Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

Just up front, this is good conversation. I enjoy this. I hope there isn't any perceived hostility here.

Now, onto the reply. You posted single-card results and I posted multi-card results; 5 frames per second in DiRT is actually quite large and will have an extra impact as time goes on, especially once I get to over-clocking the GPUs when the warranty runs out in about two months. Metro 2033 shows some slowing, and on Z68 I can only imagine it would be worse. Even still, I get some slow-downs when those 3D particle effects are in full force (needs Nvidia PhysX to fix, or a CPU over-clock :D) I only wish they had stuffed in a Sandy Bridge comparison. That said, Anand doesn't analyse frame times like Tech Reports (they ought to) so that may not even be telling the whole story. They also didn't test any other titles apart from those two, which is weird. That PCI-E 2.0 rating is also at x16/x16, where Z68 would have been worse at x8/x8. The best X79 performance was using PCI-E 3.0 x16/x16...even SB-E can take advantage of PCI-E 3.0, they manually set it to PCI-E 2.0 just for comparison. Basically, look at the green bars.

To address your curiosity, I built my computer before Ivy was out by about a month. The i7-2700K was pretty young and I had originally priced the AMD FX-8150 against the 2600K; X79 only popped up once I totalled how much my builds were costing. None of the NF200 boards made the ratings cut-off. The idea with this PC became building the absolute most future-resilient computer with most top-shelf components I could afford. My last computer was also a Socket 939 Athlon 64 3200+ coupled with a GeForce 7800 GT and it lasted me nearly 8 years. However, because of the socket, I couldn't feasibly upgrade it without spending as much as an entirely new PC as early as 2007, and being stuck with that single core was becoming a serious impediment toward playing newer games or efficiently using newer programs by March 2011. I didn't want to get hosed like that again. Hence, my preference for X79 (and AMD). This ended up being my first Intel computer since 1995.

Really, my main point is that if you think you want to be building an Ivy Bridge computer using the maximum performance i7-3770 and also think you might want to go multi-card at a later date, it's worth it to consider X79. A board can be had for the same price as the good Z77 boards, and you actually can benefit from the increased PCI-E bandwidth even now with the current high-end GPUs, to say nothing of what the next generation will bring, and GPUs are improving in performance at a much higher rate than CPUs. Yes, the i7-3770 is actually faster than even the i7-3960X in quite a few tasks, but you are very rarely CPU limited in games and productivity applications are quickly moving to take advantage of heterogeneous computing. If you do a lot of photo or video editing, or any kind of productive rendering at all, the increased memory bandwidth from a fully-loaded quad-channel board could help, too. I dislike 1155 because it no longer has any upgrade path. I bought a Socket 939 CPU at the end of Socket 939's life, and I got shafted on that end. Had I waited and jumped on AM2, I wouldn't have had to upgrade for another two or three years. I thought 8 years on high settings was a good run but 10 would have been an incrediblelife-span for a computer. I suspect I will be able to achieve that with this computer. I do not believe LGA 1155 will be so fortunate. And for what it's worth, I thought $2000 for what I crammed into this machine was pretty damn good. My only regret is that Nvidia didn't release the GTX680 sooner, and not for performance reasons.

Just to get back to the beginning, all of this came about because Warlord wanted (needed) to build a new rig and you guys jumped on him for his choice in platform. I told him X79 in a private conversation because I know he does multi-card and I know he doesn't want to have to upgrade again for awhile. He was really only toying with the idea of going Intel in that conversation and was ready to jump AMD, partly because AMD sockets have longer lives. That would be dandy except I thought that Socket AM3+ was also on its way out (I had missed an announcement in September saying it was extended to cover Steamroller in 2014). So now he has himself a board that still has one more refresh waiting for it and a cheap, 2.4GHz, 60 quid Xeon to run it on for awhile...which is already leaps and bounds better than his old Phenom I computer and is probably faster than a Bulldozer/Piledriver core. I'd say he made out like a bandit.

Now, if Intel changes its mind and gives 1155 one more go-around OR decides not to update LGA 2011 CPUs, then the joke is on me. However, I have to work with the best information that I have.

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Originally Posted by Btcc22

Higher than x8/x8 PCI-E 3.0 which is the same amount of bandwidth as x16/x16 PCI-E 2.0 plus better latency, yes. This is assuming you're using IB, although the article and benchmarks I posted show that there's no real difference between PCI-E 2.0 x8/x8 and x16/x16 anyway.
You're suggesting I should settle for pci-e 2.0 x16/x16 when I could have pci-e 3.0 x16/x16?

Anyway, to sum it up lest we do another loop, none of that really matters and we're just nitpicking. I just felt you were overhyping LGA2011 and being slightly unfair about LGA1155 when really, there's nothing wrong with it and it's still the better choice for building a machine that can come close to or match the 2011's perfomance but with a cheaper tag, unless you convince yourself about needing features that you'll likely never use.

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To be fair, I feel you're over hyping LGA1155, it has no more cycles and the LGA2011 board I got was far cheaper than any comparable LGA1155 [£84 inc P&P].
Will I need the extra features?
Probably not but having those features is the same as keeping a condom in the wallet, you may not need it but you'd rather have it on you and not need it than need it and not have it.

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Originally Posted by Warsaw

Just up front, this is good conversation. I enjoy this. I hope there isn't any perceived hostility here.

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None. :)

Does anyone know of a super cheap laptop that can run the latest openGL drivers? I need one bad for class.

So I got this built.
Specs are:
Intel i5 3470 @3.2Ghz
Corsair Vengeance dual channel kit [2x8Gb @1600Mhz]
Asus HD6770 1Gb
Asus Sabertooth P67
OCZ ZS 650W
Zalman Z11

All of this was in total ~£200 taking advantage of the currency conversion rates.
As for the MSI I posted about earlier in the thread, the cheapest chip I could find for that board was ~£200 so I went for the Asus board and i5 for cheaper than what it would have cost for the chip alone for the msi..
Oh and the memory cooler there cost me £5 off Ebay.
PSU and HDD as well as DVD-ROM were from an existing build.
http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1676ae06.jpg

So you're telling me for $310, you got an Ivy Bridge i5, Sabertooth motherboard, 16GB RAM, HD6770, and Zalman HSF? What about the case and fans?

And judging by the amount of cables lying around, you're not done with the build yet?

I'm telling you that Ebay and sniping auctions is an excellent way to get decent hardware for a cheap price.
The motherboard was sold as faulty, all it needed was the bios being upgraded and it works perfectly fine.
I already had the PSU from my former system, same with HDD, Ram I got from Amazon during the boxing day sales, same with the case so that was 75% off for the ram and around 55% for the case.
Cables need tidying up but as it stands, the cooling I have is good enough that the RAM is 5*C lower than the room temperature.

Time to replace that CPU cooler...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by =sw=warlord

I'm telling you that Ebay and sniping auctions is an excellent way to get decent hardware for a cheap price.
The motherboard was sold as faulty, all it needed was the bios being upgraded and it works perfectly fine.
I already had the PSU from my former system, same with HDD, Ram I got from Amazon during the boxing day sales, same with the case so that was 75% off for the ram and around 55% for the case.
Cables need tidying up but as it stands, the cooling I have is good enough that the RAM is 5*C lower than the room temperature.

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eBay? Say no more. And here I was thinking everyone bought from retailers. Hmm, that has me thinking. Off to the eBay for an HD 7850!

So yeah, I wanted a SSD, so while I was at that, I wanted to cleanup my computer which meant a new case, water cooling would be nice and some more RAM so transformation:
http://i.imagebanana.com/img/vb1hhp0c/Comp1.jpg
http://i.imagebanana.com/img/nt8jlamo/Comp2.jpg

hipster photo effect included

need some more cables and then I am finished

AMD Phenom II X4 955 (not sure if I want to OC yet)
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO
NZXT Kraken X40
NVIDIA GeForce 275 GTX (I wanted the 650 TI but only because of the smaller size and DX11, the performance difference is not that great)
4GB to Corsair LowProfile 8GB
2x 1TB WD Green
1x 3TB WD Green
1x Samsung SSD 840 Pro