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New Build - please advise

sanzen07

sanzen07

Senior member
I'm getting the upgrade itch and I'm planning on upgrading my CPU, RAM, motherboard and video card. My goal is to keep this upgrade under $1000. Also, how much gaming performance increase do you think this will give me over my current rig listed in the sig? Please comment 🙂

CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1333C9
$149.99

EVGA 768-P3-1360-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
$199.99 (should I wait until the 1GB version comes out?)

EVGA E758-TR 3-Way SLI (x16/x16/x8) LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
$199.99 w/ rebate

Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80601930
$289.99

$839.96 total.
 
Last edited:
sanzen07 said:
Why is that?
Click to expand...

Since this question comes up a lot, I'm going to quote TheStu's excellent post on the topic.

TheStu said:
Alright... yes, 1366 has more lanes on PCIe than 1156. You can actually run 2 x16 cards at full x16 speeds. HOWEVER, you have a 22" monitor that has, at best, 1920*1200 resolution. A pair of 5870s in CF will not saturate 2 x16 lane slots to drive that display.

If you start to talk 30" display, or multiple spanned displays, then you are talking something else the need for more bandwidth. But as it stands right now, 1366 doesn't offer you anything that you need, or could potentially need that 1156 cannot. What 1156 offers you is cheaper CPUs, cheaper boards, boards with more features (though they are reaching parity again), a wider selection of boards, and a wider selection of CPUs. Oh, and since you don't need to run triple channel RAM, you can save a little money there as well.
Click to expand...

Basically, there is no reason to pay the X58 premium unless you are running CFX/SLI, and even then the benefits are marginal.
 
Last edited:
mfenn said:
Since this question comes up a lot, I'm going to quote TheStu's excellent post on the topic.

Basically, there is no reason to pay the X58 premium unless you are running CFX/SLI, and even then the benefits are marginal.
Click to expand...

That makes perfect sense, I'm sold 🙂
 
Here's what I would look into:

Core i5 760 $210 - same as the old 750 but with a clock speed bump
GA-P55A-UD3 $140 - solid P55 board with a nice feature set
G.Skill DDR3 1600 4GB $98 - 4GB of 1.5V RAM
GTX 460 1GB $230 - reference GTX 460 that should be very overclockable if that's your thing
Total: $678

If you want to spend closer to the $840 that your other build cost, throw a 5870 in there instead of the GTX 460.
 
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