New Computer, New Technology

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The GTX 295 is NVIDIA's current top card offering for the consumer desktop, right?

Yes its Nvidia's, its also a dual GPU card. IMO that makes it not comparable to other single GPU cards. It's just two gtx275s on one board ( I think ) which are even less powerful then the 5870. Also if you're worried about money and power why are you even considering the 295? The 5870 uses less power, costs less, makes less heat, and is dx11. Kind of an no-brainer honestly.

Although the i7s do run hotter then the phenoms, its all comparative. They can take wayyy more heat then any phenom so higher temps are not a bad thing. Mine idles at 27c, load at 43, and I'd never EVER want to see it above 60c, yet alone 50. But 50c for an i7 is nothing, considering how much more heat they can take.

If I may ask what do you have against intel? or what is your budget? that would help you a lot in deciding which to get.
 
It's obvious that you don't want to take the "plunge" and buy from another computer company. In all honesty there's no valid reason why you shouldn't. Trust me, if there were ever something wrong with any of these chipsets we are recommending it would be all over the internet and we would be telling you all about it. But there isn't.

You know its Nvidia that I've been hearing all the bad things about. Just last week Nvidia faked a prototype of the GT300. link
But would that stop me from recommending an Nvidia card if it was a better deal? No.

The 5870 is a no brainer, there's absolutely no reason why you would want to get a GTX 295 unless you absolutely could not come to terms with buying from AMD/ATI.

The Phenom II X4 is a great card for the money, its way better then what Intel has in the same price range. But its not high-end. If you are looking for something faster then your only other option is an Intel i5 or the extremely expensive i7-920.
 
^ budget figure would be a plus, also you were stating that you may not get an ASUS board because you can't find one that meets your requirements. What are your requirements? If we knew, we'd be better suited to help :big_smile:

I'm an AMD guy myself, but if your looking for the end all be all in CPU's right now, then you definitely want the i7.

I have been looking at AMD mobo's for a little while now and the M4A79T Deluxe AM3, would probably be a good choice for future-proof AMD mobo. For AMD CPU I would chose the phenom II x4 955 Black Edition because you would save a couple bucks and even if your not "into" overclocking, with the M4A79T you would probably be able to OC the 955 to 965 speeds on stock cooling.
 
^ budget figure would be a plus, also you were stating that you may not get an ASUS board because you can't find one that meets your requirements. What are your requirements? If we knew, we'd be better suited to help :big_smile:
Hard to say exactly but mainly my key focus for this build is to try and get something that's stable, moderately future-proof, easy to work with and update, and the least amount of gibberish. AM3 will probably last a little while so I'll lean towards that, but I want to make sure the board has a chipset that will perform and be moderately future-proof, too. NVIDIA will likely come out with their new DX11 cards in January '10...I don't know what that will mean for the mobo but mobos are cheap.

It's not so much specifics that I'm looking for, but if I have one board from MSI and another from ASUS, and they match up but the MSI has some extra features or a better layout, I'll probably end up going MSI (or whatever). The ASUS venture was just because I hadn't bought anything from them before.

Would there be a reason not to go with the NVIDIA 980a chipset? I'm assuming that's NVIDIA's latest chipset, so if I end up sticking to the plan and getting one of the GTX cards, that's the best option I can see.

I'm an AMD guy myself, but if your looking for the end all be all in CPU's right now, then you definitely want the i7.
I don't necessarily need the absolute best CPU out there, and if that is currently an Intel with an AMD in second, I'll still go with the AMD. To that end, I just want the best I can get so that I'll be good for a bit. If the difference between the very top AMD chip and the next one down is just a very slim margin, I'm not gonna fork out the extra bucks for the top chip (unless the price difference isn't significant).

I have been looking at AMD mobo's for a little while now and the M4A79T Deluxe AM3, would probably be a good choice for future-proof AMD mobo.
Aside from the M4A79T being a Crossfire board and the M4N82 being an SLi board, is there a difference? Looks like a nice board.

I know the ATI sounds tempting, and the cheaper price of the cards could lead to a crossfire setup sooner than an SLI setup. I would like to try the PhysX stuff, though, and since I already have an 8800GTS it would be free to try it (as opposed to having to buy a second card for it). Also, I'm guessing ATI cards won't do 3D? That's not a key feature for me, but it sounds fun and would be good to have it as a possibility.

For AMD CPU I would chose the phenom II x4 955 Black Edition because you would save a couple bucks and even if your not "into" overclocking, with the M4A79T you would probably be able to OC the 955 to 965 speeds on stock cooling.
Yeah, with AM3 the 955 BE sounds good. I'm not into paying $60+ extra for 0.2GHz. I don't usually do overclocking, but that's certainly within the easy realm. Plus I intend to go with a liquid cooling setup, so I doubt there will be trouble with heat. :thumbsup:

Thanks for the help, all, I really do appreciate it. Hope I'm not being too difficult! lol

Le'me digest this.
 
The Phenom II X4 is a great card for the money, its way better then what Intel has in the same price range. But its not high-end. If you are looking for something faster then your only other option is an Intel i5 or the extremely expensive i7-920.

well actually the core i5 750 does beat the Phenom II 955 by quite a bit.
 
Also, if you wanted to take a slight step away from premium prices, you could go with the M4A79 Deluxe (supports ddr2 instead of ddr3, $10 less than M4A79T(ddr3) and it has free shipping) and you could go with the Phenom II x4 940 BE. If your going to go with liquid cooling, then you could easily OC that to 965 speeds and beyond. That would be another $11 savings on CPU as compared to the x4 955 ($46 savings vs 965). And then When buying the ram you would save probably $5 or something nominal like that, it all adds up in the end though, and you would still be getting a great computer.

The DDR2 version of that ASUS board will support AM3 CPU's if you would want to purchase one later on down the road (940 is AM2+) and from what i've seen is a very good board.

Not sure about this, but I believe I've read somewhere that there isn't much difference between DDR3 and DDR2 on AMD systems. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
 
I've had a number of things force my hand on this recently. Firstly that NVIDIA is coming out with their new gpu's in early spring, so that's close enough for me to just tell myself to wait and see what happens.

Second, I had some hardware failures that forced me to go ahead with some upgrades premptively, so some money unfortunately flew out the window out of the savings for the new box. (When it says built for 30k hours...they mean it.)

So my current plans have changed to where I'm just going to upgrade the components (now) with things that I can carry over to a new system (HDD, sound card, drives, etc) and hold off on the guts upgrade till later in spring.

Plus maybe by then Win7 will have its first SP going.
 
Plus maybe by then Win7 will have its first SP going.

I really don't understand why so many people are complaining about buying windows 7 without a service pack... I personally could not tell the difference between XP vanilla and XP SP 3; nothing. I also haven't had any issues with the RC so far, other then the network menu/window being annoying, but thats just cause its not too user friendly and I don't know my way around yet.
 
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