Karrde's Lookin' to Start a Build - New Tech Question

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

I was only looking for info on new technologies and see if I should hold off, but ok, build a rig thread it is ;P  I'm seriously tempted to do two of the new DX11 geforce cards SLI.  Or maybe just one and buy a 2nd when they come down in price.

[Didzo]

Intel or AMD? Also, budget?

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Like I said, I was asking about new tech ;P  No idea for a budget yet since I'm not buying yet.  Probably going with one of the core i5.  Something like

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819115215 since the i7's are still pointlessly expensive.

[Kirby]

Karrde link=topic=4601.msg154377#msg154377 date=1274910782]
I was only looking for info on new technologies and see if I should hold off, but ok, build a rig thread it is ;P  I'm seriously tempted to do two of the new DX11 geforce cards SLI.  Or maybe just one and buy a 2nd when they come down in price.

If that option is remotely affordable, you're getting 2 shitty cards that one could out-perform at this point in time, and SLI is *still* overkill unless you're driving multiple monitors at full HD res.

If you want to get a DX11 card, you'll need to shell out some bux unless you want it to be so decrepit when DX11 games actually come out that it's like running a 5 year old card.

[LV15GAMER]

my budget is gonna be about $500 - $600 but I'm probably not buying yet unless I see a sweet combo deal or something

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

[quote author=[fr31ns]Karrde link=topic=4601.msg154377#msg154377 date=1274910782]
I was only looking for info on new technologies and see if I should hold off, but ok, build a rig thread it is ;P  I'm seriously tempted to do two of the new DX11 geforce cards SLI.  Or maybe just one and buy a 2nd when they come down in price.

If that option is remotely affordable, you're getting 2 shitty cards that one could out-perform at this point in time, and SLI is *still* overkill unless you're driving multiple monitors at full HD res.

If you want to get a DX11 card, you'll need to shell out some bux unless you want it to be so decrepit when DX11 games actually come out that it's like running a 5 year old card.
[/quote]

Right, the high end geforce cards are nutso expensive.  That's why I said I'd hold off until later   Unless you're implication is that the nvidia cards are crap to begin with, in which case there's a lot of reviews that disagree.  But yeah, for this build I'd like to invest in graphics that will hold me for a while.  Alternatively, I could put in a less powerful but cheaper DX10 card and wait for the second gen DX11 cards.

[copulatingduck]

or just buy ATi, better than nvidia for just about everything right now

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

EVen though ATI has the overall upperhand right now, they still have problems with OpenGL applications.  Or at the least, older OpenGL applications.  We (ESF Dev Team) actually got confirmation from ATI that what we were trying to do basically wouldn't work on ATI cards because their drivers weren't programmed to handle it.  Don't ask me on the specifics, I'm not one of the coders, I only know what I'm told   So I'm def sticking with nvidia right now.  Also, F ATI - even if their drivers and whatnot are a hell of a lot better now, their support still sucks.  NVidia keeps releasing drivers that work with older gear.  New catalyst drivers only work with more modern hardware.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Ok, I've been poking around a bit, and it looks like we're on a bit of an annoying precipice.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this will be resolved within the time I'd like to have a new rig.  It looks like the downfall of socket LGA 1156 is its meager PCIe 2.0 support.  Seems like excepting some of the crazy expensive mobos, if I want a GPU running at x16, it must be the only thing running on the PCIe channel.  Socket LGA 1366 which is available only for i7 "Bloomfield" doesn't have this problem.  But the i7s seem much pricier than seemingly comparable i5s.  I found a socket LGA 1156 mobo that looks decent, but the thing is it doesn't seem to be able to run SATA 6.0 and USB 3.0 at the same time.  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813131634

I haven't really taken the time to look for price/performance comparisons.  My mian question is  - anyone have any strong opinions either way about SATA 6.0 or USB 3.0 as to which might be more important now and in the future?  I'm inclined to imagine SATA 6.0 would be more important since I don't move a lot of files around on USB and I don't run USB hardware/cards.

[Versus]

neither is worth it, but i'd rather have USB 3.0, where i might at least see some performance increase, as opposed to SATA 6.0 which is completely worthless until we have SSDs or some other storage media capable of using all of SATA 1.5's bandwidth, much less SATA 3.0's

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Hmmmm, ok answers that.  Basically it'd be future proofing in case I'd want a bunch of SSDs later   Good to know   Speaking of SSDs, would it be worth getting a smaller one just to use as a windows drive?  The problem is thay get crazy expensive pretty fast, and considering how windows can balloon in size, I'd be concerned about which size to get.

[Versus]

depending on your budget, yes

[Mission Difficult]

You might look into the Seagate hybrid ssd.

[KarthXLR]

or just buy ATi, better than nvidia for just about everything right now

I'm backing this all the way. The DX11 GeForce cards (Fermi) suck balls compared to the Radeon 5800 series. As much as I like Nvidia, it's true.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Well as I've stated though, ATI has been having too many problems (and admitted it to our coders) with OpenGL, especially older stuff.  I need a card that's more reliable in that department being that I'm the lead tester on our project.  Budget wise, I'd like to keep this mess below 1500 (including monitor, extra fans, cables).  I'd like to future proof it to the extent possible without going the i7/socket LGA1366 route as that will really crank the price.

[zaneyard]

go for am3 then
from what i understand it's going to be developed for for a long time

[Didzo]

Here's a link to my computer.