Building a new system (motherboard and cpu)

[Cops]

I'm looking at getting a new CPU and Motherboard in a day or two, I currently have a AMD Phenom 9500. Even though it's a low end quad-core that should still do the bulk of what I need it to do, it's a piece of shit when it comes to games that run on one core. Even if I over clock it the best I get is 2.2 or some shit, and for games like Darkfall the things seizes up in the middle of a battle between 50+ people. I think the main problem is the l2 cache is like 512 kb, not even 1mb. It's a fucking bottle necking joke of a system.

I've already looked at upgrading the CPU, and because they created two versions of my motherboard and I got the older one I can't handle the wattage of new chips. I was told the Black Edition chip would be perfect and require me not to ditch my system, however it's not compatible with my motherboard. Meaning if I upgrade it's back to getting a new cpu + motherboard, there's no way around it.

What I'm looking at getting;

$219
i5 - 750 Lynnfield 2.6 L3 Cache 8 MB - Quadcore
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...3&Sku=I69-0750

$?
Ram - don't know which, yet (has to be ddr3)

$?
Motherboard



I've read some reviews and apparently the i7 hyper threading isn't something that is really viable, it seems like the technology is ahead of the industry and averages consumers actual needs. I have little interest in using Windows 7, I'll rip a copy if newer games won't run off XP - otherwise I'm completely content with Windows XP.

I'm thinking long-term with this purchase, I invested too quickly last time. I'm looking for longevity, I have a few more years of University and I want a rig that will be able to handle the current and new games that will be coming out, at the same time I don't want to spend more than $450-500 total. My video card is a 9800 GTX+, which currently isn't that bad of a card. If I have to make a purchase in the next 2-3 years I just want it to be a new video card, that's it.

Any advice is appreciated.

[Cops]

Found this board on their site,

$119
Intel DP55WB Motherboard - Intel P55, Socket LGA1156, micro ATX, 8 Channel Audio

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...14874&csid=_25

[kthx]

I heard they are giving away some new ATX's for free, the ilyaz model.

[Dwopple]

i unsubscribed from darkfall just 5 minutes ago, im not sure if you were on EU-1, but i was a part of The Mercs/Blackwater, we owned.

[Cops]

i unsubscribed from darkfall just 5 minutes ago, im not sure if you were on EU-1, but i was a part of The Mercs/Blackwater, we owned.

The Mercs got caught duping, a lot. It kind of sucked that everyone could barely afford to skill up greater to get into fire and the mercs would roll into our city with 100 fire magic. I can't get mad or whatever, they were just better exploiters than the rest of the server. From day one, you guys were hitting mobs that did no damage and sitting in acid pools to max out rigor/ignore pain. Within the first 48 hours, The Mercs were ahead of everyone by at least 3 weeks.

I joined LOTD during the middle of them relocating, I was there when they tried to form a Stasis alliance, which was nothing but an epic failure. By the end of EU, and the start of NA I had a decently high character and we positioned ourselves with Capsule and basically had non stop PvP come to our door. Right now my alliance combined with Sinister has NA down pat, the only players who rival us in skill is DiE, and The Black Shields. I can't wait for EU to officially die once they allow server transfers. We need more bodies in the game, and the best part is that North Americans will have the upper hand this time, no more 20 ping for those fucking euros.

[Dwopple]

i was actually in Invictus, we never had any dupers, but we did roll with The Mercs and Afgans, especially against cairn. Good times in darkfall, my character (Atticus Killbane) is pretty stacked, i plan on transfering to NA-1 when they open up transfers and rejoining invictus, but i gave away everything to my clan mates including 2 full sets of dragon!! woo those were great to wear on cairn raids

[Cops]

my alliance now owns cairin yssam is supposedly the biggest alliance in the game but truthfully they lost a lot of people and are very weak, on paper they have lots of people but in reality they're less than a hundred man alliance. i think if any clans come over and have plans of taking territory they will look to either nif or yssam, ruby and cairin may be a little harder.

[Fit of Rage]

FWIW, at least currently, there are not a lot of games out there that utilize more than one CPU core. For that reason, unless you're running a lot of programs simultaneously (internet, excel, word, powerpoint, photoshop, movie editing software, solid modeling software, etc) you really won't see a huge benefit from having a quad core. If you are worried about that kind of thing, there are three things you should consider:

straight up clock speed- I'd steer away from a 2.66ghz if I were you. Try to find something at least near the 3ghz range:

E8500 (dual core) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115036
Q9550 Yorkfield - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115041

The 8500 clocks at 3.16 stock so you can actually overclock it to 3.5 safely without any aftermarket cooling system. The 9550 clocks at 2.83 stock which you could easily ramp to over 3.0 without complications.

Now lets talk motherboards--if you really want to make the best use of either of the cores I mentioned above, you better make sure the FSB is 1333 MHz. If it's anything less, you're giving your system a bottleneck right there.

For memory, I took the cheap route and bought a ton of DDR2 800 RAM (8GB) and it's working well for me. I don't think I've maxed out my memory once since I upgraded. It's really up to you how much money you spend. If you want something that will last for quite a few years, you may opt for 4GB of DDR3 with the option to upgrade to 8 later.

Bottom line, best option is to set a budget, find a mobo that will support all the things you want within that budget, pick your parts, and check compatibility. Can't stress that last part enough--if your RAM and mobo are incompatible, you're gonna be fucked.

[Cops]

That's the problem the game I play runs on one core. The i5 comes with an overclocking program that lets you pump it up to a 3.6 without it changing the actual temperature, it could sustain at this speed. As far as I know even looking at this from an individual core stance it beats out everything but the i7's. The card you showed me looks sweet, but even the people giving reviews say it's the next best thing compared to an i5. If I'm gonna plug $200 into a CPU why go for the lesser one, especially when i'll have to buy ram regardless.

[Cops]

Bottom line, best option is to set a budget, find a mobo that will support all the things you want within that budget, pick your parts, and check compatibility. Can't stress that last part enough--if your RAM and mobo are incompatible, you're gonna be fucked.

I'm caught between a rock and a hard place, i can't get a better chip for my motherboard, and my ram is not compatible with an i5 or i7. my rams decent, my videocards decent i just need a new chip and a motherboard... the issue really is that i see myself having two options.

build a whole new system, ram, cpu, motherboard, etc

downgrade and buy a crappier cpu and motherboard so i can save some money on the cost/ram

[Cops]

FWIW, at least currently, there are not a lot of games out there that utilize more than one CPU core. For that reason, unless you're running a lot of programs simultaneously (internet, excel, word, powerpoint, photoshop, movie editing software, solid modeling software, etc) you really won't see a huge benefit from having a quad core. If you are worried about that kind of thing, there are three things you should consider:

straight up clock speed- I'd steer away from a 2.66ghz if I were you. Try to find something at least near the 3ghz range:

E8500 (dual core) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115036
Q9550 Yorkfield - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115041

The 8500 clocks at 3.16 stock so you can actually overclock it to 3.5 safely without any aftermarket cooling system. The 9550 clocks at 2.83 stock which you could easily ramp to over 3.0 without complications.

Now lets talk motherboards--if you really want to make the best use of either of the cores I mentioned above, you better make sure the FSB is 1333 MHz. If it's anything less, you're giving your system a bottleneck right there.

For memory, I took the cheap route and bought a ton of DDR2 800 RAM (8GB) and it's working well for me. I don't think I've maxed out my memory once since I upgraded. It's really up to you how much money you spend. If you want something that will last for quite a few years, you may opt for 4GB of DDR3 with the option to upgrade to 8 later.

Bottom line, best option is to set a budget, find a mobo that will support all the things you want within that budget, pick your parts, and check compatibility. Can't stress that last part enough--if your RAM and mobo are incompatible, you're gonna be fucked.

I went a bit above my price range but I bought;

A 9550 2.83 Core 2 Quad, 12 mb cache (shared) (C$239)

Motherboard for the Processor (C$114) - saved $20

650 watt power supply (C$65)

Looking at the price on newegg, I saved close to $70 on the processor when you do the conversion. I'm going to get this to run at a stable 3.5, it's not completly built yet though so I can't say how I'm doing in video games that require a tremendous amount of power and resources.

I've talked to people running an 8800 nvidia card with the 2.6 8500, and they are getting roughly 100 FPS in large scale sieges in Darkfall. I can't wait to see what my 9800 GTX+ and 9550 processor do for me. I can't say the problem's solved, but I'm pretty sure when it's built it will run perfectly fine.

[Fit of Rage]

FWIW, this is the vid card I'm running:

http://www.evga.com/articles/378.asp

It's an nVidea 8800 GT; I'm sure you could do better for cheaper now. I've had no problems at all with my EVGA, it works great.

[Cops]

It does what it needs to, so you can't complain :] I'm playing Darkfall right now and just walking around is giving me 160 FPS, that's up from the 60-70 that I was getting on my old system. I haven't overclocked my system either, I think I'll be up to 190-200 FPS when it's running at a 3.5. I may very well be able to get 100 FPS during a city siege with hundreds of players. My old system would drop from 60 FPS down to under 10 during a siege, it was fucking ridiculous.

I bought my card for $150, it has since gone down to $110. It's not a bad card and does what it needs to, with all these recent cards in this videocard war between ATi and Nvidia it seems like its really just a race to the bottom. There's just so many new cards on the market, that cards can't hold their price tag even if they hold their value.

Once my card goes down to $50 in six months I'll jump cards again to another $125-150 mediocre video card, I can't see myself ever needing or wanting a $300 card. I can still play all the games that I want to on my 9800 gtx, why jump?