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Hardware Discussion Thread
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The HD6790. Bit of a surprise that, AMD had such a good spread of cards I thought they were giving the low-mid-range cards a break until HD7000... nope, they've released... well, a HD5770 :P
But with a 256-bit memory bus
The result is, of course, HD4890-level performance. It can't match the HD6850 or the more advanced incarnations of the GTX460, but it thrashes the GTX550Ti while being around the same price. And nVidia has already moved to retire the weaker GTX460 variants in favour of the GTX550Ti. Ouch!
The catch is that the reference board is ludicrously thirsty compared to the frugal HD57*0, sucking down considerably more juice than a stock HD6850 :eek: Then again... said board is a modded HD6870 PCB, and the more task-appropriate custom PCBs are suspected to bring in big power savings so watch this space 0 -
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after literally reading and researching every board from €60 to €130 i finally settled on this MSI 870A-Fuzion.
Overclocks very well, has x16x16 CFX AND SLI AND hybrid SLi/CF, SATA300, USB3, Realtech sound. seems to be amazing value for money really. but then it dawned on me. i could either get a nice Phenom X4 upgrade with that great MoBo, or.... for a total of €75 out of my pocket, which is not much more than the AMD route i was going to take, i could get an i5-2500k with the ASRock P67 Pro3 (B3)
sounds like a bit of a better deal to me
i love AMD i do but the i5-2500k is a better chip, no question about it.
any thoughts on the ASRock P67 Pro3 Mobo?
only problem i have now is that it'll be kept cool by an Akasa Freedom Tower heatsink that i already own. not sure if its upto the ~4.4ghz task. it was only something like €30 when i bought it. but i cant justify getting more stuff...0 -
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i was going to pass on my Mobo and spend a little money and upgrade it, then i thought id pass the processor on too and do that too.That's not a bad price for a P67 board although you'd be sacrificing the second PCI-E slot altogether! To be fair, I'd say a lot of people never bother with a second graphics card on their SLI/crossfire board. By the time it comes around to upgrade, a better single card is easily available.
So the original idea was to use your own board in this build and upgrade yours, but now you're thinking of a whole new build and passing on what you have?
What do you have now?
he gets a good deal cause my kit is only 6 months old, and i become the free tech guy for life and dont charge any money for building/maintaining it
obviously im going to let him know about my plan and see how he takes it. just research now
ive a MSI 770-G45 and an athlon X3 (unlocked to phenom X4 with 6mb L3 cache) that i was going to give to him. more than he needs but cheaper than what he'd pay for something else..
any idea what that unlocked phenom will be like with its stock (athlon) cooler back on? will it keep things acceptably cool? its running @2.9ghz and according to HW monitor has a max draw of 132.5W and 52W at idle.0 -
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It should be OK, at that speed anyway. I haven't seen the A2 X3 heatsinks but they're probably the same as the A2 X4s there's usually a bit of room.
It really depends on how much money you want to spend on yourself then. A 2500K will give you the best performance but at cost if you want an equivalent board. If it's cheap gaming, then maybe a better AMD board. There's workarounds for SLI on an AMD crossfire board. AMD are very cheap these days with phenom X4s just above €100, but with a new socket around the corner, I'd think about investing in a solid upgradable (1155) platform.
As always Mono, thanks for the advice
I think im getting the upgrade bug again, and its itching badly.
ok, your thoughts on these please:
ASUS P8P67 EVO Rev 3.0. i want this to be the last big upgrade i do for my PC for a long time, so i want to get it right. that board seems to be the cheapest option to have all the bells and whistles. do you know if a better board for the same kind of money or cheaper?
im a little worried about those massive heatsinks around the CPU housing, getting in the way of a good CPU cooler? seems ok but they are massive!
and onto coolers, do you think my Akasa Freedom Tower will be up to the job of a bit of OC on the i5k? will it fit on the board?
ive heard about problems with the P8P67 PRO and people being advised to avoid. does that affect the P8P67 EVO? is it overstating an actual minor limited fault?
and finally, any thoughts on this 4GB-Kit A-DATA XPG X Series PC1600 CL7 RAM? it seems to perform well in benchmarks, but im a little worried that its the cheapest 4gb kit on HWVS?0 -
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silly me was when looking for ram i just searched 2x2gb and that was the first hit (and cheapest) HWVS was showing me.Looks like a very solid board against the rest of Asus' lineup (see comparison table). Mmm... two LAN ports - handy. Just make sure that your RAM is compatible - there's quite a few people running into problems with this series because of boards not liking RAM.
I'd say the EVO would have any of the same problems. Some might have been sorted out with BIOS updates. The MSI P67A-GD65 has pretty good reviews if you don't want to go for Asus.
A lot of today's CPU heatsinks tend to have extra clearance with board heatsinks and RAM in mind. Just do a search and you'll usually find someone with a combination if it's a popular heatsink.
A-data is a slightly less mainstream brand. RAM is RAM though and it usually works or doesn't. Nevertheless, given the problems I've seen about asus P67 boards and RAM, I'd be a bit more careful. The CL9 RAM is on their approved list but the CL7 is not. You'd probably be OK with it, but I suppose you can't moan to Asus if something goes wrong.
Where do you see it as being the cheapest 4GB on HWV?
There's a lot of cheaper RAM. Even CL7 1600MHz.
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=29672
im going to go for the RAM you listed. @1600mhz and CL7 it means i wont find an excuse down the line to upgrade it, cause you cant get much faster can you?
im going to stick with the ASUS board, honestly, because it looks more flashy, and for that reason alone. all boards come with their problems, im guessing MSI would be no different.
the Gskill ripjaws are in the QVL but something odd about it.
by my understanding of that picture, the board wont post with a single RAM module? is that correct? i dont fancy that as it leaves no room for diagnostics down the line..
EDIT: ok im going for this ram instead. not as nice but it's definitely listed in the QVL and has all 3 dots ticked.
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28070&agid=1193
what do you think if the fact that the board doesnt support the original Gskill ram with 1 module?0 -
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I heard that you may be able to use quicksync for fast video decoding even if you have a dedicated card with Z68.
I doubt the prices will be that high since the benefits don't seem to be that amazing. Most people would fit into a H67 or P67 category so I would think maybe slightly more than what P67 boards are now, at least after the initial gouging.
I hope they have mITX boards.
You're right about the quicksync but the prices will be VERY high--as in x58 high, seeing as that's the platform they are replacing. ie. enthusiasts who have the money and desire to have the best possible configurations.
I'm guessing between 300 and 600 yoyos at launch. 0 -
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im not so sure. ivy bridge will be the next X58, and the Z68 will still be a sandy bridge era motherboard.You're right about the quicksync but the prices will be VERY high--as in x58 high, seeing as that's the platform they are replacing. ie. enthusiasts who have the money and desire to have the best possible configurations.
I'm guessing between 300 and 600 yoyos at launch.0
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