Which PC? : - P5K3 deluxe/WiFi QX6850 4GB Corsair DDR3 1066 GTX8800 Ultra X-Fi Xtreme Audio 500GB WD caviar 700W Fortron Epsilon PSU 64-bit Vista or Striker Extreme QX6850 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066 2 x 8800GTX (SLI) X-Fi Xtreme Audio 500GB WD Caviar 900W Fortron Epsilon PSU 64-bit Vista Looking to play next gen DX10 games like Crysis and beyond at 1600x1200 at full settings on a CRT monitor for at least the next 2-3 years. Also Photoshop and Google Earth. The top system is 150 quid cheaper but my main priority is quality. Appreciate any thoughts.
In my personal opinion, neither. You don't need GTX SLI, as a single GTX will cut it in any game out there, and the money you save by buying one would be able to upgrade to a high end video card in the future when the GTX starts lagging behind a bit. DDR3 is a waste of money as it has little real world performance difference over DDR2 at the moment, and is about 4x as expensive. Try tweaking the first build for best price/performance. Get the P5K-Deluxe that users DDR2, and some Crucial Ballistix or other good quality DDR2. Drop the Ultra down to a GTX, as the Ultra is just an overclocked GTX when you get down to it. Then take the 700W Fortran and swap it out for something like a Corsair HX620. You can also drop the CPU to a Q6600 and easily overclock that to 3Ghz, which will give you the same performance as the QX6850 at that speed(since they would have the same FSB, cores and cache). Take the money you just saved and use it to upgrade the video card later when your system starts to lag a bit. The best plan for future proofing a gaming system is to save money for a new video card after a few years, as video cards become obselete very fast.
Neither. try something with a Q6600, 4gb DDR2 800, a single 8800GTX, and a Corsair HX 620. It'll be almost as fast for significantly less, more quality, and not overpriced.
You mean exactly what said in the post above yours? Not to be mean or anything, but that is exactly what I said to change to, just without the short explanations of each choice.
Is a single GTX really enough to play the next generation DX10 games coming out like Crysis etc at 1600x1200 at full settings on a CRT monitor? Wouldn't the QX6850 be better for "future-proofing"? Gravemind's explanations and insights are appreciated. Any and all input is welcome.
The second one is the best, but both are hugely fast. What everyone is saying is that you don't need to spend that much money to get similar performance. If you've got the cash though, go for it.
QFT, I currently use a 8800gtx card, there not a single game out there it wont play smoothly, save your money and add the extra card when things start to lag. Again, truth, the Q6600 g0 stepping cpu is much cheaper yet will overclock massively, just bump up the fsb to 333mhz and your be running at 3ghz without having to adjust any voltages on motherboard, also saving you a LOT of money, more than enough money to maybe invest in a better cooling solution, like water cooling for example. At present DDR3 is not really worth it, bang for buck, your better off with DDR2 untill DDR3 comes down in price substantially. the GTX will be suffcient for Crysis, the beta atm runs ok'ish on lesser spec hardware, the beta still needs optimizing tho, so a single GTX will be fine for Cysis. ^ Exactly
In terms of upgrade path, I'd bite the bullet on DDR3. I made the mistake of sticking with DDR RAM when DDR2 had only just came out, and lo and behold, when I went to buy my second gig, prices had skyrocketed and performance was sub par. The first system will offer a great upgrade path and will easily handle crysis. Although I agree with everyone on overclocking a Q6600, not to mention, don't get an ultra, and don't get SLI either. Neither are worth it, and the 'sli upgrade path' is pointless imo. By the time you need the power of SLI, you could spend the same money on a single card that will outperform it.
The difference is that by the time he needs more then 4GB of DDR2, Nahelem/AM3 will probably be out, and he would want to just do a whole system upgrade at that point.
Is air-cooling enough for a Q6600 overclocked to 3+ Ghz? 4GB DDR2 800, or 1066? Can a standard GTX be easily overclocked? Mobo would be a P5K Premium. Appreciate your input.
A standard GTX can be overclocked, and I saw this guide the other day on changing shader clocks also, it was for an 8800GTS, but a GTX should have the same method. There are plenty of programs out there for overclocking video cards, such as ATI Tool(works great with nVidia cards too) and RivaTuner. DDR2-800 running at a 1:1 ratio with the FSB would take you well over 3Ghz, and quality DDR2-800 will clock up to 1066 no issues. If you get a G0 stepping Q6600(which I believe you should at this point) you can get it up to 3Ghz with any decent air cooler, and possibly even on stock cooling(but I'm not sure about stock).
I wouldn't try for 3.0 on stock cooling. I'm running with a maxorb cooler and I had it up to 3.15 at one point.
I agree... especially if you intend OCing! The Scythe Ninja Plus [Rev B] is another good 'un... albeit a big/heavy bugger of a thing....
Appreciate the advice. Can a regular Q6600 be easily overclocked as well? How about the Asus Silent Knight II as a heatsink.
A regular Q6600 will be able to clock to 3ghz, just it will output more heat, so you will need a better cooling solution. Allthough the Asus heat sink you selected will work ok as long as the cpu is not overclocked, im not so sure about it handling overclocked to well. I would 2nd the heatsinks mentioned by Hazardous and Fod If you have not done so already, check out these reviews of various heatsinks, and you shall see how they perform against each other. Article 1, 2.
Thanks Delphium. If overclocking the Q6600 is not an option for me, can I still speed up RAM and graphics independently of the CPU? Mobo would be a P5K Premium.
Yes, you can run the ram on a higher memory divider then 1:1 and the graphics card core and memory clocks are unrelated to all of that. CPU overclocking isn't very hard though, so you could still be able to get the Q6600 up above stock if you need to, but 2.4Ghz quadcore is still plenty of performance.
