Advice on new build please

[gnoofz]

Sorry I can't read obviously, thought it was a P35 on your first post. Have no personal experience
with the P45s, as for the Asus Pro I would check out a few reviews to see what FSB they got.

No worries All those code names they use are horrible. In fact double checking I realised i meant the LN23571 Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R rather than the one i put in the first post! >.< But I suppose they're all so close in spec anyways. That particular model seemed to have been reviewed favourably quite abit.

Also the P5QL-E 24pin power socket is in a pretty poor place and I had to run the PSU cable between the CPU heatsink and the GPU, not a massive hassle, just ruined my plans for ultra-neat cabling thats all. With your P182 case (a bottom mounted PSU) you better make sure the cables will reach.

Thanks for reminding me about this point! I like having my ultra-neat cabling I guess that means the P5QL-E is out of my list.

The Asus P5Q Pro though seems to have ok reviews regarding OCing, and quite favourable feature wise. I'll definitely be considering it as a choice. Although the lack of proper eSata ports does bother abit. That means more cables running about in the case..

[staffsMike]

Well I'm going to throw my 2 pence worth in even though I'm a little late to the party.

Hopefully you have decided on the E8400 instead of the E8600 which is a bit of a waste of money. But I wouldn't even bother with that.

The E5200, 2.5GHz 800MHz FSB makes so much sense if you want a dual core system. The overclock in excess of 3.5GHz and when all you really need in games is 2.2GHz + (on a dual or quad) you just aren't going to notice the difference if you have the more expensive chips. Yes they have less cache but for highn res gaming this counts for next to nothing.

I would probably take the GTX260 in preference due to the stock cooler being far better on that than the Hd4870 but both are very comparable performance wise with the most recent driver.

With the savings made on the chip though the GTX280 probably isn't out of the question given your budget, that will own 1920 x 1200 for years to come

Since the chip is only 800MHz (200Mhz effectively, I've seen some talk of this flying around in the thread) you will only ever need PC6400 RAM saving you yet more money.

Motherboard wise, the P5Q PRO and above are nice boards, plenty of overclocking headroom for the E5200, in fact it won't even run it's native FSB most probably.
I'd personally go for a nice DFI P45 but the ASUS boards have a better feature set I suppose.

[gnoofz]

Well I'm going to throw my 2 pence worth in even though I'm a little late to the party.

More opinions always welcomed

Hopefully you have decided on the E8400 instead of the E8600 which is a bit of a waste of money. But I wouldn't even bother with that.

The E5200, 2.5GHz 800MHz FSB makes so much sense if you want a dual core system. The overclock in excess of 3.5GHz and when all you really need in games is 2.2GHz + (on a dual or quad) you just aren't going to notice the difference if you have the more expensive chips. Yes they have less cache but for highn res gaming this counts for next to nothing.

My concern with getting the E5200 vs the E8400 is that the E5200 will become the bottleneck of the system and limit my gpu upgrade options in the future.

The reason why i'm upgrading now is that I want to update my 7800gt gpu, but my s939 3200+ venice (with 1gb of ram) will be hugely bottlenecking the gtx260 or 4870 i try to throw at it. If my s939 venice could hang on till the mainstream nehalems come round I would've waited and just upgraded the gpu. But if you have any suggestions on how to keep this system chugging along till late 2009 i'd like to hear them.

I would probably take the GTX260 in preference due to the stock cooler being far better on that than the Hd4870 but both are very comparable performance wise with the most recent driver.

With the savings made on the chip though the GTX280 probably isn't out of the question given your budget, that will own 1920 x 1200 for years to come

Is the £50ish premium worth getting the 216 gtx260 over the 192 one? The reason why I leaned towards the 1gb 4870 is that the price was in between both of those cards. I'm not entirely sure i'm comfortable with plonking down £300 on a single component, unless it does give significant gains over the gtx260/4870s?

[staffsMike]

You should still be able to pick up a GTX280 for &#163;240 from scan. They have it on their shop only offers so if you are anywhere near them that would be a good deal. Else moan at them until they put it on the today only page at that price

I don't see the E5200 becomming any more of a bottleneck to your system than the E8400 especially if overclocking is involved. Games really don't need more than 2.2 right now so I can't imagine when they will need more than 3.0GHz. GPU's are your main gaming bottleneck and almost always will be until games can utilise quad cores.. and that will still land you in the same boat whichever dual core you have.

EDIT: That 280GTX has gone, so yeah scratch that and go for the 260. I'd probably stick with the cheaper/less cores version but I guess you get a bit more performance with the newer version, I wouldn't say &#163;50 worth but some.

Perhaps the 1GB HD4870 is the better buy here since nvidia seem to have stuck all their prices up again.

[gnoofz]

You should still be able to pick up a GTX280 for £240 from scan. They have it on their shop only offers so if you are anywhere near them that would be a good deal. Else moan at them until they put it on the today only page at that price

Unfortunately i am no where near them. But they'd better hurry! Otherwise i'll be shaking my fist at them if they do a deal AFTER I buy another gpu.

I don't see the E5200 becomming any more of a bottleneck to your system than the E8400 especially if overclocking is involved. Games really don't need more than 2.2 right now so I can't imagine when they will need more than 3.0GHz. GPU's are your main gaming bottleneck and almost always will be until games can utilise quad cores.. and that will still land you in the same boat whichever dual core you have.

Should I be considering a quad then? As it does seem like more games will optimise for quads post nehalem. But i do see the logic in diverting the funds to a better gpu rather than cpu

[staffsMike]

Just Editted my previous post having found out the 280GTX is sadly gone anyway. The 1GB HD4870 might be the better way to go here.

Quad's again are a good bet. I personally would either have an E5200 or a quad as the middle ground doesn't seem worth it to me, especially for gaming.

The Q6600 will hit 3.0GHz (often more like 3.4Ghz or higher) anyway which is always nice but again 2.4GHz stock is more than enough CPU grunt right now.

The more expensive quads should run a little cooler being 45nm etc.. but at their price I'm still not too sure about them. i7 will almost certainly affect their prices the most though.

It could be 3 years before we see games properly utilising quads though which is the problem by which time your PC will be getting near the end of it's gaming life if the last 3 years are anything to go by so it's up to you really.

In yours and mosts situations right now I think I would plump for the E5200. It's almost a throw away price at &#163;55 (or less) it's going to last bloomin ages anyway.

If though you want to run cpu intensive tasks behind the scenes of games then the Quad is the way to go as you can just assign two cores to the game and 2 to whatever else

[gnoofz]

Just Editted my previous post having found out the 280GTX is sadly gone anyway. The 1GB HD4870 might be the better way to go here.

Yeah spotted that on another thread while looking for prices for it.

So i've taken all the advice and gone and spec'ed out a new list:

LN22894 Asus P5Q PRO, iP45 £83.41
LN23991 Intel Pentium Dual-Core, E5200 £54.04
LN23977 1GB PowerColor HD4870 £198.56 (Lost it's ETA but I can get it elsewhere)
LN20676 Xigmatek HDT-S1283 £19.92
LN23136 Xigmatek Crossbow ACK-I7751 £5.28

What i'm now not so sure about is the RAM. The QVL list for the P5Q Pro is here:
http://www.asus.com/999/download/pro...69/2269_10.pdf

But the list doesn't include some of the RAM available at scan eg:
LN19302 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), CAS 5-5-5-18 £50.10
or
LN21658 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), CAS 4-4-4-12, DHX £64.50

But if i get the 4870 from ebuyer i can get these OCZ 4GB Kit (2x2GB) 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Platinum Performance CL5 (5-4-4-18) £54.91 which are on the list.

So my question is, how important is it to follow the QVL list? Does it mean if it's not tested then it failed at some point of the testing?

Also quite tempted to throw in one of 'em since i've got abit left over on the budget now
LN22613 Asus Xonar DX/XD 7.1 PCI-E Soundcard £56.15

Any changes or suggestions? Cheers

[Maccer101]

If its not on the list it probably means it hasn't been tested on the board thats all.

I used this Corsair RAM on the Asus P5QL-E board and it wasn't on the QVL list, but thats a P43 board. LN19302 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), CAS 5-5-5-18 &#163;50.10

[gnoofz]

If its not on the list it probably means it hasn't been tested on the board thats all.

I used this Corsair RAM on the Asus P5QL-E board and it wasn't on the QVL list, but thats a P43 board. LN19302 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), CAS 5-5-5-18 £50.10

Thanks Maccer101 for the reply.

I guess to be on the safe side i'll pick one on the list tested working with 4 sticks in case i ever want to use all 4 ram slots in the future...

[Maccer101]

good luck