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Build Advice Final check!

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by longweight, 28 May 2011.

  1. longweight

    longweight Possibly Longbeard.

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    Which soundcard sorry?
     
  2. longweight

    longweight Possibly Longbeard.

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    Which gigabyte board then?

    I am using a 40 inch Sony LED TV at the moment, dual monitor set up will have to wait a couple of months...
     
  3. jasonst888

    jasonst888 What's a Dremel?

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    Asus P8P67 Pro, MSI P67A -GD53 (no need for the more expensive versions), Gigabyte UD4

    With all three the difference is stupidly minor, one man on here will tell you asus is crap another will tell you they are brilliant! to be honest you will have to pick your poison and live with it....I went for the asus and not had a problem, know 4 people who have done the same and they haven't had a problem, but others on here wont touch them. What I will say is the Asus is the biggest selling (I think) and the majority of people who dont have a problem wont post on forums or reviews just to say its gone fine....that said the GD53 is just as good and a lot cheaper....so up to you really, but got to agree the sabertooth is a waste of money for next to no benefit!

    Also dont have time to check now but the 570 might not be the best choice for such a large screen, as I understand it more memory on the card will help with this, and 1.25gb is not loads???? But I'll bow to greater wisdom on this one if others can confirm or deny my suspicions? Just thought I'd raise the point!
     
  4. longweight

    longweight Possibly Longbeard.

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    Thanks Jason, I hadn't thought about it not being suitable enough!

    Could anyone comment?
     
  5. Subv3rse

    Subv3rse What's a Dremel?

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    Longweight - Have a look at my thread if you want to see the Sabertooth inside a Silverstone Raven, which I built yesterday- The Sabertooth IS good, but I think it's very specific too. For my needs I love it - I personally hate motherboards with thousands of pointless features on it that I simply disable in bios anyway. I simply want decent storage controllers (without resorting to secondary cards), decent ram, decent IRQ sharing on the PCIe ports (and spacing) and a convenient layout. Depending on your feelings for on-board vs pci sound cards, that takes up a very minor point.

    Suffice to say my own opinion of the Sabertooth so far is it's brilliant, it's different, and it's trimmed down to what I feel are the bare essentials, which for me justify the cost because I'm not likely to interrupt conflict between the thousands of other bits "bolted on" for "extra value" that I'll never use in my life.

    Oh, and I've used Asus mainly - had some with major problems, had others without. I have no experience with Gigabyte or MSI really, but I tend to find that if you use any of their bundled software, you're in for a world of hurt, regardless of who they are.

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    Subv3rse
     
  6. Subv3rse

    Subv3rse What's a Dremel?

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    Actually I can help with the GPU on this one too - the 6950 2Gb is comparative to the 570 in benchmarks, but yes, the 2Gb will assist you if you want to deal with high level eyecandy at high resolutions - read AA/AF. I'd suggest 2Gb minimum if those points matter to you. If not, then 2Gb will help anyway with tex load at high res (dual screening). Otherwise less MAY hitch a little.

    Sorry, I should elaborate a little there too - the OC editions are certainly comparitive to the 570's as stock 6950 already wins out over stock 560. (Game dependent, but more in favour of AMD, though lacking Physx/Cuda/Arguably Not-As-Good tesselation)
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    Subv3rse
     
    Last edited: 28 May 2011
  7. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    Gigabyte boards are easy to identify, kinda like Nvidia graphic cards.

    Models usually vary from UD3 to UD9 or UD7.
    Higher that last number, the higher end the board. Usually the UD7 and UD9 are for extreme overclockers, and want every features.

    UD4, UD5 is the mid range. Usually the UD5 is the same as the UD4 but a larger heat-sink on the north and south bridge, second Ethernet card (or something else, like more USB 3.0 ports), and more or powered eSATA ports, and other minor things. UD5 models (except when 3 way SLi was new) you have 3 card SLI/Crossfire support, instead of 2.

    In my case, I got the UD5 from the X58 chipset, because it was on special, (20-30$ more than the UD4) and as I was aiming for ultra quiet computer fan cooled, I know that my fans would run at very low speed, and would get fans aimed for more quietness than pushing air... so I needed the larger heatsink on the south and northbridge, to improve board cooling.

    If there is a "P" in front, it's an updated revision of the board where new feature has been added... like USB 3.0. Example: UD4 was released before USB 3.0 was out. Now, USB 3.0 is out, Gigabyte releases UD4P which has USB 3.0 to it.

    As I don't think you will overclock your motherboard like no tomorrow, and just seek for a nice quality build, with options and ability to overclock mostly your CPU and possibly memory, I would suggest the Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3. Of course, if you think you might need better north/south bridge cooling, or plan to overclock them, than the P67A-UD5-B3 is another option.

    The board is colored black, which will provide you a close overall look to the ASUS Sabertooth, where the board is black (obviously without the plastic cover up).

    And here is a feature comparison:
    UD4
    > 12-phase power (the more you have, the better the CPU will be stable when you overclock, and cooler the power phases units will be). Back in the old days when we passed from 2 phase (usually OEM's, and cheap boards) power to 4, this was a big system stability boost jump even when you don't overclock. Now, the lowest you can go is 4, I believe, and it's plenty when you don't overclock, due to increase build quality and better engineering.
    So here you have 12 of them.. but what happens is that you have 6 that are use, and the other 6 are redundant, in the case of overheating or non-permanent failure it won't shut down your computer or freeze just switch the other set, and switch back to the other ones, once it's their turn. See it as if you have a backup RAID (RAID1) but for CPU power management.

    > Intesil VRD 12 chip, which from my understanding it allows a communication between power management of the processor and voltage regulator controller, to increase system stability
    > Dual BIOS with 3TB HDD support
    > SATA 6Gbps and the rest of course
    > 2x USB 3.0
    > 2x eSATA ports
    > Gigabit Ethernet, of course
    > and several other minor features common on about all Gigabyte boards trough the CPU socket series model


    UD5
    > has 20-phase power, with the same technology as mentioned above, but instead of 6 power phase used at a time, it uses 10.

    > Bigger heatsink for the south and north bridge
    > Intesil VRD 12 chip, which from my understanding it allows a communication between power management of the processor and voltage regulator controller, to increase system stability
    > Dual BIOS with 3TB HDD support
    > 4x USB 3.0
    > SATA 6Gbps of course
    > 2 powered eSATA ports (which are also USB 2.0. (it's a combo port. Works very well, and hold very well the USB and eSATA plugs. I have it on my Dell laptop, and on my motherboard.))
    > Firewire support
    > Gigabit Ethernet, of course
    > 3 way SLI/Crossfire



    heumm it's not the size of the screen that counts.. it's the resolution. TV's are 1080p.
    So 1920x1080... a GTX 460 will handle that no problem with current games at max settings. A GTX 570 will provide enough power for max settings for a very long time. Of course, going with multiple monitors or higher resolutions, changes things, and now a more powerful GPU would be needed.
     
    Last edited: 29 May 2011
  8. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    So, why not buy the lower end board which has less features?!

    I don't know if you know, but USUALLY, the lower end boards is the fancy one, with less features.
    Hmm.. maybe it's really for a very small market.
     
  9. Subv3rse

    Subv3rse What's a Dremel?

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    Ha, ok, my description was probably a little lacking there. The quality of the components are, arguably, better designed. The quality of the controllers are better "for gaming", by a small margin, so I can only presume the system has been optimised for that sort of throughput. The thermal shield is something I can't comment on yet, as I've not had mine long enough to tell whether it's good or not, but it's a nice, sturdy, well constructed quality board that, with other features, fits the exact profile i was looking for. Moreover, it only cost me £120, which is cheaper than say the Asus P8P6 Deluxe. By a lot.

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    Subv3rse
     
  10. crosshair

    crosshair It's life Jim but not as we know it

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    A GTX 570 will be more than adequate for a screen that size. In fact, it's not about size, but resolution.
    A 570 will play games on a 30" monitor @ 2560x1600. That's 4,096,000 pixels.
    A 24" monitor @ 1920x1200 has 2,304,000 pixels.
    The highest possible resolution on a TV is 1920x1080. Irrespective of how big it is. That's 2,073,600 pixels. Which is less than both of those monitors.
    The only drawback with using a TV with a PC, is that you end up sitting too close to the screen to appreciate its resolution.
     
  11. .//TuNdRa

    .//TuNdRa Resident Bulldozer Guru

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    Asus Xonar DX, although most of the Xonar series seems to be good, as the GX mode functions with excellence at taking DirectX sound and using it, up until the game crashes, but still: It's easily, easily far better than Motherboard Audio, and it has the little touches, such as a Front Audio Port connector, so you can use Front-Audio through the sound-card as well.
     
  12. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    As another motherboard suggestion, you have the new Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD which feature with a 20GB SSD and uses Intel's Smart Response technology to turn your HDD into a hybrid one for more a bit more performance.

    The board is expected to be out this June. Obviously they are no reviews yet, but perhaps something to keep an eye on.
    http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3896#ov
    http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/05/27/gigabyte-mobo-with-integrated-ssd-due-in-ju/1
    http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/28/gigabyte-bolts-an-ssd-to-a-motherboard-so-you-dont-have-to/

    It also has switchable graphics feature
     
    Last edited: 28 May 2011
  13. jasonst888

    jasonst888 What's a Dremel?

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    Yes a 570 can run at 1080p or higher res if need be thats not the point here. The point is that on a 30 inch screen the 1080p res wont look so good without some aa on, and this is where the higher memory on the card helps, 2gb on a hd6950 (which is cheaper and can be flashed to a hd6970 (only revision 1)) or so id been lead to believe? But either way as with the mobo's the differences in between the HD6950 (flashed), HD6970 and gtx 570 are minor and really down to preference.....and budget

    But again i dont really know a lot about using a 30inch screen...
     
  14. longweight

    longweight Possibly Longbeard.

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    Thanks for all the information guys! I haven't got time to read it all now but I will later on this morning!

    As crosshair said I thought it was related to pixels not the size of the screen? I will probably go from the TV to 2 x 24" monitors at 16:10 if they are still available in a couple of months!
     
  15. longweight

    longweight Possibly Longbeard.

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    Oh and I sit about 2m away from the TV Crosshair :D
     
  16. longweight

    longweight Possibly Longbeard.

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  17. jasonst888

    jasonst888 What's a Dremel?

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    The UD4 is a good solid mobo, my preference is towards the Asus P8P67 pro, but if this is cheaper then go for it! :p

    If you intend to go dual screens at some point in the future then deffo consider amd, as eyefinity is very good at multi screen gaming! (sounding like a little bit of a fan boy here :p) But in all honesty I keep plugging the HD6950 because I think its the best value for money + great performance! Plus you bump up to dual screen resolutions and the 2gb card will deffo be the better choice!
     
  18. Subv3rse

    Subv3rse What's a Dremel?

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    I have to agree with Jasonst888 here - I've been running benchmarks on my MSI Twin Frozr 6950 2Gb over the past day, 1920x1080, 16AF, 4xSSAA and the results are simply amazing! Disclaimer: I have nothing to compare it against as I haven't used any high end nVidia's lately, but nothing I throw at it seems to really put a dent in this thing.

    __________
    i5 2500k, MSI HD6950 TwinFrozr III Power Edition, Asus Sabertooth P67 (Rev B3), Corsair XMS3 8Gb (1600Mhz) CAS 9-9-9-27, Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb, Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro, Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 750W 80+ Gold, Silverstone RV02B-EW Evolution, Samsung BD-ROM, Dell U2311H-S 23" IPS
     
  19. longweight

    longweight Possibly Longbeard.

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    I did look at the ATI cards but every test and benchmark shows the 570 whipping the 6950....
     
  20. jasonst888

    jasonst888 What's a Dremel?

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    hd 6950 flashed bios into a HD6970, not a certain thing ill admit but ive not heard about very many failing this, then for £190-£200 you got a HD6970 which is comparable to the GTX570. But up to you, if you have the money to burn go for it, just thinking if you want to grab a deal the HD6950 is the way to go! :p
     
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