CPU Suggestion Requested.

[Keisaria]

Alienware sucks. They take forever, and they cost more. I canceled my order.

Now, since this was such a hot topic last time, I would like to request advice from those who may have more knowledge then me. (Zel)

I can build an AMD system now for much cheaper, and everywhere I look it's said that for gaming and everything, they are better. so my question is..

Which is better, FX - 57/60 single core, or the X2 4800 Dual Core? I hear the FX's are the shit for gaming, but are they as fast as the newest 4800 dual cores? They ae priced near identical, so all I need to know is which one is the best. I can find information on both of them.. but nothing yet that directly compares the two.

I wanna make a more informed choice this time. Thanks for your help!

~~Kei.

[Ravenschylde]

both sad and glad for you. I drooled over an Alienware A-51M for the longest time, forunately sanity kept hold of my credit card. But I *really* wanted one, damnit. LOL

Sorry to hijack/piggyback on your request, but I too am considering a system upgrade, and I'm looking for a decent setup, AMD cpu, Nforce4 mobo that can use my existing 1gb of PC2700 DDR ram. Also will need a PCI-E vidcard, and I prefer ATI. I'm not looking for top end, just a good solid upgrade from my present Asus A8NX-DE (someothing like that, lol) Athlon XP 3000+ and the Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb I have.

That is, unless even those people with "uber systems" are still getting massive slowdowns in places like BWL's crawl to Broodlord hell. I *think* that IF lag is just unavoidable, but I'm wondering how much improvement I could realistally get from a system upgrade, and how much of the bad effects I see are from Blizzard tech/hardware-induced problems? Any opinions, mew?

[Zelstrom]

FX60 is a dual core, get that or a 4800+ X2 for a highend box. The 939 Opteron dual core chips are nice to but those can get confusing so stick with a FX60/X2 chip.

The best mainboards currently out are the ASUS A8N32-SLI or the DFI Expert, they are full featured and not cheap. A name brand set of 2x1gig DDR will work for memory.

When building a system like this keep the quality of the powersupply in mind, only get the best you can afford. Top brands I can recommend are PC Power and Cooling, OCZ and Seasonic. 500w-600w is plenty.

For video cards I only buy Nvidia. They are currently faster than their ATI counterparts per price range and ATI has shitty OpenGL support for the 3D modeling/animmation package I use.

Later this year a new CPU socket comes out for AMD, but the diffrence isn't worth waiting for if you can use an upgrade right now.

[Ufgang]

You are now the third person I know of that has had nothing but a horrible experience with Alienware.

About Vid cards I have the x800xt ATI card and loves it to death.

[Keisaria]

It's be 49 days since I placed my order, and they still hadn't even started building it yet when I called them today to get a status.

Where I'm going now, I can get an AMD system with more, for 500-1k less.

I'll post the specs after I order it so you can all give me you're thoughts. (Zel mostly, since he was hardcore against my last one. :) )

[Zandur]

It's be 49 days since I placed my order, and they still hadn't even started building it yet when I called them today to get a status.

Where I'm going now, I can get an AMD system with more, for 500-1k less. *

I'll post the specs after I order it so you can all give me you're thoughts. *(Zel mostly, since he was hardcore against my last one. *:) *)
Awesome, Keis. Building a comp is way more fun than buying one, if you ask me. Researching the stuff and getting a deal on each component is half the fun!

[Keisaria]

I agree.. though building them on your own also has a whole seperate set of problems it comes with as well. :D

Anyway though, new specs as follows:

Case: Nzxt Lexa Gaming Tower Case
Case Lighting: ( Cold Cathode Neon Light Red )
Power Supply: Thermaltake Purepower 680 Watt Power Supply [SLI Ready] )
Processor: AMD® Athlon-64 FX-60 Dual Core CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology
Processor Cooling: Liquid CPU Cooling Fan System Kit --- [for AMD CPU] )
Motherboard: ( Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI-x16 Chipset w/7.1 Sound, Dual Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, Dual PCI-E MB )
Memory: ( 2048 MB [1024MB X2] DDR-400 PC3200 Memory Module Corsair XMS PRO w/ Heat Spreader & LED Lights )
Video Cards: 2x [PCI-Express 16x] Nvidia Geforce 7800GTX 512MB w/DVI + TV Out Video
Hard Drive: ( 250 GB HARD DRIVE [S-ATA] Western Digital 250 GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive )
CD/DVD Drive: ( 16x DVD-ROM Drive - Sony Black )
CD-RW/DVD-RW Drive: ( Sony DWQ-28A Dual Format/Double Layer 16X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive Black )
Sound Card: ( 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard )
Floppy Drive: ( Mitsumi 1.44 MB Internal Floppy Drive Black )
Operation System: ( MS Windows XP Home Edition w/Service Pack-2 )

And other random crap of course.. just not worth mentioning the little stuff.

[Ravenschylde]

important question is..... what's the CPU speed, I don't see it. And what's the final price? ^_^

[Keisaria]

AMD's don't actually give you an exact speed, as they're weird with how they do things. like, a 2.2ghz is as fast as an Intel 3.2 . ::shrug:: Zel could probably explain it better, or at least link you somewhere that could. But the FX60 is made for gaming and hands down, flat out completely kills all Intel chips on the market right now is just about every application. I didn't know that when I ordered my last system.. it was the other way around when I built the one I use now. :)

But the final price was $3685. Which is about 1k LESS then Alienware was charging me.. and this is a much better system.

[Ravenschylde]

Sweet, sounds like you've got quite the beast coming to you there, I'm sure you'll be happy with it, and that I'll be jealous of your framerate. LOL

I hear there's a new version of 3Dmark out now. Once you get that beast I'd be interested to see how it does on that benchmark

[Zelstrom]

Any option on the powersupply aside from Thermaltake? They have massive quality control issues, somehow reviewers get good parts and retailers get garbage....

[Bercy]

That is, unless even those people with "uber systems" are still getting massive slowdowns in places like BWL's crawl to Broodlord hell. I *think* that IF lag is just unavoidable, but I'm wondering how much improvement I could realistally get from a system upgrade, and how much of the bad effects I see are from Blizzard tech/hardware-induced problems? Any opinions, mew?

I have an Alienware sys and I'm getting about 20-25 FPS in the crawl.

EDIT:
Read the rest of the thread :cry:

My system was ready and shipped to my door in less than a month as I recall. Could it be the parts that you ordered delayed things? Dunno why they hadn't started it after so long...

Anyway, my experience has been good w/ Alienware except for one thing, and that's covered by warranty and should be fixed today or tomorrow.

B

[Zandur]

I agree.. *though building them on your own also has a whole seperate set of problems it comes with as well. *:D

Anyway though, new specs as follows:

Case: Nzxt Lexa Gaming Tower Case *
Case Lighting: ( Cold Cathode Neon Light Red )
Power Supply: Thermaltake Purepower 680 Watt Power Supply [SLI Ready] )
Processor: AMD® Athlon-64 FX-60 Dual Core CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology *
Processor Cooling: *Liquid CPU Cooling Fan System Kit --- [for AMD CPU] )
Motherboard: ( Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI-x16 Chipset w/7.1 Sound, Dual Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, Dual PCI-E MB )
Memory: ( 2048 MB [1024MB X2] DDR-400 PC3200 Memory Module Corsair XMS PRO w/ Heat Spreader & LED Lights )
Video Cards: 2x [PCI-Express 16x] Nvidia Geforce 7800GTX 512MB w/DVI + TV Out Video
Hard Drive: ( 250 GB HARD DRIVE [S-ATA] Western Digital 250 GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive )
CD/DVD Drive: ( 16x DVD-ROM Drive - Sony Black )
CD-RW/DVD-RW Drive: ( Sony DWQ-28A Dual Format/Double Layer 16X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive Black )
Sound Card: ( 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard )
Floppy Drive: ( Mitsumi 1.44 MB Internal Floppy Drive Black )
Operation System: ( MS Windows XP Home Edition w/Service Pack-2 )

And other random crap of course.. *just not worth mentioning the little stuff.
Some nice parts in that badboy, specially the SLI 7800's :drool!:

For hard drive, I would suggest getting a new 150GB Raptor. Review on it: http://storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD1500ADFD_1.html

I have the 2nd gen 10000 RPM 74GB Raptor, and it screams for playing WoW. I can't even imagine getting something with more storage that's even faster and non SCSI... ;)

[Sanatarium]

I agree.. though building them on your own also has a whole seperate set of problems it comes with as well. :D

Anyway though, new specs as follows:

Case: Nzxt Lexa Gaming Tower Case
Case Lighting: ( Cold Cathode Neon Light Red )
Power Supply: Thermaltake Purepower 680 Watt Power Supply [SLI Ready] )
Processor: AMD® Athlon-64 FX-60 Dual Core CPU w/ Hyper Transport Technology
Processor Cooling: Liquid CPU Cooling Fan System Kit --- [for AMD CPU] )
Motherboard: ( Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI-x16 Chipset w/7.1 Sound, Dual Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, Dual PCI-E MB )
Memory: ( 2048 MB [1024MB X2] DDR-400 PC3200 Memory Module Corsair XMS PRO w/ Heat Spreader & LED Lights )
Video Cards: 2x [PCI-Express 16x] Nvidia Geforce 7800GTX 512MB w/DVI + TV Out Video
Hard Drive: ( 250 GB HARD DRIVE [S-ATA] Western Digital 250 GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive )
CD/DVD Drive: ( 16x DVD-ROM Drive - Sony Black )
CD-RW/DVD-RW Drive: ( Sony DWQ-28A Dual Format/Double Layer 16X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive Black )
Sound Card: ( 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard )
Floppy Drive: ( Mitsumi 1.44 MB Internal Floppy Drive Black )
Operation System: ( MS Windows XP Home Edition w/Service Pack-2 )

And other random crap of course.. just not worth mentioning the little stuff.

Just another reason why I hate you! :lol:

Hopefully this one works out better for you.

[Keisaria]

The reason the Alienware took so long is part after part after part went into backorder, and things were still that way yesterday.

Sadly, as of today I have found out that the video cards from THIS place are backordered... with no known arrival date.

So apparently no matter who I give my 4000ish dollars to, they can't deliver. ::sigh:: Maybe I'll have it by june.

[Zelstrom]

7800 GTX 512 cards are almost impossible to get, stick with the 256 meg versions and you can have your machine. The 512 cards have faster GPUs on them but two 256 cards in SLI are already a beast. Did you find out about the powersupply?

[Bercy]

The reason the Alienware took so long is part after part after part went into backorder, and things were still that way yesterday.

Sadly, as of today I have found out that the video cards from THIS place are backordered... *with no known arrival date.

So apparently no matter who I give my 4000ish dollars to, they can't deliver. *::sigh:: *Maybe I'll have it by june.

:cry:

[Keisaria]

The only other power supply offered was indeed a PC Power and Cooling, but it was a 850 watt and 400 dollars more expensive. And that seemed a bit high for the power supply.

And I'll wait a week longer if I have to. If I'm gonna get something, I want the nest available.. which is why the whole AMD/Intel thing had been bugging me since the moment you said something.

I'm not gonna be doing anything for the next 5ish weeks save sitting here anyway, so I can wait. :D

[delphine]

The FX cpus are the highest performing cpus you can get for general gaming. No game really takes advantage of multiple thread execution (WoW certainly does not) so having a dual core system will not really help in that regard. That being said, there may be a time in the near future where dual core cpus will start to benefit gameplay significantly, but that isn't going to be anytime in the very near future. However, with the strong push from both Intel and AMD towards dual core cpus, it is very reasonable to assume that multi-threaded games should be developed sometime soon.

As mentioned earlier, AMD is transitioning towards their new socket, Socket AM-2. This will not be backwards compatible with existing socket architectures and will rely on DDR2 for the first time on the AMD side. If you think that DDR2 is what you want over DDR1, then you might want to wait until some boards using the new socket are out. However, the first implementation of a new socket design, as well as new memory technology usually comes with some hiccups, so I would not suggest jumping on board the new socket for at least 6 months. That should give engineers ample time to work out any bugs and really start to tap the new technology's potential.

If you really have to have a system right now then the FX-60 with a top of the line motherboard, top of the line memory, top of the line video card, and a very fast hard drive (maybe a new WD Raptor?) will give you all the gaming power you need and then some, but as always it comes at a hefty price. Try to eliminate any sort of bottleneck in system performance if you are going to be spending this much money. It makes no sense to spend thousands of dollars on a system if all that performance hits a huge bottleneck with slower memory or a slower hard drive (items which people overlook quite often).

[Zelstrom]

*No game really takes advantage of multiple thread execution (WoW certainly does not) so having a dual core system will not really help in that regard.

Incorrect, with the new video drivers from Nvidia and ATI alot of games get some boost from a second core. Also games like Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 have gotten recent pacthes that improve their performance on multi-threaded capable machines.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_dual-core_performance/page5.asp

[delphine]

Call of Duty 2 performs better with SMP disabled, so having a dual core CPU will not make any difference for that game right now. In fact the FX-57 outperforms the FX-60 in this game (but only by a very small margin). The only game that I have seen that takes any advantage of a dual core CPU is Quake 4, and spending a lot of money on a CPU to take advantage of 1 game seems silly to me.

The same is true for Battlefield 2 - The FX-57 outperforms the FX-60, for now at least. Here is a quote from Anandtech:

"Setting records in Winstone, SYSMark and WorldBench, it's clear that for all of your desktop applications, you can't get any faster than the Athlon 64 FX-60. Granted, the performance advantage over the X2 4800+ is generally in the 5% - 9% range, so it's up to you to decide whether or not the advantage is worth it.
Then there's the issue of AMD's upcoming Socket-AM2; due out in another few months, you obviously won't be able to use any Socket-939 processors in the new motherboards and there will be no upgrade path beyond the FX-60 for current 939 owners. So, our recommendation would be to stay away from the FX-60 unless you absolutely have to build the world's fastest system today.

If the latter is true, then you can't go wrong with the FX-60; if not, however, you'll be better off waiting for AM2. "

The price difference between the X2-4800 and FX-60 is $300-$350 right now. A 5-10% (sometimes less) increase in performance for that amount of money seemsm silly to me, but as I stated before, if you absolutely need the fastest system available today and money is no object, then go wtih the FX-60.

[Zelstrom]

...and spending a lot of money on a CPU to take advantage of 1 game seems silly to me.


The Quake 4 engine is used/going to used in several games, the information I listed shows the path the industry is taking. Also as the graphic card vendors fine tune drivers games in general will be faster on dual core setups. Not silly if you understand what is happening.

[delphine]

Some interesting reading if you're still contemplating which motherboard to get: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2661&p=17

Also, some benchmarks for some of the newer top of the line video cards: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679&p=14

The 7800GTX 512 is a $750 card by itself, so running 2 in SLI mode is going to set you back $1500+. You will also see a very significant drop in performance if you enable AA/AF, much more than the cheaper ATI equivalents.