Recommendations on new build

pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
edited November 2009 in Hardware
Ok, the time has come in the next 30-60 days to rebuild the core of my gaming rig: cpu, motherboard, ram, video and psu.

My budget is ~$700 (though I could probably swing another $100 if needed). I do not need: harddrives, cd/dvd drive, keyboard, mouse, or monitor.

I am really quite lost about the current generation of hardware; this build originally dates to 2004 with some of the RAM coming from an xp2500 build. After a partial rebuild in 2006, I stopped paying attention to the hardware world. Also, I do not care about overclocking anymore, doesn't interest me like it used to back in the day.

Right now I am looking at the Phenom X4 as a possible CPU and the new HD5000 series for video.

Current Build:

XP4200 X2
Asus nforce4 SLI mobo
1gig OCZ DDR400 (other gig died on me suddenly, system won't even boot with it in)
2x7900GT in SLI
550w Antec PSU
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Comments

  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Current build if I were to order tomorrow:

    AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz $160
    DFI LANParty DK 790FXB-M3H5 AM3 AMD 790FX ATX $140
    OCZ Obsidian 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) $84
    SAPPHIRE 100282SR Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported $260

    Total Cost before shipping (if any): $644

    I really need this below $600 if possible, apparently I was off the mark with the $700 budget. What could be changed out to drop the price? I already, after checking the actual unit, a recent OCZ 700w PSU and going to keep this case I have for the time being (Lian-Li PC1000).
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    The only place to cut is the GPU, because you can't cut the rest of the parts without dipping into products of questionable quality.
  • ObsidianObsidian Michigan Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    What's the maximum resolution supported by your monitor?
  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Yeah, but dropping from 1440 stream processing units to 800 on the HD5770 seems like a pretty big drop. Sigh, guess I will just tough out the lack of money by reducing my food budget for two months.
  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Obsidian wrote:
    What's the maximum resolution supported by your monitor?

    1600x1200, but I run @ 1280x1024 for most things. The monitor is a ViewSonic G90f.
  • ObsidianObsidian Michigan Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    pigflipper wrote:
    1600x1200, but I run @ 1280x1024 for most things. The monitor is a ViewSonic G90f.
    There's no point in getting a 5850 for those resolutions. A 5770 will be plenty powerful enough for you.
  • mas0nmas0n howdy Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Keep the 5850 and get a good panel when you can afford it. I think I saw you say in IRC that you're dropping down to an X3. Are you within budget now?
  • ObsidianObsidian Michigan Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    You could probably save some money by going with a cheaper motherboard.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    I have a Phenom II 720 and a Radeon 4870 1 gb laying around doing nothing that I would sell you reasonably if you are interested. Very lightly used, still in warranty so on so forth.

    PM me if your interested.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Problem solved: He's going Phenom II X3 and 5850, because he's getting a 1920x LCD down the road. This combo is the best balance between short and long-term performance.
  • edited October 2009
    I would not go with an X3 and stick with X4. You may not feel the difference with the current games but in the next generation of games (you seem to keep the computer 3-4 years) and definitely with media encoding today, you will feel the difference.

    Since you will be targeting 30-60 days purchase window, you can still stay in the $600 budget if you order the parts as you catch deals on the internet. Also, it will help with catching those deals if you have alternative brands for memory, motherboard, and graphics card in mind. For example you can keep GIGABYTE GA-MA790XT-UD4P as an alternative to your current board. It already saves you $40. You can check Powercolor, ASUS, etc brands for GPU, and Corsair, Gskill, A-Data, etc brands for RAM. Again, I would not go with anything less than X4.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    They've been saying that quad core would kill dual core in gaming for about 4 years now. It still hasn't happened yet, and that's because there aren't enough threads in a game to occupy 4 CPU cores. Unless the science of programming undergoes a radical transformation in the next 3 years (how likely is that?), then the X3 is a better choice to preserve his GPU.
  • edited October 2009
    I don't think this is a technical issue, it is more related to economics and availability. The incentives to develop games that employ more than two cores are growing. Just a couple of weeks ago, AMD released quad-cores at a price less than $100. It will happen, Thrax. Hopefully before 12.21.12 :)
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    No, it really isn't a matter of economics. There are only four threads a game can spawn: Physics, AI, sound and graphics. Sound, AI and physics fit on a single core--splitting them up would not improve game performance.

    The last one, graphics, is a linear thread which cannot readily be dispatched to idle cores: The whole chunk goes, or none of it goes. It cannot be split and reassembled at the end. This is why CPU makers and GPU makers alike are diving into fine-grained threading to pull the precious few threads that can be parallelized onto other cores or stream processors. These efforts are being met with limited success.

    Combine the technological limitations of code execution with a collegiate computer science environment which does not readily teach multi-threading best practices, and the whole industry isn't moving towards quad core all that quickly.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    I agree with Robert. I think if budget is a limiting factor, you balance the system build to be GPU heavy if your any kind of PC gamer. I supose the one potential arguement against that would be if you wanted to buy enough GPU to satisfy your demands on a single unit then crossfire a 2nd in when the budget allows six months or a year latter. I would make a few things for certain, without a doubt I would have at least two full fuctioning PCIE 2.0 slots on any motherboard I select. I would just want the option to add the 2nd GPU at full bandwidth if I desired at some point down the road. If I'm gaming in 1080P I'm at least going to consider GPU's that leverage either GDDR 5 memory, or GDDR 3 at 256 bit or higher. I would upgrade to a 64 bit Windows 7 install. I would buy at least four gigs or reasonably fast ram, allthough on a budget I would not obsess too much over the RAM specs, all DDR3 is reasonably fast if your not concerned about overclocking headroom so I could let budget dictate there. On the CPU, I would be value minded but at least consider a really aggresively clocked dual core, preferably look at an unlocked tripple, or if you can squeeze it in, a budget minded quad is not a bad option. Keep in mind on current dual threaded games you may actualy get more from a tripple unlocked that you can easily clock to 3.5 per core with a small voltage bump than a value quad that you are sitting at 2.7-2.9 per core on.
  • edited October 2009
    At the link I gave above, it is only the share of X4 that grows against X1, X2 and X3, specifically 6.91% in the last 11 months. Programming is as much of an art as science. I am sure they will find their way around (if it becomes a priority and it looks like that). PS3 and XBOX360 are the most important indications that gaming industry is going towards massive multithreading.

    Tips For Multithreaded, Multicore Game Development, from AMD. Especially check the topics on Granularity.
    http://developer.amd.com/documentation/articles/pages/222007121.aspx
    http://developer.amd.com/documentation/articles/Pages/522007168.aspx
  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    I am getting the 720 Black Edition expressly for the purpose of overclocking down the road. Also, I am not going to sacrifice the motherboard, because, well, cliff agrees with me on something...for once.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Great choice. :)
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    OMG someone agrees with me, this is the 7th sign of the appocolypse, not 2012!!
  • ZuntarZuntar North Carolina Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    I love that 3 months ago I was asking for help picking out parts and everyone but you was like "Intel has superior architecture, you suck if you go AMD, here buy this atom":crazy:

    I bought a 720 and couldn't be happier.:tongue2:
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    With a $600 price envelope, AMD is the only choice.

    /me shrugs.

    Brand suggestions should not be about preference. It should be about facts, budget, and usage.
  • ZuntarZuntar North Carolina Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Thrax wrote:
    With a $600 price envelope, AMD is the only choice.

    * Thrax shrugs.

    Brand suggestions should not be about preference. It should be about facts, budget, and usage.

    My point exactly.;) My budget was 300.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Thrax, you're oversimplifying the amount of threads a game can spawn. For instance, the AI alone could spawn hundreds of threads all running concurrently if the programmers built an AI to do that. In theory, they could make a complex AI where each enemy on the current map has it's own thread which makes decisions only for that particular character. There are ways that game designers can utilize 4, 6, 12 cores and beyond, it's just a matter of such systems becoming widespread enough for them to be able to sell games that spawn that many threads.

    Otherwise though, I'd agree, you'll be fine running an X3. I do second the Gigabyte board suggestion though. I'm so in love with the Gigabyte UltraDurable boards, it's almost sickening.
  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited October 2009
    Shipping tomorrow (10/29):

    Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition
    DFI LANParty DK 790FXB-M3H5 motherboard
    OCZ Gold AMD Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

    Having trouble, like most people, finding an HD5850 for sale. I have three of them listed for auto-notify from Newegg, so hopefully sometime in the next week I can get one ordered.
  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited November 2009
    Well, the system is up and running. I am having a few problems getting the ram to run above 1066, but I think that has to do with the timings and it is far too late for me to be screwing around with that. Also, DFI has yet to release their tools and most drivers for Win7. Kind of annoying.

    Haven't gotten a HD5850 yet, buggers are hard as hell to find. This is a major step up, even running the 7900GT instead of the HD5850 that I want, badly.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2009
    The only driver you need to install for your system is the GPU.
  • pigflipperpigflipper The Forgotten Coast Icrontian
    edited November 2009
    yeah, finally figured that out. The bios flash util and system monitoring util that DFI includes would be nice, if they worked in Win7.

    Also, stable now with one 2gig stick @ 8-8-8-24 1.65v 1333mhz. Going to drop the other stick back in next reboot.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited November 2009
    pigflipper wrote:
    yeah, finally figured that out. The bios flash util and system monitoring util that DFI includes would be nice, if they worked in Win7.

    Also, stable now with one 2gig stick @ 8-8-8-24 1.65v 1333mhz. Going to drop the other stick back in next reboot.

    To effectively flash a DFI board you need a USB thumb drive and you need to format it with a utility listed on the DFI site, load the files, and set it to boot from USB. Its significantly more trouble than running a utility in windows but it gets the job done.

    In my limited experience with DFI boards I would say they are not very user friendly, but they easily have the most tweakable BIOS I have ever seen.
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited November 2009
    IMO, you should never flash a bios in Windows, I wish they never came out with that :)

    I always flash every board in DOS.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited November 2009
    I absolutely agree with Eric. Windows flashing is dangerous shit.
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