Full PC build on a budget < £670

highest clocked phenom in the test

unreal tournament 3 (you are mainly gaming?)


edit: forgot about your later post, quadcore (or more) is definately they way to go for transcoding
ps: dont worry about socket life, when you replace your cpu, you will have to replace the board, its always the way (unless you upgrade every 6 months)

ps: shaidar, thats a good setup apart from one thing the ps3 - Do not defile gods own gaming machine with that propriety evilness ;)
 
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I hope you're putting a Terabyte of Gaming Goodness™ on that hitachi drive

Mostly movies but I do have a fair amount of game ISOs there for LANs. I may turn it into an apps-only drive eventually though, if my media storage requirements exceed the space I have available on the 1TB drive. Maybe pick up a couple 1.5TB drives or even 2TB.

Core i7 is 16% faster then 775 per clock, all you mate has to do is clock his i7 to 3.7-3.8Ghz and his i7 will beat your Quad, At 4Ghz his i7 will completely hammers yours.

It's not an across the board improvement. I don't deny that i7 can be faster, but there are plenty of tests (gaming in particular) where there is little to no difference. Not many games are so well-threaded that they can take advantage of 8 threads after all.

Not a huge fan of Linpack, but I tried it just now and it peaks at 73 after 10 minutes (idles at 40). So it's still good enough. Of course this is in a case with bottom mounted PSU (P182) so it has the exhaust fans next to it (also 800 RPM). I wouldn't get any other type of case any more nowadays though, there's plenty of cheap options. No matter how good the PSU, if the fan in it spins up high it will generate more noise than any other fan in my system ... pushing air from the CPU cooler through it makes no sense at all unless it's pulling solo duty as exhaust fan in a very small system.

Yeah, I've been running bottom-mounted PSUs since I got my first really good case in 2005, a Silverstone Temjin 7. No longer have that case but running my quad in a Lian li full tower and my dual in a Coolermaster Storm Scout, both bottom-mounted PSUs.

Maybe it's just that the Mugen 2 is really good :) Bit of a bitch to align the backplate to get it on but on the other hand you can't overtighten the screws, which is a nice touch (when the thread stops it's done). The cheapest of the high end coolers, definitely recommended.

The Mugen 2 is one of the better coolers on the market. I don't feel let down by either of mine though. It can get pretty hot in my apartment sometimes (during LANs especially) so having that 2nd fan is a necessity.

highest clocked phenom in the test

unreal tournament 3 (you are mainly gaming?)


edit: forgot about your later post, quadcore (or more) is definately they way to go for transcoding
ps: dont worry about socket life, when you replace your cpu, you will have to replace the board, its always the way (unless you upgrade every 6 months)

That's an original Phenom, Davros. The Phenom IIs are almost on-par with the Q9 series, and easily match the Q6 series at the same clock speeds. Also they're up to 3.4GHz now which is nothing to sneeze at.

ps: shaidar, thats a good setup apart from one thing the ps3 - Do not defile gods own gaming machine with that propriety evilness ;)

LOL, not going to get into a console war but I'll stand behind my roommate's decision to pick up a PS3 slim. Too many good games not too. We already have an existing library of games and Blu-rays so it only made sense. Just started using it as a media playback device and streaming all my Divx movies from my PC, man does it clean up those images. It's amazing what the PS3 does for image quality on low quality Divx files @ 700MB or so. Better than a DVD in most cases. Gotta start collecting Blu-rays again to really take advantage of its media center functionality though, all the ones I have already have been watched over and over.
 
It's not an across the board improvement. I don't deny that i7 can be faster, but there are plenty of tests (gaming in particular) where there is little to no difference. Not many games are so well-threaded that they can take advantage of 8 threads after all.

Maybe Your not reading the correct benchmarks but i7 slaughters any core 2 quad at ANYTHING. It's ~16% faster per clock so your still going to see an improvement in performance over a C2Q in single threaded applications if both chips are clocked equal.
 
Maybe Your not reading the correct benchmarks but i7 slaughters any core 2 quad at ANYTHING. I


Not in farcry2 it doesn't (from[H])

The first thing you will notice about the above performance is that the 3.2GHz Core 2 QX9770 outperforms the 3.2GHz Core i7 pretty much across the board when “Very High” quality is used in the game. This is not true for low quality settings, but we don’t think that our readers are going to be playing FarCry 2 without they eye candy turned on

my quick bit of research found 10% per clock on average in games for the i7
 
from bit-tech
"Despite being a graphics behemoth, Crysis requires a fast CPU as well and there's a little extra performance available from the new architecture. This appears to be down to out and out CPU performance more than memory performance, as even with single channel memory, the Core i7 965 is about two percent faster than the QX9770 and two percent slower than the i7 965 with triple channel memory."

Like I said the i7 is about at 10% faster per clock in games (and thats because supreme commander does scale well and pushes the average up) a far cry from
Maybe Your not reading the correct benchmarks but i7 slaughters any core 2 quad at ANYTHING.
 
from bit-tech
"Despite being a graphics behemoth, Crysis requires a fast CPU as well and there's a little extra performance available from the new architecture. This appears to be down to out and out CPU performance more than memory performance, as even with single channel memory, the Core i7 965 is about two percent faster than the QX9770 and two percent slower than the i7 965 with triple channel memory."

Like I said the i7 is about at 10% faster per clock in games (and thats because supreme commander does scale well and pushes the average up) a far cry from

As I said, on average 16% faster

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-11.html
 
Not that it's relevant at all considering the OP's budget, but from all I've read Crysis with SLI loves a fast CPU.

kyetech, the Lynnfield CPUs just came out and it might be worth your while to splurge on an i5 750.
 

would that get my phenomII(945 3ghz) to 3.6 ghz with the over clocking settings?

What other single PCI express slot boards with an AM2+ socket is good for overclocking?

Its CONFUSING aaargh. :)

EDIT: this looks OK:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-180-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1482

It gets the phenomII 2.8 ghz to 3.6ghz. and is stable. and is only 60 quid. seems great for the price? check this review

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-ma770-ud3-am2-am3-motherboard-review-10.html
 
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Maybe Your not reading the correct benchmarks but i7 slaughters any core 2 quad at ANYTHING. It's ~16% faster per clock so your still going to see an improvement in performance over a C2Q in single threaded applications if both chips are clocked equal.

16% faster is "slaughtering"?

:rolleyes:


Seriously? Tom's Hardware?

:LOL:


Completely different platforms. X58 vs. 680i is a joke. At least compare as close to like for like as possible and do X58 vs. X48.
 
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Back on-topic: AMD hardware is perfectly fine. The Phenom II and Athlon II offer excellent performance for the money. I was going to buy an X3 720 until I found this Q9550 for only $50 more.
 
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