Originally posted by: dflynchimp
Originally posted by: Zenobia
Ok, now I feel really dumb. I forgot to mention I?m allergic to intel. Sorry, consensus here reads intel, but I?ve been doing AMD for decades... almost. Intel is probably the better choice for the $$ but if I get one I?d know I?d brake out in worts. And I?m sorry about HD Radeon, etc, too, but I?ve had an Nvidia EVGA 7600 card for years that plays Crysis amazing well at fairly high settings. And the Asrock board my be el cheapo but it looks to the future. Phenom FX when and if? But thanks, you've really given me lots to consider!
(Ganesh1, it was an honor to read your comments. No negetivo here.)
Yeah, Diablo3, arf arf!
lol. There's nothing wrong with brand preference, although it's amusing since AMD owns ATI (and subsequently the Radeon HD line) so you're really divying up your loyalty here.
If you don't overclock, the new Phenom II's look very promising. I used to be an OC whore before I realized how big of an impact it had on the powerbill. I run my computer 24/7 and the money I save from not overclocking can pretty much by me a new $200 cpu every two years. Now I'm a huge underclocking buff, only clocking my gpu and cpu up when I game or do heavy computing.
Most cpus can still be overclocked quite well, while still utilizing power saving features, which run the cpu at half-speed when idle or lightly used. I recently put together an E5200 based system - it overclocked quite easily to 3.33 Ghz, but it ran at half that speed most of the time, even while using the computer for web browsing (although it would do "micro-bursts" of higher speed when first starting up programs). It was nice - the computer felt very fast, yet used low power. I'm sure AMD has the same thing with PowerNow.
With ATI cards, its very easy to edit the BIOS so that the card is underclocked in 2D, and overclocked in 3D. By default, most GPUs are already underclocked in 2D, so you'd only need to edit the BIOS if you want to underclock it even more. You can get them virtually silent that way.
Finally, you can really save on the power bill by letting your computer go into standby when not in use. No ned to have it fully running 24/7 if you are at work or in school, or asleep. I've gotten into the habit of putting my machine into standby every night. It boots right up in a few seconds the next day. Has lowered the bill alittle bit.
Finally, if your going to support AMD (and the Kuma is a very decent chip) then you might as well support AMD with the video card as well (and you'll get better bang for the buck as well).
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