Korean Job Discussion Forums

[languistic]

There is no future-proof computer shopping. Its a ruse.

If you want to play games, then just stick with your 775 socket and O/c the heck out of your current chip. Or get a Q series (depending on the prices, of which I am not sure) like the Q9550. It destroys an i3 (dual core) and when OCed (and they do O/C very well on air alone) it will compete with most i5 series CPUs. The i7 wipes the floor with everything, but really not for gaming. The GPU is the main concern for gaming right now. Your C2D may have some legs yet. I am unaware of which C2D you have, but...O/c the heck out of it.

The problem with the i series is they force you to make some pretty locked-in decisions right now. The mobos are not cheap yet and what with the range of sockets, things kinds suck. I have a Q9550 with an aging 775 mobo and have no intention of upgrading anything but the GPU, to a 6870 this winter. That will keep me gaming happily for a time yet. When prices for mobos (X58) come down, then it will be a good upgrade. For me, moving to anything but an i7 is silly, as I don't do any video encoding or the like.

[Nuggets]

[vDroop]

Disagree. Future-proofing is real. But perhaps mis-named, and mis-understood. Everyone knows that the speed at which hardware advances makes it impossible to be future "proof."

Futureproofing is the ability of your rig to be upgraded in the future, piece by piece to suit your personal usage, instead of buying a brand new computer.

Motherboard - should be sli/crossfire enabled, have extra ram slots

PSU - should provide far more power than your current rig needs

GPU - the highest clocked single card solution you can afford is the most future proof, it allows for the addition of a 2nd one later without performance loss compared to the future cards

Case - big enough to allow for longer graphics cards, wide enough to add an aftermarket CPU cooler, provide lots of cable management and airflow incase you suddenly get into overclocking

All of the above were things I didn't consider when building my first gaming computer. I wanted to kick myself in the ass many times for some of those mistakes. My rig was stuck and had to be sold, if I wanted to upgrade I would have needed a new mobo, psu, and case just to handle the addition of 1 graphics card.

[eamo]

Intel are making it essentially impossible to be future-proof if you're talking about CPU's. They seem to be changing sockets almost every 'tick' of their 'tick-tock' cycle.

Another new CPU coming up in January, Sandy Bridge, guess what?! Another new socket! LGA-1155.

Of course, you'll be fine for a bit longer if you have 1156 or 1366 CPU's/mobo's........but you'll start to feel the pressure to upgrade later in 2011 when the Sandy Bridge stuff comes down in price.

All of this only applies to power-users, of course.

Languistic is definitely right that anyone who doesn't game heavily or video edit heavily should go with very good value LGA-775 stuff right now and be damned with future-proofing.......staying one generation behind the curve is a no-brainer for the casual user.

[singerdude]

I agree that you can never be future-proof and that there is always something new around the corner. However, when you have a brand new socket and chipset coming out in a month and at about the same price as the current processors, I think it would be best to wait. If you want AMD, you also have a new socket and processors coming out in a couple of months.

[languistic]

[eamo]

[hanguker]

Hey Guys. I'm almost ready to buy but I'm still trying to cut some costs.

What do you think about the Athlon X4 640?
It will lower my price points by 80K and I 'think' it will work just as well as a Phenom x6 for gaming.
I've been reading that no games use the 6 cores so it's essentially useless unless you're a programmer.
Further, by the time games start using 6 cores, this chip will be obsolete (with the coming of Sandy and Bulldozer).

So would I be better off with an x4 and save some cash?
I still want to pair it with a gtx460.
Is there any advantage of having an L3 cache for gaming?

[hanguker]

Do you guys think I'll regret cheaping out with this upgrade?

AMD Athlon x4 640 102K
ASRock 770 Extreme3 80K
(2X= 4GB) G.SKILL DDR3 2GB PC3-10600 CL9 RIPJAWS 72K
EVGA GTX460 768MB 200K

Total: 454K

Notice I went down to an older 4 core AMD and the GTX with 768MB rather than 1GB of RAM.

[Nuggets]

Not too sure if it works the same way in Korea, but I'd recommend waiting about half a month before making a purchase as Intel is about to release their new line of CPU's, and that usually means older stuff becomes cheaper.

Not too sure about AMD's line, but you'd get more value out of it when prices are lower.

But, it seems like a good low/mid gaming machine. I think you could up the settings mid/all the way on most modern games with little problems.

[hanguker]

and of course I'm going to OC the crap out of the CPU and GPU.

[Nuggets]

[languistic]

You never did say specifically what C2D CPU you had, but it may be worth not changing that out. Overclock it, put in a nice GPU.

[hanguker]

I've got a kinda crappy e5200. Though I might try the GPU first and see what happens.

[Nuggets]