Quote:(And I actually MAY be able to get a better GPU at some point down the road!)
Well that's a pretty big "MAY". Be sure before you take that route.
Quote:I'm just seriously worried a bout system stability and future upgrades (4 DIMMS > 2)
(2 PCI-E slots for SLI.)
(Potential Overwhateverability.)
I don't consider any of those three things to be major in terms of future proofing.
You'll never need 4 dimms for ram upgrades, you can just keep upgrading the ram sticks in your 2 dimms as higher capacity dimms become available (not that you'll need to do that either since 4GB of ram is fine). The only real advantage is that your first ram upgrade will be slightly cheaper (buying two additional sticks of lower capacity ram instead of 2 sticks of higher capacity ram).
SLI/Crossfire is useless in my eyes except for the people who want top of the line performance regardless of cost. Buying a better video card every 2 years is a much better strategy than getting a second card.
Overclocking helps but it can only help so much. The difference between a i5 2400 and an i5 2500 is 10%. The difference between an i5 2500 and i5 2500K + Z68 for overclocking is potentially 22%.
The difference between a heavily overclocked i5 2500K on a Z68 board ($350 total) and a i5 2400 + H61 ($260 total) is about 33%. That's enough to delay upgrading 1 extra year at the absolute most.
I'd rather spend that money on a decent video card if I were in your shoes. But that's just my opinion (which I have been stating over and over again and probably won't change).
HAHAHAHAHA
Seriously though, no, don't even think about it. I normally try to take a neutral stance but there is absolutely no way anyone can consider bulldozer anything more than a worthless piece of shit at the moment.
Its single thread performance is WORSE than phenom II which means it will no doubt be slower than a phenom II cpu as far as dolphin is concerned. The octacore models are able to keep up with some quad core sandy bridge models in software that is highly multithreaded (able to use all 8 cores) and can perfectly load balance (which is extremely rare outside of video encoders). Even then the top of line sandy bridge models still manage to beat it even though bulldozer has a die size that is 50% higher than sandy bridge and twice the number of transistors despite having no IGP (the IGP on sandy bridge takes up about 1/5th of the die space so if you were to take it out bulldozer would have 3 times as many transistors). In all other tests bulldozer falls flat on its ass, often being outperformed by its own predecessor. I have not seen AMD come out with a product this disappointing since....well actually never. Bulldozer consumes a lot more idle power than sandy bridge and has a much lower performance per dollar, with most chips being priced much higher than similar performing intel chips.
Sad for AMD and Mee...
As I said, what would be most future proof?
Muh Dad says that h61's are made from inferior materials... so?
Quote:Muh Dad says that h61's are made from inferior materials... so?
I cannot respond to that claim honestly with insulting your dads intelligence, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear that.
Does your father have any empirical evidence of any kind to support his claim (of course I already know the obvious answer to this)?
Quote:As I said, what would be most future proof?
We've been through this like 5 times now.
If you can't afford a video card upgrade soon: i5 2400 or i5 2300 + H61 + GTX 550 or GTS 450 (I don't know the prices over there so I don't know what you can afford but I discussed this already so you can look at previous pages in this thread)
If you can afford a video card upgrade soon: i5 2500K + Z68 + GT 430 and upgrade your video card to something less shitty in the future
(10-16-2011, 11:36 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Muh Dad says that h61's are made from inferior materials... so?
I cannot respond to that claim honestly with insulting your dads intelligence, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear that.
Does your father have any empirical evidence of any kind to support his claim (of course I already know the obvious answer to this)?
Quote:As I said, what would be most future proof?
We've been through this like 5 times now.
If you can't afford a video card upgrade soon: i5 2400 or i5 2300 + H61 + GTX 550 or GTS 450 (I don't know the prices over there so I don't know what you can afford but I discussed this already so you can look at previous pages in this thread)
If you can afford a video card upgrade soon: i5 2500K + Z68 + GT 430 and upgrade your video card to something less shitty in the future
How would I be able to afford the gt 430?
As a note, I've said things far worse to my parents than anything you could type, so go right ahead. (Yep, mummy's little angel.... -_-)
Also, besides emulation, the only game I play on a regular basis is SPORE.
(Partially because it's the only modern game my PC can run.)
Dude, you are so kind and patient. I seriously can't thank you enough for all the help you keep giving me.
1. Most motherboards are made of the exact same materials they just use different chips and have different sockets/configurations/technology/bios/etc.
2. Motherboard manufacturers get to choose what to use and how to build the board. MSI can make there motherboards however they want to and asus could make theres with different capacitors or something if they wanted too. Of course despite this most motherboard manufacturers tend to use the same companies to provide the materials. My point it that such a broad generalization as saying "all H61 boards have inferior materials" would require some serious empirical evidence (internal company documentation which nobody outside the company could get detailing materials, specifications, and how the board is built).
3. My current hypothesis is that your father is making the common mistake of assuming lower cost = lower quality materials. The lower cost comes primarily from cheaper chips, less stuff on the board (therefore less materials needed), and lack of certain features that are expensive to develop.
Simply put your father is incorrect and even if he was correct would have no convenient way of backing up his point of view with hard evidence.
Quote:Also, besides emulation, the only game I play on a regular basis is SPORE.
(Partially because it's the only modern game my PC can run.)
Any build with a decent cpu and gpu (which all of these have) will run any modern PC game. Some of them won't be able to maintain a high framerate with high settings but they will still run flawlessly on medium/low settings.
(10-16-2011, 11:53 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]1. Most motherboards are made of the exact same materials they just use different chips and have different sockets/configurations/technology/bios/etc.
2. Motherboard manufacturers get to choose what to use and how to build the board. MSI can make there motherboards however they want to and asus could make theres with different capacitors or something if they wanted too. Of course despite this most motherboard manufacters tend to use the same companies to provide the materials.
3. My current hypothesis is that your father is making the common mistake of assuming lower cost = lower quality materials. The lower cost comes primarily from cheaper chips, less stuff on the board (therefore less materials needed), and lack of certain features that are expensive to develop.
Quote:Also, besides emulation, the only game I play on a regular basis is SPORE.
(Partially because it's the only modern game my PC can run.)
Any build with a decent cpu and gpu (which all of these have) will run any modern PC game. Some of them won't be able to maintain a high framerate with high settings but they will still run flawlessly on medium/low settings.
I freakin love ya man. Just amazing.
But seriously, I tried to get Z68, 2500k, and a card, but all the cards that I found were inferior to the HD 3000. (But I
could afford the Hyper 212 OR the new EVO edition.) How could I afford a GT 430? (2x/ 2.5x resolution would be a GODSEND.)
Actually, now that I think about it, aren't gt 240's just as powerful? And cheaper?
I listed the xfx gt 240 on the previous page.
Is it the 500 of VRAM?
That is why:
Quote:i5 2400 or i5 2300 + H61 + GTX 550 or GTS 450 (I don't know the prices over there so I don't know what you can afford but I discussed this already so you can look at previous pages in this thread)
is currently your best option in my opinion.
(10-16-2011, 12:02 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]That is why:
Quote:i5 2400 or i5 2300 + H61 + GTX 550 or GTS 450 (I don't know the prices over there so I don't know what you can afford but I discussed this already so you can look at previous pages in this thread)
is currently your best option in my opinion.
I know. What I don't know is how to boost the turbo clock.
Being able to get some free performance would make the 2500k a non-option.
Or is no h61 board capable?
(I really need an ATX board, because of spacing and what not.)