In the next week and a half I plan on ordering the parts to upgrade my system, this is what I have selected (from Scan using their Finance Option): LN27163 Intel i7 920, D0 SLEBJ S1366, Nehalem, 2.66 GHz £204.90 LN26454 Asus P6T Deluxe V2, Intel X58, SLi/Xfire, Sok 1366 £204.90 LN14373 Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound £4.95 LN25719 Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366RT 120mm heat sink KIT £51.62 LN25578 Thermalright Ultra Series Polycarbonate Fan Holder £4.59 LN24850 Thermalright 120mm Fluid Dynamic Bearing Fan £11.49 LN25380 LG GH22NS40 22x DVD±R, 16xDVD±DL £16.43 LN26163 CM STORM Sniper Black Ultra Mid Tower Gaming Case w/o PSU £124.17 LN27874 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3, PC3-12800 (1600) 7-7-7-20 £129.38 LN26468 Corsair Airflow Fan for up to 6 x module cooling £23.74 LN26886 2 X 1TB Seagate ST31000528AS Barracuda 7200.12 £125.93 Total cost at Scan £915 GX-199-SP 2 X Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic (1000/4200) Graphics Cards from Overclockers.co.uk (unless Scan can get them on/by the 30th), and side & bottom fans for the case direct from CoolerMaster. Total cost at other places £515 Total cost of upgrade: £1,430 I went for the Storm Sniper case as it has Dust Filters. I will be overclocking the i7 to around 3.6 - 3.8 (more if stable and cool). The TRUE will have the 2 fans in a push/pull config. I only get ATi cards and 2 4890's beat the 295 GTX anyway. I already have a CoolerMaster Real Power M 1000W PSU, 320Gb HDD, 17" Monitor, CLSB Audigy (1) PCI. Next year I will get a 24" Widescreen Monitor, 2 more HDDs, 1 SSD, CLSB PCI-E sound card and a Logitech 9000 webcam. Does all this sound OK?
Why not get a single 4890 or 4870 and then wait for DX11 cards to come out, instead of spending £300 right now when these cards will become outdated in 3 months?
Do you really need the Corsair Dominator 1600 C7 RAM? It is very overpriced for what it does. You could either go for this or this. Regarding the video cards, I agree with ashikamlani.
Thanks for the replies folks... I went for the 2 ATi cards as I won't be able to upgrade them until at least this time next year (Even if I only buy 1 now) and so thought it would be better to get as fast as possible now. 2x4890's beat 1xGTX295 from what I've read on various sites. Some of our stuff only supports a single card, others support Crossfire... When are the Ati 58xx series actually due out as I heard they were delayed until after Win7 in Oct. Are they actually going to be that much of an improvement over 48xx series? After all games that really take advantage of DX11 probably won't be out for at least a year! I went for the Dominator's because of overclocking, and as I understood it the lower the latencies the better? Is this not right? If I got the slower Dominator memory, and maybe a single 900/4200 4890 GPU then I would save a total of £347.97. Would this be better do you think? I may then be able to afford to get a single 58xx card in October/November. The GPU card is this one: LN28030 Sapphire HD 4890 Vapor-X, PCI-E 2.0, 4200MHz GDDR5, GPU 870MHz, 800 Cores, DVI/ D-Sub/ HDMI/ DP £160.99 Would this system run games such as Crysis, Far Cry, Bioshock, FEAR, The Sims 3, well?
What size screen do you have? Whether or not those games are playable depends largely on your screen resolution.
I have a 17" (1280x1024) LCD [Viewsonic VP171s]. I've read that the Sapphire 4890 Vapor-X (870/4200) can be overclocked easily to 950/4200 while still remaining fairly cool and quiet. It is only £161.
Oh, a single 4890 will play pretty much everything at max at that res, it's at 1920x1080 and up that you need to worry about SLI/Crossfire..
I plan on getting a 1920x1200 24" monitor next July so by then would have two 58xx's so that should cover it, yes?
Oh, for sure. You might want to even go down to a 4850/70 or GTX 260 for 1280x1024, a 4890 might be overkill.
Hmm... I think I would stick to the 4890 series, you've certainly given me a lot to think about! I may get the single 4890 Vapor-X for now, then a single 58xx in October and another in March next year, then the bigger monitor in July next year.
Sounds Good You will save a lot of money this way, and as said before the 4890 is perfect at smaller resolutions.
If you want my advice, seeing as you're putting it all on finance anyway, get some DDR3 2000 RAM.. I wish I did. I got the Dominator C8 1600 stuff.. and it doesn't overclock very well. Being able to have the headroom to have the RAM go faster makes it easier to overclock the system. As some BCLK/Multi combinations mean you have to run either over, or under 1600, and obviously, if your RAM doesnt go past 1600 easily, you'll be running it slower. Given the high bandwidth you'll have anyway... that's not a great problem, but knowing this before you even buy the rig, you'd be silly to not buy the fastest RAM possible IMO. I'm sure there's cheaper DDR3 2000 than the Corsair out there though. Other than that, it all looks good. Don't wait for DX11... what's the point? Hardly any games use DX10, never mind 11. Sure there might be a faster, better DX11 card soon... but there's ALWAYS something better just around the corner. Buy the best you can now. Plus... with a 17" monitor, you could actually spend around £100 on a card and get great performance in pretty much all games. Why such a tiny monitor on such a hi-end rig?
2000MHz memory is still too expensive a the mo. DX11 is being waited on by games companies whereas DX10 was seen as a flop. Many say that as Win7 is what Vista should have been, so DX11 is what DX10 should have been. The 17" monitor is the one I've already got on my current system (an old P4) and I will be getting a new one next year, a 24" 1920x1200 jobbie. It's always tricky to make the final decision isn't it. I could wait for the DX11 cards, then there's Intels 32nm i7 8 core HT chips due by Xmas, then SATA 6Gb/s and USB3 just into the new year. It never ends!!!! Hence the reason why I'm not by the most expensive parts so that if need be I can upgrade each year to better. In the past I could only upgrade every 6 years and only spend about £400 a year on the PC, so now that I can spend upto £1,200 every year I am making the most of it...! According to all the reviews/charts I've found, a single 4890 in Crysis at Maximum quality settings only averages 28fps (give or take a couple), and I hate playing games at anything less than maximum quality settings.