My current Dell isn't hacking it anymore. I run two monitors, one at 1920x1200, other at 1280x1024. I play Eve Online, Total War, The Sims 3 (¬_¬), Flight Simulator and a few other games. I'd like to play Crysis/Far Cry 2/other games that I've not been able to play with computer. So I need to upgrade. I was going to wait for the i5/P55 range to be released, but I think I'd rather spend the extra £150-200 to get i7. I want this computer to last much longer than any of my previous ones. I've never bought top end before, but I think it's worth it this time round when the price difference is a couple of hundred rather than £500 like it was with the P4 EEs etc. I've already got the case; a Lian Li PC-A05. So I just need the components. Here's what I was thinking: Intel Core i7 D0 920 Asus P6T or MSI X58 Pro? I want a motherboard with both SLi and Crossfire, but is the Asus worth £30~ more than the MSI? 6GB DDR3 Corsair XMS3 1600 Asus GeForce GTX275 Western Digital WD6401AALS Caviar Black 640GB 32Mb Cache DVD+RW Corsair HX520W modular PSU Vista x64/Windows 7 x64 when it comes out. What do you guys think? I guess my main question is are the i7 chips likely to go up in price when i5 gets released? Is £200-220 as low as the 920 is going to go? Also, is the GTX285 worth the extra over the 275?
Looks good to me. I would go for the Asus motherboard due to the slightly better chipset cooling. The 285 isn't worth the extra over a 275 in terms of price to perfromance ratio, maybe do SLi with 2 275's? You might be able to save a few quid by getting some slightly slower RAM, 1600MHz isn't really needed, and you won't really see any benefit according to tests etc. Otherwise its a nice rig, good luck Gaz
Unfortunately, yes, on both counts. In fact, Intel's plan of action (IIRC, someone set me straight if I'm being an idiot) is to not produce any more Nehalem i7s other than the Extreme Editions after Lynnfield is released on the first of September. So if you're particularly concerned about system longevity - especially being able to upgrade to a more powerful CPU at some point down the line - it's actually in your best interest to purchase a Lynnfield-based system come September rather than a Nehalem-based system right now. - Diosjenin -
Not too bothered about upgrading the CPU down the line. I'd rather keep just one for as long as possible. Hence wanting to get the 920, as it seems it's going to be noticably more powerful than these new i5 chips (Triple channel, hyperthreading etc). Especially when overclocked. Also, what about the Gulftown chips? They're going to be 1366 too IIRC, not 1156.
That said, the Lynfield chip bit-tech has overclocks by 1.1GHz so perhaps it might just be worth waiting??? The graphics card on the new socket also directly connects to the CPU which promises better performance. It seems SLI/Crossfire never really works. 275 should be fine or go for the 4870X2 if you need it ultra fast but again, not sure if it's worth it. And again, new direct 11 graphics cards should be out soon so... :s On memory, from what I've read, it seems Ram timings are more significant than actual clockspeed in gaming. So look for the DDR3 1333 with the lowest latencies instead. Also, I'm not sure that PSU can run dual graphics cards anyway
On a side note, you may want to go with a slightly more "powerful" PSU. Especially if you want to SLI in the future, 520W will just not cut it.
