Buying New System

[jrphoenix]

I built my last system in 2004, way overdue for upgrade. In 2007 I switched from years of PC gaming to my xbox 360 / PS3. Anyway, I have Cysis (never played) and I will be playing Empire & Napolean Total War. I will also be using the system for quickbooks / web usage and possibly some new games later this year? Getting a new monitor 26" 1900 x 1200.

I'm looking at ibuypower & cyberpower pc because when I built my last system, I had issues with small "gotchas" and I just don't have the time / patience. It was a good experience but, frustrating at times.

Question 1:

With a choice of upgrading from 6 gb of ram to 12 Gb of ram or going from i7930 to i7960. Which one is a better upgrade? (assuming I can overclock the 930 but, will have questions)


Question 2:

With the ram:

I'm looking at 1600 Mhz ram.
They offer corsair / or major brand.

I'm leading toward corsair dominatior or Kingston hyperx (for overclocking). If there a preference here?

Question 3:

Would you guys recommend 2 x 5870's or 1 5970? price wise the 5970 is about $40 cheaper.


THank you!

 

[mfenn]

To answer your questions:
(1) Depends on your workload. For your application, you're unlikely to run out of memory, so the 960 would be better.
(2) Both are overkill, the motherboards these days have plenty of dividers that will let you run your ram within spec for pretty much any BCLK.
(3) I doubt they actually have an 5970's in stock, so 2 5870's because it is actually buyable and faster

HOWEVER. It seems like you're talking about a $2K+ system here. That's complete, ridiculous overkill for your stated usage. Get an 860 or a 750 and 1 5850 with 4GB of RAM. Save the difference and buy a new PC in 2 years. Money in the bank appreciates in value whereas computers depreciate in value. The $1K system 2 years from now will dominate today's $2K system.

 

[jrphoenix]

To answer your questions:
(1) Depends on your workload. For your application, you're unlikely to run out of memory, so the 960 would be better.
(2) Both are overkill, the motherboards these days have plenty of dividers that will let you run your ram within spec for pretty much any BCLK.
(3) I doubt they actually have an 5970's in stock, so 2 5870's because it is actually buyable and faster

HOWEVER. It seems like you're talking about a $2K+ system here. That's complete, ridiculous overkill for your stated usage. Get an 860 or a 750 and 1 5850 with 4GB of RAM. Save the difference and buy a new PC in 2 years. Money in the bank appreciates in value whereas computers depreciate in value. The $1K system 2 years from now will dominate today's $2K system.

Thank you for the update. I may consider doing that? I built my last system over kill for about $2,500 and was getting close to that this time. I was guessing I could get another 5 years of use out of a system Would Crysis run on a stripped down system at 1900 x 1200. I bought the game in anticipation of th new build.

 

[Fayd]

Thank you for the update. I may consider doing that? I built my last system over kill for about $2,500 and was getting close to that this time. I was guessing I could get another 5 years of use out of a system Would Crysis run on a stripped down system at 1900 x 1200. I bought the game in anticipation of th new build.

a 5850 with 4 gb of ram and an i7-860 is *not* stripped down, and will certainly not have any trouble running crysis.

 

[mfenn]

Thank you for the update. I may consider doing that? I built my last system over kill for about $2,500 and was getting close to that this time. I was guessing I could get another 5 years of use out of a system Would Crysis run on a stripped down system at 1900 x 1200. I bought the game in anticipation of th new build.

I would hardly call an i7 860 w/ a 5850 a "stripped down" system. :awe: The system will run Crysis just fine.

Basically, Moore's Law confounds any attempt to extend the useful life of a system beyond 2 or so years. By "useful" I mean "able to run everything at max settings". You'll end up with greater "average performance over time" if you spend the same amount on money in 2 purchases. Here's a handy graph that depicts your performance over 5 years in two scenarios: buying 1 killer system now vs. buying 1 moderate system now, and another moderate system in 3 years.

In this graph, a performance of 100 indicates that it could run that year's most demanding game perfectly. Values over 100 indicate a level of overkill (i.e. 100 FPS vs. 60 FPS).

EDIT: Beaten to the punch! I've got a pretty graph though.

 

[jrphoenix]

I would hardly call an i7 860 w/ a 5850 a "stripped down" system. :awe: The system will run Crysis just fine.

Basically, Moore's Law confounds any attempt to extend the useful life of a system beyond 2 or so years. By "useful" I mean "able to run everything at max settings". You'll end up with greater "average performance over time" if you spend the same amount on money in 2 purchases. Here's a handy graph that depicts your performance over 6 years in two scenarios: buying 1 killer system now vs. buying 1 moderate system now, and another moderate system in 3 years.

In this graph, a performance of 100 indicates that it could run that year's most demanding game perfectly. Values over 100 indicate a level of overkill (i.e. 100 FPS vs. 60 FPS).

EDIT: Beaten to the punch! I've got a pretty graph though.

I guess I may have approached this thing the wrong way? I can't believe I stretched out my current system for 6 years I'll try pricing one of those not so stripped down system out!

 

[busydude]

Would Crysis run

No offense intended, but seeing this makes me cringe every time.

 

[jrphoenix]

No offense intended, but seeing this makes me cringe every time.

LOL.. none taken... but, why is that?

I'm actually more interested in total war (my favorite gaming series ever). If total way mouse / keyboard went to xbox 360 or 720... I may not have anything other than a laptop

 

[busydude]

By all means your question is legit, since you actually own the game.

But this question has become so cliched. A lot of people I met became so obsessed with the benchmarks of crysis, they started to believe that if the system doesn't run crysis then the system is not worth using to play any other game that would otherwise run perfectly smooth.

 

[Fayd]

i cant imagine a modern system being unable to run crysis.

for reference, i just dusted off my crysis game and loaded it on my current PC.

it's somewhat inferior to your proposed machine, even after "stripping it down".

my rig:

Phenom II X4 945, stock
5770 1g, stock
6 gigs DDR2 800 mhz

playing with all options but post-processing at high:

no lag during gameplay. might change when i get to the big firefight with the NK's.. but currently it's running beautiful. i havent even tried V.high detail... i suppose i should turn on AA as well...


EDIT: well, i had to turn post-processing down to medium. otherwise it was lagging bad.

 

[herry.james]

They are both very good computers. I would prefer a Macintosh. Why? Because they are much easier to navigate through, they basically never get any viruses, and they are very fast. Macs are pretty fun to use because they have cool programs like garage band, which I can use to make my own music, and iMovie which I can use to make my own movies and much more.

 

[batuchka]

Batty's Monster frames for the low dollars build for you?

 

[jrphoenix]

They are both very good computers. I would prefer a Macintosh. Why? Because they are much easier to navigate through, they basically never get any viruses, and they are very fast. Macs are pretty fun to use because they have cool programs like garage band, which I can use to make my own music, and iMovie which I can use to make my own movies and much more.

I couldn't game on a mac!

 

[jrphoenix]

Batty's Monster frames for the low dollars build for you?

Thank you very much for the work Awesome!

 

[imported_NoGodForMe]

Nice graph. I'm in the same boat as everyone else around here. 6 year old 939 system, ready to build. People are supposed to upgrade their video card after 2-3 years, and that lets them go to 5.

The problem happens when the video card spec changes (AGP To PCI-E). But I don't see that happening any more. If people could upgrade their CPU and GPU after 3 years, we'd be set building that monster rig. But the chip set changes, memory is different, and the faster CPU doesn't work in the old MB. They do this on purpose so we have to build from scratch.

I'm still going to build a monster because many are talking about $1,300 systems around here, and the monster build comes out to $2,200. I'll spend the extra money.