New Gaming Machine - Help

[Sleepingforest]

I'm just talking about new Ram in general. 8GB is $40, and as far as I can tell we're talking about him ghetto splitting his RAM and having 4GB in his old rig, and 4GB in his new beast. Makes no sense to me. Just buy new RAM. 8GB is $40, 16GB is $70. Just be done with it.

Ah, there's the misunderstanding. We're advising him to "ghetto split" a 4x4GB set into two 2x4GB sets.

 

[Davidh373]

Ahh, ok. That might work better.

 

[mattwhitt]

Thank you all very much for your input. My final build I have decided to go with is a lot different then my original after heading the advice of everyone that took the time to help me out here. I decided to up my budget another 100 dollars from my income tax which will hopefully be here in the next ten days or so. This is what I have decided to go with.

Case : NZXT Phantom PHAN-001WT White Steel / Plastic Enthusiast ATX Full Tower Computer Case
Mobo : ASRock Z77 Extreme3 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU : Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K
RAM : G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL7Q-16GBZM
SSD : Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
HDD : Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
PS : Rosewill HIVE Series HIVE-750 750W Continuous @40°C, 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified, Modular Design, Single +12V Rail, ATX12V v2.31/EPS12V ...
Video Card : EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
BlueRay/DVD : LG Black 12X Blu-ray Combo Drive SATA Model UH12NS29 - OEM
CPU Cooler : COOLER MASTER Hyper TX3 RR-910-HTX3-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" 92mm CPU Cooler

I alread have a copy of Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit that I am going to use.

Final Price before shipping charges $ 1,424.90

One final question. Is the PowerColor 7970 Video card some of you have advised a lot better then the NVidia GTX 670 ? I have always used NVidia cards and have never tried a Raedon card, but that dosnt mean i'm not open to trying something new.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

It's the game you play that should dictate which card to get as AMD does better in some games while Nvidia does better in others e.g. BF3 sheesh

 

[Termie]

Thank you all very much for your input. My final build I have decided to go with is a lot different then my original after heading the advice of everyone that took the time to help me out here. I decided to up my budget another 100 dollars from my income tax which will hopefully be here in the next ten days or so. This is what I have decided to go with.

...

One final question. Is the PowerColor 7970 Video card some of you have advised a lot better then the NVidia GTX 670 ? I have always used NVidia cards and have never tried a Raedon card, but that dosnt mean i'm not open to trying something new.

The EVGA GTX 670 FTW for $380AR is a decent deal, but it's not a great one. Based on its factory overclock, it will perform just slightly behind the Radeon HD7970, which is available for around the same price, also factory overclocked: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&PageSize=20

The issue is that the HD7970 has much more overclocking headroom, even above the factory "GHz" overclocks, so if you like to experiment with that kind of thing, you might like the HD7970 more. On the other hand, AMD is currently in a transition period with its drivers, correcting some issues that have led to latency in gaming despite high framerates. So I'd say the GTX670 is going to provide a bit more predictable performance, but ultimately may be a bit slower for the same price. Furthermore, EVGA is a top-notch vendor and provides great support.

 

[Davidh373]

One final question. Is the PowerColor 7970 Video card some of you have advised a lot better then the NVidia GTX 670 ? I have always used NVidia cards and have never tried a Raedon card, but that dosnt mean i'm not open to trying something new.

Neither are "BAD" cards. AMD has the technically better cards, but when it comes to the drivers, AMD loses. I always go with NVidia for stability and reliability, but performance per dollar says go with AMD. My head always tells me to not let the technical specifications guide my decision, because drivers control the card's performance, and what good is the better performance if it can't be properly utilized or controlled? I tried AMD once, and while I was ultimately happy, I missed PhysX and some additional graffics effects NVidia offered, and I missed the ability to play some new games on the day of release due to driver issues (Skyrim, BF3 Beta, Skyrim after weird patch... mostly Skyrim at all 😛 ).

 

[frankthetank195]

I'm coming into this really really late, but I'd like to say that your current computer really isn't that weak. If you look at the build in my signature, that one works almost perfectly in every game I play: Battlefield 3, Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3, etc. My graphics card bottlenecks me a little bit, but that's just the VRAM holding back my MSAA settings. I'm actually upgrading to a cheaper and better 660ti 3GB. The bitrate's a little lower, but I think it'll do just fine.

I love the Phenom II x4 965 BE, 8GB of RAM does me just fine, and the Phantom is a great case, plenty of room. I'd say mix and match your two systems; keep the cpu, upgrade motherboard, upgrade the psu, upgrade the gpu, get an SSD.

It would save you tons of money now that can be put towards Haswell, 7-series GPU, a new monitor, or whatever else strikes your fancy in the future.

 

[raildogg]

I'm coming into this really really late, but I'd like to say that your current computer really isn't that weak. If you look at the build in my signature, that one works almost perfectly in every game I play: Battlefield 3, Max Payne 3, Far Cry 3, etc. My graphics card bottlenecks me a little bit, but that's just the VRAM holding back my MSAA settings. I'm actually upgrading to a cheaper and better 660ti 3GB. The bitrate's a little lower, but I think it'll do just fine.

I love the Phenom II x4 965 BE, 8GB of RAM does me just fine, and the Phantom is a great case, plenty of room. I'd say mix and match your two systems; keep the cpu, upgrade motherboard, upgrade the psu, upgrade the gpu, get an SSD.

It would save you tons of money now that can be put towards Haswell, 7-series GPU, a new monitor, or whatever else strikes your fancy in the future.

You make some great points. I agree that the computer OP has is still very fast today and getting a new one may or may not be the best approach.

mattwhitt, you should try putting an SSD along with a better graphics card in your system and see how you like it. If its not a big upgrade, then you could reuse those parts in your next system. I have an even slower processor than yours (Athlon X4 635) but adding an SSD made things a lot faster. I don't feel any performance differences between my computer and some of the newer Intel-based systems in the tasks that I do. I don't play modern games or do heavy workload type stuff so that may change things a bit.

 

[mfenn]

Neither are "BAD" cards. AMD has the technically better cards, but when it comes to the drivers, AMD loses. I always go with NVidia for stability and reliability, but performance per dollar says go with AMD. My head always tells me to not let the technical specifications guide my decision, because drivers control the card's performance, and what good is the better performance if it can't be properly utilized or controlled? I tried AMD once, and while I was ultimately happy, I missed PhysX and some additional graffics effects NVidia offered, and I missed the ability to play some new games on the day of release due to driver issues (Skyrim, BF3 Beta, Skyrim after weird patch... mostly Skyrim at all 😛 ).

I've used both for a very long time and have only ever run into ONE driver issue with AMD. That was with some random Russian game that barely sold any copies (King's Bounty: The Legend). I did have my 9800 burnt up by Nvidia's infamous card killing driver though.

See, our anecdotes cancel out!

 

[Davidh373]

I see. Well the 6850 had some issues arise for me. I either had to choose a driver to play BF3 Beta, or to play Skyrim. I also had an issue in Skyrim a few updates after, which made little shading glitches sparkle through walls. Like I said, the card was great, and overall I don't think I would have gotten a 460 instead, but it wasn't a flawless experience.

 

[mattwhitt]

Ordered all my parts and they arrived Saturday. New system is all together and I love it. Thanks all for your help with putting this together.
One final question. I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit version on the new rig. I have some cash left over and was wondering what your thoughts were on Windows 8 64 bit version. Would this be a better operating system and worth purchasing. I mainly game and like to always use ultra high settings, i wanna see evrything there is to see in a game with no lag issues.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Windows 8 sucks imho

 

[Termie]

Ordered all my parts and they arrived Saturday. New system is all together and I love it. Thanks all for your help with putting this together.
One final question. I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit version on the new rig. I have some cash left over and was wondering what your thoughts were on Windows 8 64 bit version. Would this be a better operating system and worth purchasing. I mainly game and like to always use ultra high settings, i wanna see evrything there is to see in a game with no lag issues.

Win8 won't add anything to your gaming abilities, and you might not like the interface. If you were deciding between buying one or the other, it might be a toss up, but in your situation, no, don't buy Win8.

 

[mfenn]

Win8 won't add anything to your gaming abilities, and you might not like the interface. If you were deciding between buying one or the other, it might be a toss up, but in your situation, no, don't buy Win8.

Seconded. Not worth the money after you've already dropped $140 on Windows 7.