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Settle an argument

ChrisLandin

ChrisLandin

ChrisLandin

Associate
Joined
10 Jun 2009
Posts
2,225
Location
Darlington
Hiya guys, im after some advice / info.

My brother in law being the oracle that he is has just spent a grand on a Dell pc. Now im not knocking dell cos im sure that for people who dont know or dont have the time to put together there own system they are an excellent option. However imho he's been ripped. Its all standard dell on an i7 chip. It has a 500gb hdd, no raid, vista 64 and a ati 3650 installed and he thinks his system is great. Its running ddr3 800mhz Ram. As always the bios options are very limited so he has no headroom for overclocking, anyways getting back on track he called round last night and gave me a bit of a blasting over using old tech, which I acknowledged as yes my 775 chip is "old" tech but still very capable. So the question I pose is this which chip would be better in the day to day world of gaming, surfing, music & dvd playback and a little word processing an i7 @ 2.66 or a Q9550 @ 3.6. The reason I ask is for my money bags brother in law cash is no problem but just for once I would like to be able to say he was ripped, however I might be wrong!!
 
ChrisLandin said:
Hiya guys, im after some advice / info.

My brother in law being the oracle that he is has just spent a grand on a Dell pc. Now im not knocking dell cos im sure that for people who dont know or dont have the time to put together there own system they are an excellent option. However imho he's been ripped. Its all standard dell on an i7 chip. It has a 500gb hdd, no raid, vista 64 and a ati 3650 installed and he thinks his system is great. Its running ddr3 800mhz Ram. As always the bios options are very limited so he has no headroom for overclocking, anyways getting back on track he called round last night and gave me a bit of a blasting over using old tech, which I acknowledged as yes my 775 chip is "old" tech but still very capable. So the question I pose is this which chip would be better in the day to day world of gaming, surfing, music & dvd playback and a little word processing an i7 @ 2.66 or a Q9550 @ 3.6. The reason I ask is for my money bags brother in law cash is no problem but just for once I would like to be able to say he was ripped, however I might be wrong!!
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the 775, the i7 only comes into its own for encoding really. but £1k for that is steep, but thats the problem with pre built systems.
 
Due to the increased frequency your rig is faster without a doubt, even in encoding.

How much did he pay though? Some Dell systems are quite well priced.
 
775 system is better bein OCed n all, yes with that video card he did get ripped a little, wat PSU he have and are u sure that isn't DDR3 1600Mhz?
 
I assume he got a mouse, keyboard and monitor? If not, £1000 is a massive rip-off. If he did get the aforementioned peripherals then it is still a rip-off, but not quite so bad.

As to your question:
which chip would be better in the day to day world of gaming, surfing, music & dvd playback and a little word processing an i7 @ 2.66 or a Q9550 @ 3.6
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Apart from gaming, where your GPUs would be the more determining factor in performance, then both chips would probably perform similarly - you don't need much CPU power to surf, listen to music, or do some word processing.

800MHz seems woefully low for DDR3 RAM - are you sure that's right?

p.s. Try not to have an e-peen contest with your brother-in-law, it will only end in tears.
 
Cheers for that. I wasnt 100% confident so thats why I asked the question. Yea I told him at the time he was paying a lot of cash for it but he would listen, cash talks as they say and cos he was paying a chunk of money he thought he was getting a cracking deal. I gave him Crysis to play last night just to be evil and it was like watching a slide show at times haha, I shouldnt laugh.
 
Like I said ripped. He got a 20" dell monitor and a standard wired keyboard and mouse but other than that that is what he got and yea its running at 800 unless if its triple channel could that make it 1200mhz?? Cpuz records 400mhz anyhow!!
 
ChrisLandin said:
I gave him Crysis to play last night just to be evil and it was like watching a slide show at times haha, I shouldnt laugh.
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no you shouldnt laugh, but theres nothing to say we cant so.. rofl :D

I think you can officially give him a smug look everytime you see him :D
 
Yeh your system beats his hands down atm, mainly due to the really pure GFX his system came with, that is really low end for a £1k system, shame on dell lol.
 
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ChrisLandin said:
Like I said ripped. He got a 20" dell monitor and a standard wired keyboard and mouse but other than that that is what he got and yea its running at 800 unless if its triple channel could that make it 1200mhz?? Cpuz records 400mhz anyhow!!
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wow yeh that's 800Mhz, sounds like the ram is underclocked

bifday2k said:
Yeh your system beats his hands down atm, mainly due to the really pure GFX his system came with, that is really low end for a £1k system, shame on dell lol.
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knowing them they touted it as a gaming system too
 
Your pc beats him with ease, his gpu is crap, he could have at least looked at their Alienware range.
 
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I was unaware that DDR3 could even be run at 800. I would have thought if it recorded 800 somewhere, then it was running at 1600..... I am probably wrong though, Dell have a habit of giving out budget boards to "save".

pretty much all Dell machines come with a hideously underpowered GPU. I'm in agreement with everyone here that if your gpu is better than his, then your whole system will pwn his.

Especially if that RAM is actually running at 800... even at triple channel, i'd be surprised if the bandwidth is beating a dual channel 1066 setup by much.
 
Cheers guys for all the replies. Yea the ram is undercooked massively actually. They are running at 800mhz but its rated speed as of cpuz is that it will run at 533 or 1066 effectivley. It wasnt sold as a gaming pc more like mid entry but I still think it was way over priced. He moved to this over his previous Dell which was powered by a QX9770!!! The boy is mad I tell you.
 
Haha! A Dell PC buyer slating a person who has built their own system, OC'd and knows what they are doing with hardware, just on the basis that he "paid more" therefore his is better.

The only bigger lols you could get from this is if he bought it from PC World and tried the same crap.

Do some standard GPU/CPU tests on both machines and see which one comes out on top. Only then will you have hard evidence that he has a tiny e-peen.

Now he has seen Crysis on his machine, show him it on yours and ask which he thinks runs/looks/plays better?
 
Like the saying "a fool and his money" but to be fair most ppl who buy highstreet comps, dont have a clue. But 3650 in a i7, thats laughable, thats like yrs old now, cos I bought my 3870 2yrs ago, and to be fair, its still running all games nice and smoothly med to high detail at 1280x1024;)

ejr22 said:
p.s. Try not to have an e-peen contest with your brother-in-law, it will only end in tears.
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I agree,, been there done that with pcs. and just as long as it runs everything I want it to, I not botherd about that no more :D
 
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