New gaming machine

[ciphernetic]

Purpose: PC will be used for gaming.
Budget: 1300
Country: US
Brand: no-pref
Current Parts: none
Search/Read Threads: Was scouring through anandtech and tomshardware for a decent up to date guide and could not find one that fit my price point. The guides I found for 1000< or 1500>.
Overclocking: no
Res: 1680x1050 on dual 22" screens (so video needs dual DVI out)
When: ASAP


Been a long time since i pieced together my own machine and I am not up on which motherboards work best with which CPUs and such. Hoping I can get some guidance from the forum members.

 

[MisterDonut]

WELCOME TO ANNNNNNNNAAAAAANDDDDDDDDDDDDD

You can probably save a little bit of money with AMD, but you can easily fit an Intel machine within that budget. Either route will give you pretty much identical performance in gaming...

AMD 955BE + AM3 motherboard + 4gb DDR3-1600 (I recommend G.Skill; Don't touch OCZ) + 5850 + Win7 Home Premium OEM + Antec 300 + Corsair TX650 + WD Caviar Black 640gb + Logitech G5/MX518/Whatever you want + Saitek Eclipse + Scythe Mugen 2 (I'd recommend OC with AMD. It's ridiculously easy and you get a little bit more speed). Sorry, I'm too lazy to find all the prices, but I'm 99.9&#37; sure that it falls within your budget range. If you wanted Intel, switch out the 955 for the i7-860 + motherboard. With a more aggressive TurboBoost than the i5-750, you can probably drop aftermarket heatsink and just not overclock like you originally planned. I dunno how much more it would cost though. If you have any money left, I'd also recommend dumping it into a third monitor and running Eyefinity. Now that's real gaming 🙂. I wouldn't go near 1366 unless you have a Microcenter nearby and can pick up the 920/930 dirt cheap. As far as gaming goes, it'd only improve performance in multi-GPU setups.

EDIT: I forgot to mention Fry's. They usually have really good 965 + mobo + (maybe) GPU deals. Check them out if you live near one. Also check the Hot Deals section in this forum. You might find something worthwhile.

 

[ciphernetic]

Likely going to order this stuff online and have it shipped. Being in Maine, i do not have access to Microcenter or Fry's.

I know i was originally looking at the i7-860 so I do not know how the AMD compares...will have to try to find a chart.

Was also looking at the ATI 5850 as my video card, so looks like that is going to work. Not sure what the eyefinity feature is, from context i assume it is spanning over the three screens, guess i will have to some reading on that.

 

[MisterDonut]

Yeah, Eyefinity is basically what you said in a nutshell, haha.

As I said, as far as gaming goes, you won't get any noticeable performance gain with the i860 over the 955. I would opt for AMD because saving money in this market is never a bad idea. Parts are improving and coming out too fast to really "future-proof" your machine. But if you are worried about how far the AM3 platform will go, it's said to support the hexacore Thuban processors, so if PC games ever require 6 cores (lol.), then I guess it'll give you peace of mind that the socket isn't going dead. Intel enjoys changing sockets every 7.238 seconds. 5850 will be plenty of power for gaming at 1680 x 1050. It's actually a bit of overkill as a 5770 will handle that perfectly fine. But if you're going with AM3 or 1156, I'd stick with single cards and avoid CFX.

 

[ciphernetic]

Now what is the performace difference between dual channel and triple channel, and is it worth it for the price point i am trying to meet?

 

[MisterDonut]

You probably won't feel the performance difference. As far as I am aware, it's minimal for gaming purposes. Triple channel is supported by the 1366 platform, which, imo, is unnecessary for gaming unless you want a multi-GPU setup. Dual channel is perfectly adequate for what you're doing with the machine. Again, avoid OCZ. I have heard countless DOA's...

 

[ciphernetic]

Thanks for you help, you have been incredibility helpful.

 

[mfenn]

I second pretty much everything MisterDonut said. 🙂

I would like to note that the i7 860 will be faster in general usage due to the (a) the more efficient architecture (more instructions per clock cycle) and (b) the turbo boost (aka turbo mode) feature. If you ever get stuck with a program that only single-threaded, it is really nice to be able to auto-magically overclock to 3.46GHz.

 

[MisterDonut]

I second pretty much everything MisterDonut said. 🙂

I would like to note that the i7 will be faster in general usage due to the (a) the more efficient architecture (more instructions per clock cycle) and (b) the turbo boost (aka turbo mode) feature. If you ever get stuck with a program that only single-threaded, it is really nice to be able to auto-magically overclock to 3.46GHz.

If you want to sleep with me, just ask :sneaky::sneaky::sneaky::sneaky::sneaky:. Just a question. I haven't personally toyed with an i7, but I've worked on builds with them plenty (never booted up). Compared to one of the high-end 775/AM3 quad-cores, is the real-world performance incredibly noticeable in everyday use? I've fallen a little behind on my reading for 1366. Haven't paid much interest towards it.

 

[mfenn]

If you want to sleep with me, just ask :sneaky::sneaky::sneaky::sneaky::sneaky:. Just a question. I haven't personally toyed with an i7, but I've worked on builds with them plenty (never booted up). Compared to one of the high-end 775/AM3 quad-cores, is the real-world performance incredibly noticeable in everyday use? I've fallen a little behind on my reading for 1366. Haven't paid much interest towards it.

Well, I was talking about the 1156 i7's. The 1366 ones don't turbo for crap. I'll just say that going from Q6600 + SSD + 8GB (so memory or disk wasn't the bottleneck) to i7 860 + SSD + 8GB was quite noticeable. Not SSD level of mind-blowing, but noticeable.

 

[MisterDonut]

Ah, yeah. I must have missed the "860". I was starting to doubt myself cause yeah, 1366 have territurbo compared to the 860. I'm still running a 9550, but it's doing me justice. I have a buddy near Microcenter though.