i5 or PhenomX4 for Dev box (occasional gaming)?

GunsAkimbo

GunsAkimbo

GunsAkimbo

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Hi all, I'm a software developer who has unfortunately fallen behind on his hardware knowledge (I haven't built a gaming rig in 6 years, and not played PC games, in any serious manner, in about 4 years)...

But Parralelism and GPGPU are getting more and more important in my line of work so it's time to get my hands dirty again and get a rig with 4 cores and some serious GPU's so I can keep my skills relevant and play with some cool new coding toys...(and play some Bad Company 2 in my down time ;) )

Reading about all the new CPU's it seems the i7 is my best choice... but I'm on a bit of a budget (I'm moving house soon and the TVR will need a trip to the garage when it comes out of hibernation :( ) so I'm trying to keep the whole rig under £1000. Leaving me looking at the PhenomX4 and the i5 from Intel.

Intel seems the better product but from what I can see the i5 lives in a different socket form the i7 so if I want to upgrade in 6 months I'll need a new CPU and new Mobo :( ... Also from what I read the i5 boards don't do Crossfire as fast as the AM3 boards; so again in 6 months slapping another 5770 in there will mean I loose out with the i5 set up.

...BUT like I said; I've been out of touch with hardware for 6 years, so I'm as good as a newbie here.

What do you think of the 2 setups below (oh and I have I missed anything?, I always forget something when buying PC bits)...Most component choices where just picking what's on offer, if there is better stuff at the same price please let me know; Thanks :)
i5spec.png


x4spec.png
 
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Me personally i would go for the Phenom because it is more future proof because in (fingers crossed) 6 months AMD will release their 6 Core 'Thuban' cpu which will as you can imagine be very good for encoding :D
Unlike the i5 750 which is on 1156 platform which wont recieve any future cpu's
 
The motherboard in the AMD build can do symmetrical Crossfire at PCI-E 2.0 8X/8X whereas the Intel motherboard can only do asymmetrical Crossfire at PC-E 2.0 16X/4X.

I would also read this article about the P55 motherboards:

http://www.hardware-revolution.com/p55-motherboards-crossfire-sli-performance-problem/

You would need to spend over £130 on OcUK to get a symmetrical Crossfire P55 motherboard.

Also the Phenom II X4 955BE has shot up in price only on OcUK from around £122 to around £136 in the last week or two. If you look around you will see that the Phenom II X4 965 125W(don't get the 140W version) is around the same price.

Anyway both builds are pretty decent for the money TBH.
 
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Thanks guys & thanks for the heads up on the CPU price CTF... that's quite frustrating.

I can get the next model up 965 @ 125W, delivered for the same price as the 955; elsewhere :(. Are OCUK not price matching any of there competitors on this ?
 
Don't think asymmetrical crossfire matters for gpgpu computing. Certainly folding at home runs using cuda and it doesn't seem to matter at all what speed the slot is running at. Plus it's the nvidia cards which are dominating for gpu calculation, meaning sli could be useful but crosfire not.

Of course, nvidia cards can be tricky to source at present, and hoards of gamers will tell you they're not worth the money. A 260gtx is probably what you want.

Similar arguments suggest amd for bang for buck, but it remains that intel have them thrashed on raw speed.

965 is exactly the same chip as the 955 as soon as you bring overclocking into the mix, so it's sensible for them to be the same price.
 
Yeah, I always wonder what people mean when they class 1156 as a dead end socket. I'm no expert, I don't claim to be. But surely 1366 is classed as the enthusiast socket whereas 1156 is mainstream? Surely 1156 would receive more attention from Intel with regards to affordable processors being available, rather than stupidly high priced 6 cores on 1366.

Feel free to correct if I'm wrong. ^^
 
GunsAkimbo said:
Reading about all the new CPU's it seems the i7 is my best choice...

Intel seems the better product but from what I can see the i5 lives in a different socket form the i7 so if I want to upgrade in 6 months I'll need a new CPU and new Mobo
Click to expand...

You can still upgrade to a core i7 chip with any of the new 5 series chipset boards ie P55/H55/H57. Both the core i7 860 and 870 will work fine in these boards.

Here is a comparison between the core i5 and AMDs flagship Phenom II 965 BE.

Out of the 44 tests the Phenom only manages wins in 9 of them.

GunsAkimbo said:
Also from what I read the i5 boards don't do Crossfire as fast as the AM3 boards; so again in 6 months slapping another 5770 in there will mean I loose out with the i5 set up.
Click to expand...

Crossfire in a decent P55 board runs at 8X 8X, which as you can see in these tests is no cause for concern running two 5870s let alone a couple of 5770s, The difference is negligible.

Here's a vantage score for my rig in sig, using those lowly dual 8x pci-e slots ;)

vantage2.jpg
 
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Ace info coup...
Am I right in saying the p55 boards only support the i7 860 from the i7 range? (as far as OcUK stock goes).

Also is there anything in the product information that will tip me off to a mobo's? crossfire performance ? or do I need to compare them all in off-site bench's/reviews (hope not; that's a pain in the arse).

Also any news when OcUK is getting the 5830 in?

Thanks again everyone.
 
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GunsAkimbo said:
Ace info coup...
Am I right in saying the p55 boards only support the i7 860 from the i7 range? (as far as OcUK stock goes).

Also is there anything in the product information that will tip me off to a mobo's? crossfire performance ? or do I need to compare them all in off-site bench's/reviews (hope not; that's a pain in the arse).

Also any news when OcUK is getting the 5830 in?

Thanks again everyone.
Click to expand...

Look at the link I posted in the third post. It lists the best motherboards for Crossfire performance for socket 1156.
 
Thanks all.

I've decided to go with a 5850 so, hopefully, the need to crossfire in the near future will be unnecessary.
If I got the i5 route will the Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L suite my requirements (now I no longer want x-fire) and will the ram I've selected work with it?
 
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