Need advice for a new build, mostly for gaming and general work/browsing/media ect. Doubtful that I would do any video encoding. I will only be replacing the Mobo, CPU, RAM and Graphics card. Everything else I have is fine. My budget is around £400, maybe a little over. Been looking at the i3-530 and GTX460 but open to suggestions. kthxbai
Get this build: - INTEL CORE i3 530 2.93GHz (CLARKDALE) (SOCKET LGA1156), £85 -GIGABYTE GA-H55M-S2H Intel H55 (SOCKET 1156) DDR3 MICROATX MOTHERBOARD, £65 - CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2xGB) DDR3 12800C8 (1600MHz) DUAL CHANNEL KIT, £105 - XFX ATI RADEON HD 5770 XXX EDITION 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-EXPRESS GRAPHICS CARD, £140 OR -PALIT GEFORCE GTX 460 768MB GDDR5 PCI-EXPRESS GRAPHICS CARD, £150 Depending on which route you want to take, the radeon 5770 is a better GPU, I've got a 5850 PLEASE COULD I KNOW WHAT POWER SUPPLY YOU HAVE....
Sorry forgot to mention, 700w PSU. Also monitor res is 1440x900 but I have plans to upgrade to a 1920x1080 soon.
The GTX460 1GB is a faster GPU than the 5770 and only costs £33 more. If you were comparing the 5850 and the GTX460 it'd be a different story. But as it stands the GTX460 1GB is faster than the 5830, is around the same speed at the 5850, is cheaper and has features such as PhysX than the ATi cards don't have. Even thought the budget is small I'd recommend getting a faster GPU for gaming and a processor like the Pentium G6950 or the i3 530 as you suggested, and save money by just overclocking it.
PhysX doesn't matter a jot, as very few games use it, and those that do only use it for pointless things.
But as it stands, if you have a faster card with PhysX and a card that doesn't why would you choose the other? It's not only PhysX, it was just the first example that popped into my head, look at games like Just Casue 2 or Arkham that are optimised for Nvidia. You loose advanced graphics features or in the case of Arkham have to set your AA detail level through the CCC. I have a 5870 myself because it was the faster card for my price range, and I prefer it over the 480, but tbh at this price range the 1GB 460 is a no brainer.
I'm not disputing that, I prefer Havok myself and I really don't want to hijack this thread into a Nvidia vs ATi flame war. All I'm saying is, with ATi cards, as I found out myself from moving from Nvidia to ATi you do loose certain advanced graphics features in games that are optimised for Nvidia cards. As far as I'm aware doesn't happen with games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky and Call of Prypiat that are optimised for ATi, they just run slower on Nvidia hardware. The GTX460 1GB is faster than the 5770, 5830, and is on par with the 5850, is cheaper than the latter and no matter which was you look at it is has more features, even if you're never going to use them. It's a bit like if I was offered a car without seatbelts. Cars work fine without them and for 99.99% of the time I'm in a car I won't ever need them, but it's sure as hell nice to know I have them if I did.
i read a article a while back that basically says the physx system uses a old instruction set rather than 86x, therefore making it 10x slower but because the instruction set it uses is so obsolete no other manufacture considers using it. Physx is a big con.
I don't know how this thread moved into bashing PhysX, I said before in my other posts it's just one of the features the GTX460 has that no ATi card has yet. It's not only PhysX but GUGPU support, but advanced graphical features. Take Arkham Asylum, it has no native AA on ATi cards without a hack. Just Cause 2 has reduced AA levels, no SSOA, no Point Light Specular, no Bokeh Filter. Now you could say you wouldn't notice a difference with these settings off, but I can see a difference when I ran a in game benchmark with my old GTX275 with these feartures on and my new 5870 where I don't even have the option to turn them on. Obviously my new 5870 has alot more power than my GTX275 and the game runs smoother, but as far as I'm aware there isn't even a hack to enable these features. All I was trying to suggest was, as I mentioned twice above is the GTX460 1GB is a faster card than the 5770, 5830 and is on par with the 5850, costs less and has more features. For Syn's build this would be a better graphics card as he plans to upgrade to a 1080p monitor. I'm also not sure than x86, that was introduced in 1978 according to Wikipedia is a newer instruction set than Ageia/Nvidia PhysX that was introdcued in 2002. x86 was extended to support x64, but I class that as its own instruction set as not all processors or programs can use it yet. Even if the PhysX instructions sets are slower, GPU's are so much faster than CPU's it shouldn't matter. Plus I don't see how it can be a con, if PhysX really bothers you that much, go into the Nvidia control panel and switch it off.
Pretty much all P55 mobos support the i3 as a processor, they just can't display the output from the integrated graphics. So it'll work, but you can't use the onboard GPU, which isn't a problem if you are using a gaming graphics card.
yeah I realised about the onboard graphics but I would never use that anyway. So that aside all P55 boards will support an i3?
As far as I can tell. If you are worried, look at the manufacturer's website for the CPU support list of any given mobo and you should be golden. This is a highly recommended P55 board, and according to Gigabyte's site, supports the i3-530, 540, and 550. Have fun.
