eh. It'll work.
About my only complaint would be the Sound Blaster X-Fi.
The lowest end Sound Blaster X-Fi runs around $50-Canadian.
It's audio specifications are listed as:
- Sample Rate 96KHz
- Digital Audio 24-bit
- SNR >108dB (20kHz Low-pass filter, A-Weighted)
The only X-Fi to do a better sampling rate is the $180 X-Fi Titanium Fatal1y
However, Asus has two cards that will do 192KHz sampling rates: the DS 7.1 and the D1 7.1 sound cards. I wasn't able to find a DS 7.1 in my short list of sites, but I did spot a D1 7.1.
There's actually quite a few cards with better sound quality for a lower price than the X-Fi that I saw on the Canada Newegg.
Don't really need the two video cards for COH/GR, but that looks like quite the nice setup overall.
Hard drive - Depends. Do you want to spend money on an SSD boot drive (fast, small, expensive) and larger storage? Even without an SSD, I tend to be a fan of having separate boot and data/program drives - something fast for Windows, and plenty of space for everything else (though I still lean toward Western Digital's Caviar Black drives of late.)
I'm not a fan of ATI Cards, so I would switch to NVidia GTX 470 (only need one, as CoX does not take advantage of CrossFire or SLI also you can't dual monitor with either of those) get two only if you are playing other high graphic intensive games.
Go from 6GB RAM to 8GB RAM (it helps in so many other ways.)
Take some of the money you are saving from that second video card and put it toward a getting a few SSD Hard drives. AData makes great ones.
Not sure how much you are paying for the case (Net prices range form $125 - $279) I would go with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811517004
it has decent reviews and costs around the same. The features of it are very nice and allows you to add water cooling down the road if you are so inclined. Another option is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811156062
which I currently have for two of my computers.
I would also put money into a very nice power supply (way to many people underestimate the importance of a good one) like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153127
that is my starter (I currently am using one on but I also don't CrossFire or SLI) but if you want dual video cards I would get one with at least 1000w.
A dirty little secret that most people won't tell you is that sound cards are really a thing of the past (I know I will get crap for that) as most motherboards have a great built in sound card that rivals those that you could end up paying more than a $100 for. Save the money and put it some place nice like the SSDs or PSU.
One very important thing, don't buy the retail version of Windows 7 (only do this if you are comfortable doing your own Windows trouble shooting) and get the OEM version from NewEgg or other direct vendors. Win 7 Home Prem 64bit is all that you need and you will love the changes over XP and Vista.
Hope this helped. Oh, btw there are as many computer preferences as there are butt holes in this world, just pick the build that is the least smelly to you, and don't get caught up in this is a $3500 build because next year (more like next month) your build loses $500 - $1000 in worth as the next latest and greatest hits the market.
Da Falcon Scrapper lvl 50
Shadow Hunter Q Blaster lvl 50
http://psfcoh.com/
Step Up or Step Aside
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Soo... switch to a card that has less performance... puts off more heat... and.. uses up far more power?|
Originally Posted by Cinkidd
I'm not a fan of ATI Cards, so I would switch to NVidia GTX 470 (only need one, as CoX does not take advantage of CrossFire or SLI also you can't dual monitor with either of those) get two only if you are playing other high graphic intensive games.
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Is this suggestion supposed to make sense?
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| Go from 6GB RAM to 8GB RAM (it helps in so many other ways.) |
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| Take some of the money you are saving from that second video card and put it toward a getting a few SSD Hard drives. AData makes great ones. |
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|
Not sure how much you are paying for the case (Net prices range form $125 - $279) I would go with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811517004 it has decent reviews and costs around the same. The features of it are very nice and allows you to add water cooling down the road if you are so inclined. Another option is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811156062 which I currently have for two of my computers. |
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I would also put money into a very nice power supply (way to many people underestimate the importance of a good one) like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153127 that is my starter (I currently am using one on but I also don't CrossFire or SLI) but if you want dual video cards I would get one with at least 1000w. |
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| A dirty little secret that most people won't tell you is that sound cards are really a thing of the past (I know I will get crap for that) as most motherboards have a great built in sound card that rivals those that you could end up paying more than a $100 for. Save the money and put it some place nice like the SSDs or PSU. |
Here's the real dirty little secret: Most onboard chips don't do OpenAL or OpenSL ES. Which pretty much means you won't get hardware accelerated sound at all.
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| One very important thing, don't buy the retail version of Windows 7 (only do this if you are comfortable doing your own Windows trouble shooting) and get the OEM version from NewEgg or other direct vendors. Win 7 Home Prem 64bit is all that you need and you will love the changes over XP and Vista. |
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| Hope this helped. |
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| Oh, btw there are as many computer preferences as there are butt holes in this world, just pick the build that is the least smelly to you, and don't get caught up in this is a $3500 build because next year (more like next month) your build loses $500 - $1000 in worth as the next latest and greatest hits the market. |
You might get a more enthusiastic response to this particular kinda question from the scary tech-heads who lurk in the Tech Issues & Bugs forum.
Folks here are whizzes with in-game questions like Where do I get a Cape? but the really tech-savvy types lurk elsewhere.
Actually, it sounds like he's getting 12GB, two 6GB kits.
What about the power supply?
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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<nitpick>| It's an I7. That means triple channel memory. Unless you know something I don't, and from your first line that's really doubtful, I doubt you'll be able to get 8gb of memory to work in a Triple Channel mode. |
It's not that it's an I7, it's that it's Socket 1366 (think I'm remembering that right) that makes that distinction. i7 = Hyperthreading. i5 = No hyperthreading, regardless of socket. (I'm running an i7-860, 4 Gb RAM. No triple channel available. Socket 1156. Quad core, eight threads.)
</nitpick>
Edit: But yeah. Shop for a good power supply. Currently running a Corsair 650w, though I'm not doing Crossfire. (I do have the headroom to.)
Still not quite right. Yes you are right about Socket 1366 is the one that uses triple channel memory (3 sticks at a time).
For Socket 1156 it's a bit more convoluted.
i7-8xx - Quad Core, Hyperthreading, Turbo Boost +667MHz, 8MB L2 Cache, DDR3-1600 without overclocking.
i5-7xx - Quad Core, Turbo Boost +533MHz, 8MB L2 Cache, DDR3-1333
i5-6xx - Dual Core, Hyperthreading, 4MB L2 Cache, Turbo Boost +266MHz, DDR3-1333, Onboard Video
i3-5xx - Dual Core, Hyperthreading, 4MB L2 Cache, DDR3-1333, Onboard Video
Pentium G6xxx - Dual Core, 3MB L2 Cache, DDR3-1066, Onboard Video
Simple and straightforward isn't it, just as you expect from Intel. 
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
*sigh* AMD's so nice and simple... 
Somehow I've completely missed the i5-6xx series having hyperthreading. (Half wonder why they didn't split that level in to i4 and i5, then.) Knew about the i3 (just from seeing so many reviews of it vs lower-end AMD 3 and 4 core parts with a comment like "Hyperthreading doesn't make up the difference vs physical cores in heavily threaded apps.")
Yea, hyperthreading is an efficiency feature. It can squeeze a bit more performance out of each core by running two threads at a time.
The i3-5xx gets a lot of press because if you are going to overclock the snot out of an i5-6xx, it's best if you disable the Turbo Boost, thus making it almost like an i3-5xx. The i5-6xx does have specialized instructions for high speed encryption/decryption but that's not what is usually benchmarked by overclockers. And since one of the main points behind overclocking is to get the most performance for the least amount of money, why pay for features you aren't going to use?
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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Symmetrical Multi-Threading, as implemented on (most*) Intel processors, is extremely selective in what tasks it can accelerate. I wrote about SMT/HT on the Pentium 4 processor a few years back: http://www.mepisguides.com/fti/rig-r...g-rec-cpu.html (beware, lots of spelling errors that I have never bothered to fix, don't ask me why, I'm normally pedantic about spelling)|
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Yea, hyperthreading is an efficiency feature. It can squeeze a bit more performance out of each core by running two threads at a time.
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Okay, at this point I should probably explain Hyperthreading. Hyperthreading is the term Intel uses to describe the technology that allows a Pentium4 processor to be seen as two processors by the computer system. Intel advertises Hyperthreading as a performance boost, like you are getting 2 processors for the price of 1. While not an outright lie, it is important to understand some factors behind Hyperthreading. (go read the rest if you are interested) |
On my own I7-920 I can't really create average use scenarios that leverage the Hyperthreading abilities.
*most: I am aware of some Intel processors, such as Itanium, that have the Full-Threading capabilities normally found in RISC architectures like IBM POWER, IBM Cell, and Oracle / Sun SPARC. As far as I am aware, the full-threading has yet to be seen on Intel's desktop line-up of processors.
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| The i3-5xx gets a lot of press because if you are going to overclock the snot out of an i5-6xx, it's best if you disable the Turbo Boost, thus making it almost like an i3-5xx. The i5-6xx does have specialized instructions for high speed encryption/decryption but that's not what is usually benchmarked by overclockers. And since one of the main points behind overclocking is to get the most performance for the least amount of money, why pay for features you aren't going to use? |
Well the Pentium 4 had enough problems keeping it's pipeline full with a single thread that splitting the L2 cache between two threads in an attempt to gain a little better performance was pretty much a craps shoot.
The hyperthreading in the Core iX line of CPUs is a whole lot better but still only squeezes another 15-20% performance improvement in heavily multithreaded applications. It's easiest it see in the single Vs multi threaded Cinemark benchmarks. If we hop in the wayback machine we can see the difference between HT on and off in this article on the i7-965.
The same article however also shows us the downside of HT with gaming performance being a bit worse with HT on than off. But this was under Vista. IIRC Windows 7 does a better job recognizing real cores from virtual ones and only assign virtual ones work only after the all the real cores are being used.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
So the title basically sums up the whole thing. I'm buying a new PC and want some input, pretty much anything from suggestions to change parts or even if it will all work together...I'm not that computer savy but i did some research and came up with this!
I'll finally be able to see Ultra-mode and in a zone designed for it none the less! Oh in case you're wondering about how much this is costing, it'll be about $2500 -Canadian- when I'm done. It would cost $3500 but I decided to save roughly $1000 by switching from the Intel i7 980x Extreme Edition to the 930, simply because I really don't see an advantage to the 980 other than the whole running a billion programs at once >.> Since I only run four tops I think I'll be fine, if you don't think so though please let me know why!
Toe Tagger's New Computa!:
Processor: Intel i7 930 2.8GHZ
Motherboard: Asus Rampage 3 Extreme Edition
VideoCards: 2x Radeon HD 5870's XFX 2GB
Memory: 2x6GB Corsair Dominators (<---that's just ironic)
Hard Drive: Unknown (Suggestions more than welcome)
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi (don't really care about soundcards >.<)
Case: Cooler Master - Sniper
Operating System: Windows 7
That's pretty much it! I'm really excited to get this in time for the Going Rogue release