cpu and motherboard, maximum budget £200

Bacon? · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:30

honosuseri said:
I remember you spec'ing AMD over intel when you first joined the forum too and you needed educating to realise why it was "wrong".....so get off the high horse

At least it the was the Phenom's I was speccing not the BD's. Although my memory is bad so....

Although I did not buy the AMD in the end, after I saw the benchmarks :eek:

snips86x · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:30

honosuseri said:
I remember you spec'ing AMD over intel when you first joined the forum too and you needed educating to realise why it was "wrong".....so get off the high horse

It's not "wrong", it's a matter of opinion and preference! Just because your blind-sided by some pretty specs, doesn't mean the rest are incorrect.

If someone requests and Intel spec, i'll do my best and same goes for AMD. Being an AMD gamer, that would be my choice. I've learnt a lot from joining the forum and really appreciate the guidance of the more experienced members, but choice is down to the individual, not majority!!

zakblood · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:38

snips86x +1

for me it all depends on the budget, if small then i'll quote the cheapest.

honosuseri · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:43

snips86x said:
It's not "wrong", it's a matter of opinion and preference! Just because your blind-sided by some pretty specs, doesn't mean the rest are incorrect.

There is a reason I put wrong in inverted commas. Please lose the attitude. He said he can pay a little more if it is worth it and any one who says the i5K isn't worth the extra is either very misguided or blindly loyal to AMD.

I would still take the i3 3220 over your AMD build and you haven't answered my question over your RAM choice either. I'm not here to attack people just to help inform the OP of the threads

snips86x · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:52

honosuseri said:
You haven't answered my question over your RAM choice either.

It's the cheapest 8GB in the list.

zakblood · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:52

the thing is, not everyone wants to pay "pay a little more"

where does it stop?

if the budget is £200 but £250 get you 20% or 30% more, what does it matter?

better value for more speed is only if the user for one either needs it, or could even notice extra, as most couldn't, unless you have both spec side by side and say oh, that one cost £50 more and i got 10fps more in my game or 2 seconds less in opening photo shop as was so much worth it.

most can't tell the difference between dual core speed and quad, and very few would notice any difference in real term use in a i5 or equivalent AMD chip.

Savage_Smithy · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:54

again, thanks for all the replies (even if a few were just arguing

)

the problem with the i5 is that being so much more expensive, it will really push back the time when i can upgrade the graphics card and do other things i want to do with it.

Despite all your helpful advice i'm still leaning towards amd because as far as i can tell £ for £ amd does still offer more power.

but in all honesty i dont know what to do, i'd rather have the i5 but i would really rather not spend all that much extra. hence me saying absolute limit was £200

honosuseri · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:54

snips86x said:
It's the cheapest 8GB in the list.

LIES!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £35.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £35.99
Total : £116.66 (includes shipping : £7.25).

Granted CAS ratings don't make a great deal of difference but the Kingston and Crucial are the same price, are reputable brands and do have the lower CAS rating

zakblood · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:55

Savage_Smithy said:
again, thanks for all the replies (even if a few were just arguing )

the problem with the i5 is that being so much more expensive, it will really push back the time when i can upgrade the graphics card and do other things i want to do with it.

Despite all your helpful advice i'm still leaning towards amd because as far as i can tell £ for £ amd does still offer more power.

but in all honesty i dont know what to do, i'd rather have the i5 but i would really rather not spend all that much extra. hence me saying absolute limit was £200

then go AMD, as you don't need to spend more.

just get a good gpu later and you will be fine

Bacon? · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:56

I would say get the i3. But have a Z77 board, then when funds allow you can upgrade for minimal cost (hopefully) to a K CPU

snips86x · 1 Jan 2013 at 20:59

honosuseri said:
LIES!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £35.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £35.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED38GM1600HC11DC01) £35.99
Total : £116.66 (includes shipping : £7.25).

Granted CAS ratings don't make a great deal of difference but the Kingston and Crucial are the same price, are reputable brands and do have the lower CAS rating

I see that now! :rolleyes:

They were just below the TeamGroup product!

Will keep an eye on that for future spec requests.

honosuseri · 1 Jan 2013 at 21:06

We don't need to discuss RAM as he has DDR3 to use.

It's a shame the OP has just missed the offer on the i5K @£160ish. The offers change tomoz so maybe it might favour him more then. Or he can wait and save some more cash and see what we can do with the offers then.

I want the guy to get the best for his money. I wanted AMD to do well but they have let us down, the only product they have that is worthwhile is the FM2 APU because of it's excellent IGP, it makes for great laptops or really low budget gaming rigs....anything else the clever money is on intel

snips86x · 1 Jan 2013 at 21:08

honosuseri said:
We don't need to discuss RAM as he has DDR3 to use.

It's a shame the OP has just missed the offer on the i5K @£160ish. The offers change tomoz so maybe it might favour him more then. Or he can wait and save some more cash and see what we can do with the offers then.

I want the guy to get the best for his money. I wanted AMD to do well but they have let us down, the only product they have that is worthwhile is the FM2 APU because of it's excellent IGP, it makes for great laptops or really low budget gaming rigs....anything else the clever money is on intel

I dont think they are doing themselves any favours either, with cancelling the Steamroller APU and moving the launch back to 2014. Only time will tell I guess!

honosuseri · 1 Jan 2013 at 21:38

Tom can waffle a bit but his thoughts are always worth hearing. Frankly over this Xmas holiday period I've seen some terrible advice\specs given here by new members. I won't name and shame people as it causes the thread to go off topic.

Savage_Smithy · 1 Jan 2013 at 22:49

hmm intel does seem to be the better option right now. i can afford the extra cost but i just didnt want to spend it, I will certainly think it over but if i need a new cpu cooler too then the costs may end up too much

honosuseri · 2 Jan 2013 at 02:46

Savage_Smithy said:
hmm intel does seem to be the better option right now. i can afford the extra cost but i just didnt want to spend it, I will certainly think it over but if i need a new cpu cooler too then the costs may end up too much

If you have an aftermarket cooler now on your 555BE there is a chance that you already have the mounting kit to put it on the i5K. Worst case you use the intel stock heatsink and you can still get to say 4GHz with that.

I'm sorry the video was so long but I needed a way to show you that Zak and snip are barking up the wrong tree. I dont know what Zak is on about, you will see the difference between a dual and a quad core. Many games dont use quadcores to their fullest currently but BF3 does and games will look to exploit these "extra cores" in the future. I don't think he does much video encoding either from the sound of it.

I do have a soft spot for my 555BE, I've kept it in service as a HTPC/Console killer. When I used the i5 2500K (prequel to the 3570K) it was such a massive improvement though. I ran a 2 pass encode of a 2hour movie with dvdfab (CPU @4.2Ghz with Quicksync enabled) on the fly from the DVD drive......it took 20mins.....20mins!!! We now have ivybridge (3570K) which uses less power, does more clock for clock and has the better IGP which is what quicksync exploits.

snips86x · 2 Jan 2013 at 06:55

Still prefer AMD!!

Let me explain it so you understand it from my point of view. My next upgrade may be moving to the SLI setup, so for me to move to Intel would be expensive. Because it's my preference to have my SLI running at x16/x16, I'll need to get a new motherboard.

A move to intel, as much as I like the look of the chip would be in excess of £300. I'm perfectly content with my AMD build:

YOUR BASKET
1 x ASRock Z77 Extreme9 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £296.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
Total : £487.78 (includes shipping : £9.00).

To move to an AMD board which supported x16/x16 would be a fraction of the price:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £104.99
Total : £114.89 (includes shipping : £8.25).

Now, I may consider an upgrade to Intel in 2014 when the Ivybridge has been out for longer, Haswell would have been out for a while and prices would come down to, well, for me , more affordable. The current price difference between an i5k and FX6300 is about £80, for me this is a no-brainer. £80 spent elsewhere. I'm not saying I wont go Intel, but I currently have AMD with I'm more than happy with. It does what I want it to do!

honosuseri · 2 Jan 2013 at 07:42

Well if you love AMD then you should have gone with the 7850 GPU over the 660. AMD do great bang for buck GPUs. The 660 is utter meh!

If you knew how to balance a build you would know that there is no need for both PCI-express 3.0 lanes to run at X16, X8 is just fine, even for PCI-Express 2.0. Infact your midrange GPU isn't even taxing the PCI-Express 3 lane, not even a high end card does.

But this thread isn't about you, it's about the OP and I'll advise him not you, why you hijack threads and make them about you I don't understand. If you want to buy AMD stuff then crack on. The OP has watched TTL's video and can see that he is better off going intel.......sadly you can't see the light

snips86x · 2 Jan 2013 at 07:50

honosuseri said:
Well if you love AMD then you should have gone with the 7850 GPU over the 660. AMD do great bang for buck GPUs. The 660 is utter meh!

If you knew how to balance a build you would know that there is no need for both PCI-express 3.0 lanes to run at X16, X8 is just fine, even for PCI-Express 2.0. Infact your midrange GPU isn't even taxing the PCI-Express 3 lane, not even a high end card does.

But this thread isn't about you, it's about the OP and I'll advise him not you, why you hijack threads and make them about you I don't understand. If you want to buy AMD stuff then crack on. The OP has watched TTL's video and can see that he is better off going intel.......sadly you can't see the light

I went with the 660 as it was a card which did the job and had PhysX. Bad experienced with AMD cards, haven't gone back since! It's a preference! Understand that!!!!!

I would also like to point out it's not about me, you've digressed, I've responded. You obviously don't understand the whole thing about 'preference'. Seeing the light, lol, that's my freight train heading in your direction!

snips86x · 2 Jan 2013 at 08:59

Tell ya what, if I get upgrade to Intel and I'm impressed with the performance increase over my FX, I'll apologize to you personally.