Second Build

[siddy123]

Hi guys, I'm planning my second build which is going to be a step up from my first as mentioned in the sig. My next system I definitely want to be a dual GPU system but there are a few question I wish to ask.

My situation
18 year old student intending to start university in September.
In need of a system that will take near intense gaming and some audio.
Needs to be one that works well in having an easy future upgrade plan in place.
Be able to last the 3-4 years I'm at university.
Gonna have around £1300 to £2000 from past years savings and working all summer long to spend on this.


AMD or Intel
I would like my CPU to be as high end as possible. So if so, i7 or the A10 to be released .

I am currently swaying towards my next system to be a AMD based system in the benefit of that it is substantially lower in cost and I heard it works better in sync with AMD graphics cards which I favour ultimatly over Nvidia. I do like the look of AMD's trinity and want the A10-5800K, but the reports and articles that suspect AMD have pushed back their piledriver desktop chip releases back to October to shift more Liano chips out of their storage has put me off as I would like this system completed by September. Is it worth the wait for the chip or would you just recommend getting the Intel 3700K (taking in mind it would bite my wallet harder having an Intel based system than a AMD based one.). I've heard that Trinity is reported to perform 40% better in graphics but 20% slower in CPU compared to Ivybridge, is this true?

Motherboard
Would intend entirely on the CPU chosen. Anybody have an idea of if FM2 supports 2 graphics cards and a PCI x1 slot for a sound card?

GPU
At the moment I'm thinking of buying another Sapphire 7770 OC as i have heard that although the card is quite poor on its own it performs significantly higher when in crossfire mode. other ideas i have would be to upgrade to 2x Radeon 78xx series cards or if building an Intel system have Nvidia GTX 550 or 650 ish (my last Nvidia card was a GT 220, I have poor knowledge of the Nvidia Geforce series since it past 9xxx)

RAM
The highest i would wanna go before I think it's ridiculous is 1666MHz. any suggestions?

PSU
650 or 750w be enough for this?

Hard drive
I have got my eyes on a veloceraptor 300GB. but I have been thinking of perhaps a 240GB + 120GB SSD

Case
One requirement of my case is i wish for it to have dust filters so right now it's between the NZXT Tempest 410 elite and the Antec DF-85.

Monitor
No need to worry about this, the only thing not changing at all is that it will remain my current Hanns-G 23"

Any suggestions would be helpful towards this.
thanks

 

[Knufire]

First of all, matching video card brand is a complete myth. AMD cards and NVIDIA cards work equally well with Intel CPUs and AMD CPUs.

The 40% better in graphics is talking about onboard graphics. For gaming, you don't really care about that. CPU wise, Trinity is supposed to perform about the same as the Phenom II X6 in IPC (that means equal clock speed and cores, so the higher clock speed and core count will mean it will beat the PIIX6 by a small amount). Frankly, at your budget, there's no reason not to go Intel.

Also with Intel, the main difference between the i5 and the i7s is Hyperthreading. This does NOT have a significant impact on game performance, so most gamers actually opt for the i5 instead of the i7 as the extra $100 is better spent towards a GPU.

Velocitraptors aren't worth it now. They're only barely faster than 7200RPM drives and completely outclassed by SSDs. SSD+7200RPM drive is the way to go.

The general advice we go by here is to try to avoid going with dual card setups when buying new. Always buy the best single card you can afford, and save dual cards as an upgrade option in the future.

You can max out all games at 1080P for under 1K, your budget might be a little unnecessary.

Are you keeping your second build or selling it? if you're keeping it...reuse that 1TB Spinpoint, it's a nice drive.

If you really really prefer AMD, I guess you could get a 7970, it's about the same price and performance as the GTX670. Thing is that a 7970 draws between 230-250W (depending if you get a GHz edition card) while a GTX670 only draws 170W, so you don't need as big of a PSU.

 

[siddy123]

I like that I could build a nice system for under a K, gives me more cash to spend on other projects and stuff. In truth, so long as it can beat down Crysis 3, Unreal tournament 4 (If and when it comes out) and other rather graphic intensive games and can survive 5 years minimum until I can land a full time job after university to start my 3rd build I don't mind if it is Intel or AMD. As long as the CPU and Mobo are future proof for the next 5 years every other part pretty much looks easily upgradeable.

GPU looks good, what would be the difference between a 660, 670 and 680?

Thanks for your time!

 

[Knufire]

5 years is probably the max limit. I bought top of the line Intel when it was released in 09, and it's still considered pretty good, but I'll probably upgrade in about a year.

660 doesn't exist yet.

680 is about 5% better than the 670 but costs a lot more. Not really worth it.

Since you have extra money, look at getting 3 of these monitors: http://www.overclock.net/t/1215866/...g-90hz-achieva-shimian-qh270-and-catleap-q270. They're the same panel as the 27" iMac display, 2560x1440 27" IPS displays. All the A+ panels to go Apple, and the A- panels end up in these. Only $300-400 USD, amazing monitors. 3 of those and two 4GB GTX670s in SLI should make a killer gaming setup.

 

[Operant]

GPU looks good, what would be the difference between a 660, 670 and 680?

Well, the 660 is not even out yet. Supposedly it will be similar to a 670 (which I will explain) but will run on a 192-bit VRAM bus. For your budget and timeframe, I would ignore this.

For my explanation of a 670, I am going to assume you are looking at cards that are operating on the 680's board. You can get them on the shorter 670 boards but you lose some of the nice features like enhanced cooling and power delivery. With that, the 670 actually uses the "same" chip as the 680 with one of its main cores (there are 8 I believe) disabled. Both this and the 680 also operate on the 256-bit VRAM bus.

The 680 is NVIDIA's flagship single-gpu card. It is essentially a 670 with a few minor enhancements and all main cores enabled. You are looking at a 5-10% performance enhancement over the 670 with about a $100 price increase.

Hope I didn't miss anything in my explanation!

Edit: bah, Knufire ninja'ed a reply while I was typing

 

[siddy123]

As I am an AMD graphics card fan, the 7970 does look more appealing to me, but now you mention the 670 GTX and i have read a review on it i am now a little stuck between the cards.

I think i will take your advice and go for an Intel based system with an i5 3570K.

A Component i missed out is i would like to have a sound card. At the moment the Creative titanium X-Fi looks intresting. Double that with Corsair SP2500 speakers and the sound quality could be amazing.

I don't wish to change having just the single monitor i have now for bizarre personal reasons. but thanks for the suggestion, perhaps next time i might aim for Eyefinity or such related system.

 

[Knufire]

Quality sound is a whole 'nother area.

If you want speakers, expect to spend about $400 (£250) for some decent bookshelfs. Below that, the only thing I've heard of worth buying are the Kilpsch Promedias.

That being said, I think headphones are much better suited to gaming than speakers are. A quality headset (Audio Technica, Sennhiser, many others) paired with a nice sound card (ASUS Xonar Essence STX, Creative X-Fi Titanium) would be nice. I've heard that open back headsets are more comfortable than closed back to wear for long periods of time, but they do leak sound more.

This isn't really an audio focused forum, so if you want a real quality setup, go check out some of the reviews and buying guides at HeadFi.