Upgrade Time! Need Advice

[HAVOC]

Well, it's been awhile since I've been around TF. It's also been while since I upgraded my gaming PC. So now that I've got a little extra money put aside, I need to upgrade my rig. I've been away from the latest PC tech for awhile do I decided to see what type of advice I could get here. Thanks in advance.

Budget: $800-$900 USD
Preferred Dealer: newegg.com

Upgrades needed:

CPU: Would like to stay in the $175 - $200 range Phenom X4 or i5 core?
Cooler: For CPU
Motherboard: $150-$200 range
Memory: Want no less than 4GIG, possibly 8GIG
HDD: Want a 1TB or 1.5TB drive
Windows 7 Professional 64bit

Already have to be used:

Case: Antec P180
Optical Drives (2)
PSU: 700w Seasonic
GPU: HD 4850X2
Audio: X-Fi Fatality

Go intel or GO amd? best bang for buck mobo for either? Best HDD for those capacities? Ram. Buy 4g now, get 4g later? Best, price?

Thanks in Advance!

 

[Hefemeister]

I will give you some Intel action.

Newegg.com - Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops $199
Newegg.com - ASUS P7P55D EVO LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards $195
Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL7D-4GBRM - Desktop Memory $105
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $99 could save $5 on a green if only for data
Thermalright Venomous-X CPU Heatsink w/ Pressure Vault Bracket System (Socket LGA 775 / 1156 / 1366) Ultra-120 Extreme Successor - FrozenCPU.com $75 could save some cash here.

That is $673 with some shipping. could get a second set of ram at $105 if needed still withing budget.
You could almost sneak a i7 in with that budget but a i5 or PII will be great for your needs.

 

[farinha]

You can squeeze a i7 860 with that budget. The main difference is that the i7 860 has Hyper Threading and the i5 750 doesn't. If you do video processing than the HT is worth it, if it's only for gaming then i5 should be enough.
Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

 

[meat_helmet]

Yeh if you wanted to beef Hefe's build up to an i7 920 you could get:

Newegg.com - Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops $289

Newegg.com - ASUS P6T LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards - $240

So that is an extra $135 and would come to $808. Really though the i7 920 may not really be worth the extra cash for you, they are quite similar in performance when it comes down to it.

 

[HAVOC]

do the i7 860 and i7 920 have different bandwidths? i7 920 having the higher?

 

[veg1992]

i7 860 came out after i7 920, and Lynnfield is slightly faster clock per clock than Bloomfield. However, P55 (1156) has a significant disadvantage to the X58 (1366) when you have a multi-GPU setup. Plus, there are some concerns with Foxconn messing up LGA 1156 boards and, "socket burn". (An issue with ASUS/Gigabyte/Foxconn as they all use Foxconn)

 

[HAVOC]

Socket burn? Please explain. Sounds like something I want to avoid, lol.

 

[veg1992]

AnandTech: P55 Extreme Overclockers: Check your sockets!
P55 overclockers...check your sockets - [H]ard|Forum
P55-UD6 socket burn - XtremeSystems Forums

There you go, Dale.