94 replies to this topic

[Vulpesveritas]

Vincent Vascaul, on 11 February 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

just double up your 5850 my buddy did and its awesome for one screen its all you need!

Dude, not only is that energy inefficient unless you're running DX 10/11 it won't really do him any good. Not to mention, it is nearly always a better idea to have a single good card instead of Xfire/SLI.

[Catamount]

Vulpesveritas, on 11 February 2012 - 08:39 AM, said:

Dude, not only is that energy inefficient unless you're running DX 10/11 it won't really do him any good. Not to mention, it is nearly always a better idea to have a single good card instead of Xfire/SLI.

Crossfire and SLI are interesting toys, but not very practical for all sorts of reasons, unless 1 GPU is just flat out not powerful enough for something one does

[Vincent Vascaul]

I have used crossfire for the last couple years and while I like having single cards it usualy just ends up that way.

[Will Hung]

I say we drop these two performance GPU giants and go with the company with the largest market share. Let's run MWO on an Intel GMA graphics processor, f*ck YEAH!

[Vulpesveritas]

hey new low cost option out there; http://www.tomshardw...rk,3135-16.html
and Asus has a good OC'd card at $160; http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814121559

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 15 February 2012 - 11:41 AM.

[Fresh Meat]

IMO the best bet is to wait and see what nvidia releases and let the market stabilize. The game comes out in summer so don't be too hasty.

[Vulpesveritas]

Fresh_Meat, on 15 February 2012 - 12:28 PM, said:

IMO the best bet is to wait and see what nvidia releases and let the market stabilize. The game comes out in summer so don't be too hasty.

true, but Nvidea doesn't have much of a track record for performance/watt, so that Radeon HD 7750 may quite likely end up being the best HTPC card for 2012-2013 before the GTX700/HD8000 series comes along.

Not to mention, the 7770 performs between a Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 in most benches, and given the 80 watt TDP and pricing about the same that's not bad. may get one instead of a 6870 lol.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 15 February 2012 - 01:51 PM.

[Fresh Meat]

Kepler graphics processors will be manufactured with a 28nm process so performance/watt should be decent or at least improve. Also the 7750 has a really tough time with crysis 2

Edited by Fresh_Meat, 15 February 2012 - 02:01 PM.

[Bianca Flowers]

a note to the OP:

you DO NOT want a Bulldozer chip. at all. They underperform the previous generation Phenom IIs, and the Phenom IIs are blown away by Sandy Bridge. And Sandy's replacement,Ivy Bridge is due out atthe end of next month.

This article, specifically for gaming, has all the gory detains for AMD:

http://www.tomshardw...hmark,3120.html

and this conclusion image showing relative performance of a variety of chips:




as you can see, the 8120 is outperformed by a Pentium G630. Go with a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge CPU for this build.

[Vulpesveritas]

Fresh_Meat, on 15 February 2012 - 01:54 PM, said:

Kepler graphics processors will be manufactured with a 28nm process so performance/watt should be decent or at least improve. Also the 7750 has a really tough time with crysis 2

that's due to drivers right now- there are conflicts in the current drivers. should be fixed within a couple months.

Bianca Flowers, on 15 February 2012 - 02:11 PM, said:

a note to the OP:

you DO NOT want a Bulldozer chip. at all. They underperform the previous generation Phenom IIs, and the Phenom IIs are blown away by Sandy Bridge. And Sandy's replacement,Ivy Bridge is due out atthe end of next month.

This article, specifically for gaming, has all the gory detains for AMD:

http://www.tomshardw...hmark,3120.html

and this conclusion image showing relative performance of a variety of chips:




as you can see, the 8120 is outperformed by a Pentium G630. Go with a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge CPU for this build.

the problem is that is a culmination of many game- the FX series chips have lower IPC than older chips, however in heavily threaded workloads it matches or outperforms Sandy bridge- and Cryengine3 is octa-threaded (i.e. the FX chip gets to use all it's cores.) Also, he will be doing video and CAD, both of which are also heavily threaded. And there will be new chips through at least 2014 if not longer for AM3+, unlike LGA 1155 which is only good through 2013, so he has better upgradability should he decide to use this rig for a large number of years. Also, Piledriver is expected to have quite a bit more performance. Then you get steamroller after that.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Vulpesveritas, on 15 February 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

true, but Nvidea doesn't have much of a track record for performance/watt, so that Radeon HD 7750 may quite likely end up being the best HTPC card for 2012-2013 before the GTX700/HD8000 series comes along.

Not to mention, the 7770 performs between a Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 in most benches, and given the 80 watt TDP and pricing about the same that's not bad. may get one instead of a 6870 lol.

Probably not a great idea to go with a 770, given its poor performance in those gaming benchmarks. Hopefully the Pitcairn GPU (Mid range) will fair better, which hopefully will be released just before i make my purchases for my system.

[Bianca Flowers]

Vulpesveritas, on 15 February 2012 - 02:16 PM, said:

that's due to drivers right now- there are conflicts in the current drivers. should be fixed within a couple months.
the problem is that is a culmination of many game- the FX series chips have lower IPC than older chips, however in heavily threaded workloads it matches or outperforms Sandy bridge- and Cryengine3 is octa-threaded (i.e. the FX chip gets to use all it's cores.) Also, he will be doing video and CAD, both of which are also heavily threaded. And there will be new chips through at least 2014 if not longer for AM3+, unlike LGA 1155 which is only good through 2013, so he has better upgradability should he decide to use this rig for a large number of years. Also, Piledriver is expected to have quite a bit more performance. Then you get steamroller after that.

Piledriver isn't due until 3Q/4Q 2012. Long time to use a really BAD chip.

I'l suggest that AMD's own statements indicate they are abandoning the high-end enthusiast cpu market to concentrate on APUS and Mobile chips.

[Vulpesveritas]

Bianca Flowers, on 15 February 2012 - 02:11 PM, said:

a note to the OP:

you DO NOT want a Bulldozer chip. at all. They underperform the previous generation Phenom IIs, and the Phenom IIs are blown away by Sandy Bridge. And Sandy's replacement,Ivy Bridge is due out atthe end of next month.

This article, specifically for gaming, has all the gory detains for AMD:

http://www.tomshardw...hmark,3120.html

and this conclusion image showing relative performance of a variety of chips:




as you can see, the 8120 is outperformed by a Pentium G630. Go with a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge CPU for this build.

Also, there is a moral decision there too which the OP may have made- Intel has had to be sued before when it was paying manufacturers to use it's chips instead of AMD chips back in the Athalon 64 era when AMD was swamping Intel chips. AMD also has a cleaner record beyond that, has been given a position in the 20 most moral fortune-500 companies, and still AMD manages to remain competitive when Intel puts more into R&D per year than the total sales AMD makes in a year.

Bianca Flowers, on 15 February 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

Piledriver isn't due until 3Q/4Q 2012. Long time to use a really BAD chip.

I'l suggest that AMD's own statements indicate they are abandoning the high-end enthusiast cpu market to concentrate on APUS and Mobile chips.

For the moment this is the case. And it isn't a really bad chip for things like MWO, Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, and other modern games, along with CAD and video editing which use its cores. Just not quite as good as the Intel chips

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 15 February 2012 - 02:28 PM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

You don't get anywhere in business by being nice.
It depends what you want out of your CPU really Intel= Better Performance AMD = Cheaper solid performance longer upgrade path.

[Catamount]

Bianca Flowers, on 15 February 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

I'l suggest that AMD's own statements indicate they are abandoning the high-end enthusiast cpu market to concentrate on APUS and Mobile chips.

No, AMD has said they're shifting focus from that market to concentrate on APUs (and GPUs), that doesn't mean they're abandoning the market in the least.

Nvidia has shifted focus away from gaming GPUs to focus on GPGPU, which is frankly a better business for them in many ways; it doesn't mean they've abandoned making gaming GPUs. On the same token, AMD has no plans that they've given any hint of to abandon the high-end CPU market, nor should they, given that they have the makings of a great chip once they solve some architectural issues (not to mention Windows 8 is the first OS that can actually run the chip properly anyways, so Bulldozer is being held back by the Windows 7 task scheduler).

[Vulpesveritas]

DV^McKenna, on 15 February 2012 - 02:29 PM, said:

You don't get anywhere in business by being nice.
It depends what you want out of your CPU really Intel= Better Performance AMD = Cheaper solid performance longer upgrade path.

You actually do. It's called ethical business, and some people, like myself, refuse to buy from companies who are not ethical.

[Vincent Vascaul]

Ok this is something that bugs me a little bit, these days theres no such thing as a BAD chip. To make that statement is just ridiculous, anything at or above a AMD 965 is going to meet at least 90% of the peoples needs. If I put 100 proper infront of my overclocked 2700k and my Thuban 1100.(I have done this just not 100 people.). None of them would know the difference. Todays cpus are almost never the bottleneck. Bulldozer is a fine chip and I plan on grabbing one unless its next gen comes out first. Tje only place all of this better chip stuff comes in is in benchmarks and as someone who is on hardware bot and actually has a golden cup or 2 I get it but for gamers and everybody else don't get so caught up in the charts look at what you need and what you can afford and work from there.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Vulpesveritas, on 15 February 2012 - 08:44 PM, said:

You actually do. It's called ethical business, and some people, like myself, refuse to buy from companies who are not ethical.

No you do not, people like you are in the minority, to the average purchaser ethics and a good guy image are the last things on their mind.

[Vulpesveritas]

DV^McKenna, on 16 February 2012 - 08:34 AM, said:

No you do not, people like you are in the minority, to the average purchaser ethics and a good guy image are the last things on their mind.

i know I am part of a minority, but it is a minority in which there is a niche for. And if the majority of people put more emphasis on humanity instead of money there would be a lot fewer problems in the world. People are too centered on the here and now instead of looking at the bigger picture and the people around them, and selfishness and greed have come to be the forefront ideology of society. Off of philosophical debate though, it is my, and possibly the OP's decision, and saying people shouldn't follow their morals is like saying people don't have a right to personal opinions. Also as Vincent said, in real life application you won't see much of a difference, if any between an i7 and bulldozer.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Just saying ethics is interesting, i mean after all is it ethical to release a 4 core CPU with an extra pipeline on each core and call it an 8 core cpu?