New PC

[Mr.Patrick]

... Someone said you should get a 850 Watt instead, but you don't even need more than a 620 watt Corsair for that build, but the 750 is good if you'd want to CF one day.

* Mr.Patrick throws out the power consumption charts

This is whole system, as the picture mentions.

CPU:      Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz
Motherboard:    Intel DX58SO (Intel X58)
Chipset Drivers:    Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel)
Hard Disk:    OCZ Summit (120GB)
Memory:    Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20)
Video Drivers:    NVIDIA ForceWare 197.13
NVIDIA ForceWare 197.17
AMD Catalyst 10.3a
OS:    Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

This is the specs of the computer used.

[Ad Bot]

[Duckmeister]

So is the nVidia GTX480 better than the ATI HD5870 or is the HD5870 still my best bet here?

The cost-to-benefit brown townysis shows that your best bet is the 5870.  Most bang for your buck.


Man, that reminds me of how much I hated those Gateway commercials in the 90s.

Also, I highly recommend you get at least a 750W PSU.

[Tom Gunn]

Go crazy and buy all the most powerful computer parts within your price range.
Create Glados.
The end.

[Mr.Patrick]

I have a GTX 295, an i7-920, a blu-ray drive and two 7,200RPM HDDs, all running on a single damn Corsair 750 Watt PSU, and I could crossfire with 5870 if I wanted.
Oh and four fans and two cold cathodes.
Actually Corsairs website recommends a 550 Watt PSU for my system...

[Resonance_Cascade]

They had this guide here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/pc-help/#19

I doubt it's totally wrong or they'd get a lot more complaints.

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine is a fairly good indication of the recommended PSU wattage - using your setup under 90% load without capacitator aging calculated 314 watts, so a higher wattage power supply would be a good idea - especially if you plan on adding a second 5870 later.

As for cooling/fans, the HAF 922 comes with 2 x 200mm fans and a 120mm fan, and unless you're planning on overclocking, the stock Intel heatsink and fan should serve you fine.

If you're looking at saving money, I'd swap the i7-930 processor for an i5-750, as unless you're doing extensive rendering or compiling you won't need the hyperthreading capabilities of the i7-930, and buy 2 x 2gb DDR3 RAM instead as the i5 processor uses dual channel memory and it is unlikely you'll need 6gb of RAM.

Might also be an idea to look into the hard disks seek times and transfer speeds if performance is important.

[Madmitten]

can someone tell me if an ATI radeon 1150 is good?

[Resonance_Cascade]

can someone tell me if an ATI radeon 1150 is good?

No.

[Madmitten]

No.

aw forget

[Ephialtes]

This is a really annoying decision to make. I get cooler accessories and what appears to be a nicer LG monitor if I go with this custom company, plus they offer free pick-up warranty to fix anything that goes wrong. Plus it's cheaper, too. They have all these awards and certifications from Intel etc. so they seem like a reputable company.

Or I can pick Dell which is er ... a Dell and it costs about £200 more, takes longer to deliver and has not-as-good warranty terms and a disgustingly tacky case.

[dkamm65]

This is a really annoying decision to make. I get cooler accessories and what appears to be a nicer LG monitor if I go with this custom company, plus they offer free pick-up warranty to fix anything that goes wrong. Plus it's cheaper, too. They have all these awards and certifications from Intel etc. so they seem like a reputable company.

Or I can pick Dell which is er ... a Dell and it costs about £200 more, takes longer to deliver and has not-as-good warranty terms and a disgustingly tacky case.

You just listed two options, one with no negatives and one with no positives. What's hard about the choice?

[Zaran]

The cost-to-benefit brown townysis shows that your best bet is the 5870.  Most bang for your buck.


Man, that reminds me of how much I hated those Gateway commercials in the 90s.

Also, I highly recommend you get at least a 750W PSU.

The cost-to-benefit brown townysis should be saying spend $100 more and get a card that will last longer and ultimately perform much better as DX11 is used more.  Not to mention that CUDA and Physx are appearing in newer games more frequently.  Of course you're using some of that "creationist logic", so I can see how you could be wrong.

[Ephialtes]

Oops. I kind of presented it slightly biased. The upside to dell is that they're established and pretty trustworthy and I know that all the parts will be correct and will work with the components I selected. Especially fans/power stuff.

[Duckmeister]

The cost-to-benefit brown townysis should be saying spend $100 more and get a card that will last longer and ultimately perform much better as DX11 is used more.  Not to mention that CUDA and Physx are appearing in newer games more frequently.  Of course you're using some of that "creationist logic", so I can see how you could be wrong.

Are you saying that having a card with the same features + other less useful ones, that will last marginally longer, is worth an extra $100?  $100 is a lot of money, especially when you are already spending $2000 on the rest of the computer.

Oh right, I should've known you think money grows on trees, you're using some of that "evolutionist logic".

[Ephialtes]

I'd like to try and get some more opinions out of this thread before it descends into yet another religious debate.

[Otis Da HousKat]

The GTX 480 will out preform the 5870. That's not to say to 5870 will do poorly. They are both very good graphics processors.

PhysX is a load of bull and games have just started utilizing DX10 features more commonly. It will be several years before TESSELLATION or whatever the hell Nvidia is throwing out there as the benefit of their DX11 card over ATI's will be seen enough to care.