Buying a new computational device!

I don't see a mobo. And I'd suggest an AMD chip over an intel one, personally. They are just money, no object. I expect many to disagree with me, though.

I'd personally stick with Intel for your CPU. I just bought the hardware for a new system (should all be here on Wednesday) so I'll post that so you can compare. Have to head out for a bit, once I get back I'll make some suggestions etc.

CPU INTEL|CORE I7 930 2.80G

CPU COOLER COOLER MASTER V8

DVD BURNER LITE-ON | IHAS124-04 %

PSU CORSAIR|CMPSU-850TX 850W RT

MB GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R

WIN PRO 7 64-BT

HD 2T|HITACHI 7K SATA2

EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GTX470

MEM 2Gx4|CORSAIR CMX8GX3M4A1333C9

/copypasta

I'd go with ATi, tbh. Nvidia have been kinda pants lately. :X

Quote from insta

It just rolls of the tongue.

Quote from dux

I'd suggest an AMD chip over an intel one, personally. They are just money, no object. I expect many to disagree with me, though.

I agree, the prices on intel cpus are ridiculous recently, same for the graphics,I recommend an ATI card, save some cash without losing much if anything on the performance side.

Quote from Psy

I'd go with ATi, tbh. Nvidia have been kinda pants lately. :X

Hmmm yeah that's what I've been hearing as well. Planning on getting a gaming PC very soon, need it to play Civ V . Thinking about going for one of the i5 CPU's, really can't be bothered to spend too much on this thing and it sounds like that you get a lot for you money with those.

ATI and AMD has always been the safest bet in a good cost/quality relation.

Even tho, I'm using nvidia and intel for a few years now, and no complains here.

Hmmm, I've just heard that AMD isn't quite so hot these days. Also, I've never actually bought an Intel CPU, would be nice for a change

Here's my list for cost to performance ratio.

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - £117 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1328

Asus M4A87TD Evo AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard - £86.99 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1782

OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 (1333MHz) Low-Voltage Dual Channe - £66.96 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1516

HIS ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £299.99 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1502

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM - £47.99 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1279

Corsair VX 550W ATX Power Supply - £75.99 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1084

Asus Xonar D1 7.1 PCI Sound Card - £54.99 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... 11&subcat=

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit - OEM - £113.96 inc VAT

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... -MS&tool=3

+1 for the Asus Xonar. I had nothing but crap with my Creative X-Fi card. It would work fine for a few weeks then fuck up so it would start to make random hissing noises and generally cut out on it's own accord.

ATi is fine in its latest generation here. Just one thing messes, is Autodesk Products. Motionbuilder can be one bitch with ATi Graphics and 3Ds Max and Maya tend to lower performence sometimes (though not as brutal as MoBu).

It really all depends on what you need your machine to do. For me, I just dropped $1600 for the hardware I posted above. I need it for high-end gaming, 3d art, and everything else. It's somewhat "future proof" (oxymoron in PC tech, I know) so I can keep upgrading it until I decide I need a new system again. I had the money and wanted the hardware, so I pulled the trigger.

Intel has been for the past few years on top of the gaming CPUs, plus I can get my i7-930 to 4ghz on air with ease (IF it's not a crummy batch.) That's another thing to consider, do you plan on overclocking at all?

Here's a good overview for comparison of CPUs:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bes ... ,2698.html

And here's one for GPUs:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gef ... ,2697.html

An AMD/ATI system would still be a good way to go though.

What are you doing with this computer? Is it a workstation, or a gaming PC? If you're not using shit that supports hyperthreading (no game does), the i7's a waste of money. Over 4GB RAM is also unneeded unless you're going to be making massive maps in level editors and using photoshop and a 3d editor at the same time. For general use, an i5 and 4GB and a Geforce 460 1GB is essentially top of the line and far cheaper than the highest end components possible.

If you're baking textures from 3dsmax, it's always nice to have more than 4gigs of RAM to ensure max doesn't crap out on you.

Oh, and I wanna say because a few people in the thread said Nvidia hasn't been good lately: They haven't, but the Geforce 460 is a massive turn around for them and is basically the best card for the money in the ~$200 price range. It's very near the ATI 5850 in performance, while seventy bucks cheaper, and typically better software support (also CUDA and PhysX if you care).

I too have heard the Intel Core processors are the bee's knees.. I went newegging to see how much it'd be to upgrade my system, and decided against that rather quickly $300 for the cheapest core i7's.. up to a grand+

Then I looked at some AMD processors and a quad-core 3ghz is a hundred bucks, great reviews, take well to overclocking, etc... Unless you have cash to burn, seems to be the smart way to go! You get an L3 cache with the i7's, but I've read the performance increase is minimal for the additional cost. An AMD Phenom X2 quad core, 3.4ghz with a 6mb L3 cache is $150, just about half as much as the i7 you have specced.

I've also heard really good things about the Samsung Spinpoint F3 drives, fast and quiet. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152185

$5 more expensive than your specced drive, but it has a better Newegg rating, fwiw. Occasionally they'll go on sale for ~$60, so maybe snap one up during one of those sales.

I see dux has mentioned the spinpoint already

Quote from twiz

I see dux has mentioned the spinpoint already

Samsung are awesome.