What do you think of these builds?

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SereneChaos

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This is the computer I'm on right now; it's my first ever build and my uncle helped me put it together about a month ago.

AMD II Phenom X4 940 Black oc'd to 3.75GHz (stock fan/heatsink)
Biostar 128M AM2+/AM3 790GX Motherboard
2x 2GB DDR2 800 Mushkin Memory
Western Digital Caviar Blue 650GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
ATI Radeon 4850 1GB oc'd to 693MHz/1.15GHz Video Card
Linkworld Black/Silver Case
Corsair 650W PSU

Cost us about $650 total.

This is a dream build I've been piecing together for the past couple days to relieve boredom (and I'm trying so hard not to save money for it, b/c it's making me drool....).

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black
Gigabyte SATA 6.0Gb/s USB 3.0 DDR3 1866 Motherboard*
2x 2GB DDR3 1866 OCZ Platinum Memory
2x Western Digital 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drives
2x XFX ATI Radeon 5870 Vide Cards, Crossfired*
Corsair 750W PSU
Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU Fan/Heatsink w/ Arctic Silver 5
Antec 900 Black Steel Case
3x Cooler Master 90CFM 19DB Fans (1 as side case fan, 1 to replace Hyper 212 fan, 1 as extra Hyper 212 fan)
Logitech MX518 Mouse*
M-Audio Studiophile 2.0 Desktop Speaker System*
Asus 23.6" HDMI 1080P LCD Monitor*
And Lite-On Keyboard*, CD/DVD Drive* and CD/DVD Burner* to replace my old, dusty, crappy handed-down stuff.

Total cost: $2252.80, but I can remove the starred items and say "ah, I can live with my old monitor and stuff" to get a $950 "just the system" version. The motherboard and video cards would also be downgraded; the video cards to a single EVGA 9800 and the motherboard to a less-expensive version that's almost identical except it doesn't support CrossfireX.

Thanks for any support/critcism/ideas/just checking it out!
 
I don't think it's a good idea to pair 2 of those cards with that processor...maybe I'm totally wrong but I think you would get better performance when Crossfiring with a nicer CPU.

edit: come to think of it since you are concerned about budget a bit, you would do really well with 965 and a single 5870 since you are playing on that size screen. Also, you don't need a two optical drives. You could just get one combo drive and be good :D
 
patonb: Thanks for the tip! What would you suggest? Does Antec make a similar larger model? (I've heard really good reviews for them; is there something better?)

james: Why not? What does AMD have out past the 965 BE right now?? I'm a bit iffy about going Intel, since from what I understand they perform closely enough that it's not worth the extra $100....
 
Antec has a 1200, but not sure of how it reviews, jfen has a custom build log on one.

I believe james is saying 1stly, 2 5870 will get bottle necked by the 965, an i7 920 oc'd destroys most cpus out right now. And the performance of the upper intels are way worth the money.
But
As you're only on a 24" 2 5870s actually might hinder stuff, as its really meant for ginormous resolutions.. 1 5870 will be lenty strong at 24" 1080 res.
 
Total cost: $2252.80, but I can remove the starred items and say "ah, I can live with my old monitor and stuff" to get a $950 "just the system" version. The motherboard and video cards would also be downgraded; the video cards to a single EVGA 9800 and the motherboard to a less-expensive version that's almost identical except it doesn't support CrossfireX.

if you were to downgrade parts from your "dream" rig, getting a 9800 (im assuming gt) would be a step down in performance compared to your current hd 4850.

why don't you just upgrade a couple things on your current rig? sure it's not the latest and greatest, but it's still a nice system.

you could buy an aftermarket cooler to see how much more of an OC you can get, you could buy an ssd as a primary hdd for your OS/programs and keep your current 650gb as a just a data drive, or just upgrade the gfx card to a 5870 or 5850.
 
GTX+, actually (738MHz/2200MHz stock), but even a GT would probably outperform my 4850, b/c it's almost even with it stock (550MHz/1600MHz vs. my oc'd 693/1.15G, which, I might add, I have to lower for some games to be stable). Also, this isn't something I'm planning on; this is an "if I have the money sometime in the next year or so, MAYBE". Til then it's just speculation and drooling.

And I don't want to get into an i7/965 war between fanboys. I'm AMD, though with so little experience in either (or computers in general, for that matter) that it's just a vague preference. From what I understand, 965 BE can at least hang with, if not match, the i7, and I can tell you conclusively that it is WAY cheaper ($184 on Newegg vs. $289). I may even build an equal Intel rig if/when I build my dream rig, and compare them. If I do, I'll let you know what I find out. Even though it'll be moot by then lol.

I do, however, appreciate all the help and advice. Back on topic, why would the 5870s be bottlenecked? Is there anything to do about that, or will I just get better performance with a single 5870?

edit: Also, if I do cut back to one video card, do I still need a larger case, or can the 900 handle it?
 
GTX+, actually (738MHz/2200MHz stock), but even a GT would probably outperform my 4850, b/c it's almost even with it stock (550MHz/1600MHz vs. my oc'd 693/1.15G, which, I might add, I have to lower for some games to be stable). Also, this isn't something I'm planning on; this is an "if I have the money sometime in the next year or so, MAYBE". Til then it's just speculation and drooling.

And I don't want to get into an i7/965 war between fanboys. I'm AMD, though with so little experience in either (or computers in general, for that matter) that it's just a vague preference. From what I understand, 965 BE can at least hang with, if not match, the i7, and I can tell you conclusively that it is WAY cheaper ($184 on Newegg vs. $289). I may even build an equal Intel rig if/when I build my dream rig, and compare them. If I do, I'll let you know what I find out. Even though it'll be moot by then lol.

I do, however, appreciate all the help and advice. Back on topic, why would the 5870s be bottlenecked? Is there anything to do about that, or will I just get better performance with a single 5870?

edit: Also, if I do cut back to one video card, do I still need a larger case, or can the 900 handle it?

Buddy, you can't compare two different graphics cards that ARE NOT THE SAME ARCHITECTURE directly by core speed or memory speed.

(Your comparison of the 9800's vs your 4850 only comparing clock speeds is incorrect.)

The 4850 is made by ATI and uses a completely different architecture than the Nvidia 9800 cards.
You can NOT compare them by clock speeds and memory frequencies.
I could go more in depth into why, but I'm not very good at explaining such things, so I'll give someone else the opportunity to give that a go. :p

Also Phenom II X4 955 = Phenom II X4 965

The only difference is .2Ghz, and they overclock the same.
Save yourself the $20-30

Also, I don't know why people are saying the Phenom II X4 965 would bottleneck crossfire 5870's?
I extremely doubt that.
I would bet money against that CPU bottlenecking the cards.
AMD owns ATI I doubt they'd be releasing chipsets or processors that bottleneck their own cards.

But if you're playing at low resolutions, crossfiring could bottleneck you because it would be overkill, one card could process all the frames and the second card computing data would probably slow it down, because it would eat into the first card's bandwidth sending over frames, when the first card won't even need the computed data/frames. Also micro stutter is probably going to occur with a small resolution + crossfire.

Also price/performance wise I usually recommend 5850's over 5870's, but it's just a preference thing really.
There are physical differences between the 5850 and 5870.
Something like 200~ shader cores or something or other, but the performance is VERY close to the same regardless.


Also about the case and single GPU setup thing.
Buddy, you don't even need an Antec 900...
That's a whole lot of case for not a lot of component. :p
You'd be perfectly fine with an RC332, Centurion 5, 541, CM 690 II, Rosewill Blackbone, Apex Vortex 3620, and many more mid tower cases that are from $40-80
 
And I don't want to get into an i7/965 war between fanboys. I'm AMD, though with so little experience in either (or computers in general, for that matter) that it's just a vague preference. From what I understand, 965 BE can at least hang with, if not match, the i7, and I can tell you conclusively that it is WAY cheaper ($184 on Newegg vs. $289). I may even build an equal Intel rig if/when I build my dream rig, and compare them. If I do, I'll let you know what I find out. Even though it'll be moot by then lol.

no one is getting that serious here about amd vs intel lol. but in reallity, yes we know that amd cpus are cheaper, that's why they are better for low-mid end builds. peformance wise, they hang and match with the c2qs but the i7s are just faster, there are already many comparisons that show this.
 
I believe james is saying 1stly, 2 5870 will get bottle necked by the 965, an i7 920 oc'd destroys most cpus out right now. And the performance of the upper intels are way worth the money.
But
As you're only on a 24" 2 5870s actually might hinder stuff, as its really meant for ginormous resolutions.. 1 5870 will be lenty strong at 24" 1080 res.

This.

And no, the 965 is not on par with the i7. Not even close. There's no fanboyism here, just facts. I own a PII 940 and I would not drop another 5870 in my system, I'd rather get an i7 setup because multi-gpu solutions do much better there. That's just me though :D
 
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