Spec me! - £700-750

[inverseSquare]

Hi all,


I'm looking for a machine to do graphics work, games, programming, etc.

The machine will be on for around 16 hours a day so any pointers to components that would provide quality, heat reduction, quietness, etc. would be appreciated.

Budget £700-750 (£800 if something really catches my eye )

(Don't need a monitor, keyboard, etc..)



One certainty - needs two pci-e 16x slots on the motherboard


I was thinking...
i5 (better than a quad phenomII cos of the new 'turbo'?)
Ati 5850 (seems silly to be buying Nvidia at the moment?)
Nothing too flashy for the case - just good cooling and big enough for those ati 5800 cards
New OS - Win7 business a good buy?




Thanks for the help.

 

[inverseSquare]

well

i assume i want to go xfire in future, and have both cards operate at x16. Well, you cant do that with i5. lynnfields can only do 16 lanes total, so x8 + x8 (unless you've got nf200 chip, then x8 +x16, but no much point).

Didn't know about this limitation...

So 2 pci-e cards running at 16x wont work with an i5?
Is that to do with the crossfire setup? Or wouldn't it work if it were just 2 cards running at 16x + i5 irrespectively?


Thanks for the help

 

[inverseSquare]

Cheers for the explanation - puts a bit of a spanner in the o'l plans though


How about an i7 with a cheaper gfx card? Any chance of getting that for a similar price?




Thanks for the help.