New 3xs help

[Dol]

Was wondering if you could all please help me.

I'm looking to buy a pre-built system next month but the strides made in tech over the past few years has left me confused. It will mainly be for gaming but would like quite swift web surfcing etc also.

I know you can always get more if you self build but really want to buy prebuilt for the warranty etc (plus I'm lazy)

I've mainly been looking at the following 3XS AMD 790FX AM3 Dragon System and sticking an extra ATI 4890 crossfire on it.
Asus M4A79T Deluxe CrossFire Motherboard
AMD 3.2 Ghz Phenom II X4 955 CPU
Scythe Mugen 2 Quiet CPU Cooler
850W BeQuiet 87% Efficient PSU
4GB Corsair 1600Mhz DDR3 Memory
1TB Samsung 32Mb Cache HDD
1GB ATi Radeon HD4890 GFX Card (CrossFire options available)
Creative SoundBlaster X-FI Titanium PCI-E Soundcard
LiteOn x4 DVD Writer/BluRay Reader
Scan Internal 81in1 Card Reader
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64Bit
Acronis True Image Home 2009
Scan 3XS System - 1year Onsite Warranty

Which would be better the above system, or going for an I7 system with a single 4890?

Thanks for you help the whole comparison between AMD Phenom and I7 (let alone future I5 and I9) is confusing the heck out of me and appreciate any help

J

[en3sge]

I did a lot of research a while ago on exactly the same quandry you find yourself in here.

With similar (ish) specs, I could save a few hundred pounds by going down the dragon route instead of the i7 route.

I did some research and found that generally when it comes to gaming, the top phenom II did approx the same as an untuned i7 920. Add in an overclock though and the i7s do start to streak ahead somewhat.

However you wont really notice the difference on most games as most tend to be GPU-limited rather than CPU limited. Games like flight simulator are very CPU limited whereas something like Fear 2 or Crysis tend to be GPU limited.

As for 'technology has come on strides' lately, yes it has but then you have the old adage - its never a good time to buy a PC cos there is always something aroud the corner.

My advice is this - go for a single 4890 (maybe get the XXX black edition to milk the most out of it), invest some pennies in a solid state hard drive for your web surfing etc (see youtube vids for just how crazily fast those things are) and then upgrade to a 5870/5890 graphics card in a year.

Trust me, even at high resolutions, the 4890 is strong enough for most games.

[Noggin]

If you arn't buying for a month I wouldn't worry about it till a few days before, at the very least in a months time you are going to be choseing a different Operating system windows 7 instead of windows vista, a different graphics card a 5870 will up there with a 4890 crossfire all on one card and it will be dx11.

Personally I like the overclocked 920 i7 route but a couple of the i5's and the amds look nice too, since prices change (especially as i5 is just coming out) its hard to know what processor will give the best bang for your buck in a month. Are you planning to have scan overclock for you?

I'm with the previous poster on saying to go with an SSD for a boot/app drive.

You won't need an 850W PSU with one graphics card and if you need to skimp somewhere in order to afford the SSD you could drop the sound card, onboard sound tends to be very good these days. You'll notice the faster boot up and load etc times 100% more than you'll notice improved sound from a sound card.

[en3sge]

I disagree with the previous post to some extent.

The 5870 is unproven so far in benchmarks and in DX11 games/apps.

The 5870 may well be awesome in games and apps but equally it may not be.

Generally, when I buy hardware, I tend to buy proven, tested hardware with mature drivers. Especially when they devalue due to the next generation of cards. As soon as the 4800 series drops price (due to the 5800 series) this would be the best time to invest as it presents the best £/perforance.

With a suitable motherboard, the 4890 can be easily upgraded in the future. So u can play mind-blowing graphics today with a route to upgrading in the future for a fraction of the price u pay today

[Noggin]

well he said he is going to buy next month, the nda for the new ati cards drops in 3 or 4 days. So the the card will be proved and we will have full benchmarks in everything by the time he comes to order.

It's possible of course the older cards will provide better bang for his buck especially if the cards have more demand than supply (the distributers fleece scan and in turn scan pass the fleeceing onto us) but at this point we simply don't know hence the fact that if you arn't buying till next month don't try and make your decision untill a couple of days before. We simply don't have enough info to make a proper informed decision yet.

The cpu decision is going to be different weather he wants scan to overclock for him or not. The amd's and the i5 750 or 860 are probably the way to go if not overclocking but with a big overclock I like the i7920.