2010-09-15, 03:40 PM
KajitiSouls Wrote:Oh wow that was a lot more advice than I was anticipating! And a lot more technical terms being thrown around than I'm used to x_X
Anyways, quick responses... don't be offended if I didn't address you specifically or anything, I'm kinda in a hurry and won't settle down until this evening.
--I thought the MOBO came with a CPU? No, they're sold separately.
--What's the difference between Intel and AMD MOBOs? Price, socket compatibility. Some motherboards have more features than others, but it comes at a cost.
--Water cooling = no. Water + electronics = destruction. If you're not careful
--I thought about a heat sink, but I honestly don't have much of a clue how much heat these desktops generate =/ I know the ventilation is much better than a laptop though *points to laptop dying in summer* If you're not overclocking, the stock coolers are sufficient, but I know for a fact that the stock AMD cooler is quite loud.
--I don't think I need a quad core. Hell, a dual core isn't twice as good as a single core, and I think quad is probably overkill anyways. Well, I'm not trying to stear you away from a quad, but you can probally fit one in your budget. If the main purpose of this build is gaming, then you might want to fit one for the newer games that allow multicore rendering.
--On the topic of processors... do they actually come separate from the MOBO? o.O Yes
--I don't know if I'm going to wait for 2011's new architecture design from the companies. Computer technology gets updated every few years anyways. Yes, but We're at a point where AMD Is finally updating their CPU architecture for the first time In 7 years. Intel also plans on revising it's nehalem architecture, but the performance isn't significantly better than current generation i7's. Intel is also killing off socket 1156 and 1366 meaning expandability not possible for current generation users.
--About the Nvidia vs. Radeon thing... I know the two companies are neck and neck up each other's asses, but I saw a benchmark test chart online. What I basically saw was a bunch of Radeon cards around my price range up on the high end, with Nvidia dotting the place. Nvidia came out on top, but those GPUs are $800+, which is ridiculous for my budget. However, it doesn't tell me anything about quality in the individual departments, which I was hoping you guys could fill me in on. Well how much do you want to spend on a GPU? At $300, a GTX470 is a better buy than a HD5850(Performance wise). At $200, the 1GB GTX460 is a better buy than 5770 and at 130-150, the 5770 is a better buy than the GTS450. Prices are really really weird right now, but I believe Nvidia is trying to play catch up considering they were late to the market with the Power hungry GF100 fermi core. I mean, It's usually ATI who has the price and performance down while Nvidia normally overprices, but the times have changed and it seems the 58xx series cards are overpriced at the moment. The 58xx series is already a year old, but still performs close with Nvidia's offerings in DX9 and DX10. When it comes to DX11 and tesselation, Nvidia comes on top due to the fact that they emulated 16 cores onto their tessellation engine opposed to ATI's single dedicated tessellator. Compared to the GTX470 and 480, the HD5850 and 5870 consume less power and put out less heat while giving almost identical performance. If heat and power consumption concerns you there's the option of buying a 5850 and or Getting nvidia's brand new GTX460. The GTX460 is built off a newer GF104 architecture and produces less heat and dosen't consume as much power as its bigger brothers. Performance wise, the GTX460 is weaker than a 5850, but performs around or better than the 5850 when it comes to DX11 and tessellation. At $200 this card performs really good and offers amazing price and performance. Be sure to get the 1GB model over the 762mb version due to the 192 bit bus bottle necking GPU performance. Of course, that's if you choose that route.
Quality wise, the Reference ATI 5800 series was/were superior to Nvidia's reference cards due to the Voltera Digital phase controller, but as of now, those cards are like non existent as new and have been replaced with newer non reference models which feature cheap analog phases much like nvidia's reference models. If you want quality, you're going to have to leave that to the PCB partner aka, what brand you decide to buy.
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