What do you think of these builds?

[SereneChaos]

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.)

Mmk. My bad. As I said, very new to this. Is there any way to compare them aside from benchmarks?

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.

That's what I figured...but I'm also getting alot of messages, as you may see, telling me that if I really want the biggest, fastest machine I should go i7. Will the i7 work as well with ATI cards? Please keep in mind that this is a hypothetical, "how ****** could I make this" boredom reliever and learning experience.

I'm still putting together and tweaking the list, but I also put together an Intel version, which is almost identical, but with DDR3 2200 memory (which I may also replace in the AMD version) and an i7-920. It's about a grand more, but it looks pretty nice just from the parts. If I can manage to save up about 7k sometime this year or next (plus the 3k for my upcoming Hong Kong trip) from my two minimum wage jobs, I'll definitely build these. But fantasies aside, I still like learning from you guys, so please keep the tips and critique coming!

 

[orihS ‪‪‪Shiro]

I don't recommend an i7 - 920 to anyone who isn't swimming in money.
The upgrade path is crap (Gulftown will cost $1000-1300)* and 1366 is basically server class or extreme enthusiast, performance wise.

And yes ATI cards work just as will the i7's as anything else.

You may also want to consider an i5 - 750 build, which will be much closer to the price range of the AMD build, but maintain better performance.


*Gulftown is the name of Intel's six core processor releasing for 1366, the i7 - 980x

AMD's six core processors will release for AM3 and will probably be between $200 - 400
Some sources say $600, but I would take such high predictions with a grain of salt because the Phenom II X4 965 is less than $200 and has four cores, why should they charge $600 for a six core cpu?