New computer

[The European]

Hello fellow Escapists
After a few long years im finaly getting a new computer.

which was really necessery as I only could play Half life 2 with low textures and a low resolution and most special effects like invisibility couldnt even done right (a cloaked Spy is black instead of being invisable)And I could see stuff like blood and shadows trough walls which made things a little bit easy online.

But now for the main purpose of this topic. Im not really familiar with specs that are good or bad so can you my fellow Escapist help me with this?

lian li armorsuit pc 50R (Case)
ASUS P8P67
Intell I core i5 2500
Kingston 4gig ram
crucial real ssd c300 64Gb SSD (for windows)
Ati club 3d hd6970
samsung 1,5Tb eco 3 (Hard disk)
seasonic m12d 850

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers. Also, which OS will you be running, if it's 64 bit, you might want to think about sticking in another couple of GBs of RAM in there.

 

[The European]

Well its too late now I just got an Email that everything was orded.

 

[Kaboose the Moose]

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers. Also, which OS will you be running, if it's 64 bit, you might want to think about sticking in another couple of GBs of RAM in there.

Meh, having both chipsets I'd go for the i5 computer. The i7 is more powerful than the i5 but for games the latter is more than adequate, In fact, the higher processing speed of the i5 leads to better overall performance where as the i7 will really shine with multimedia and multi-interface tasks, such as photoshop. Nothing is wrong with running an i7 chipset for gaming, it's just that it doesn't really make a noticeable difference. They, for all intents and purposes, are the same. It's mostly Goldilocks pricing

 

[Wolfram23]

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers.

That's the stupidest thing I've heard today. Nice!

OP: Looks good although I'd suggest getting more than a 64gb SSD. At least go for 80gb.

Otherwise it looks good, it'll be a very nice system.

Spoiler: Rant about i5 vs i7

It's well proven that hyperthreading doesn't actually double performance, so by hyperthreading the quad cores you're only going to perform around the level of 6 cores. This shows an advantage only in very limited scenarios that aren't encountered by the vast majority of PC users. Things like rendering, video and audio editing, and file compression can use all cores and show some gains. Games are still optimized for dual cores most of the time, but even the most CPU intensive game isn't going to max out a quad cores before a hyperthreaded quad core, even if you're running SLI GTX 580s.

On top of that, the i5 platform tends to show better results for single card solutions, and equal in 2 card solutions. The only time the i7 platform (formerly X58) pulls ahead is with 3 or 4 cards, however, any P55 motherboard (now P67) that has an NForce 200 chip will actually perform equal to the X58 in 3 card setups as well, even tho i5 has 16 PCIe lanes and i7 has 32.

The only thing really left is that the X58 boards support triple channel RAM while P55 supports dual channel. However, the difference once again is very small.

What isn't small, is the cost difference. The CPUs are $100 more, the motherboards are $50-150 more, and an extra stick of RAM is $30-50 more.

So, $200-300 more bucks spent for... unused CPU power. (Assuming the application is gaming and not hardcore rendering and video stuff etc). You could spend that money on a second GPU and get far better gaming performance than the i7.

Finally, there is an i7 for the P55 platform, the 870/875K which is equal to the X58 CPUs.
The OP is going with Sandy Bridge, so things have changed ever so slightly, but as far as motherboard features go they are still the exact same but now his i5 2500 is actually clock for clock faster than an i5 750/760 which is already a super fast CPU.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers. Also, which OS will you be running, if it's 64 bit, you might want to think about sticking in another couple of GBs of RAM in there.

Meh, having both chipsets I'd go for the i5 computer. The i7 is more powerful than the i5 but for games the latter is more than adequate, In fact, the higher processing speed of the i5 leads to better overall performance where as the i7 will really shine with multimedia and multi-interface tasks, such as photoshop. Nothing is wrong with running an i7 chipset for gaming, it's just that it doesn't really make a noticeable difference. They, for all intents and purposes, are the same. It's mostly Goldilocks pricing

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers.

That's the stupidest thing I've heard today. Nice!

OP: Looks good although I'd suggest getting more than a 64gb SSD. At least go for 80gb.

Otherwise it looks good, it'll be a very nice system.

Spoiler: Rant about i5 vs i7

It's well proven that hyperthreading doesn't actually double performance, so by hyperthreading the quad cores you're only going to perform around the level of 6 cores. This shows an advantage only in very limited scenarios that aren't encountered by the vast majority of PC users. Things like rendering, video and audio editing, and file compression can use all cores and show some gains. Games are still optimized for dual cores most of the time, but even the most CPU intensive game isn't going to max out a quad cores before a hyperthreaded quad core, even if you're running SLI GTX 580s.

On top of that, the i5 platform tends to show better results for single card solutions, and equal in 2 card solutions. The only time the i7 platform (formerly X58) pulls ahead is with 3 or 4 cards, however, any P55 motherboard (now P67) that has an NForce 200 chip will actually perform equal to the X58 in 3 card setups as well, even tho i5 has 16 PCIe lanes and i7 has 32.

The only thing really left is that the X58 boards support triple channel RAM while P55 supports dual channel. However, the difference once again is very small.

What isn't small, is the cost difference. The CPUs are $100 more, the motherboards are $50-150 more, and an extra stick of RAM is $30-50 more.

So, $200-300 more bucks spent for... unused CPU power. (Assuming the application is gaming and not hardcore rendering and video stuff etc). You could spend that money on a second GPU and get far better gaming performance than the i7.

Finally, there is an i7 for the P55 platform, the 870/875K which is equal to the X58 CPUs.
The OP is going with Sandy Bridge, so things have changed ever so slightly, but as far as motherboard features go they are still the exact same but now his i5 2500 is actually clock for clock faster than an i5 750/760 which is already a super fast CPU.

But if you want to show off and say "Look, *****, I got the more expensive one." Which is what I go for when buying a computer, you want the i7 at least.

 

[Kaboose the Moose]

But if you want to show off and say "Look, *****, I got the more expensive one." Which is what I go for when buying a computer, you want the i7 at least.

Fantastic!

Personally I prefer performance over substance but to each his/her own

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

But if you want to show off and say "Look, *****, I got the more expensive one." Which is what I go for when buying a computer, you want the i7 at least.

Fantastic!

Personally I prefer performance over substance but to each his/her own

Agreed, I'm just a bit of an asshole I guess.

 

[Kaboose the Moose]

But if you want to show off and say "Look, *****, I got the more expensive one." Which is what I go for when buying a computer, you want the i7 at least.

Fantastic!

Personally I prefer performance over substance but to each his/her own

Agreed, I'm just a bit of an asshole I guess.

Not really. If you have the money for it then you deserve whatever makes you happy. Others have to make do with the most economical/rational of choices

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

But if you want to show off and say "Look, *****, I got the more expensive one." Which is what I go for when buying a computer, you want the i7 at least.

Fantastic!

Personally I prefer performance over substance but to each his/her own

Agreed, I'm just a bit of an asshole I guess.

Not really. If you have the money for it then you deserve whatever makes you happy. Others have to make do with the most economical/rational of choices

Well you just made me feel much better about myself. Thanks.

 

[Anarchemitis]

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers. Also, which OS will you be running, if it's 64 bit, you might want to think about sticking in another couple of GBs of RAM in there.

Meh, having both chipsets I'd go for the i5 computer. The i7 is more powerful than the i5 but for games the latter is more than adequate, In fact, the higher processing speed of the i5 leads to better overall performance where as the i7 will really shine with multimedia and multi-interface tasks, such as photoshop. Nothing is wrong with running an i7 chipset for gaming, it's just that it doesn't really make a noticeable difference. They, for all intents and purposes, are the same. It's mostly Goldilocks pricing

Just like the difference between making stuff and rendering stuff in 3D Programs.
Nice video cards mean awesome performance on the software side (Making things) and sheer brutal power in your processor means faster Renders.

 

[barash]

@OP: Specs are good. If you have some extra $$ to burn I'd put it in 4gb more ram.

Congrats on the new rig!

 

[Nexoram]

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers. Also, which OS will you be running, if it's 64 bit, you might want to think about sticking in another couple of GBs of RAM in there.

OH SHIT. Well I'm still using an intel dual core and i've only got 2 Gigs of Ram. No wonder my black ops run slow.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

You don't want an i5, at least get an i7. The i5 is the Intel chip for grandmothers. Also, which OS will you be running, if it's 64 bit, you might want to think about sticking in another couple of GBs of RAM in there.

OH SHIT. Well I'm still using an intel dual core and i've only got 2 Gigs of Ram. No wonder my black ops run slow.

That would be it. Nowadays with the ridiculous amounts of RAM you can get enough to have an entire game stored in there.

 

[Wolfram23]

But if you want to show off and say "Look, *****, I got the more expensive one." Which is what I go for when buying a computer, you want the i7 at least.

Fantastic!

Personally I prefer performance over substance but to each his/her own

Agreed, I'm just a bit of an asshole I guess.

Not really. If you have the money for it then you deserve whatever makes you happy. Others have to make do with the most economical/rational of choices

Well you just made me feel much better about myself. Thanks.

Hahaha! Yeah some people like a big nerd-peen... I'm with Moose on buying something a little more practical... and then overclocking the shit out of it!!

 

[Zer_]

That's the thing about Hyperthreading, even claiming a 50% increase in performance is stretching it. Although I've been somewhat of an AMD user for the past few years, I'm most definitely looking forward to the new Bulldozer processors over the new series of i7s. The main reason being is AMD's new take on multithreaded cores.

Instead of relying on two virtual threads, the Bulldozers will actually have 4 cores running 2 hardware threads each. They basically took the component from processors that do the actual calculations, gave each of them a small cache and shared cache, and called the package a "core."

This will result in awesome performance gains. It's also quite low cost from what I hear, so they'll keep their prices down. Intel may still hold the performance crown with their new i7s, but AMD might actually dominate the mid range market.