Gaming rig?

Firebouncy

Firebouncy

Firebouncy

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Joined
19 Nov 2010
Posts
71
Location
UK
  • Intel Core i7 930 2.80GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail - £219.98
  • XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 Black Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £211.49
  • Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard - £154.99
  • Patriot Viper 2 Sector 7 6GB (3x2GB) PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Kit - £88.11
  • XFX 650W XXX Edition Modular Power Supply - £69.99
  • Samsung EcoGreen F2 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HI) - £30.98

    Ive got a five year old mesh case (from my old computer) which I dont know if it will accommodate my Mobo, ive measured it does, just dont know about the holes in the back if they will accommodated the board). With that case i have CD drive. Anything Im missing?
    **Graphics isn't certain**

    At the mo = £787.31 ( I want to keep it all under £825 - 850 inl.tax & posting )
    Open to any ideas
    Used for day to day use...and Gaming hard!




 
You might be missing an OS? Not sure if you have one, if not then you are starting to push your 850 budget.

If daily use and gaming are your two activities, I would definitely go for an i5 solution. Get the i5 760 and pair it with the relevant motherboard, the cheaper Gigabyte or Asus if you want to stay with one GPU configurations, possibly the MSI or the 150 pound Gigabyte version if you want SLI or Crossfire at 8x/8x.

Definitely go with RJC's suggestion of upgrading your HD to an F3. You will definitely not regret that. Also, you will probably need a cooler; what you get depends on how far you want to overclock or if you want to overclock at all.
 
i would stick with your i7 and dont get sucked down to an i5. i dont see the sense in going i5 to get a slightly better gpu because in the end you will be investing in somthing that will be the first thing your gonna change. the 1366 socket will still be highend when sandybridge is released and in my eyes it will be powerful enough to allow you to skip sandybridge all together and a bit more. this is my logic and just throwing it in the mix for an extra angle. :cool:
 
i said it so i would.

the i5 isnt always going to be "just as fast" as an i7. its fast approaching that the i7 will be the new i5 when sandy bridge is in full swing. wake up please.
 
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jakesnake said:
i said it so i would.

the i5 isnt always going to be "just as fast" as an i7. its fast approaching that the i7 will be the new i5 when sandy bridge is in full swing. wake up please.
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This makes no sense. The reason people are recommending an i5 now is because it is so close to the relevant i7 alternatives. SandyBridge coming out will not, I repeat, will not make the gap between the two processors any bigger. How would that work? The i7 will becomes the new i5? In the sense that it will be the cheaper of two high end processors while still retaining equivalent power? Well you do not know what SB will be like in comparison to what we have today. And the i5 will not magically become worse because it will be third in the pecking order. Benchmarks are benchmarks.

The i7 is an excellent processor and if I had the budget for it in a build I would go for it. That does not mean that you should always strive for it however, I really do not see the reason to try to shoehorn it into a build where it will de facto force a sacrifice in GPU power.
 
He said gaming mainly, most games use 2 cores and now some are starting to use 4, a 480 would be a huge jump for him also.

Makes sense to me if it was my money, since he has no need for a i7.
 
Porcelina said:
This makes no sense. The reason people are recommending an i5 now is because it is so close to the relevant i7 alternatives. SandyBridge coming out will not, I repeat, will not make the gap between the two processors any bigger. How would that work? The i7 will becomes the new i5? In the sense that it will be the cheaper of two high end processors while still retaining equivalent power? Well you do not know what SB will be like in comparison to what we have today. And the i5 will not magically become worse because it will be third in the pecking order. Benchmarks are benchmarks.

The i7 is an excellent processor and if I had the budget for it in a build I would go for it. That does not mean that you should always strive for it however, I really do not see the reason to try to shoehorn it into a build where it will de facto force a sacrifice in GPU power.
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let me clear up wot i mean because you dont get it. when sandy bridge is in full swing theres clearly gonna be a lot of new programming with minimum requirments coming behind it. things that an i7 will be able to do "just as good" as sandybridge. ofcourse i didnt think that sb showing up will magically make the gap bigger alone, but the eventual capabilities will. thats when the i7 will pull away from the i5 and you will start to see the difference. the guy might not always game for the rest of his life he might get new interests and the i7 will back them up. a lot of ppl cant see past i5 at the moment and its funny because all you get out of them at the same time is that the computer world moves so fast you cant keep up. the future is bright :)
 
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even still this machine is for gaming and therefore will be a good move as an i5 for a while as much of the programming is stil behind where we are now let alone whats coming through.
 
I still stand by the i5 760 + P55 board with dual channel ram. The 6870 is a great card and would provide excellent frame rates on most games at high settings.

Do get a decent cooler for the cpu as the in my opinion the stock fan can be a tad loud and annoying.
 
Porcelina said:
You might be missing an OS? Not sure if you have one, if not then you are starting to push your 850 budget.
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I will be getting Win7 Ultimate for £50 So im not including it!

Why are people saying i5? Ive heard that they are a dead end..is this true the many of you are saying i5!
How much would I say, and which what compromises?
 
jakesnake said:
let me clear up wot i mean because you dont get it. when sandy bridge is in full swing theres clearly gonna be a lot of new programming with minimum requirments coming behind it. things that an i7 will be able to do "just as good" as sandybridge. ofcourse i didnt think that sb showing up will magically make the gap bigger alone, but the eventual capabilities will. thats when the i7 will pull away from the i5 and you will start to see the difference. the guy might not always game for the rest of his life he might get new interests and the i7 will back them up. a lot of ppl cant see past i5 at the moment and its funny because all you get out of them at the same time is that the computer world moves so fast you cant keep up. the future is bright :)
Click to expand...

It is not about not being able to see past the i5 at all though, is it. The fact of the matter is that you are advising people to take a 100 pound budget cut for GPU. Most people will acknowledge that the i7 has its place in builds. I just do not think that the seven to eight hundred pound bracket is its place.

Also you are hypothesising about things none of us can really know at this point. And you are making assumptions that, if we look back on the evolution of CPU requirements brought about by games, lack both evidence and logical backbone. If you look at games they are only just breaking into dual core utilisation. Even if you are willing to disregard the law of diminishing returns, it would take a very long time before the i5 would be obsoleted.

Stating that the OP might also take up other interests as a reason to recommend an i7 is likewise flawed. First off, since when are we asking people to take cuts in areas that interest them now in order to facilitate room for, at present, non-existent needs? That is a disservice to anyone inquiring about custom builds.

Furthermore, even if the OP decided he wanted to do some encoding or programming, would that require an i7? Hardly. Yes, perhaps he or she magically becomes dependent on an optimised programming or encoding rig, but at this point you might as well start recommending tri SLI 580s to people who want to play some good old CounterStrike and Revodrives in RAID for our grandparents who want to type up stuff in Word and access their e-mails.
 
Firebouncy said:
Why are people saying i5? Ive heard that they are a dead end..is this true the many of you are saying i5!
How much would I say, and which what compromises?
Click to expand...

i5 and i7 will be considered finished when Sandybridge is launched. this doesnt mean they will stop working at midnight, it just means that its unlikely there will be any new processors released for them. so what you have to look at is which socket has the most potential left in it to make use of. the answer is simply that i7 has hyperthreading and you could evntually drop a Hexcore into your board.
 
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