The 580 is unequivocally faster than the 570/6970. Sure, it may be 20% more performance for 40% more price, but it is more performance, and your budget isn't exactly constrained.
With your budget and what you are wanting to do, I would recommend going ahead and looking at a single 580GTX. Sure, other cards may have it beat in price vs performance, but no single GPU has it beat in performance, and your budget is large enough that the price isn't an issue.
Originally posted by kildonalis one more question what do you think about barebone systems? there's a i7 one for 999.99 on tiger seems cheaper. but I know how sometimes they put lower quality products in those bundle deals
If you can get the breakdown for every single component in the build, and it's something that you are satisfied with (or are willing to buy anyway with the intention of replacing), then they can be good deals.
If they don't tell you what something is (like exactly what model power supply, what latency/speed RAM, etc), then assume it's the absolute worst/cheapest crap they could throw in there, and budget that for immediate replacement if you are considering if it's a good deal or not.
Best site you'll find for any of this info. They do regular builds and HEAVY testing on them. I think they even price them out at different points, one of which being 2000 dollar machine.
I just recently built a new gaming / workstation PC for around 500$ and it is screaming fast. Might want to take a look and improve on this base:
- AMD Phenom II BE dual-core at 3.3ghz (90$)
- 8GB DDR3 Ripjaws series RAM (35$ each)
- MSI 870-G45 motherboard (support for up to six cores) (70$)
- GeForce 460GTX SE (150$)
- Antec liquid CPU cooling system (easy install, and 70$)
How fast is it? It can run BFBC2 at highest settings, 1680x1050 res, with absolutely 0 slowdown both online and offline. It can also, oddly enough, run EQ2 on "very high" at a stable 40 FPS.
Well AMD recently released their APU Proccessors that look promising. I haven't really done my research on them yet, but it would seem the APU has the GPU built into the same chip as the CPU and it'll work in conjunction with any Graphics card (though you'll probably have better luck/results with an AMD/ATI card) for even better graphic performence.
TigerDirect has some pretty nice bundle deals such as
pretty much any powersupply that passes the 80+gold/platinum cert will be a quality powersupply. the other thing to look for is a single rail design.
Actually, that's not true. The difference between the various 80 PLUS certification levels is only energy efficiency. There are some 80 PLUS Gold certified units that are decidedly mediocre, other than having great energy efficiency. For example, Hard OCP found that an ABS Majesty unit at full load had ripple on the +12 V rail three times what is allowed by the ATX specification. That can kill hardware in a hurry. In practical use, you're not going to pull the full rated wattage at high temperatures like that, but you want some headroom for the power supply to work properly under harsher conditions than you'll actually use, and power supply performance does tend to degrade as time passes.
-----
The Bigfoot network cards can realistically take several (as in, 3 or 5 or so) milliseconds off of your ping time and maybe save you a frame per second in some cases. That's usually all that they'll do for you. Every once in a while, they can make a huge difference and greatly reduce ping times in a peculiar situation. Or they can make a huge difference in the opposite direction and complete disconnect you for no apparent reason in particular.
Is that worth the price tag? On an infinite budget, probably. On a $2000 budget, most people would say "no".
-----
"TomsHardware . com
Best site you'll find for any of this info."
I don't like the builds on Tom's Hardware at all. They focus too heavily on average performance in games today under the assumption that everything works, even at the expense of glitchiness, reliability, and predictably not aging well.
Their latest $2000 build, for example, has two A-Data SSDs of unspecified capacity in RAID 0. I say unspecified capacity even though A-Data says 64 GB because the way SandForce's firmware works, it's sure to be less than 56 GB, and possibly a lot less. You could get more capacity, more reliably, and cheaper from a single more modern ~120 GB SSD--and the latter option would sometimes give you better performance, too. And that's assuming that RAID 0 actually works flawlessly, which is far from certain with SSDs. Personally, when I'm looking through SSDs to recommend to someone, I dismiss A-Data's out of hand, as it's buying a pig in a poke, really, which is not a good idea from a company still pushing st-st-stuttering JMicron SSDs a good two years after the reputable SSD vendors abandoned them.
Different sites have different expertises. Some have the humility to stick to what they know and can do well. Tom's Hardware doesn't, and they're still trying to figure out what to do with power supplies and SSDs even as they crank out reviews on them. (Is it arrogant for an amateur like me to criticize what they do for a living even if I might not be able to do any better myself? Only if it's likewise wrong for me to say that Peyton Manning has been a better quarterback than Ryan Leaf, even though Leaf was far better of a quarterback than I could ever be.)
-----
"Well AMD recently released their APU Proccessors that look promising."
For low power, budget gaming laptops, yes, Llano is a revolutionary product. For desktops, it's pointless for now. It might eventually be a nice product for people who are very sensitive to power consumption, or for a gaming desktop on a severe bduget, but we aren't there yet, and Llano might well never get there before it gets replaced by its successor Trinity early next year.
Heres what im looking at as of right now. Some of prices will actualy be lower found some good bundle deals with same parts for like 40-50 less. Thank you all for your help so far. Tell me what ya think
If you get that video card, then you should be aware that a three slot cooler will make it awkward to add a second for SLI later. If you're going with a single video card, that's not a problem at all. But if going with a single card, then you could give up the option for SLI in the future and save some money on the case, power supply, and motherboard.
This motherboard is nearly the same as the one you picked, except that it loses SLI/CrossFire capability:
I'm not entirely certain how the 650 W Sentey power supply differs from the 850 W version, as the 850 W is the one they sent around for reviews. From Sentey's site, it looks like it's surely still based on Super Flower's gold platform. The Seasonic X-650 is the exact model that Seasonic sent to a number of review sites.
For the case, there's no real need to spend more than about $100 on a case for a single video card, unless you're doing something weird.
A processor heatsink depends considerably on what you're planning on doing about overclocking. If you're certain to leave the processor at stock speeds, then you could save some money by getting a Core i7 2600 instead of 2600K. If you're going to do a moderate overclock (say, whatever you can get at the stock voltage) but don't want to risk frying anything, then you could try a combo deal like this for a cheap aftermarket heatsink:
If you want to see if you can push the processor to 5 GHz and figure that you'll likely eventually kill it, then you'd need a beefier heatsink than that.
I have windows 7 64 bit for my os already. I run into alot of dust issues actualy blew my last psu up so im wanting a higher end case to make it easier to clean. how hard will it be to do sli this card in the future with what I have listed?
If you're worried about dust, then the solution isn't a larger case with more room for more dust. The solution is a case with dust filters on all air intake vents.
Don't try to fit out a computer to be able to handle CrossFire or SLI eventually unless you're going to go CrossFire or SLI when you first get it. You don't want to pay an extra $100 up front merely to have an option that you'll probably never use. By the time you decide you need a faster video card, cards will have advanced enough that you'll probably be better off replacing the old card with a modern one rather than buying a second old card for SLI. A year from now, the GeForce GTX 580 will almost certainly be discontinued and gone, anyway.
No, no, no. Don't get a GeForce GTX 590. The dual GPU cards are mainly for situations where people think two video cards aren't enough. It's far better to get two single GPU cards than one dual GPU card, as too much heat in a two slot form factor is impractical to cool. The GeForce GTX 590 is particularly bad in this regard, and prone to overheat or explode even in a very nice case and with a very good power supply.
Cool was thinking 850+ for a video card was gonna be hard for me to live with. as for a case seeing what im looking and dust being my concern you have one you would recomend?
590 is a horrible card, I agree. Sure it's a "single card" but it's one of those gimmicky dual GPU cards, and that one in particular has a lot of problems. Sure you can make it fit inside your budget, but you'd probably regret getting it.
As far as cases go, I throw my lot in with Lian Li, but they are very expensive cases. I can't really point to any bad cases made by them, it's mostly just a matter of what size you want and how you want it to look, but you will pay a premium for an all-alluminum premium case. I have a nearly 10 year old Lian Li mid-tower case that I still use with computer builds today (it's running a Conroe dual 260GTX SLI setup right now), so I don't consider it a wasted investment, I consider it a recyclable asset (like a monitor or keyboard) through computer upgrades.
Really, though... cases: You just need to go look at pictures. See what you like, and then check to see if it has fan filters or not. If you really really like the case and it doesn't have filters, you can add your own easy enough (they sell filter foam or screen at Home Depot you can just cut and put in place if you really want to). Anything at least mid-tower sized with at least one nice 120mm fan in the front, one 120mm fan in the back with lots of open space in the middle should have enough ventilation: and most mid-towers and nearly all full towers will have a lot more ventilation options than just two fans.
Cool was thinking 850+ for a video card was gonna be hard for me to live with. as for a case seeing what im looking and dust being my concern you have one you would recomend?
with mail in rebate this month, it comes out to $155 + shipping cost
internally, it's very close to the fortress2(FT02) which is the best case on the market atm IMO. it's not as well built as the fortress, but it's also almost $100 cheaper then the fortress.
all 3 of the 180mm intake fans are filtered, so you wont have any airflow or dust problems in the case. it's one of the few cases that you can do "practical overclocking" (your machine doesnt sound like it's designed by pratt and whitney:D and you dont have to worry about dust)
Comments
With regard to the 580GTX vs the 570/6970:
The 580 is unequivocally faster than the 570/6970. Sure, it may be 20% more performance for 40% more price, but it is more performance, and your budget isn't exactly constrained.
With your budget and what you are wanting to do, I would recommend going ahead and looking at a single 580GTX. Sure, other cards may have it beat in price vs performance, but no single GPU has it beat in performance, and your budget is large enough that the price isn't an issue.
If you can get the breakdown for every single component in the build, and it's something that you are satisfied with (or are willing to buy anyway with the intention of replacing), then they can be good deals.
If they don't tell you what something is (like exactly what model power supply, what latency/speed RAM, etc), then assume it's the absolute worst/cheapest crap they could throw in there, and budget that for immediate replacement if you are considering if it's a good deal or not.
TomsHardware . com
Best site you'll find for any of this info. They do regular builds and HEAVY testing on them. I think they even price them out at different points, one of which being 2000 dollar machine.
I just recently built a new gaming / workstation PC for around 500$ and it is screaming fast. Might want to take a look and improve on this base:
- AMD Phenom II BE dual-core at 3.3ghz (90$)
- 8GB DDR3 Ripjaws series RAM (35$ each)
- MSI 870-G45 motherboard (support for up to six cores) (70$)
- GeForce 460GTX SE (150$)
- Antec liquid CPU cooling system (easy install, and 70$)
How fast is it? It can run BFBC2 at highest settings, 1680x1050 res, with absolutely 0 slowdown both online and offline. It can also, oddly enough, run EQ2 on "very high" at a stable 40 FPS.
Well AMD recently released their APU Proccessors that look promising. I haven't really done my research on them yet, but it would seem the APU has the GPU built into the same chip as the CPU and it'll work in conjunction with any Graphics card (though you'll probably have better luck/results with an AMD/ATI card) for even better graphic performence.
TigerDirect has some pretty nice bundle deals such as
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=808316&sku=B69-5368
which I think is worth checking out.
Actually, that's not true. The difference between the various 80 PLUS certification levels is only energy efficiency. There are some 80 PLUS Gold certified units that are decidedly mediocre, other than having great energy efficiency. For example, Hard OCP found that an ABS Majesty unit at full load had ripple on the +12 V rail three times what is allowed by the ATX specification. That can kill hardware in a hurry. In practical use, you're not going to pull the full rated wattage at high temperatures like that, but you want some headroom for the power supply to work properly under harsher conditions than you'll actually use, and power supply performance does tend to degrade as time passes.
-----
The Bigfoot network cards can realistically take several (as in, 3 or 5 or so) milliseconds off of your ping time and maybe save you a frame per second in some cases. That's usually all that they'll do for you. Every once in a while, they can make a huge difference and greatly reduce ping times in a peculiar situation. Or they can make a huge difference in the opposite direction and complete disconnect you for no apparent reason in particular.
Is that worth the price tag? On an infinite budget, probably. On a $2000 budget, most people would say "no".
-----
"TomsHardware . com
Best site you'll find for any of this info."
I don't like the builds on Tom's Hardware at all. They focus too heavily on average performance in games today under the assumption that everything works, even at the expense of glitchiness, reliability, and predictably not aging well.
Their latest $2000 build, for example, has two A-Data SSDs of unspecified capacity in RAID 0. I say unspecified capacity even though A-Data says 64 GB because the way SandForce's firmware works, it's sure to be less than 56 GB, and possibly a lot less. You could get more capacity, more reliably, and cheaper from a single more modern ~120 GB SSD--and the latter option would sometimes give you better performance, too. And that's assuming that RAID 0 actually works flawlessly, which is far from certain with SSDs. Personally, when I'm looking through SSDs to recommend to someone, I dismiss A-Data's out of hand, as it's buying a pig in a poke, really, which is not a good idea from a company still pushing st-st-stuttering JMicron SSDs a good two years after the reputable SSD vendors abandoned them.
Different sites have different expertises. Some have the humility to stick to what they know and can do well. Tom's Hardware doesn't, and they're still trying to figure out what to do with power supplies and SSDs even as they crank out reviews on them. (Is it arrogant for an amateur like me to criticize what they do for a living even if I might not be able to do any better myself? Only if it's likewise wrong for me to say that Peyton Manning has been a better quarterback than Ryan Leaf, even though Leaf was far better of a quarterback than I could ever be.)
-----
"Well AMD recently released their APU Proccessors that look promising."
For low power, budget gaming laptops, yes, Llano is a revolutionary product. For desktops, it's pointless for now. It might eventually be a nice product for people who are very sensitive to power consumption, or for a gaming desktop on a severe bduget, but we aren't there yet, and Llano might well never get there before it gets replaced by its successor Trinity early next year.
Heres what im looking at as of right now. Some of prices will actualy be lower found some good bundle deals with same parts for like 40-50 less. Thank you all for your help so far. Tell me what ya think
Comp
Monitor
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0359893 $329.99
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070 $314.99
Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131703 $179.99
Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129087 $154.99
Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121429&cm_re=580-_-14-121-429-_-Product $509.99
SSD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148442 $229.99
Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233144 $59.99
Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817322011 $159.99
BluRay
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5023038&CatId=3635 $74.99
Base Storage
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6076939&CatId=2459 $79.99
This will put me around 1650-1700 but will still need some cooling parts
You're missing an operating system entirely.
If you get that video card, then you should be aware that a three slot cooler will make it awkward to add a second for SLI later. If you're going with a single video card, that's not a problem at all. But if going with a single card, then you could give up the option for SLI in the future and save some money on the case, power supply, and motherboard.
This motherboard is nearly the same as the one you picked, except that it loses SLI/CrossFire capability:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131705
It also gives up eSATA and has an extra PCI slot instead a third PCI Express 2.0 x16 (with far less than x16 bandwidth), but those aren't important.
You could save some money on the power supply by going with lower wattage:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817322009
I'm not entirely certain how the 650 W Sentey power supply differs from the 850 W version, as the 850 W is the one they sent around for reviews. From Sentey's site, it looks like it's surely still based on Super Flower's gold platform. The Seasonic X-650 is the exact model that Seasonic sent to a number of review sites.
For the case, there's no real need to spend more than about $100 on a case for a single video card, unless you're doing something weird.
A processor heatsink depends considerably on what you're planning on doing about overclocking. If you're certain to leave the processor at stock speeds, then you could save some money by getting a Core i7 2600 instead of 2600K. If you're going to do a moderate overclock (say, whatever you can get at the stock voltage) but don't want to risk frying anything, then you could try a combo deal like this for a cheap aftermarket heatsink:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.677597
If you want to see if you can push the processor to 5 GHz and figure that you'll likely eventually kill it, then you'd need a beefier heatsink than that.
If you're worried about dust, then the solution isn't a larger case with more room for more dust. The solution is a case with dust filters on all air intake vents.
Don't try to fit out a computer to be able to handle CrossFire or SLI eventually unless you're going to go CrossFire or SLI when you first get it. You don't want to pay an extra $100 up front merely to have an option that you'll probably never use. By the time you decide you need a faster video card, cards will have advanced enough that you'll probably be better off replacing the old card with a modern one rather than buying a second old card for SLI. A year from now, the GeForce GTX 580 will almost certainly be discontinued and gone, anyway.
No, no, no. Don't get a GeForce GTX 590. The dual GPU cards are mainly for situations where people think two video cards aren't enough. It's far better to get two single GPU cards than one dual GPU card, as too much heat in a two slot form factor is impractical to cool. The GeForce GTX 590 is particularly bad in this regard, and prone to overheat or explode even in a very nice case and with a very good power supply.
590 is a horrible card, I agree. Sure it's a "single card" but it's one of those gimmicky dual GPU cards, and that one in particular has a lot of problems. Sure you can make it fit inside your budget, but you'd probably regret getting it.
As far as cases go, I throw my lot in with Lian Li, but they are very expensive cases. I can't really point to any bad cases made by them, it's mostly just a matter of what size you want and how you want it to look, but you will pay a premium for an all-alluminum premium case. I have a nearly 10 year old Lian Li mid-tower case that I still use with computer builds today (it's running a Conroe dual 260GTX SLI setup right now), so I don't consider it a wasted investment, I consider it a recyclable asset (like a monitor or keyboard) through computer upgrades.
Really, though... cases: You just need to go look at pictures. See what you like, and then check to see if it has fan filters or not. If you really really like the case and it doesn't have filters, you can add your own easy enough (they sell filter foam or screen at Home Depot you can just cut and put in place if you really want to). Anything at least mid-tower sized with at least one nice 120mm fan in the front, one 120mm fan in the back with lots of open space in the middle should have enough ventilation: and most mid-towers and nearly all full towers will have a lot more ventilation options than just two fans.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2922
ibuypower.com
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163154
with mail in rebate this month, it comes out to $155 + shipping cost
internally, it's very close to the fortress2(FT02) which is the best case on the market atm IMO. it's not as well built as the fortress, but it's also almost $100 cheaper then the fortress.
all 3 of the 180mm intake fans are filtered, so you wont have any airflow or dust problems in the case. it's one of the few cases that you can do "practical overclocking" (your machine doesnt sound like it's designed by pratt and whitney:D and you dont have to worry about dust)