Guest denneym1 Posted May 11, 2007 Posted May 11, 2007 I need some advice on a system upgrade, actually a system replacement. Just for reference, my current system is a P4 2.52 1 MB Ram Nvidia 6600 card. Its done pretty good for a long time, but its time to move up. The big question is the CPU. I have not kept up with developments on that front, and I am now throughly confused about the best choice. One system I am looking at seriously is a Intel Duo Core 2.4, so lets use that as a benchmark. How would a AMD Dual Core 2.8 compare to that? And whats the deal with the D series Intels? They supposedly have faster clock speeds and are Dual Core, but they must be older technology? I have pretty much decided to go with a 8800 card, probably a GTS, with the idea of maybe getting another one down the road if needed and running them in SLI. Good idea? Anything I need to do to make sure I have that ability in the future? I want a lot of HD space, at least 750 GB as I do some home video work on the machine. I am wondering about a Raid 0 setup, but some test results I came across last night suggested that for gaming use, there is no measurable advantage to a Raid 0 setup? Thanks for any help!!
Aeroscout Posted May 11, 2007 Posted May 11, 2007 The 8800 cand will be sweet. and planning for SLI in the future is a good idea. AMDs are just as good as intel and if the AMD is less, dont be afraid to go with it. What's your budget? if you want, you can try to use as much as you can from your ond computer in yor new one if you chose to build one. (that's what I'm doing) If you are building a computer, Check out newegg. it's one of the best places to find waht your looking for. Hope this helped. EDIT: Do you want to see my list of compnents to possibly get you started? DCS Wishlist: 1) FIX THE DAMN RIVERS!!! 2) Spherical or cylindrical panorama view projection. 3) Enhanced input options (action upon button release, etc). 4) Aircraft flight parameter dump upon exit (stick posn, attitude, rates, accel, control volume, control-surface positions, SAS bias, etc). 5) ADS-33 maneuver courses as static objects. 6) Exposed API or exports of trim position and stick force for custom controllers. 7) Select auto multiple audio devices
VMFA-Blaze Posted May 11, 2007 Posted May 11, 2007 http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795 http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/10/four_cores_on_the_rampage/ I'm afraid that AMD has lost its lead in the CPU race... Take a look at the two sites that I've listed above... That will give you the lowdown on just how strong intels 2 Core Duo is... I've built a number of systems featuring AMD processors, But have gone with Intel this time .. Another thing concerning Newegg... I would seriously look at doing some comparison shopping before buying from them.. I've spent thousands of dollars on electronic hardware and even work in the field... Newegg tends to charge more then anyone else and doesn't always have what you're looking for... http://www.bizrate.com/ This site helps you to find the best market price available at the time... Oh and one other thing regarding your choice of GPU's.. I'm presently running an 8800 and its extremly powerful, so much so that its stronger then the 7900 series running in SLI .. In Lock On you really won't need to go SLI for now anyway as Lock ON is more CPU reliant then GPU... ~S~ Blaze intel Cor i7-6700K ASUS ROG MAX VIII Extreme G.Skill TridentZ Series 32 GB Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SATA II ASUS GTX 1080/DIRECTX 12 Windows 10 PRO Thrustmaster Warthog Oculus Rift VR
Guest denneym1 Posted May 12, 2007 Posted May 12, 2007 Thanks for the info. I just found some test results that show the newest AMD X2 3.0 Ghz actually performs neck and neck with the Intel 6400 2.4 Ghz I am leaning towards, so not really much reason to go AMD at the moment. The Intel Quad Core Extreme processors look awesome but they are a whole lot more $$$!! I'm not planning on running the 8800 GTS in SLI just yet, I just thought it might make for a worthwhile upgrade at some point in the future.
VMFA-Blaze Posted May 12, 2007 Posted May 12, 2007 Yes I'm thinking about going with SLI as well after the Black Shark release... ~S~ Blaze intel Cor i7-6700K ASUS ROG MAX VIII Extreme G.Skill TridentZ Series 32 GB Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SATA II ASUS GTX 1080/DIRECTX 12 Windows 10 PRO Thrustmaster Warthog Oculus Rift VR
Prophet Posted May 12, 2007 Posted May 12, 2007 That X2 3GHz may perform at stock speeds neck and neck. But with no effort, and probably very little if any vCore increase, that E6400 will be @ 3.2GHz. I could never get my X2 4400 to overclock very well. Prices sure are looking good on both sides though.
Pilotasso Posted May 17, 2007 Posted May 17, 2007 Everybody is buying E6600 as a safe buy these days. For Motherboard I highly advise a P5K from asus with P35 chipset. They are affordable and are compatible with new CPU's coming late this year. There arent any official reviews on that motherboard yet (NDA untill 21st this month, though they are already avaiable everywhere) but word runs its quite sweet (significatly more stable and perfoming) even if those boards are a bit on the ugly side of aestetics. Theres a deluxe version but its almost twice the price: As for GFX youll get the most bang for the buck with a 8800 GTS with 320MB. IMHO Im Upgrading myself, and I have chosen these chips (except the CPU wich will be bigger for me). .
Ven Posted May 17, 2007 Posted May 17, 2007 I just upgraded a month ago. Core 2 Duo E6600, 8800GTX, and 520GB RAID-0. I was considering 8800GTS too but at the time, there was just $150 difference between GTS and GTX. And the performance difference was well worth it for me. And I'm looking to go SLI in about a year and by that time, there'd be very little price difference between GTS and GTX. But GTX SLI would be substantially more powerful than GTS SLI. And what RAID-0 does for games is loading times, installation times, and faster file transfers under Windows. But even if there is no frame rate gain in games from RAID, why not go RAID? It's not like you have to purchase expensive SCSI controllers like we used to. With today's motherboards, RAID controller comes with it and RAID-0 doesn't decrease hard drive capacity like RAID-1. Buy two smaller drives rather than one big one. Yea two smaller drives will be more expensive but not much. In 500GB setup, two 250GB drive may be $10 more than one 500GB. Some people tells me "yea but in RAID-0, if you lose one drive, you lose all data". Well... that's same for single hard drive. It's actually better with RAID because if one drive goes bad, I can still use the other for single drive setup. Whereas with one large drive setup, if it goes bad, you have to buy another. And for motherboards, make sure the motherboard is Intel Quad Core ready. Nowdays with cheap CPU prices and really high GPU price, you tend to upgrade your CPU before the GPU. And I'm a believer that multi-threading in gaming will pull itself together soon. Finally, compare prices between Newegg.com and ZipZoomFly.com. Some components, newegg is cheaper and some are cheaper on ZZF. And ZZF has free shipping on everything so consider the shipping price from Newegg. I bought half the components from newegg and half from ZZF. Make sure you purchase Vista OEM when you purchase the hardwares if you're planning to go Vista. OEM is cheaper than Upgrades.
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