Build Advice Would like a hand with hardware

At the moment I am thinking of a new (complete) build from my current spec but keeping the GPU as that is relatively new. This build may be happening in the Summer 2012

What I was am planning to do with the new build is to game with virtulization as well!

I am also trying out a few things as well so that is the main reason that I am virtulising at the moment.

So I was thinking of the AMD FX-6 6100 or FX-8120 vs the Intel i5 2500k?

I know that if it is AMD it has to have "AMD Virtulization" and Intel with "Virtualization Technology" to run Server Hyper-V.

Budget is about £650 at the moment but then may go over a little or under (Depends on the upgrading).

Many thanks

Mr.a

 

go with the i5 2500K

In short the FX series are not great CPU's, they are particularly poor in cpu intensive gaming situations.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-fx-8120-6100-4100_6.html

 

Whilst I agree the 2500k is the default choice here I do recall that the K series have certain vitulization features disabled.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/52209,52210

(i5 2500k vs 2500).

Whether this is an issue for the op I don't know.

 

Yeah that would be a problem as I would like to run Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V as the main OS therefore the CPU will have to support the Virtulization Technology! Well that sucks that the 2500k doesnt support it!
What would be a good option other than the 2500k for Intel then? For gaming and virtulization.

 

Sorry wasnt aware of such things.

Are all K series affected by this?

A stock 2500 is still a beast of a cpu tbh.

 

The 2500K does support virtulization but only VT-x and not VT-d.

I believe it is the same story for the 2600K as well.

The non K varieties both support VT-d and have limited overclocking potential (4 bins above max turbo so roughly 4GHz each). I would have thought that with virtulization you would be after stability rather than outright speed so the limited OC potential may not be such a big issue?

You would have to look at Bulldozer vs Sandybridge benchmarks that specifically look at virtulization to see which would be the best direction to take. Gaming wise there won't be that much in it at resolutions of 1920x1080 and above.

The AMD FX series (ignoring the FX-4100) are not slow specifically they are just very inefficient.

 

I'm not that bothered about OC as if it is a decent enough machine then I wont need to OC. Yes the stability is better to have when I am virtualizing the other machines.

Yeah I'll be running it on a heavy GPU (560 Ti 448) so that will mean that I'll have enough graphics power to game. Since a lot will be better than the Q6600 (still a decent CPU!).

So what build would you recommend for me then?

Also to add I will be doing a little bit of Video and picture editing as well on it!

 

Your not planning on gaming in a VM running on Hyper-V are you?

 

No I am not planning on gaming on a VM machine. I am planning on the physical machine or have a second partition to have another OS to run all the games!

 

Good. Just checking. You would have been very disapointed when you found your gaming VM had a GPU called "Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus Video Interface" and not Nvidia 560 TI.

Yep. A non K series 2500 will get all the hardware virtualisation assists and be better performing than a AMD offering.

2500 at stock speed will be fine for gaming. How many VM's are going to be running concurrently? You'll most likely find that RAM will be your biggest limiting factor but with DDR3 being so cheap get the most your motherboard can take. Probably 32 GB.

 

Yeah I know the issues with the VMs graphical processing powers! Never good really! I just like having them there so that I can mess around and not mess my main machine up!

Sounds like a plan to have more RAM in the machine at DDR3 level.

But then again with virtulizing if I have more cores then it'll be better in some ways. Then again the 2500 is a nice processor is also nice for gaming. Still the price is what I am aware of as well!