Almost ready to buy

Alright... based on all the feedback from my last post I have narrowed it down to two builds. This is more of a "is it worth the money" exercise. (i will say both are more than I set out to spend but seems worth it to spend just a bit more)

Thats why I like you guys here. Very straight forward in your answers. I somehow feel compelled to spend the $100. I didnt really come into this with a budget more jsut an Idea on what i feel like spending. My biggest concern is to get good bang for the buckand have something that will be relevant for as long as possible. Are there any other upgrades you would suggest that are high on the dollar to increased performance ratio?

Originally posted by !ender_ well, just to be clear, the price/performance ratio for going up to x58 is almost nothing, your gains are insignificant. the only way there would be a margin of difference is if in the next few years all the sudden the requirements for ram bandwidth blow through the roof, which seems kind of unlikely

Or, you know, if you wanted 36 PCIe lanes or something. Or maybe better motherboards. Or maybe that extra 2GB of memory. Or maybe hyper-threading (you're not getting a $100 difference if you select a 860) .

EDIT: Bah, shut up, I forgot there were config option changes. There difference is $100 now only because you can't get the 930 or Micro anymore. If you could switch to the 930 to save $11 and the Micro to save another $52 (!) the difference between those two builds would only be $34 (!!). Still worth the $100 difference though, the motherboard is heaps better plus you get 2GB more memory, and triple channel memory at that so more memory bandwidth.

EDIT EDIT: "Flame on!" - The Human Torch


Edited by Dragoonseal - 03 Sep 2010 at 2:30pm

Originally posted by Lat So im a bit confused... Dragoon your saying its worth it and !ender_ your saying that its nice if you can fit it in but not the best use of $100??

He's saying that for a pure unadulterated gaming rig that you don't use for anything else but gaming, with a single GPU, that the P55 system will work just as well and is $100 less. And he's completely right too.

I'm saying that for only $97 (was just $34 ) you get a very cost effective upgrade in a few areas, both in performance and functionality. But, not so much in gaming, mostly only in other ways.

Up to you in the end, but in the mean time you get to watch us sucker punch each other for fun and profit.

Originally posted by !ender_ you say better motherboards? what can your evga x58 micro do that an evga p55 sli cant?

*Points to signature*

Granted the x16/x16 lanes aren't really doing anything that x8/x8 lanes couldn't do. But still, more memory, triple channel, dreamy overclocking, etc. The triple channel memory won't come into play much unless you're really clocking your CPU high, I'd much rather have triple channel to feed to the CPU when going over 4.0GHz. Using extra high speed memory like yours would offset that, but that would up the price too. And of course there's the 2MB more memory itself for multitasking or memory heavy apps.

eh sorry, cant give up any ground here, we agree that single and dual video are good, we agree that for anything gaming specific its good, but the only thing making triple channel over dual channel better right now is potential, unused potential.

Originally posted by !ender_ you changed the question, saying which one you would get first isnt the choice, its either or, end of topic, p55+40gb ssd or x58

You can always add an SSD to a x58 afterwards no problem. You can't add a x58 to a P55 + SSD later on though, not without wasting a ton of money because you're replacing a bunch of parts. So it's not changing the question, one has easy upgradability and the other does not. I don't like fictional "If you could only spend this much on a PC and never a penny more, ever" scenarios.

dont mind me and dragoon, as you can see, the difference is really up in the air.. my option is better, but i can respect his input

Hey, what's that over ther--BAM SUCKER PUNCH TO THE FACE, YEAH SUCKA.

i believe youuuu are the biggest advocate on the forums for not spending anything you dont need to, as is constantly seen when you tirade through my few and far between SLI suggestions as we have both agreed upon, the gaming difference is nil, so hes actually even better off starting a "i want a second 480" fund with his $100 than he is buying a x58 setup as far as gaming power is concerned!

So your sayin 2x 470's (not overclocked) with the i7 860 (OC'd) and a 750w powersupply will cook both of the other builds for only $75 more than the i7 950?

true however that is actually a quantifiable performance loss and isnt worth losing the $75 if you do anything but just game and its in the budget

Edited by !ender_ - 03 Sep 2010 at 10:44pm

Now this is the type of discussion I've been looking for, down and dirty. I love the comparisons and the I'm right he's wrong, IMO makes for a better build in the end and fully informed potential buyers. I'm learning alot from this forum, for instance x2 470's in SLI is more gaming power than one 480, now that I didn't and the price difference is minimal. Keep going guys, this is good real good and btw googled 470 SLI apparently there are some driver issues in that configuration. And as !ender mentioned 1000w psu is highly recommended. But I like the idea of SLI

from the article:
It is quite evident that while the GTX 470 is a clear winner against a single HD 5850, SLI is currently struggling to mirror the downright amazing scaling that Crossfire offers. Overall framerates for a GTX 470 SLI system are still incredible but the HD 5850 in Crossfire is simply too close for comfort in most cases. It is also important to remember that NVIDIA’s drives are still quite immature and multi card performance is usually one of the first things addressed when new versions are released. As such we intend to take another look at GTX 470 SLI performance in the future. While we can’t outright recommend going SLI in this case, it offers enough convincing performance wins that it should be at least considered by enthusiasts.
Link is here: Review
 

Edited by the12deel - 04 Sep 2010 at 12:59pm

I was reading reviews and benchmarks. One of the things that everyone mentioned was the drivers for SLI are "young" and the scaling "issues" are mostly likely to be fixed. Is this just wishful thinking or a realistic expectations.


I play many games, warcraft being one of them. I read that wow doest take advantage of xfire or SLI. Is that true?

The more research I do the more confusing this gets lol.... I know wow isnt very GPU dependant was just curious.