Core Components Upgrade: Opinions

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Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2008
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Morning All,
Im soon to be upgrading my system (by force really - im selling my rig minus case for £600 to my brother!) so im obviously going to go for a Core i7 system.

Obviously im going to get the Core i7 920 and overclock it as its silly not too, however i was wondering if anyone had any input / preferences on tri-channel DDR3 and motherboards, and whether 6 x 1GB DDR3 will perform better than 3 x 2GB DDR3?

I have heard good things about the Gigabyte X58 stuff off certain people and negative things from others so i wanted to gauge some opinions before tipping my proverbial toes into the murky non-northbridge waters.

Finally, what are everyones thoughts on GTX280 vs 4870X2? I have 2 22" Syncmasters @ 1680 x 1050 resolution but i dont do that much gaming, mainly movies etc but i do want one of the aforementioned cards for those twice a week forrays into Source, RA3 etc. What is the driver support for ATi like nowadays?

Finally, can anyone with a Core i7 machine tell me how much power draw it has (real) - at boot and at idle? I have 3 PSU's at home and the most hefty if a 650w truepower trio, however i was hoping to keep modular and run it off my Coolermaster M520 (520watt) PSU. Anyone?

Thanks for all your help in advance guys,
Sam
 
6x1GB will perform worse than 3x2GB (in theory). The P6T is a good all-rounder but won't do tri-SLi if that matters to you. Don't want to get into GFX card war, so will only state the GTX280 you mention will perform very well - as will the ATi (which is more expensive and won't give you much improvement). Have you thought about getting a decent 24" panel?

520w is a bit weak I think, but in theory will do. I ran a similar rig to your spec for a while on an Enermax 620 with no problems. Key thing is the 12V rails - how many Amps it puts out, you can get to 520w total output in many ways but not always with the power where you want it.
 
I only recently upgraded to 2 x 22's so unfortunately no upgrade on the monitor front :( Can anyone explain to me why 3 x 2GB will be faster than 6 x 1GB? They are operating at the same speeds across all 3 channels - does it have to do with tree traversals and having to cover more physical transistors, or is it a lot more technical than that? :)
 
Think it's a fairly simple case of more sticks eqauls more voltage needed, as it is with DDR2 (4x1GB tends to need extra voltage compared to 2x2GB).
 
I think it's because DDR3 1600MHz isn't supported for more than 1 DIMM per channel.
Plus,if overclocking, you will want to add a RAM cooler with 6 sticks because cooling is impaired.
 
EX58-UD5 should be good choice for you, nice mobo, imo. Comparing to Asus, Gigabyte has local RMA in UK so it's much much faster if anything wrong happens.
 
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