My new build. What you think?

[DarkDraco]

As you can see from my sig, my last rig is pretty outdated. Deciding to build a new system and this is what I came up with so far:

$275 - Board - ASUS Crosshair II Formula AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI HDMI
$150 - CPU - Phenom 9850 BLACK EDITION 2.5GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core
$740 - VGA - 2x KFA2 by Galaxy 98XGF1HSFEXX GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI
$90 - RAM - mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel
$00 - PSU - Having trouble finding one that will fit my setup at a price less than 400$

so far this adds up to 1255$ still needing a PSU, HDDs, case, and a cooling system. i dont really have a limit on how much to spend but i dont want to be xtreme or cheap. any comments are welcome.

 

[ou_phidelt]

First unless you have a unadulterated love for AMD switch to Intel. The performance is much better. Secon drop one of the GX2's. Unless the drivers have changed dramatically recently quad SLI scales very poorly. For a gaming rig a switch to Q9550, P45 board, and a 4870X2 would provide a noticable increase in performance over the proposed set-up.

What resolution do you intend to game at?

 

[DarkDraco]

yea thats me in my avatar. i love amd...
i try to game as high as i can, got a 1080p projector im tryin to play on.
what kind of setup would you recommend that would be better than this for same price?

 

[ou_phidelt]

For gaming on 1080P
E8500
P5Q-E
4870 or the GX2 if you can find a deal
2x2GB G.Skill PC8000
Corsair 520HX

 

[DavidJa]

have you considered a 4870 x2?
and for psu Oklahoma Wolf has a Silverstone Strider 1200W for sale in the classfieds
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=575117

 

[DarkDraco]

ok new question... since i dont build a new pc every 6 months anymore, what would last longer in the future, a quad core or core 2 duo? like say 3 years from now... lol

 

[frankkesel]

Quad is more for video , photoshop , rendering , not a lot of game use it for now.
For gaming dual is the choice , clock is higher for the price

Id say E8500 199$
p45 board 140$
4870x2 580$

Just got a corsair TX750watt for 94$ after mir , its looks pretty good

 

[DarkDraco]

so for photo and video editing quad is better?

 

[blazed]

Yes, multi-threaded apps that can use more then 2 cores. Folding, rendering, etc.

2x 9800GX2 is just about the biggest waste of money in graphics history lol, besides maybe 2x 7950GX2. Scaling is horendous.

Single 4870 X2 is the fastest single graphics solution to date, need a fairly beefy CPU to keep up with it. Really is no need for any more GPU power then that today.

 

[DarkDraco]

does 2 or 3 x2 cards work in benchmarking? lol

 

[Vio1]

id setup a nice watercooling system with that. I held off from water for years cause i thought the whole idea of water and electronics a weird mixture, but my last computer i went all out with a custom water setup and it was 1000x better than the air cooling.

 

[DarkDraco]

yea only problem is the waterblock for each card from dangerden is 210$ and that would be insane on a good setup