New build.. need expertise.

[Slaymate]

Where did you see a hard drive? All I saw was that he had a hard drive with Windows 7 already on it..

The post was moderated. I have now approved it.

My bad, I never even noticed it was moderated.

I tried looking up GPU coolers, but I could only find CPU coolers. Is there a difference?

Yes there is a difference. You won't find aftermarkets coolers for the 7990 until after it is released and some are designed to fit and effectively cool it.

 

[tj_extreme]

My bad, I never even noticed it was moderated.

Well, I see it now. Is the op using a desktop bought from Walmart? If so, why does it have a laptop hard drive? Either way, he'd be better off with another hard drive. And judging by the other components, he can probably squeeze this into his budget.

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

[CSx121]

No, I'm not using anything from my welfare Walmart computer.. except my optical drive and card readers (whatever those are). And it didn't come with a laptop HDD, I suggested one for my new build not knowing it was for a laptop.

So.. I'm all set except for me not being sure on whether or not to get a cheap HDD or SSD. I only need about 200GB, depending on how big Windows is.. and by the time I save up for the whole computer, there may be a deal / price drop.


Thanks guys. I'll bump this thread if I have any more questions and will also check my email for more replies.

 

[tj_extreme]

No, I'm not using anything from my welfare Walmart computer.. except my optical drive and card readers (whatever those are). And it didn't come with a laptop HDD, I suggested one for my new build not knowing it was for a laptop.

So.. I'm all set except for me not being sure on whether or not to get a cheap HDD or SSD. I only need about 200GB, depending on how big Windows is.. and by the time I save up for the whole computer, there may be a deal / price drop.

Okay, sorry I misunderstood. Here's a cheap HDD: Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500413AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Thanks guys. I'll bump this thread if I have any more questions and will also check my email for more replies.

Bumping threads is against the forum rules: Announcements - Forum Admin, Announcements & Feedback

 

[Roark]

by the time I save up for the whole computer, there may be a deal / price drop.

Depending on how long that is your whole build may change.
Technology moves fast, if you wait a few months new tech will be available and old tech may have dropped enough in price for you to upgrade further.

I would say once you have the chunk of cash you're willing to spend post up your budget and see what new ideas people have.

 

[I_Am_Skip]

Good suggestion Roark, unless your certain you are going to add a second graphics card later, the 850w is overkill since amd recommends a minimum 500w psu to run the system. It is always nice to have a good psu but you need to draw a line on what you want otherwise you are wasting money. If you saved on the psu you could buy the overclocked xfx 7970 which has a custom cooling setup on it anyway (and it comes preoverclocked).

 

[CSx121]

Good suggestion Roark, unless your certain you are going to add a second graphics card later, the 850w is overkill since amd recommends a minimum 500w psu to run the system. It is always nice to have a good psu but you need to draw a line on what you want otherwise you are wasting money. If you saved on the psu you could buy the overclocked xfx 7970 which has a custom cooling setup on it anyway (and it comes preoverclocked).

That was originally my plan.. the XFX 7970. But then I decided to get a 2560x1440 monitor, so the 7990 would be much better for needed performance.

 

[I_Am_Skip]

Well there is no such thing as a 7990 as yet. And normally dual gpu cards aren't as good as a single gpu one. For instance two 7970's would be better than one 7990 (if it exists). Heck, even two 7950's (if they exist haha) would be better than the 7990. And, if you look here: AMD Radeon HD 7970 review you can see that a single 7970 can run bf3 at 2560x1600 at 33 fps. However that is with 16x Anti Aliasing and the game set to ultra settings. I am sure if you set the anti aliasing to 4x or 8x, the performance would improve a decent amount without sacrificing visuals.

And according to AnandTech here: AnandTech - AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One It can run it at 49.7 fps at 2560x1600 on ultra. That is using an lga 2011 setup however. The guru3d setup is on an older x58 setup which explains the large difference in performance. I'd assume normal sandy bridge would sit somewhere in between both benchmarks. So if you weren't stupid and decided to run AA at 8x or 4x instead of 16x I can't see why a single 7970 would suffice. And if it was the overclocked version you can expect almost a 5fps increase on performance as well in certain titles. So you may as well stick with one 7970, at least for now

 

[CSx121]

Well there is no such thing as a 7990 as yet. And normally dual gpu cards aren't as good as a single gpu one. For instance two 7970's would be better than one 7990 (if it exists). Heck, even two 7950's (if they exist haha) would be better than the 7990. And, if you look here: AMD Radeon HD 7970 review you can see that a single 7970 can run bf3 at 2560x1600 at 33 fps. However that is with 16x Anti Aliasing and the game set to ultra settings. I am sure if you set the anti aliasing to 4x or 8x, the performance would improve a decent amount without sacrificing visuals.

And according to AnandTech here: AnandTech - AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One It can run it at 49.7 fps at 2560x1600 on ultra. That is using an lga 2011 setup however. The guru3d setup is on an older x58 setup which explains the large difference in performance. I'd assume normal sandy bridge would sit somewhere in between both benchmarks. So if you weren't stupid and decided to run AA at 8x or 4x instead of 16x I can't see why a single 7970 would suffice. And if it was the overclocked version you can expect almost a 5fps increase on performance as well in certain titles. So you may as well stick with one 7970, at least for now

But wouldn't two 7970's require a motherboard with two x16's, a much better power supply, and on top of that, cause more issues like heat on top of the price? I think I'll stick with the 7990 or a single OC'd 7970 if something goes wrong with the 7990. I know the 7990 isn't out, but the specs were released and the price seems well-predictable.

Plus, can't I always get an aftermarket version like the XFX 7970 for the 7990 and overclock it a bit to match two 7970's?

 

[I_Am_Skip]

Depending on your socket, yes two gpu's in crossfire on an lga 1155 socket will run in 8x, but if you look up reviews etc you will find that gpu's don't even use up the bandwidth. Linustechtips compared two gtx 580's in sli on dual 16x and dual 8x and found the difference in performance to be 0.01% in favour of 16x. The power supply shouldn't have to be much better than the 7990 as the 7990 is technically two 7950/70 gpu's put together, so unless the 7990 was under clocked a significant amount I could not see why power draw would be much different to a 7970 crossfire setup. As well as that since the xfx card has aftermarket cooling it should run cooler. And having two separate cards means that the heat is spread out more rather than just intensifying the heat over one card. Ontop of this gigabyte has announced their 7970 aftermarket cooling card anyway which has 3 fans on it (it looks sick).

So what I really recommend is get a single 7970 now and a good psu and add a 7970 down the track when u need it. The performance of two seperate gpu's in crossfire is better than two gpu's on one card, period...