[Ryan_88]

i'm running vista x64, dual core intel processor and a P35 mobo with dx10 graphics cards!

and it flies! games look amazing, i would personally go with vista (not that i like it! cos i don't, but microsoft will eventually stop supporting XP and everyone will be forced to vista anyway!)

plus in a year or two, all the games that come out will be optimised for Vista! so u'd get better performance!

just my opinion!

ry

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and it flies! games look amazing, i would personally go with vista (not that i like it! cos i don't, but microsoft will eventually stop supporting XP and everyone will be forced to vista anyway!)

Microsoft is going to stop the support of XP in 2011, lots of time in that OS.
In terms of gaming, Vista is the way to go as DX10 is the future and SP1 is just around the corner.
James

Edited by james_8970, 27 November 2007 - 03:51 PM.

[james_8970]

and it flies! games look amazing, i would personally go with vista (not that i like it! cos i don't, but microsoft will eventually stop supporting XP and everyone will be forced to vista anyway!)

Microsoft is going to stop the support of XP in 2011, lots of time in that OS.
In terms of gaming, Vista is the way to go as DX10 is the future and SP1 is just around the corner.
James

Edited by james_8970, 27 November 2007 - 03:51 PM.

[SOORENA]

ooh just to add I just found out MS released a SP3 for XP which means that its gonna be around for a while. HERE is a link to the article.

Soorena

[SpaceCowboy706]

Alright took your recommendation and went with Intel and the P35 board. The problem i encountered on the HD3870 cards was that the interface is pcie2.0 and i could not find any motherboards on newegg for PCIE2.0.

So i changed it up a little bit and this is what i came up with for 16$ more than the AMD setup:

INTEL SETUP

Motherboard
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813128059

Processor
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819115003

Video card
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814102095

AMD SETUP

Motherboard (chose 590 SLI so i could use the full PCIx16 for 2 video cards)
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131011

Processor
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103773

Video Card (2 - with SLI)
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814127306


I could not find the power requirements for the video card (under intel setup) to see if the power supply i have picked out supplies the right amount of amperage and voltage??? And also the INTEL processor is only a 2.4Ghz where the AMD processor is a 3.0Ghz, will there be a performance decrease here by going to the intel one? Will the single video card outperform the two sli cards as well and by how much?

[james_8970]

Take the Intel setup, but make these changes.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814161212
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819115029
In both cases, the above is the same price, but cheaper.

Intel's micro architecture is supperior to AMD's offering, what this means is that Intel's chips can perform more tasks per clock cycle. Therefor a 2.4GHz Core2duo doesn't equal a 2.4GHx X2 processor.

PCIe 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCIe 1.x, I have already looked into the issue.

As for power supply recommendations, whats your budget?
James

Edited by james_8970, 28 November 2007 - 10:26 AM.

[james_8970]

Just realized there is no HD3870's in stock right now.
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814131072
The link mentioned above will bring you to a brand that will be available November 30th (that's it's ETA).
James

[SpaceCowboy706]

The powercooler card you reccomended only has 256bit and the saphire card i posted has 512bit... is that going to make a performance difference between the two... and since the powercooler card is pcie2.0 and i will be using a pcieX16 motherboard, what will the powercooler cards actual stat's be on pcie16? I understand the 2.0 cards are backwards compatible but i thought that also the 2.0 cards increased thier speeds from the New 2.0 type interface, thus it would stand to reason that if you were using backwards compatibility with pcie16 the stats would go down?

changed the cpu to the one you posted.. good find on that one... thanks.

As for the PSU, earlier i had picked out this one http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817153036
due to the four available 12volt 18amp rails. most of the cards i were looking at for SLI required at least 17 amps, but i havent yet found the amperage needed for the pcie2.0 cards your recomending? Available price range for a psu is 200$ or less.

[jrm20]

The powercooler card you reccomended only has 256bit and the saphire card i posted has 512bit... is that going to make a performance difference between the two... and since the powercooler card is pcie2.0 and i will be using a pcieX16 motherboard, what will the powercooler cards actual stat's be on pcie16? I understand the 2.0 cards are backwards compatible but i thought that also the 2.0 cards increased thier speeds from the New 2.0 type interface, thus it would stand to reason that if you were using backwards compatibility with pcie16 the stats would go down?

changed the cpu to the one you posted.. good find on that one... thanks.

As for the PSU, earlier i had picked out this one http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817153036
due to the four available 12volt 18amp rails. most of the cards i were looking at for SLI required at least 17 amps, but i havent yet found the amperage needed for the pcie2.0 cards your recomending? Available price range for a psu is 200$ or less.

On the 2900xt vs the 3870 many review sites are very biased meaning some say the 3870 is faster some say the 3870 is slower.. They are very very close in similar performance. The difference is that the 3870 uses less power while the 2900xt requires more power to run it.

Like I said one card is faster at some tests while the other is at other tests/games.


We havn't even fully utilized the full bandwidth on the last pci express 16x standard speed so don't worry yet. You will not loose any performance until the actual cards are faster than your current pci express 16x slot and they aren't yet.

I would go the INTEL route its a no brainer.

For a powersupply that thermaltake is fine but OCZ has a 700W also for the same price. Either will do.

[SpaceCowboy706]

JRM20,

Thanks for the info on the cards but my last question on the two cards is the powercooler pcie2.0 card is 269$ and the saphire pcie16 card is 329$.... As far as price goes the pcie2.0 card is a better deal because it is cheaper... but i am very leary about purchasing a cheaper card that has a new type of interface and uses backwards compatability... I wonder just for ease of installation, driver support, and reliability... should i just go with the more expensive card? (under yours and james' idea that the speeds and performance of the two cards are very close to each other)

thanks.

[jrm20]

JRM20,

Thanks for the info on the cards but my last question on the two cards is the powercooler pcie2.0 card is 269$ and the saphire pcie16 card is 329$.... As far as price goes the pcie2.0 card is a better deal because it is cheaper... but i am very leary about purchasing a cheaper card that has a new type of interface and uses backwards compatability... I wonder just for ease of installation, driver support, and reliability... should i just go with the more expensive card? (under yours and james' idea that the speeds and performance of the two cards are very close to each other)

thanks.

Pci express 2.0 is still a pci express 16x slot it just has the ability for more bandwidth, its just a new revision/version.

There is nothing to be leary about, here is an example.. the nvidia 8800GT is the first pciexpress 2.0 video card to be released and people with P35 motherboards are getting the full speed of the video card. Again nothing to worry about at all. You would be better off going for the cooler running video card that requires less power also which would be the 3870.

[james_8970]

Another gain on the PCIe 2.0 front is that PCIe 2.0 will also double the power available from the motherboard to the card.

As far as price goes the pcie2.0 card is a better deal because it is cheaper... but i am very leary about purchasing a cheaper card that has a new type of interface and uses backwards compatability

I understand this, but nVidia is doing the exact same thing, the 8800GT exceeds the 8800GTS in terms of performance, yet it is cheaper.
ATI is going to cease production of the HD2900XT and nVidia is going to do the same for the current 8800GTS series, if they havn't already done so.
I think we witnessing the dawn of a price war in the GPU segment.

Other things to consider about the HD2900XT vs. HD3870
What the HD3870 has that the HD2900XT doesn't
-DX10.1 support
-UVD (if you are unsure of what this is just ask)
-55nm manufacturing process
-lower power requirements

What the HD2900XT has that the HD3870 doesn't
-512 bit memory bus (no card needs one this high at the moment).


jrm20, the reason why many reviews conflict with one another is because the 7.10 drivers did not fuction with the card, there were beta drivers at the time and many review sites did not contact ATI to receive them. To get an accurate estimate of how this card should preform, you need to look at the build of the RC2 drivers (some people were even using RC1 drivers). If your using the right drivers, the HD3870 should be a little bit better then the HD2900XT, but we are talking very little. Even as resolutions go up, the 256 bit memory bus is no bottleneck.

If your still worried about the PSU take a look at this review.
http://www.hardwarec....html#post26213
Scroll down to number 15, while I know the layout seems unproffesional, this guy knows his stuff, and these guys do it for free. The reason why I like this, less likely to have a bias towards a particular brand due to payments. Anyways, if you scroll down to 15, you can see that this card will consume ~95W less then the HD3870, when the entire build is taken into consideration. Keep in mind this is the power being drawn from the wall, as the load increases on the PSU effciancy takes a dive, so in reality we are probably looking closer to a ~85W difference between the two cards, which is quite significant.

James

Edited by james_8970, 28 November 2007 - 03:29 PM.

[SpaceCowboy706]

Alright im sold on the 2.0 card and here is the final setup after many changes. Can you two look over this and make sure it is all compatible...

Case
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811119129

Motherboard
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813128059

Processor
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819115029

Video Card
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814131072

Ram (2 sets - total 4Gb)
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820145177

Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822148262

Case fan (2)
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811999145

DVD/CD
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16827135145

Keyboard
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16823109164

Mouse
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16826161001

TOTAL PRICE ..... $1113.98

Already have a big widescreen lcd monitor, zalman cpu cooler, and AC5 thermal compound.

PSS....
since im using 4gb of ram and a dual core processor what OS do i need to get to utilize all of both... XP64? Vista? Vista64?

[james_8970]

Looks good to me. In order to use all 4GB of RAM you require a 64bit operating system, I'd suggest Vista over XP, as vista 64bit has better support then XP 64bit in terms of drivers.
Keep in mind it is likely that some games and applications will not have 64bit support, it's your call if you want to go this route. I'd personally take a slight performance hit and go with a 32bit OS right now, as you'll know that when you run something that it'll work. But this is your call.
James

[james_8970]

Since your reading this topic you'll likely miss my edit.

Anyways, your missing a power supply in that build
James

[SpaceCowboy706]

OOPS using the OCZ one that JRM recomended