What a rubbish recommendation!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some of Bit-techs system builds seem a bit poor recently.

Look at their gaming workhorse recommendation for example:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buy...should-i-buy/4

You can get an i7 920,6gb of RAM and an x58 motherboard for £461:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Intel...MB-130W-Retail

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...-SATA-RAID-ATX

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/6GB-(...d-CAS-9-9-9-24

Yet they recommend a Q9650,4gb of RAM and a P45 based motherboard for £400.

They say an overclocked Q9650 can exceed the performance of a stock clocked i7 yet the Core i7 can be overclocked itself.

They then find the most expensive AM3 motherboard for the Phenom II they can find and yet there are so many cheaper AM2 and AM3 based motherboards which will do the job well.

On top of this they say the Q6600 is a better choice than the X2 720 for gaming. This is what they say:

"Performance-wise, the triple-core system will be much slower than a Q6600-based PC."

However in this article last month they contradict this viewpoint:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...i-x3-720-be/10

This is what they say:"the AMD 720 Black Edition shows a slight advantage in some of the latest games and multi-tasking compared to even the Intel quad core, but when it comes to very CPU intensive tasks like video encoding and rendering, the fourth core obviously stretches a lead. What AMD offers is evidently a pretty good balance between the two in terms of price performance - sometimes higher, sometimes lower."

This is despite the fact that 4gb of DDR3 or DDR2 ,an X3 720(around £110) and AM3 or AM2 motherboard is still cheaper than a retail Q6600(around £150) or Q6700(not OEM) and 4gb of DDR2 RAM. On top of this there are quite a few AM3 and AM2 motherboards for under £105 which can overclock quite well. This is around the same price as the P45 based motherboards they recommend too.

Of course they fail to realise that the Phenom II X4 940 can be had for less than even a Q6600 and the same goes for the Q8300. Both the Phenom II X4 940 and Q8300 are better choices than the old Q6600 as they are faster at stock speed,overclock well,run cooler and consume less power.

They also fail to mention the HD4850 512mb and GTS250 512mb which can be had for under £90 which are clearly better value than the HD4770 which is in short supply.

Their pricing is way out to as two of the main online computer parts retailers in this country(Scan and Novatech) have had the HD4870X2 for under £260 delivered for ages.

I like this line:
"We've still been free to list the products we wanted to as well, and we've worked with CCL to make sure the prices are competitive."

It looks like they are trying to spread fud methinks. Ebuyer has free postage too as has Novatech and they are cheaper too than CCL.

It seems with the merger of the Bit-tech and CustomPC websites(both owned by Dennis publishing) their recommendations are beginning to become quite irratic.

[staffsMike]

Glad you got that off your chest? lol

Does anyway here pay attention to those things anyway? I'm sure some poor sob will but nevermind.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Sadly many people who do DIY builds will read the guides though as Bit-tech is meant to be a well known review website. They will cause people to waste their money with many of these recommendations though.

At least Hexus reviews tend to be much more rounded luckily and their pricing is usually upto date.

[ajones]

Good point, well presented.

Now stand away from the loaded cannon and just breath.....

[amjedm]

...breath.....

breathe

Thank you Cat, I'd probably be one of the people who'd follow their recommendations

[sammorris]

FTR, I don't agree with a single one of their choices for the game system, apart from perhaps the graphics card (Why is that not priced in the UK?)

[GeorgeStorm]

I agree, while I think bit-tech is very good as a whole, I was surprised by their choices this time round.
AMD are the way to go apart from the very top
But ahwell, everyone gets something wrong sometime.

[ed^chigliak]

I suspect the Q9550 & Q9650 will soon be the best choice financially. I predict demand will outlive the availability driving the 2nd hand prices up. People will as always just want to max out the upgrade potential of their existing boards even if it doesn't make financial sense to do so.

The fastest CPU's on an older socket are a blessing in disguise. You won't see anything like the depreciation in value that you would if you were to choose an entry level CPU on a new socket.

[TooNice]

People will as always just want to max out the upgrade potential of their existing boards

They do? I can't say that I've ever upgraded my CPU on any single motherboard. Adding some RAM (not that often), and replacing GFX card, yes, but I tend to go for reasonably overclockable CPU in the upper-midrange and stick to it until the next architecture.

[ed^chigliak]

Yep. That's what a lot of people will do to avoid the hassle of re-installing the OS. Do not under estimate the number of people who would rather spend money than time.

For the non-overclocker the fastest CPU for their aging motherboard will remain an object of desire long after being discontinued. These people will also want to buy DDR2 at prices far greater than DDR3 prices.

A well time Q9650 CPU purchase will likely turn a profit IMO. Look what happened to X2 4800+ prices when the 939 socket was discontinued and I think people are still buying them even now.

[Infinite]

Re-installing Windows takes me like a day, tops. Not really that much time wasted.

[lego batman]

Re-installing Windows takes me like a day, tops. Not really that much time wasted.

Plus I quite like being able to have another look at what I want and need on my system, and clear off all the junk.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I can understand people upgrading the CPU during the lifespan of a computer as I have done it before.
I bought my SD37P2 SFF barebones in late 2006 and had a D805 overclocked to 3ghz as the E6600 I wanted was very expensive new or secondhand. After a few months I upgraded to an E4300 which I overclocked to 3.1ghz and sold the D805. I then assembled another computer and used the E4300 in that(I still have that computer now). I replaced the E4300 with the E4500 because it had a higher multiplier and had a more energy efficient stepping and I overclocked this too. A few months ago I upgraded to secondhand Q6600 which cost me less than £80 and I sold the E4500 for nearly £60 too!

Excluding the E4300 which I am still using I have spent well under £200 on CPUs for main computer and this would have been roughly the amount I would have spent on an E6600 originally. Since the Q6600 is likely to be last CPU I have for my current desktop it has been advantegous for me to upgrade. Also the fact it has also fulfilled some of my upgrading bug at the same time too.

However whereas the Q9650 is a very good CPU for a person who already has a compatible socket 775 platform it simply makes little or no sense since a better i7 build is available for a little bit more.

[sammorris]

Stick with the same brand and you often don't need to reinstall. I've gone from P35->X38 on the same install and X38->X48, and back down to P45 on the same install. I know someone else who made the leap from P965 to P35 as well.

[mikepegg]

I was much of the same thought when I read that article. For a recomendation list of what to buy it skips the best-bang-for-buck that 99% of people would want. Shame really.