Hardware What Hardware Should I Buy? - July 2009

Great news that there's an AM3 mobo out there from MSI that came in slightly less than the last (only?) good value AM2+ board, the K9A2-CF - When Win 7 arrives I can look at a new build with the right backbone.

 

Does the AMD 770 chipset come with ACC? or does it depend on the manufacturer or south bridge?

 

If you can find one (a bit like the A-Team) is the 6600 still good choice?

 

The link for the memory in your Premium Player section is linking to the wrong memory...

It is linking to the http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/memory/2009/01/29/g-skill-f3-12800cl8t-6gbhk-tri-channel-ddr3/7 on your site but links to http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231247 on newegg.

 

thats the thing i keep getting confused on...why recommend a card that you cant find, and now that a gts 250 is at the same price (cheaper after $25-$30 MIR). even when it was $130-135 it was still the better deal.

plus, why the switch from 2 x 260's in sli to the 4870 x2? the 260's are still cheaper despite the price drop.

 

well then get busy!

j/k but I would like to know what's going on in displayworld as I'm planning on getting a 24" soon

 

Where's the P183?

 

I'd also recommend the Dell 2209WA, features an E-IPS panel for under £200 and I've never looked back Only downside for me is the lack of 1:1 pixel mapping although it supports Interlaced signals VIA VGA which not many monitors these days like, I use it for my Wii sometimes at 480i (GC) and 480p (Wii)

Nice round up guys, glad you put something in for the £500-600er's and picked the 4870 1GB I was after That is actually the build I was gonna make only with a Corsair HX450 and Coolermaster HAF 932 (already bought, got for £10 more than the 922 on CCL XD), interesting to see you recommending the MSI 770 but I'm still torn between that and the GB 790X for Crossfire as I plan on getting another 4870 1GB.

 

Need some monitors, looking at the mo

Also what's happened to the P180/2....are the new antec's really better? or just newer?

 

It's close enough to give you an idea

trig - 192SP 260s are cheaper, not the full fat 216SP.

Newegg sold out of the Sapphire in the time it took me to write that link last Friday and today. I don't magic an article out in a morning (although I wish I could!)

The 250s have come down a lot yes, but all the cheap ones when we planned the system.. 10 days ago were on offer only and out of stock. I'll probably change it to a 250 next month.

P182.. Akasa Omega.. Antec 902.. too many choices - we had to pick one.

And P183?? :-S

 

oh god no, not p183, you are better off with 902

 

"...but for the price it's certainly hard to ignore the HD 4870 X2, and for 24 or 30in monitor gaming there is no single card capable of generating the FPS needed for very high image quality or extremely large resolutions. (...)"

Agreed!

It is still the best single card ever!

 

Was English your first language?

Considering the cut and paste (quite rightly, and understandably) nature of parts of this article could you not have copied in the monitor section from last month or included blurb as to why the most important part of a pc was being left out?

 

never understood why stuff differs in price so much over there...216sp 260's over here are $170 before $20 rebate. cheapest x2 was $370 i think...feel sorry for you guys pause not...

 

Explained in previous posts.

 

The Zotac GTX 275 is now £186.29 inc VAT

 

Okay, the P183 isn't beautiful, but at least it's a sight better than the 902.

 

It makes no sense to recommend the 4770 for the budget build when the 4870 is $7 more in the US..

 

I must say that I question the wisdom of the Gaming Workhorse CPU.

An E8400 (E0) with its 6MB of L2 Cache, which OCs like stupid to 3.6 with no extra voltage, would easily outperform the Quad in games, while costing a mere £117.73 inc. VAT (http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=66014).
This leaves us with an extra £121.40 to spend on graphics.

Add that to the cost of the 275 (£165.08) and we have £286.48 to spend on graphics. That will get us the 4870 X2 with £46 to spare

 

It's not a gaming machine alone. It's a workstation-gamer for the serious multi-tasker, a dual core is not enough - we're trying to build up levels of computing power.

The whole point of the workhorse PC is that it's got plenty of MHz for hardcore gaming with future potential in mind with those extra cores, as well as enough cores for crazy multitasking (bar Core i7). If you wanted to drop in a dual core - swap it out for the tri-core in the enthusiast overclocker, but then I'd argue just swap out the E8xxx for an E7xxx that'll do 4.2GHz just the same for less money.