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Chaos (40)
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[Magathery]

Hello boys & girls

Here's the dilemma. I've not upgraded in a while. An the pattern always seems to follow the same path. The moment you've upgraded you stop looking. You will have spent ages reading up on the different components. checking their prices, performance and compatibility. So once you have purchased your geeky hearts desire, the last thing you want to do is find that it was half the price you paid for it 3 months later.

So time passes and the technology moves on. And eventually you feel that urge to make thing all shiny and new. But you find the landscape has change quite a bit since the last time you looked out of the rolling plains of the geek world. And you feel that a little guidance is required.

Which neatly brings me to the question, which goes a bit like this...



When considering building a new system, the starting point will usually be processor type and compatible motherboard. So should I stick with Intel and look to an i7? Or should I give good consideration to the AMD Phenom II?



Now price is a major factor. So using eBuyer as an example using today's [Saturday 3rd September] prices, here's how it looks...

AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition 1090T 3.2GHz Socket AM3 9MB Cache 125W Retail Boxed Processor £136.96

Intel Core i7 2600k 3.4GHz Socket 1155 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor £234.95


Now I don't know enough about the technology but at the moment that looks like a difference of nearly a hundred pounds for what appears to be 6 cores vs 4 cores and 0.2GHz difference in speeds.


Now a little disclaimer:
This is all hypothetical so far. I'm giving the thought of upgrading good consideration. But more immediately I have more sensible (boring) uses for my money at this point in time. But Christmas is coming and I might be able to bribe Santa again into believing that I've been a good boy So a little bit of research now might be a good thing.

[Power]

First of all, mate. If you go for Intel, go with 2500k instead of 2600k. The price difference on those two doesn't justify the performance gain and 2500k can be overclocked to 11 if you really feel the performance is lacking. Secondly, Intel CPUs are currectly much faster than the AMD ones with the same clock speed, BUT that said, the AMD are still fast enough to run pretty much everything there is, so if you really want to save money, while still being able to run every game, AMD is just fine. 1090 seems as good choice as any, though I'm not yet sold on the usefullness of 6-core CPUs, so an equally fast x4 CPU might be just as good for your purposes, but a lot cheaper.

[Zarf]

The new Amds are out on the 19th, should be futureproof (lots of real cores) and competitive with the 2500k and 2600k. If nothing else it'll bring prices down.

Thats what im waiting for anyway, Though to be honest CPUs aren't a great factor for gamers anymore, any quad core will do you proud.

[Blue Geezer]

i can tell you right now rippy with what you have in mind i cannot emphasise enough how badly you should be looking at an SSD right about now.

[PapaFade]

Have prices improved any? You used to be looking at £100+ for only 32GB of storage.

[Mr Chug]

It's pushing £1 for 1 gig now, even without special offers. Been keeping an eye for prices stabilising so I don't feel like a tool in 6 months when they're half the price again.

[Blue Geezer]

well yes. prices on ssd's drop regulary as they improve and the recent bad press they had around the vertex 3 range. but they are still immense.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/90gb-ocz-vertex-2-35-ssd-up-to-285mb-s-read-up-to-275mb-s-write-50k-iops-sandforce-controller

for example. so thats pretty good for what its worth and a fair upgrade over a mechanical drive and considering rippy will wants fast access to his hd for those tuesday nights this could be fairly important to that build.

plus i wish i had the money for something like this:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/ocz-12tb-velodrive-pci-e-x8-h-w-or-s-w-raid-sandforce-1565-(x4)-3-year-warranty

incredible.

[Zarf]

Yeah, IIRC Rippy dabbles in video editing etc from time to time, anyone who spends much time at the desktop will get big benefits from an SSD.

[Blue Geezer]

what does everyone think about:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/Intel+Core+i5-2500K+3.30GHz+(Sandybridge)+Socket+LGA1155+Processor+-+Retail+?productId=43216&source=googleps

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/components/motherboards/intel1155h67,q67chipsetmotherboards/Gigabyte/GA-H67MA-USB3-B3.html#utm_source=google&utm_medium=base&utm_campaign=products

for rippy.

[Zarf]

what does everyone think about:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/Intel+Core+i5-2500K+3.30GHz+(Sandybridge)+Socket+LGA1155+Processor+-+Retail+?productId=43216&source=googleps

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/components/motherboards/intel1155h67,q67chipsetmotherboards/Gigabyte/GA-H67MA-USB3-B3.html#utm_source=google&utm_medium=base&utm_campaign=products

for rippy.

Not bad, would need to buy some DDR3 though (not a big problem as it's dirt cheap atm, 8GB is under £40)

[Blue Geezer]

ddr3 like you said shouldnt be an issue though? follow up with a half decent graphics card and an ssd and sorted

(depending on what else you have that you need extra for your pc, power needed? monitor?)

[Sk1nn3d]

go for z68 shipset if you can. it has intel rapid storage with raid 0,1,10,5 ....

[Magathery]

Very cool. Big thanks for the responses.

So far the plan is along these lines. I looking to recycle my PSU, graphics card, sound card, network card. And quite possibly the two hard drives as well.

The graphics card will need changing in the future, but that's a whole other topic of discussion.

But as the prices improving on the world of solid state, and new methods to manage the data allocation and shuffling that is required. The desire for an OS install mounted on an SSD is ever more appealing.

I always find that as soon as I've upgraded I stop following the technology and it's developments. So that when I return with my shopping basket in hand I find that I'm overwhelmed by the advances that have happened.

I tend to upgrade buy throwing out my anchor as far as I can. Basically one step behind cutting edge of the moment.

So for me the fun part is the first few steps where i figure out what I'm after. What I can afford. And what I can expand on.


As ever, big thank you for the input and advise. I just need to bribe Santa again