New setup acceptable?
well, a friend of mine helped me put together this system, please let me know after reading below if you think i should move to an SLI ready mobo
Mobo-Asus P5K-E/wifi (p35 chipset)
CPU-intel core 2 duo 3.16Ghz
RAM- 4 GB OCZ sli ready
HD-500GB seagate SATA2
Video cards - dual Nvidia Geforce 9800 GTX+
I originally wanted an SLI setup simply to be able to occasionally play COD4 at highest resolution and figured it couldnt hurt if i was going to be running 3dsMax, autoCAD, Catia V5, Maya, etc... mind you I readily admit I am new to this I just wanted a decent platform to work with as my old computer died a while back. I didnt know ahead of time that this mobo wasnt SLI compatible as it uses "cross fire" technology. i guess my buddy was in a hurry as he got deployed 2 days before he helped me put this together on newegg. Do you guys think i will be ok with just one graphics card? that way I could send one back and put that money towards a tablet.... thanks in advance oh mighty gurus of graphics.
Mobo-Asus P5K-E/wifi (p35 chipset)
CPU-intel core 2 duo 3.16Ghz
RAM- 4 GB OCZ sli ready
HD-500GB seagate SATA2
Video cards - dual Nvidia Geforce 9800 GTX+
I originally wanted an SLI setup simply to be able to occasionally play COD4 at highest resolution and figured it couldnt hurt if i was going to be running 3dsMax, autoCAD, Catia V5, Maya, etc... mind you I readily admit I am new to this I just wanted a decent platform to work with as my old computer died a while back. I didnt know ahead of time that this mobo wasnt SLI compatible as it uses "cross fire" technology. i guess my buddy was in a hurry as he got deployed 2 days before he helped me put this together on newegg. Do you guys think i will be ok with just one graphics card? that way I could send one back and put that money towards a tablet.... thanks in advance oh mighty gurus of graphics.
Replies
Quad-cores are great for 3d work and for games. I wouldn't worry about SLI. What is he thinking getting you to buy two 9800gtx cards? They're "ancient" now.
I would recommend to buy the 4870x2 from ATI which is around the corner, but I cannot recommend it if you do 3d work, as I've never heard too good reviews about ATI cards and 3d programs.
But, what cards are they? BFG or eVGA? If so, you could "step up" or just return them. If you like it, keep it. It's a little late to be asking if you already have the stuff. 8)
[edit] Just checked, newegg carries the q6600 for $5 more than your CPU.
http://xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/sapphire-radeon-hd4850-cf_5.html#sect1
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4850,1957.html
- Horrible OpenGL support
- Buggy drivers
- Fixes for specific games taken out of newer drivers
- Fixes for specific games that break other games
In general they seemed to care more about getting it to benchmark well and market it with chrome hellhounds and NEXTREAME GRAFIX!!1 instead of providing something that worked consistently. Nvidia on the other hand, hasn't been bought out and ridden into the ground, hasn't had nearly as many issues as ATI in development and in management.
Maybe they've changed, maybe they've found their groove and are finally putting out solid products but its a bit late to woo me. Once bitten bla bla bla...
With the nvidia chipset you're able to go SLi when you want. I'd go with the GTX 260 or 280 like mentioned, but only one for now.
Just my two cents, but in reality, SLi is gimmicky and doesn't REALLY matter unless you want CRAZY resolutions full AA, and be able to play at 120FPS.
the 6600 is years old, the 9300 and the 9450 are the new 6600 ..
Get a quad... the q6600 is very good.
Forget DDR3, is too expensive currently and the latencies are too high usually to compensate the price... 8Gb of DDR2 are very good and affordable.... btw, you're gonna need a 64bits OS to use them plenty.
About the graphics card, the 9800GTX has a good price currently. The 38XX series from ATI have a good price too due to the new 48XX... so perhaps an old 3870 is a good choice for you .... but I always preferred NVIDIA due to the better OpenGL support, PhysX and CUDA.... and, after all, there are no DX10.1 games so...
And just a note.... the Nehalems(Core i7, pardon!) and the new 1366/1166 sockets are comming... the 775 socket is almost dead... and DX11 gonna be presented in December. Perhaps it's a good idea to wait 6 months to update your computer
-q6600 or q9450 depending on budget
-gobs of DDR2 RAM since it's so cheap (4-8gb would be good)
-if you get an Asus board, just read some reviews first. I have really enjoyed my previous two Asus boards, though they had a few small issues that were fixed via updates or workarounds
-get a eVGA or BFG Nvidia GPU so you can step-up and BFG has a double-lifetime warranty, which helps resale value, and they're step-up period is 10 days longer than eVGA's (i.e.-100 instead of 90)
-go for a GTX 260 or GTX 280, again depending on budget. SLI isn't all that it's made up to be (doesn't work in some games, some people notice slight "micro stuttering" due to alternate-frame-rendering, etc.).
:poly121:
intel core i7 will appear on market very soon, and prices will down a lot. q6600 is good if you are going to do an overclock to more than 3ghz (not a good computer for rendering and 24/7). The bad side is that you need a good mobo (expensive), better ram, and proper coolers (expensive too). People pay a plus in better mobo and coolers, when they could pay less opting for a better cpu.
If you are not going to do OC, wait to buy the newer quadcores. Intel announced 8600 and some ppl reached 6ghz doing OC. I would buy a quadcore too, but quad core of 3ghz or 2,9.
Another problem is to choose the graphic card. Actual graphic cards are good, but i recommend to wait for the new 280 nvidia that will ship soon. It will be the best choice now. With a 9800 gtx+ you will have enough to play games well, but not with crysis at 24".
Another side is that actual machines increases your electricity bill a lot (mine was doubled). They consume more and more energy for a few fps only.
Some help from 4gamer to decide which one to buy:
Yep, it's very hard to decide
My bro is waiting to see what happens with i7 and then, to buy a new computer.
As graphic card, for 3d, i recommend you to forget ATI.
cheers
also, what is the difference in the "bit" of a system i.e. 64bit
Right now im thinking about keeping my p5k-e/wifi unless theres a valid reason to change my mobo. and i like the idea of the q6600 overclocked to faster speeds but i just hate slow computers is all and i dont want my compy to run like molasess just because i have two apps open.
1. A 32bits OS is limited to 4Gb by design. 2 pow 32 is 4Gb... but usually the OS needs to partition the RAM in two sections... one for the kernel and drivers and other for the user. Usually this is set as 2Gb + 2Gb. With a trick you can change this to 1Gb for the drivers + 3Gb for the user ... that-s the famous 3Gb model for Windows. With 64 bits the programs can access much more memory, so those 8Gb won-t be wasted.
2. The x64 instructions are much better. In x86 assembler you need to do really weird things, the opcodes are mixed x87 and SSE, etc... The x64 set cleared all the legacy things and was designed better... that-s why usually the x64 OS are faster doing mathematical things.
3. The x64 OS are usually more secure. That-s because the x64 set includes things like the Data/execution/prevention aka DEP by hardware.