Best bang for buck?

[ChrisOllie]

Hi Guys just looking for a quick bit of advice, been out the loop for a while

Currently have an e7300 setup and looking to upgrade as it's pretty sluggish now

I'm thinking from research:

i5 760
MSI P55 board
4gb of OCZ or Corsair (12800?)
and a 5850 (I have no idea what graphics card is good anymore the naming is confusing!)

Does this seem a good setup, hopefully could get some overclock from it (would appreciate recommendations on a good cooler if the stock one won't go very far?)

Also I am planning on using the OCZ Stealthxtreme 600w psu I have just now, would this be able to run the above + 2 hard drives?

Ideally I want to try keep the total below £400 if possible :S

Thanks for any help/advice!

Chris

[Terbinator]

What is your full build now, the E7300 is a decent Core 2.

Also, judging by your component list [you've got a decent budget I'm guessing] i would urge you to wait a month, Intels newer CPU's launch on the 6/7th of January and are around 20% faster.

GPU wise the 5850 & 70 are being fazed out in favour of the 6xxx series. Nvidia's GTX 570 launches tomorrow as well so this will change prices around a bit. The 5850 & 70 are end of life and are getting replaced by the 6950 & 6970 some time later this year or early next - unless you can pick up a 58xx card at a decent price i would skip them personally.

[Phage]

Depends on budget, and whether you want to wait. What you have there is a good setup, I'd only change the GPU for a 6870.

[quintal]

I've been hanging fire for a while with a very similar setup in mind. Dabs does a CPU/Mobo combo (that is prob. nothing spectacular) but I have been using it as a "yardstick" @ £240 for the two. Things have not moved much in the past month.

So it makes it a bit tight for about 400, seeing how the GPU (5850 or gtx460) are about £140.
Obviously, if you can get the memory for about 20 quid

[ChrisOllie]

Hi guys,

Well it's mainly due to time constraints etc I'd like to build one for Christmas, I've heard about the new Intel stuff but surely that will be more expensive than my budget allows?

My full setup just now is e7300 + Asus P5e-VM + 1gb OCZ platinum (was 2gb but a stick died), and just using onboard gpu as I never really played games much, but wouldnt mind having the option now

I'm just finding it struggling a bit now, and I managed to get Win7 for the student price so thought why not go the whole way and build a new system.

There's a 5850 available from someone I know for £125 thats why I was considering it,
Would the i5 be much better than the AMD route? I've heard about dual cores potentially unlocking to 4 etc?

For the right setup I'd push to £500 tbh, thats why I was liking the look of i5 route

[Phage]

I've heard of the AMD series unlocking cores, but not intel.
What about an AMD system ? have a look at the post by Cat 5th in my thread here.
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...amd-gurus.html

[ChrisOllie]

An AMD build does interest me as it seems slightly cheaper, but just wondering how a (potentially) unlocked x2 compares to an i5 in terms of longevity etc because I'm led to believe the i5's can overclock a fair bit?

[Phage]

Beyond my meagre knowledge I'm afraid. You'd need Cat 5th for that. Try sending a PM.

[scaryjim]

Your problem isn't the CPU, it's only having 1GB of RAM. Buy yourself some new RAM - ideally a 4GB kit - install Windows 7 and enjoy the new lease of life it gives as your computer suddenly finds out it can breathe again

But if you're set on a new build, you need to think about what you want to do with it. For single threaded performance, Intel are undoubtedly king at pretty much any price point, for more cores you need to look at AMD. Ebuyer currently have the Phenom II X6 1055T for £140: it lags a little behind the i5 760 in single / lightly threaded tasks but tears it to shreds in heavily threaded tasks and heavy multitasking. But at the price point it's probably the best all round processor available, and you can drop it in pretty much any AM3 motherboard, giving you a wealth of mobo options starting at ~ £50.


EDIT: and in response to your cross post - don't buy an AMD dual core on the basis that you want to unlock it to a quad: results from unlocking are *very* variable. If you want a quad, buy a quad. The Phenom II 965 BE can pretty much go blow for blow with an i5 760, overclocks reasonably well, and is only £120 (although personally I'd go for the X6 ). Also an AMD build is more likely to have future upgrade possibilities: it appears that AMD intend to keep some level of compatibility between their next generation and socket AM3, whereas the Socket 1156 that the i5 760 runs on will be phased out in January and replaced with Socket 1155 for Sandy Bridge.

[quintal]

Jim beat me to it... Your bottleneck is definitely the RAM.

If you can be bothered rebuilding your machine I'd consider sitting tight for now. I build win7 at least 14 times per day on 4 different PCs these days (enterprise deployment implementation) and it is not that bad.

Don't spend too much on the RAM though, as you will need different type for the i5 (DDR2 vs DDR3) but there is nothing (that I know about) that is stopping you upgrading the GPU if you think it is a great deal you are getting. You can always plop it into your new build when you get around it.

HTH

[Domestic_Ginger]

Whats the PC sluggish at doing? what do yo plan on doing with it? the Phenom II x2 is about the same as your 7300 so there is no real point in changing. The i5 is a bit better than the phenomIIs but like said before it would be better to wait until Jan if you were thinking of having a complete overhall. I think both chipsets are pretty much eol.

There are a few eol 775 cooles kicking about. the Xigmatek 963 is a tenner at scan but ideally you want one that takes 120mm fans. The hyper 212 and HDT1283 come along on today only sometimes.

I would say get the ram and try to knock your friend down to 120 on the GPU if he is offering some warranty. I think it is still a very good GPU even if it is to be phased out. Voltage control would be useful.

[ChrisOllie]

I do a lot of music/video editing and rars mostly, so finding this pc a big sluggish, although I totally accept it may just be a ram issue, just wasn't sure it would be worth doing ddr2 in light of everything having changed.

I also had a bad virus a while ago and it's never felt the same since, so thought other than a format it would be nice to get shiny new bits!

I totally take on board the argument for rebuilding this one though, would an x6 or i5 be a decent enough jump from this? Or should I maybe rebuild/overclock this one a bit?

Need to try find some benchmarks of this x6 I think because it sounds interesting!

[nibbler]

I bought an Athlon II x3 445 and unlocked to a phenom II 955 effectively as I got all of the extra cores and cache, but nothing is guaranteed and I just seem to have been genuinely lucky for once!

[scaryjim]

I do a lot of music/video editing and rars mostly ...

Then it sounds to me like you'd do well from the extra cores that a phenomX6 would provide. Media editing, and particularly transcoding, trends to be heavily threaded.

That said, I'd still be tempted to upgrade the RAM for now and see how forget that AM3 processors work in AM2+ motherboards, so you could always buyyour RAM now, a Phenom II x6 and an AM2+ mobo later if the RAM doesn't make enough difference. But remembering how large audio and video files tend to be , I'd be amazed if the Am didn't help!

[kalniel]

Bang for buck analysis:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...k-highend.html

(that's part 3 - highend, they also have mid and low end tests)

[ChrisOllie]

Sorry for potentially being totally stupid, but will the AM3 socket eb totally dead when AMD's next stuff comes out?

reason Im asking is another retailer does a bundle deal with a Phenom 1055T overclocked already to 3.8gig, + A Gigabyte 880G mobo (which has usb3 etc) and 4gig Mushkin ram + a decent cooelr for £300

Which sounds very tempting to me, surely a x6 @ 3.8 would be alot better than this e7300 and last for a good few years?