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Help me decide my hardware for my Studio PC

easyrider

easyrider

easyrider

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Man this is tough,

I am building a New Music Studio PC and I had my heart set on a 4ghz clocked i3 and H55 Mobo with 4GB DDR3,

Now I have stumbled across maybe getting Phenom II 550 and maybe unlocking the cores to make a fully functional Quad.

I will be using onboard GFX and I understand that the 785G and H55 and i3 GFX trade blows like for like.

What would you do?

AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) - Retail £71.99
Asus M4A785D-M Pro AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £60.99

Total £132.99

Or

Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £98.99
Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £84.99

Total : £183.98

50 Quid seperates the two with the former having a chance to unlock to a quad. If not then both are dual core combo's

Which would you choose?

Cheers dudes

Easy:cool:
 
Can the Phenom perform the tasks that you require it to at stock? If yes then go for that one and save money.

I wouldnt buy something based on the chance that it could unlock. If it unlocks you would have bought the best bang for buck processor but i am not sure what the unlock rate for both cores!

i3 on the other hand have disappointed me with their prices and the fact that they don't sell a model without the graphics. It would have been cheaper for them and cheaper for us (i guess?) especially as the graphics take more than half of the real estate of the processor!

Edit: I read that AMd will new 8xx series chipsets "soon". They might be worth the wait as they will most likely claim a clean victory vs. the intel graphics once again (probably anyway, ATi knows how to do graphics)

Edit 2: Have you thought about the Athlon X4? Its only £10 more, If you want to take out the gambling aspect and still have 4 cores they are pretty good, but again you should see how the software you are gonna use performs.
 
Last edited:
After using the two, I would go with the 530. It's a great allrounder
it's got the HT if you need it, it's a decision that's based entirely on what program you will be using
 
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