Well gotta keep the "Mr. X buys X" tradition going.

So, as you no doubt will have noticed from my continuous whining, I'm going to buy a new pc. Now that I finally amassed ample funds to sustain my bold vision for a personal gaming future, I am checking in for advice/comments/criticism/just straight up flaming.

Anyway, some things I already decided on:











So...what I'm in doubt over:

1) the CPU. While Ati/AMD seems to be crawling back up to Nvidia in the GPU department with good price/quality cards, CPU's are still where Intel reigns supreme, right? I'm torn between

INTEL Core 2 DUO E8500 45NM 3.16 Socket 775

and

AMD 9650 Phenom 64BIT Quad-core Processor AM2+ Boxed With Cooler

Suggestions?

2) HD's. Either I'm going with a single HD of about a terabyte, or with 2 750 gig hard drives. That depends on if I will want to set it up in RAID or not. Is a RAID config worth it, performance-wise? Or is the difference so neglectable that it's better to save some cash and just go for the single HD? I might want to add that I'm going for a good price and system stability, here. Not looking to overclock or push the hardware to extremes.


Any input is well appreciated.

1). Go with Intel. Core2Duo all the way. The e8500 is actually the cpu I'll be upgrading to, assuming I get the cash together before another, better processor falls below the $200 price point.

2). If all you care about is cost and not performance, go for the cheaper option. As long as you go with a reputable manufacturer, a HD is a HD. RAID isn't worth it unless either you want performance (raid 0, striping) or redundancy (raid 1, mirroring) or a combination of the two (raid 1+0, raid 5, whatever). IMO, you're not going to generate enough irreplaceable data that you need redundancy (just back it up on DVD). And you don't care about performance, so screw it.

btw...you do realize how much space 1TB or 1.5TB really is, right? My home theatre PC currently has 1TB capacity... I had a 250GB drive that I filled, then added a 750GB drive. 1TB is HUGE. I'm nowhere near maxing it out. Unless you plan on installing every game you own and never uninstalling them, chances are you won't run out of space.

lo and behold, Tom's hardware has posted an updated CPU chart for 2008.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desk ... ks,31.html

*edit*
and here's a link comparing the e8500, e6300 (my current processor) and that AMD phenom you mentioned above.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desk ... .html?prod[2184]=on&prod[2164]=on&prod[2202]=on

Looks like the 8500 comes out on top of the phenom pretty consistently, though not always.

Thanks for the benchmarks. I guess that means i'm going with the intel CPU. From those benchmarks, it seems that the E8500 beats the AMD CPU in games (Crysis, World at war) pretty soundly. Since I won't be using too many CPU-intensive tools anyway the other scores aren't too much of a concern to me.


As for the HD...yeah, I already considered the fact that 750+ gig is freaking huge. My laptop has a 120 gig HD and I still have (relatively speaking) plenty of space left. Provided i don't keep every game I ever install permanently installed. And if it really comes down to it, there's always external HD's to easily transfer information.

I did some research on RAID 0, and apparently the advantage for normal HD's is rather limited and its use is more frequent in other HD-intensive processes. Apparently the gaming advantage only applies when you put 2 smaller, superfast (raptors etc) HD's in RAID0. And those cost too much for my taste.

So I'm going E8500 and a single HD, I think. Gonna wait until the weekend to make a final call. So keep it coming if you got more info.

btw, are you planning on running Vista? I can't remember if we've covered this before, but if you're running a 32 bit O/S (and Vista is the only real 64 bit alternative for you), 4GB of RAM is too much for it to handle. XP-32 or Vista-32 can only see about 3GB.

Just curious, are you planning on going with on-motherboard sound, or getting a discrete sound card?

*edit*
well well, looks like you chose a good time to start doing this. Looks like nvidia and ati are releasing new cards.

The ati 4870 1GB..basically just doubling the 4870's memory
and the nvidia gtx260 core 216

Here's a review. They're pretty much even.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... X1K0000532

Planning on XP...so even then the 4 gig will be too much. Buttt it was with an eventual upgrade to Vista in mind that I went for 4 gig. Or would you say that Vista is worth it? I know Directx10 and a few neat shader effects are only available in Vista but is it really worth picking it over XP? I could go either way depending on yes or no.

Going with onboard sound. Maybe I'll eventually get an independt sound card, but I never really saw much of a point unless you're deep into the whole surround thing. But i guess it does take some load off your system?

Yes it may take a hundredth percent of load from your CPU. To be honest, CPU's these days are so fast (and audio hasn't become more complicated for years), that you won't notice any difference but the placebo effect. Instead of wasting money on Creative junk, you'd better spend the money on a slightly faster processor, graphics card or motherboard.
Having a nicely stable XP and only having worked with Vista for a short time (long enough to annoy me though, but perhaps that's just a learning curve), I'm biased towards XP, but it would be a shame to have all that memory for nothing.

Oh, hardware does mean much. Sorts of instrument synthetization I do would be really easier for my mech if I had an external SB to take the job it is meant for. But I don't have it. Not to mention real-time effects and even not to mention that sound amplifying primitives don't quite work as supposed with my laptop's onboard soundcard / its only drivers*. On the other side, I guess you are not into that sort of things.

____________
* - Believe it or not, it does matter if I change the amplitude on the general volume control, on the wave velocity controller or in Winamp.

Well, yeah, if you're a musician, a sound card would be a good idea, I agree, but somehow I think Rinox is not into that.

You should go for a 800mhz RAM, not much point in the faster ones. And also make sure the mobo you choose has a passive cooling. There are still some out there that use a vent to cool the chipset and thats not good.

So 800mhz for RAM and passive cooling.

My RAM suggestion to people who ask is 2gb plus the amount on the GPU. But i think its actually cheaper to get 4 than 3.

I agree with Peltz on 800mhz RAM. Regarding the quantity, if you're going with XP, I'd say go with 2GB. The extra GB just isn't worth the hassle, imo.

If you're going with Vista, I'd say go with 4GB. As to which one to choose... if I were to get a new computer today, I would choose Vista. It doesn't make a huge difference yet, but dx10 I think will be more and more important as time goes on.

Then again, you may be able to hold out until Windows 7. That's supposed to come out next year.

Blah...as for the sound... I run with onboard sound on my home theatre pc and regular pc... the home theatre pc, I have a definite hum. It sucks. But I haven't dropped in a real sound card yet to see if it's the onboard chip that's the problem, or if the hum is coming in elsewhere.

For my main pc, the onboard sound is jacked up... only one output actually has audio on it, instead of the 2 I should have for my quadrophonic output. So, again, it sucks, though there's no hum. However, I would agree that Creative sucks big cocks. Personally, I'd buy a Turtle Beach sound card... their high end card is like $60 or something... and it'd be feeding Creative's only real competitor (other than motherboards with onboard sound, of course).

What about a monitor? You reusing your current one? And are you stillu using a monolithic tube? :p

I'm on Vista, I know a lot of people moan about it but its fine for me, and if you want the 4Gig of RAM then its the only option.

Good choice on the 4870, its the one I've got now, great card. I don't think the 1gig version is worth it imho unless you play at big resolutions...

Don't overlook a cheap quad if there isn't much difference price wise between that and a dual core, but it really needs to be overclocked slightly to get the best out of it

For gaming purpose there really is no need for quad. And theres hardly any point in buying one so you could be ready for the future. By the time you can actually fully utilize one there will be better quads out there that blast the old generation right out of the water.

Yeah, I think it'll just be a E8500, not a quad. And I'm considering Vista now...if BJ hasn't had any problems with it then it shouldn't be too bad. It'll be nice to make use of the Directx10 features too, now and in the future.

And don't worry, I'm keeping it simple on the ram. I always felt that quantity outdid quality when it comes to that, provided you choose a decent brand.

I actually considered getting a HD 4870 X2 yesterday...for anout 200 euros more than the HD 4870. But I decided against it because of the heat it generates and, more importantly, because its a huge power hog. A PSU of 700 watt is recommended as a minimum. Yeah, no thanks. It wouldn't fit inside my "price conscious" setup anyway, to have the fastest GPU of the moment in there.

You wouldnt need it anyway, your monitor resolution is the limiter afterall. The cards can go up to 2500x1600 or something but your monitor wont.

Edit: thats why i chose 8800gts (when my 9600GT flew away to the gpu heaven (read: junkyard)) My monitor only goes as far as 1400*1050.