New Setup Help/Advice

[stiggyb]

Hello,

I'm planning on building a new system, I like me games so im looking to run them stable with all the eye candy in a 1920x1200 resolution. I've put together some bits and bobs so far heres how it looks at the moment

CASE: Coolermaster RC-1000 Cosmos
PSU: 700W Coolermaster Real Power M700 Modular PSU
CPU: Core2Quad Q9550 (2.83Ghz)
CPU COOLER: Zalman CNPS9700-NT
MOTHERBOARD: XFX nVIDIA nForce 780i SLI
GRAPHICS CARD: 9800GTX(?)

Obviously i'm holding out here for the new cpu chipsets which is deffinately going to be intel this time around, but what im unsure of is the memory is it worth taking the step to DDR3? or will buying the best DDR2 has to offer be sufficient future proof wise? Anyone notice anything on the setup which you would recommend over a certain component? Will 700W be enough for future SLi? Anyone recommend any good 1920x1200 fast response monitors currently have my eye on Samsung 24" Widescreen

Thanks for your time any help is much appreciated

cheers

[master811]

700W should be more than enough for at least 2 cards in SLI.

With regard to DDR3, well DDR2 will be a safe bet for a while yet, but at the moment there's no real performance benefit with DDR3 and it also costs considerably more for the same amount.

You realise alsothat the 9800GTX or whatever it will be called won't be around til march at the earliest.

[staffsMike]

I think when they are released the Q9450 will offer the greatest value.

There are better coolers out there. Check out the Scythe range (ninja, mine, infinity) or the thermalright 120 extreme and ultima 90.

DDR3 isn't worth it and won't offer any advantage over DD2 really.

I don't really like coolermaster power supplies (never used them though). I would have a corsair or Enermax personally. There's the corsair 620W HX modular which will be plenty I'm sure.

Unless you plan on doing tri-sli then I doubt there is any advantage to that motherboard. There's cheaper and better boards out there. Intel P35 chipset is probably better. Something like the Abit IP-35. It may be P45 by the time we see a 9800GTX (or whatever) comes out.

[stiggyb]

Is it worth getting the quad over the E8500 top dual core chip? the current hardware out on the market can't seem to run crysis in all its goodness without a struggle at 1920x1200 resolutions.

Do you gain much by having the EXTREME version of the intel chips? with the new 45mn chips being set back (see here) its a possibility.

[staffsMike]

The extreme offer no value for money considering the overclocking potential of the lesser chips.

The extremes are easier to overclock as they have an unlocked multiplier but other than that your paying stupid money for almost no gain.

It's true that a lot of programs/games can't utilise quad cores very effecently yet but the beauty of the quad core is that you can assign 2 cores to your game and then have all manor of things running off the other 2 cores in the background. With 4GB of RAM and a decent hard drive you will never notice there is anything going on in the background either
I certainly wouldn't get the E6850 as it's too expensive for what it is. A Q6600 will overclock to 3.2GHz which imo is plently of power per core and of course you have two more of them than the dual. I would only go quad core now as more and more software will begin to utilise them and they are great for multitasking right now.

Crysis much like Far Cry was I believe, it simply isn't designed to run in it's glory with current hardware. There might not be any hardware to run it all out for quite some time yet.

[godsdog]

I think when they are released the Q9450 will offer the greatest value.

Would have been the case before that announcement yesterday. That's kind of cast a shadow over the expected price now unfortunately, i think any value that was there, will have been squeezed out. Arseflakes!