair few percent, in games it makes no difference. I don't see that changing at all.
I didn't say 1156 won't see CPUs with any more than 4 cores. I consider it quite likely there will be 6 and/or 8-core CPUs on the platform. All I can say is that LGA1366 will get them first, and will get the most powerful ones. If you're not planning on getting another CPU for 3-5 years, you can forget about planning for upgrades, as it is almost inconceivable that current gen boards will support CPUs that come along after that period of time. Remember, 3 years before now 775 boards that would work with recent Core 2s had only just come out, and the then-current crop of AM2 boards would not work with any of today's AMD CPUs at all.

 

Indeed, though the early P4s were so dire, you wanted a P3 instead. It was only when the Northwood came out that P4s were worth having (and even then, you still wanted an Athlon XP really). I think the Northwoods started at 1.6.

 

Yeah I started to think about what stuff was like 3 years ago and started to remind myself of how much of farce "upgradability" is. I think you convinced me to get a i5 and pray that it will OC well and that I'll be able to afford to upgrade again in 3 years. Still I'm not convinced "bang for the buck" now translates into "bang for the buck" over two+ years.

If I go with a i5 I'd like to get the UD3 instead of the UD4P to widen the cost gap a bit more, but I do need to know, can I put a GPU in the bottom slot and have it run at 16x? The specifications page says PCI-E 2.0 - 1, PCI-E x16 - "1, running at x4". That makes me wonder if they mean with one PCI-E populated the other runs at x4 or if one of them is actually just a PCI x4 slot. Although the UD3 board seems to have a about 3 times as many RMA's as the UD4P.

That's what i get for guessing, been to long to remember. After checking it happens to be a 900MHz P3 lol.

TIA,

redmaw

 

Well, 'pray that it will OC well' - if it helped, I overclocked my CPU to 4.12Ghz in a few seconds without even trying. They overclock pretty damn well if you ask me. You're paying literally 40% extra to get an i7 build. You aren't going to get anywhere near 40% extra performance for that money. Right now, you won't get any, unless there's something you do often that needs more than 4GB of RAM but less than 6GB.
If you buy the UD3, you can only use the lower slot at 4x whether or not the top slot is used. This is not a disaster for slower GPUs, but still an impact on performance. The UD3 is also equipped with weaker power regulators for overclocking.
It is also imperative that you buy a P55A series board, not just P55. The P55A boards use the Lotes socket which can overclock safely. The P55 series uses a Foxconn socket prone to burning out when overclocking.

 

Okay, that's what I feared. I'm assuming that since the UD4P says "1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8", that it won't work for my either if I want a lower x16 slot for me gpu. The only 1156 MB I can find that's like the UD3R is 285$, am I missing something? Since I'm only using 1 gpu I thought it would be reasonable to expect it run at x16 (and not be clumped up at the top of the board).

The reason I hope it OC well is I generally suck, or have very bad luck, with OCing. The most my I got out of my E6600 before it quit on me was 3.4Ghz lol.

Thanks for your help sam, I can't explain how much I appreciate your guidance.

redmaw

 

The reason for this is because P55 boards are limited to 16x maximum between the slots. Since the dual slot can only ever run at 8x if the top slot is occupied, it is in most instances a waste to wire 16x bandwidth to the lower slot, thus it is only done with the most expensive boards.
The X58 chipset has 32x of bandwidth available, so there is reason to wire the lower slot at 16x.
As for overclocking, Core 2s are FSB based, many are quite voltage dependent (the early 65nm CPUs like the E6600 included), and thus overclocking is more of a challenge. After all, 3.4Ghz on an E6600 is still a respectable 42%. The i5s and i7s use a new bus technology that doesn't really limit their speed like FSB did, thus they can overclock much higher, to the limit of the CPU. Most i5 750s are supposed to top out at 4.1Ghz without using more advanced settings. I'm at this level, but haven't tried exceeding it.

 

Just my two cents worth, but I don't see a socket i7 in Intel,s future plans, at least, not for the consumer market. Currently there are only 4 CPUs available for socket 1366, and I doubt that we will see any new ones. The cheapest motherboards are about $160, and go up to more than twice that price. Same thing with the CPUs. $290 for a 920, with the next model up, the 950 selling for $280 more at $570. The 960 is $300 more than the 920 at $590, with the 975 Extreme going for a whopping $970. The only future I see for i7 is in the server market, and because of the expense required, I'm not even sure of that.

There are more than twice as many Socket 1156 motherboards and three times as many Socket 775 motherboards available than there are for Socket 1366. There's also the issue of what to buy now, if one should decide to build an i7 platform. You could buy a 920 to use for the next couple of years, but where do you upgrade from there? Will there even be any 950s or 960s available as an upgrade two years from now? If I was building an i7 platform today, it would have to be the 950 or 960, otherwise to me, it wouldn't be worth the cost. There's just too much out there today, that's much more affordable, to keep most people happy. The reason for that, is "My" favorite old question itself, "How fast is Fast"? Other than for extreme gamers, we've pretty much reached that point. Extreme gamers will never be completely satisfied! They'll always want more! LOL!! For the regular folks, they won't care that they can do something 5 minutes faster, because what they buy today is 30 minutes faster at doing something than their old computer. They won't care!

Unfortunately, the 90% that make up the majority of Computer consumers, will have a lot of say over where computing is going to go for the next year or two. I think that Low Priced Affordable Quad cores will rule for the next couple of years. I think we will see prices in the $500 to $600 range for entire systems. People will buy them because they are Quad cores, not because they are better than dual cores. It's a Status Symbol, almost impractical for the average computer buyer, only a few years ago. As more programs are being ported to take advantage of Quad cores, the current superiority of some dual cores over most of the low cost Quads, grows less every day. I also think a lot of current Dual cores will vanish very quickly. Much faster than Single Cores did after the C2D arrived!

Like I said before, if I was going to build an i7 Platform today, it would have to be a 950 or 960. Anything less wouldn't be worth it to me!

Russ

 

Well, Intel already confirmed that the 6-core 32nm CPU upcoming would be LGA1366, would be an extreme edition, and would be $1000 so there will be new at least one new LGA1366 CPU, almost certainly several. I disagree about the 950 and 960 CPUs, while they're the only ones expensive enough to nullify the cost of buying an LGA1366 board and triple channel memory, they aren't worth it unless you're using the system bone-stock, which given the overclocking prowess of the i7, is a bit of a waste. Any of them can overclock as well as the 920, so the 920 it may as well be!
Of course, it's a bit moot since the i5 750 is better still and half the price. The i7 architecture kind of made sense before, but now it really is a workstation-grade CPU, nothing more, nothing less, garnering a very small niche of the gaming market - even I didn't buy one!

 

I'm drooling at the thought of anything more than 3.8Ghz now LOL! 3.8 seems to be pretty easy for the 965 Phenom. I haven't seen the temperature go above 37 in the last day, and I've been running Rebuilder, and other programs simultaneously. Loving the Tuniq 120 Estuansis. This weekend, I'm gonna coax her to 4+Ghz. Possibly more, depending on board/memory. It would appear, that everest seemed to make the fan behave even more oddly than Speedfan does. I'm thinking I'm gonna stick with speedfan for my monitoring preferences for a while It is a freeware after all LOL! I guess the Tuniq and/or thermal compound, simply needed to acclimate a bit

 

Oman7 depending on which Thermal Paste you used I don't think you'll see a significant change in temps. IMO the newer pastes out "work" right out of the tube and don't need a "curing" time. Of course if you used AS5 then it could help some but I still see NO need for "weeks" of curing time. LOL.

 

Anybody else having problems with the new e-mail notifications for this thread, the links don't work to open the thread, I've several new one's since yesterday neither works, I had to find an old one to post. Any mods out there with an opinion please?

 

Yeah it's a damn good cooler. And now that I've gotten the cooling figured out in my Crossfire rig, it's been even better.

Hopefully, when I get this HAF, my cooling problems will be much relieved. The Armor's fan setup makes it difficult to balance the airflow. Just setting the fans to auto so they dropped their speeds has actually dropped my temps considerably. I think I had too much intake and not enough exhaust.

 

Me too Fred.. I'm sure they're working on it.

add: seems as tho the "new" email link worked.. Fred have you tried it since 9am this morning? About 11:15am Central right now.

 

Omega: Speedfan's nice because it's passive. It doesn't affect the running of your system by being open. Everest on the other hand drains quite a lot of performance out of your system by being open.

 

That much has become apparent! LOL! I'll only use everest when I have to now. Besides, it doesn't even support my board yet. And I'm fairly certain I have the newest release.

 

greensman, I have recieved another e-mail in the old form which works as I replied to this one, I have kept yesterdays new type e-mails and no they still don't work, it's 2:30 here now, I don't mind the new e-mails, but they don't work, at least not for me, I'm glad to hear it wasn't just me, I though something was wrong with my system, thanks for the comeback.

 

lol.. I didn't mean the "new" ones were working but that the "reminder" or "update" emails we're receiving are now. NOT your system mate.. just a silly glitch I"m sure.

 

Well, I can't say either of your latest post is making this process any easier for me, Russ and Sam. I was almost settled on the 1156 platform until I realized the gpu had to either be in the top slot or running at x8, neither of which sits well with me. Kind of like entering a foot race with a limp as I see it lol.