Adrian F

As it says in the title my old PC has finally died and i want a new PC with a long working life for video and photo editing as well as hopefully some games as my old PC couldn't run the new releases i have set my budget and will reuse my existing 19" CRT monitor and i am not sure if Intel is currently better value than AMD( my old PC was AMD as it was a better buy) these three options are all within a £50 bracket

Option 1)
Intel® Core™ i7 860 Processor
(2.80GHz, 8MB Cache, Quad Core)
Windows 7 Home Premium - 64bit Edition
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 Memory
1TB Ultra Fast Hard Drive (7200rpm)
1GB ATI HD5750 Graphics - DirectX 11
ASUS P7P55 LX Extreme Gaming Mainboard
- Multi GPU CrossfireX Support

Option 2)
AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Black Edition Processor
(3.4GHz, 8MB Cache, Quad Core)
Windows 7 Home Premium - 64bit Edition
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 Memory
1.5TB Ultra Fast Hard Drive (7200rpm)
NEW - 512MB ATI FireGL V770 Graphics Accelerator
ASUS M4A77TD Pro Extreme Gaming Mainboard
- Multi GPU CrossfireX Support

Option 3)
AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Black Edition
(3.4GHz, 8MB Cache, Quad Core)
Windows 7 Home Premium - 64bit Edition
8GB 1333MHZ DDR3 (4x2GB) Memory
1TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0
"Stripe" (2x 500GB - 7200rpm)
1GB ATI Radeon HD5750 Graphics - DX 11
ASUS M4A79XTD Pro Ultimate Gaming Mainboard
- Multi GPU CrossfireX Support

I should add i am not interested in the Hard Drive size as i have external drives already

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

option 1 by far

Adrian F

Bioforger thanks for the reply is the AMD no good then?

BlkKnight

I'd dump an i7 and get a good i5 with a 5870 with the savings

Adrian F

So instead of an i7 processor you think something like this will be a better long term buy?

Elite Pro Ice 5 (includes upgrades - click to view)

System Base Price: £ 552.34
Intel® Core™ i5 750 Quad Core Processor (2.66GHz, 8MB Cache) - LGA1156
Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium pre-installed
XGS Gaming Chassis - Midi Tower Black / Black Mesh + 700W PSU [upg £ 42.55]
ASUS P7P55 LX Mainboard - Intel Core™ i5 / i7 - LGA 1156 / ATX
4GB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM - (2x2GB)
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
22x Dual Layer DVD Writer Super Format +R/-R/RW/RAM
1GB ATI Radeon HD5850 Graphics Accelerator [upg £ 134.47]
7.1 High Definition onboard sound card - for 8 Channel Cinema sound
1 Year Return to Base Hardware Warranty - inc 3 Months Free Collect & Return




Delivery Charge: (8am - 6pm) - Mainland UK (O Service) Standard (Working Days (Monday - Friday))
£21.26



Accessories



Subtotal: £750.62
vat: £131.36
Order Total: £881.98

BlkKnight

The i5 / 5850 IMHO is a better split if you want to do any gaming.

ScoobyJawa

Intel all the way here too, Option 1 out of the first lot but also agree with the above re the i5.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Stick with the i7, its got twice the bandwidth accessability of the i5, and I would also think about waiting for a few weeks before going for the graphics cards as NVidia are bringing out their new DX11 cards by then

Tony

Xx-IAN-xX

Agree as this is what I did

Adrian F

Tony if i go down the route of the i7 and hold fire on the graphics card what size psu should i go for 550W, 700W, 950w to then add a good graphics card in a few weeks?

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Supposedly these new NVidia 300 series cards are low power useage, they use less power than the 295 but twice the processing power and they are meant to be somewhat cheaper than the 200 series also, so a 550w would probably suffice but I would still go with a little overhead if you ever want to double up and hit a 700-750w

Tony

dunx

iTrader: (3)

If you hate waiting for a PC to boot budget for an SSD !

Mine's much nicer now.

IMHO

dunx

Adrian F

Dunx i was going to wait until the price of SSD drop more before looking to get one.

WRXBOB

If you're going i7 you want the 9xx series not 8xx series.
If going for i7 8xx series you may as well go for an i5 750 as they're the same socket (1156)and then get a better GPU.

It's what I did and I'm soooooo glad I did!

with socket 1156 boards you'll be just fine with 4GB of decent dual ram.

If going for a i7 9xx series then you'll need a socket 1366 board and triple 6GB ram.

I can recommend the i5 750 on the Asus P7P55D LE board which is better than the "LX" board. I have Patriot Viper Sector 5 1600MHz ram and it clocks great!

Running it on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit - Best OS Microsoft have made imho!

One tip I will give you, DON'T go for a low end PSU, even it if is "rated" at higher power.
Get a Corsair PSU and you'll not regret it.

A better tip . . . . Read up on the subject for at least a week - There's loads of good info out there!

WRXBOB

Samsung F3 1TB drives are pretty nifty and only 55 squid!

Mate has 4 in a raid and is beating SSD's (unless you count the really expensive 500quid top end ones!)

WRXBOB

You could go for a smaller SSD, say 32GB and use that as you boot drive, using your other drives for storage. You'll find that speeds things up!

Adrian F

WRXBOB thanks for the advice to be honest the advice on here from the regular members is normally very good but i will look into the PSU details

Xx-IAN-xX

600W Kingwin ABT-600MA1S Modular SLI PSU at TheCoolingShop

this is what i'm using

hux309

Oh dear, trust me when i say this compared to ati, nvidia fermi this round will suck.

As the others have suggested go for the i5 with a better gpu option.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

So the new Nvidia cards will be the 470GTX and 480GTX, no "real" benchmarks from independents but the ones from Nvidia show that they do outpace ATI, we shall wait for the price and spec's though (and I would still go i7 920 unless you go duel core then it would be the i5).

Tony

hux309

Nvidia are hardly going to make their card look bad, think about it.

It's about on par with a 5870 only in tessellation heavy games it'll make a difference, which are nearly non existent.

Bit like how nv kept on using batman benchies using aa, it's because they knew it would cripple ati cards as they paid off the devs to make it slow.

But meh im not fussed i have a 5970 anyway.

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/02/...gtx480-scores/

Also definitely go quad core, bfbc2 has twice the fps of a dual core system, it's the first game that has been heavily optimised for quad systems.