Build complete - Please review my decisions before I purchase the last few bits

Danger781

Hey there! Thanks for having a look!

Some items I have already purchased.. The ones with links I have not :pac:

• Case - Fractal Design Define R4 - Purchased for €80.02
• Case fans - 4 x Thermalright X-Silent 120 -
• Motherboard - ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0, ATX, AM3+
• CPU - AMD 8350 8 Core Processor - Purchased for €173.38
• CPU Cooler - Thermaltake Frio - Purchased for €20
• RAM - Corsair 8GB (2x 4GB) XMS3 Memory Module - Purchased for €21.89
• SSD - Kingston 120GB - Purchased for €79.30
• PSU - Corsair Gaming Series GS800 2013 Edition 800W
• HDD -Seagate Barracuda 2TB
• Graphics - 2 x Club 3D Radeon HD 7950 royalKing, 3GB

Most of the above I got delivered to Parcel Motel.. So you can add on €14 delivery charge

I'm divided on the graphics card front.. Trying to decide between a single 780 or the Crossfire 7950.. About €100 difference!

Also intending on getting a 1440p monitor from eBay.. Should cost me €300 - €350

Should set me back less than €1600 total which is slighly more than I wanted to spend..

itsonlyus

You really should have posting here first and let someone give you advice, Hardwareversand do the cheapest parts. Get Nivida cards over the 7950 much less jitter.Two 660's are a beast and very cheap and are better than the 7950's crossfire for much cheaper

Danger781

itsonlyus wrote: »

You really should have posting here first and let someone give you advice, Hardwareversand do the cheapest parts. Get Nivida cards over the 7950 much less jitter.Two 660's are a beast and very cheap and are better than the 7950's crossfire for much cheaper

I did post here first, actually. Got some pretty good advice too so I'm not sure where you're coming from Feel free to elaborate though.

Everything I've bought so far I got on offer. If you can find any of my purchased parts, or the parts I intend on purchasing, cheaper on hwvs let me know! Actually most of the parts I intend on purchasing are on hwvs.. The case I bought at its lowest price point ever.. RAM and Cooler were €20 each.. CPU was also at its lowest price point ever.. :rolleyes: Don't think hwvs can beat those prices

As for the 7950's vs. 660 - I very much doubt a 660 would compete against a 7950. Unless you're talking about 660ti in which case I would still tend to disagree. Their limited bus width and lower vram would would suffer on a 1440p screen. Well not so much the VRAM but I have read on a few occasions that a lot of games are pushing the boundaries of the 2GB. Feel free to correct me on that one if I'm mistaken.

As for Crossfire vs SLI - I can't seem to find anything on the Nvidia side of things that would be similar price/performance to a 7950 Xfire setup that would be able to run a 1440p screen in a single card solution (If it came to it) while maintaining decent FPS. But also with the imminent crossfire driver updates Crossfire is looking more promising. The only Nvidia solution that seems worthy to me is the 780 - More powerful, more pricey, but again I'm unsure about the 2GB of VRAM.

My reasoning behind going with the Club3D is that I've heard it's quite a good overclocker, but also the fact that it isn't voltage locked as the Sapphire's and Gigabyte's mainly seem to be now. I know my card won't necessarily be a great overclocker - Silicone lottery and all that

The mobo seems to be one of the cheaper ones available that can run Crossfire in a x16/x16 setup.

Went for an 800W PSU as AMD apparently recommend a minimum of 750W in a XFire setup. If anyone can recommend a different PSU with a +12v single rail feel free

BloodBath

Crossfire is awful for 1440p. I would advice you not to go that route based on multiple frame latency tests I've seen at that resolution. Amd are rolling out crossfire latency driver fixes but I have no idea how much these have helped the problem as I haven't seen tests with the updated drivers yet.

Why are you bothered if it's a single psu rail as well. It makes no difference if it one or multiple rails. Multi rail is a safety feature only.

€1600 is an awful lot to spend on an 8350 build.

Danger781

BloodBath wrote: »

Crossfire is awful for 1440p. I would advice you not to go that route based on multiple frame latency tests I've seen at that resolution. Amd are rolling out crossfire latency driver fixes but I have no idea how much these have helped the problem as I haven't seen tests with the updated drivers yet.

Why are you bothered if it's a single psu rail as well. It makes no difference if it one or multiple rails. Multi rail is a safety feature only.

€1600 is an awful lot to spend on an 8350 build.

8350?

What would you recommend graphics wise then? From looking around online (weeks worth of looking..) 7950 XFire seems to be a popular choice among 1440p users. It seems to have the best price:performance ratio.

PSU - I genuinely have no clue. People seem to recommend 12v single rail a lot. I haven't looked much into PSU's spec wise - just going by what people have said to me / what I read on other forums. :rolleyes:

marco_polo

BloodBath wrote: »

Crossfire is awful for 1440p. I would advice you not to go that route based on multiple frame latency tests I've seen at that resolution. Amd are rolling out crossfire latency driver fixes but I have no idea how much these have helped the problem as I haven't seen tests with the updated drivers yet.

Why are you bothered if it's a single psu rail as well. It makes no difference if it one or multiple rails. Multi rail is a safety feature only.

€1600 is an awful lot to spend on an 8350 build.

I posted this before but a few HD7990 reviews in April had access to a prototype driver which showed massive improvements over the then current 13.5 drivers, so you'd hope the full release will be at least as good and preferably even better again.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-AMD-Improves-CrossFire-Prototype-Driver

Danger781

marco_polo wrote: »

I posted this before but a few HD7990 reviews in April had access to a prototype driver which showed massive improvements over the then current 13.5 drivers, so you'd hope the full release will be at least as good and preferably even better again.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-AMD-Improves-CrossFire-Prototype-Driver

I never read that the last time you linked it on one of my threads. Giving it a proper read now. Interesting stuff!

BloodBath

That's for the 7990 only though. It doesn't work with crossfire. I'd assume a crossfire capable driver should be able to achieve the same results though so dual 7950's might not be too bad afterall once it's released.

marco_polo

BloodBath wrote: »

That's for the 7990 only though. It doesn't work with crossfire. I'd assume a crossfire capable driver should be able to achieve the same results though so dual 7950's might not be too bad afterall once it's released.

There nothing fundamentlly different about discrete GPUs AMD mightn't have added support for other configurations into the prototype driver, but dual GPU is still crossfire (Two HD7970 connected by an omnboard 48 lane PCIe 3 PEX bridge ) and because it is a driver not a hardware issue it should therfore be showing the exact same latency symptoms as a discrete cards crossfired.

deceit

I just taught I would point out the driver fix is out 31st july for AMD crossfire cards
http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/57125-amd-will-fix-crossfirex-runt-frame-issues-end-july/
Also I am using 7970's in cf and have no issues with them at all since 13 series of drivers where released.

Danger781

I don't think I did too bad though..

Considering €850 is the cost of the two graphics cards and the monitor.. Means I spent €700 on everything else!

BloodBath

It's a beast of a build, don't get me wrong. I think you could have easily gone for a 3570k though. Maybe the 8350 will prove to be a better gaming cpu in a year or 2 but at the moment it's not.

Danger781

BloodBath wrote: »

It's a beast of a build, don't get me wrong. I think you could have easily gone for a 3570k though. Maybe the 8350 will prove to be a better gaming cpu in a year or 2 but at the moment it's not.

I figured it was a better investment overall.

New consoles coming in with 8 cores means games will be developed to utilise that much, eventually.

I also will be using this for more than gaming.. Programming.. Small bit of encoding TV shows/movies now and then.. Streaming Tv/Movie.. Figured the extra cores may come in handy :rolleyes: