Mrs Cain's New PC

[juneau]

Careful or my E8500 just might come looking for you. An e8500 oc'd to 3800mhz with no vmodding is a pretty mean lil chip. Nowadays there steppings are soo good you can pretty much buy 1 anywhere and get good OC's.

I'm with you Donzi. Maybe we should start a Dual Core fight club where we can battle the Quad chips..... and win!

[bobytt]

Cain said he have budget of 900$ So going Quad core is not a problem especially since she is not going to use it for gaming and there is no need of serious VGA. I dont understand why he should go with E5200 and G31 mobo both for 105$ shipped since he already said what he can afford for his wife PC? (cpu and mobo are just example)
I believe he is going to build this PC to last. And it would help if he give us some jokers what she is using her PC for. But still he have decent budget and he can get pretty good components.

Dont get me wrong, Dual cores are OK , i have at this moment 2 PCs at home with E8400 and E8600 but i love my i7 monster and i do a lot of video editing converting so with good memory and tight timings i cut my time for each video like 3/4...
So lets first see if Cain tell us is she power user and use heavy applications or not. Even after this if he can afford better PC , i dont see reason to go with weaker...

Thats my opinion and its not necessary anyone to share it.

[Sniper1515]

I'm down for the fight club, E8400 @ 3.6

[bobytt]

i7@ 4.4GHz

[pigworthy]

If you haven't got a case yet.
Newegg.com - Antec P183 Black Aluminum Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

It's the new version of my P182, its very quiet and the filters are up front and the air sucks in from the front. I've had mine for a year and a half and just cleaned the front filters once a month. I just opened it all up to put in a new GPU and it was very clean inside. I like the PSU being in the bottom in it's own chamber also, and the wiring is very nice to do from the backside, makes for a clean cables inside.

[juneau]

Cain said he have budget of 900$ So going Quad core is not a problem especially since she is not going to use it for gaming and there is no need of serious VGA. I dont understand why he should go with E5200 and G31 mobo both for 105$ shipped since he already said what he can afford for his wife PC? (cpu and mobo are just example)
I believe he is going to build this PC to last. And it would help if he give us some jokers what she is using her PC for. But still he have decent budget and he can get pretty good components.

Dont get me wrong, Dual cores are OK , i have at this moment 2 PCs at home with E8400 and E8600 but i love my i7 monster and i do a lot of video editing converting so with good memory and tight timings i cut my time for each video like 3/4...
So lets first see if Cain tell us is she power user and use heavy applications or not. Even after this if he can afford better PC , i dont see reason to go with weaker...

Thats my opinion and its not necessary anyone to share it.

You have to remember that Quadcores are usless for say 98% of all apps. Even dualcore coded apps are a rarity when you look across the board.

Just because there is a budget of $900 doesn't mean you have to spend all of it in my eyes. I'm pretty sure Cain wouldn't mind saving a little money either. Who doesn't?

[pigworthy]

Agreed Junea, most applications are only single thread. So a higher clocked dual core would be a better solution IMO. Unless you are doing computer animation, video/photo rendering, audio work and such that the programs truly are multi-threaded programs, a quad core doesn't offer A LOT more power than a dual core. Unless you like having 4 different heavy duty apps running at once maybe.

[bobytt]

Well if you look like that way. Any processor After P4 3.4GHz/AMD A64 3000+ is more than enough. Why bother even with C2D?

[juneau]

Well if you look like that way. Any processor After P4 3.4GHz/AMD A64 3000+ is more than enough. Why bother even with C2D?

Because C2D's are faster even when running single threaded apps maybe?

[bobytt]

Well since the memory controler is build in the CPU i7 is faster than c2d in single threaded operation. So u r wrong.

[pigworthy]

Yea but the actual gains with the i7 memory are small percentages, C2D processors are like 50% faster than the for mentioned. It really comes down to what you want to do with it. If you want to surf the net, do MS office, basic photos, and etc. A C2D is a cheaper build and you will "see" very little diff between it and a i7 platform in those type of tasks. Now, if you want to run intensive apps, then by all means build an i7 system.

It just depends on the user and their expectations.

I liked this article about upgrading, systems are just getting fast, even low end ones.

On PC upgrades and diminishing returns - The Tech Report

[bobytt]

Well i said what i think. If i had possibility to build new PC and i have the money 900$ as Cains said i WILL make it with i7. He have decent budget he can afford to make it. Its future proof.

[juneau]

Well i said what i think. If i had possibility to build new PC and i have the money 900$ as Cains said i WILL make it with i7. He have decent budget he can afford to make it. Its future proof.

The i7 is as future proof as a dvd player. i7 offer marginal increases at best over Wolfdales and heavily overclocked Conroes when dealing with single and 2 core threaded apps. This is why the only people that bought into them were users that upgrade to the latest and greatest every 6 months and people that are obsessed with overclocking. Sure, they overclock like beasts, but are the performance increases noticable in real life situations?....... No.

By the time true quad core coded software outside of image/video/audio apps hits the market i7 will compare to a Celeron.

[bobytt]

This is a list of games with 2.5 threads or more

• Supreme Commander (THQ/Gas Powered Games)
• BioShock (2K Games/ Irrational Games)
• Microsoft Flight Sim X – (MGS)
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (Ubisoft/ GRIN)
• Stranglehold (Midway)
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (Activision/ iD/ Splash Damage)
• Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft)
• Warhammer MMORPG (EA/Mythic)
• Unreal Tournament 3 (Midway)
• The Witcher (Atari/CD Projekt)
• Half-Life 2: Episode II (Valve)
• Tabula Rasa (NC Soft)
• World in Conflict (Vivendi/Sierra)
• Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway (Gearbox/ Ubisoft)
• Fury (Auran/Gamecock)
• Alan Wake (MGS/ Remedy

Thats the list of the games that take advantage of multi cores, and quad cores are already 2-3 years here so more and more games are coded to use those cores. All the programmers work on this to use it in theirs applications.

I am sure my CPU is faster than yours in any single or multithreaded situation. And i am willing to bench anything you want

[Donziboy2]

Guys we seem to be goin to one of those "Mines bigger then yours threads" . This is about Mrs Cains PC. From what Cain has said she wont be gaming. Unless she will be doing large amounts of video editing, 3d rendering or some other workstation app she will have no need for an I7. And BTW its not how big it is but how you use it.