To wait or not to wait

[OCChronic]

Let the review sites be the testers of the new Intel platforms while you wait for it to mature. If you need a system soon then get a quad 9550 and a good P45 board with 4GB DDR2 1066Mhz RAM. That's your best bang for the buck and anything beyond that won't be used effectively in Windows Vista anyway. The money you'll save will defintely come in handy when it's time to upgrade from the 280GTX or 4870 you'll most likely get.

You won't even notice much difference between a Q9550/DDR2 1066/P45 system and the new nahalems coming out unless your fascinated with synthetic benchmarks. Even then, I'll bet the headaches of breaking in a new platform won't be worth the extra performance it offers, early in the game.

 

[JaBro999]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Last time i checked the price of a 920 was suposed to be on par with the Q9550 as well.

The 920's price is reasonable when you consider its price, performance, and overclockability.

But, the $300-$350 price tag for the first set of X58 boards is still pretty steep.

I wonder if any MB vendors will come out with a striped down X58 board to get the price around $200? I know that the X58 is Intel's premium chipset with tri-channel memory and 2x16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes for SLI/CF, but I would assume that offering a lower priced MB would allow vendors to reach a much larger market considering that X58 is the only game in town for Core i7 for the next 6-9 months.

 

[glarsen84]

Why P45? Isn't the X48 better?

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: glarsen84
Why P45? Isn't the X48 better?

Sure, because 48 is 3 more than 45, and as we all know bigger is better.

All kidding aside, the benefits of x48 is really just more PCIe lanes, for 1% more Crossfire performance. Oh yeah, and x48 "officially" supports 1600MHz FSB CPUs (that would be only the QX9770). So, if you want an expensive board to run Crossfire and a QX9770, then the x48 is it.

Otherwise get the P45.

 

[Tempered81]

Yah i would only get x48 over p45 if crossfire HD4800's was the main concern

 

[glarsen84]

Thanks for the replies

I'm gonna get one GTX 280.
Can you recommend a nice P45 board.. i've heard good about the Asus P5Q series.

 

[fritzfield]

P5Q PRO :thumbsup:

 

[nyker96]

i think after looking at the prelim benchmarks it is clear if you do video/audio work, nehalem is definitely worth the wait for it is about 15-20% faster clock to clock than current quads.

 

[glarsen84]

Hello,
i will use the system for gaming only

Why the P5Q Pro.. can you tell me what is the difference between the P5Q's.. there's so many models :s
If i'm using one GPU, will it run PCI-E 16x or 8x, or do i need to set something in the bios?

 

[Tempered81]

16x for 1 GPU, it can do 16x/4x or 8x/8x for crossfire.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Originally posted by: glarsen84
I don't see a big difference in games, except for the SLI reviews, and i'm a 1-GPU-person... AFAIK (from the reviews) the i7 is as fast as a dual/quad in games pr. mhz. but i see it owns in alot other stuff, and might be more futureproof.

The price for a 940 in denmark converted to USD is $718 (cheapest possible and 25% VAT included), and the board goes from $440-$500..
Ye, i see the price for a q9550 and a i7 920 is almost the same ($370).

I would love to own a i7, and if it wasn't for the rumors about it's release in November, i would have bought a q9550 months ago... I'm just afraid i will get a unstable aplha-system, like i did with my P4 just after it's release.

My internet social machine . Is a p4c 3.2ghz. Its on air only now . But there was a time it was my pride and joy.

Its life was cut short by dual cores. and Dothans.

IC7 x58 platform should last a long time. Its 8 thread capable. It has a QPI link between the cpu and gpu. Which will show its usefulness with larrabee. Its the best futureproof platform ever presented up to this point. Well see how it plays out. Now we know nothing about it. But IC7 with a skultrail type M/B . Now your talking future proof.In a big way. But cost is crazy high for such. But at 32nm it does look really interesting. I have read on the net Westmere is suppose to daybute @ 4ghz. Looking at early IC7 45nm . I have zero reason not to believe this will occur.

When it comes to hardware it's dam if you do and dam if don't. All these PCs Intel / AMD are nice computers . Buy what ya like . Don't worry about what the other guy is doing. Do your own thing and be proud of it. Build according to your usage. Ya can't go wrong that way.