Confused, simple as.

Psypher5

Psypher5

Psypher5

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Birmingham
Right, ok.

I need a second opinion. Or third, or fourth.

I don't know whether to go am2/7900gtx, or the conroe/x1900 route.

For about 1.2k I've specced myself two systems, here have a look:

amd:
REFERENCE DESCRIPTION QUANTITY PRICE COST REMOVE
CD-030-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE)
£21.95 £21.95
CA-024-LL Lian-Li PC V1000 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower (No PSU) (CA-024-LL)
£109.95 £109.95
CA-000-SS Seasonic S12 430W Silent ATX2.2 Power Supply (CA-000-SS)
£44.95 £44.95
SC-034-CL Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - Retail (SC-034-CL)
£66.50 £66.50
HD-018-SA Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA)
£43.50 £43.50
CP-168-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.20GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-168-AM)
£219.95 £219.95
GX-038-OK OcUK GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-OK)
£269.95 £269.95
MB-142-AS Asus M2N32-SLi-DLX nForce 590 SLi (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-142-AS)
£119.95 £119.95
MY-034-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC) (MY-034-GL)
£109.95 £109.95
Subtotal £1,006.65
VAT £176.17
Total £1,182.82



Conroe:
MB-152-AS Asus P5W DH Deluxe WiFi (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-152-AS)
£149.95 £149.95
MY-013-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 HZ PC2-6400 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400PHU2-2GBHZ) (MY-013-GS)
£147.95 £147.95
GX-047-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (3056) (GX-047-CO)
£239.95 £239.95
CP-128-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-128-IN)
£214.95 £214.95
CD-030-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE)
£21.95 £21.95
CA-024-LL Lian-Li PC V1000 PLUS Silver Aluminium Midi-Tower (No PSU) (CA-024-LL)
£109.95 £109.95
CA-000-SS Seasonic S12 430W Silent ATX2.2 Power Supply (CA-000-SS)
£44.95 £44.95
SC-034-CL Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - Retail (SC-034-CL)
£66.50 £66.50
HS-003-SY Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler (Socket 478, 754, 939, 940, LGA755) (HS-003-SY)
£26.95 £26.95
HD-018-SA Samsung SpinPoint P SP2504C 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-018-SA)
£43.50 £43.50
Subtotal £1,066.60
VAT £186.66
Total £1,253.26



Something inside is saying intel, purely for the motherboard accessories and the ati card pushing a bit more umph. But, I'm still being drawn for the amd? Maybe becuase I've only ever used amd and am quite content with them, and the linkboost/7900gtx features.


Also, the benches of 3d apps from conroe didn't really "amaze" me, which is what this rig would be for; Photoshop, films and gaming.

So, out of the two, what would you pick?

edit: Taking into consideration amd price drops aswell, hmmm, and would need a slightly beefier psu for amd/7900gtx rig.
 
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I'd prefer the conroe system

I suspect you'll need a more powerfull PSU around 580 watts

Mentioned in this sticky http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=121317

PREPARE YOUR SYSTEM

Its not uncommon these days to require a good quality PSU (Power Supply Unit) . To achieve maximum compatability it is recommended to have atleast a quality 350+ Watt PSU.

My personal findings show that the Enermax 350w+, Antec TrueBlue 480w, Hiper Type R 580w all work without problems on anything less than an X1800XT . For an X1800XT or X1900XT(X) GPU i would recommend a minimum of 580w
 
I'd go for Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache (extra £10) for it's extra Cache and in many reviews, it's shown to be better/faster than Samsung. (Unless you're looking for it to be very quiet, I've hear mixed review from people everywhere about Seagate and it's quietness)

I'm gonna be bias and say go with Conroe:
a) because I'm getting a similar setup, E6600
b) it's definitely better than an FX62, which cost over 2x the price of an E6600.
c) It's new tech at low affordable price (compared to AM2's Old tech, new tricks? or is it new tech, old tricks??)

However, it'll be useful to know, how often do you upgrade from base up? From your shopping list, it looks like it's a totally new system - if you do that once every 2 to 3 years ish, go Conroe, if you regularly upgrade bit by bit, then you may wanna go AM2 and *hope* their coming tech on the AM2 is worthy compared to Conroe? But I'd still stick with conroe, hyped and proven and reviewed so many times to be better right now.

As unimpressive to you as Conroe is, it's still new tech and I'm sure better motherboards will be out soon after release date...
 
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so far I have upgraded once a year (summer time), selling this rig on and moving to new pastures!

Anyway yes, I underspecced the psu a tad, seems I need 450 peak ;) (thanks for mentioning that ghost)


The conroe motherboard seems to be perfect for me, the remote defo.

The hdd, aswell, I chose the samsung for cheapness/quietness really. Don't want to help the x1900xt anymore with its helicopter noises.
 
You can go AMD+ATI, or Intel+Nvidia too.

While Intels generally perform best on Intel chipsets, the Nforce 5 with linkboost or whatever its called will be released for Conroe around the same time as the conroe launch. Non SLI nvidia works on intel chipset boards, and so does the single slot sli 7950's.

580W PSU for a conroe seems rather excessive to me, The Nvidia 7950's for example use around 150W max load (card 1 draws 75W from the PCI Express slot, and card 2 draws 75w from the power cable). And that's peak load, average would be a lot lower. And thats an 'sli' solution.

Conroe's peak at 65W, and even with a motherboard your talking <100w there. Even with a 350W PSU, thats leaving 100w of power for hard disks, fans, soundcards, and optical drives.

Unless your buying a Qtec PSU (which actually is rated on peak power output), then the average 'High quality' branded PSU's are rated for continuous load, which is probably less than half of the peak load of the system.

A 430W Seasonic should more more than enough for anything you can throw at it, with the possible exception of a Crossfire ATI solution, or a Quad SLI 7950 system. Ask anyone with a 250W shuttle PSU how much they can run of it without any problems at all.

My PC at home averages at about 200W, and that includes powering my TFT monitor (35W), overclocked P4 processor, 2 hard drives in raid0, and a 6800Ultra graphics card. Sure it peaks higher, but good quality PSU's are designed to handle that.

The reason ATI and Nvidia recommend larger PSU's is because America is a buy now, sue later society, and they dont want to have to face court cases when people plug high power graphics cards into cheap Qtec (or worse the cheap nasty PSU's that often come supplied with cheap cases) and go pop/bang or catch fire.
 
Corasik said:
You can go AMD+ATI, or Intel+Nvidia too.

While Intels generally perform best on Intel chipsets, the Nforce 5 with linkboost or whatever its called will be released for Conroe around the same time as the conroe launch. Non SLI nvidia works on intel chipset boards, and so does the single slot sli 7950's.
Click to expand...


ahhh, didnt know about linkboost on conroe, seems interesting, I'll have to see about that with benchies and whatnot nearer the time :)

Thanks for info about the psu, I know a 580 is just ott, hardly any systems use anywhere near that much. Cheers :)
 
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