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On December 26 2012 18:03 Belial88 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +You know you could get a way better quality z68 motherboard and just replace the bios chip. You basically get higher quality at half the price of a z77. I'm planning on buying a 3570k, but I dont want to pay $120 for a shitty z77 motherboard with bad VRM and lack of features, I'd rather pay $60 for a high quality z68, with lots of features and SLI and crossfire, and then $10 for a bios chip to install or maybe it already has IB supported bios because it was used. Which brings me to what I'm doing: I plan on buying a used ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3 for $60. I literally checked out every used lower end Z68 chipset motherboard on ebay and searched on their features and how they overclock. Spoilered because it's fucking huge: + Show Spoiler +ASUS P8Z68-V LX No SLI 4+2 No Heatsink VRM Offset voltage only asus "L" is budget weak version Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2218705Micro ATX heatsinked VRM, SLI support but need to put on bottom slot (which is fine on mid tower case, only issue on micro atx case) Requires bios F13 cant overclock well ib on gigabyte older chipset? not a great board? MSI Z68A-G43 4+1 heatsinked phase, wow, avoid unless super cheap no core voltage adjustment no sli, no crossfire (second gpu slot is only x4) Whereas for G45/G43, there are no voltage adjustments for the vcore. avoid this pos MSI Z68MA-G45 4+1 nonheatsinked phase no vcore adjustment? $48 ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3 bios is 0302, it will work out of box? 12 phase VRM heatsinked single at x16, dual at x8/x8 SLI/crossfire $55 ASRock Z68 Pro3-M micro atx Single GPu 6 heatsinked vrm compatability issue with corsair cs430? ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 huge heatsinked phase 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/09/asrock_z68_extreme4_gen3_motherboard_review/6hardocp says it sucks. i'll avoid it. BIOSTAR TZ68A+ http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=18833355.8ghz@1.596vcore so obviously can allow oc/volt. crossfire, no SLI, crossfire is x16/x4 2x pci 2.0 x16 $64 MSI Z68MA-ED55 10 phases (2x4+1, 8+2?)heatsinked. Micro ATX No SLI 16/x4 in crossfire $65 Evga z68 SLI 8 heatsinked phase SLI + crossfire bios r16 for ib? cannot overclock on r16 bios for ivy bridge? Unstable bios? this is going on right now... http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1820030&mpage=1$68 ASUS P8Z68-V Pro high count heatsinked vrm 2 x pci e 3.0 slots (dual at x8/x8) SLI and Crossfire support 5ghz, 1.4v, overclock well apparently Hardocp recommends! $70 GA-Z68A-D3-B3 4+1 partially heatsinked no sli, only crossfire $78 Msi g43no voltage control, bad vrm G45 can adjust up to 1.5v with new bios! MSi GD55/65/80, these boards have a bigger range of voltages and bios OC adjustments gigabyte MA will not go above 1.5v? My question to you guys, was basically sort of confirming my findings here, and that the Asus Maximus iv gene 3 is a good overclocking board. I'm just looking for a motherboard that overclocks well, plays well with IB as long as it has the right bios, and doesnt have any limits on the voltages or frequencies. I'm also interested in SLI support and both CPU VID and Offset voltage options but it isn't necessary. A higher quality VRM is more important, but most of these boards have larger phases. I know the asus maximums iv gene 3 has a removable bios chip.
Any kind of Asus ROG board is overbuilt, ready for subzero benching. Normally I'd say most of those options are overkill, but seeing as you have no qualms running chips 0.3V over nominal etc., then sure. That Maximus Gene price isn't even high.
Personally I don't see much point upgrading Phenom II to socket 1155 under most circumstances, but go ahead. It's not like Haswell / 1150 would be available soon for cheap used prices.
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God, I hate bad descriptions like that. I was actually wondering about that exact thing while I typed it.
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oh ok so there are 3 sata cables with 3 connectors each. so i could have 9 drives then without splitters or adapter?
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On December 27 2012 02:21 ImANinjaBich wrote:+ Show Spoiler +oh ok so there are 3 sata cables with 3 connectors each. so i could have 9 drives then without splitters or adapter?
Yes. And it is extremely unlikely you'll ever need anywhere near 9, let alone more. I mean: SSD + HDD + Optical is 3... are you going to add like, 1 more SSD and 5 more HDD's? You can. I doubt you'll need that many though. There are plenty of connectors for future SATA device additions.
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On December 27 2012 02:35 Wabbit wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 02:21 ImANinjaBich wrote:+ Show Spoiler +oh ok so there are 3 sata cables with 3 connectors each. so i could have 9 drives then without splitters or adapter? Yes. And it is extremely unlikely you'll ever need anywhere near 9, let alone more. I mean: SSD + HDD + Optical is 3... are you going to add like, 1 more SSD and 5 more HDD's? You can. I doubt you'll need that many though. There are plenty of connectors for future SATA device additions.
no at some point i will add another video card and maybe end up with a total of 1HDD and 2SDD. I just wanted to be sure i'd have enough connectors and everything 
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Hey guys, looking to grab a new computer for this year and am looking for some advice on compatible parts/deals 
HDDs on my old one failed and most of the components are too small[case and PSU]or old and insufficient[GPU, motherboard]
Budget?: 400-600
Resolution?: 1920x1200
Use?: Gaming. Ability to stream would be cool but not essential
Upgrade cycle?: 2 years
When do I plan on building it?: This week
Plan to overclock?: I am interested in this. I have a Intel Core i7-920 Processor (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI) from my old computer, which is about 4-5 years old. I thought it might still be a pretty good chip though. So maybe with overclocking it can be good enough that I don't need a new CPU?
Need an Operating system?: Probably
SLI or Crossfire? Yes, I would like to get one decent card(7870?) and then grab another of the same in the future.
Where are you buying from? Newegg probably, Though There are nearby canada computers and tiger direct. Living in Toronto, Canada
Don't need a monitor.
I also have an optical drive that I can use from old comp, any reason to get a new one?. Probably need everything other than the an optical drive/CPU. Also, An SSD would be nice if I could fit it in.
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Thank you, i want to get going on this asap. i was going to check ou canada computers but the line is miles long to get into the store and its -15 outside. So il be doing it at any online store for canada.
I just wanted to know if there were any good sales on to compete with anything on this list before ordering.
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On December 27 2012 04:16 Jotunn wrote:Hey guys, looking to grab a new computer for this year (old one is dead ) and am looking for some advice on compatible parts/deals Budget?: 400-600 Resolution?: 1920x1200 Use?: Gaming. Ability to stream would be cool but not essential Upgrade cycle?: 2 years When do I plan on building it?: This week Plan to overclock?: I am interested in this. I have a Intel Core i7-920 Processor (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz, 4.80 GT/s Intel® QPI) from my old computer, which is about 4-5 years old. I thought it might still be a pretty good chip though. So maybe with overclocking it can be good enough that I don't need a new CPU? Need an Operating system?: Probably SLI or Crossfire? Yes, I would like to get one decent card(7870?) and then grab another of the same in the future. Where are you buying from? Newegg probably, Though There are nearby canada computers and tiger direct. Living in Toronto, Canada I also have an optical drive that I can use from old comp, any reason to get a new one?. Probably need everything other than the an optical drive/CPU. Also, An SSD would be nice if I could fit it in.
What part is dead? Your cpu is still plenty good for gaming/streeaming, have'nt you OC'd it already?
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This is a quick laptop question, I dunno if that's answered here but found it too silly to make a thread for it
Intel Core i7-3610QM Ivy Bridge
8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
500 GB harddisk
Radeon™ HD 7670M 2GB
-About 1000$ I think
GeForce GT640 2GB
Core i5-3210M
8GB RAM
500GB HDD
-Costs maybe 30$ more than the other one
Which one of these would be best for games like SC2, CS:GO, Dishonored, Shogun2(Can it even play Shogun?), Dota2 etc.
That's mainly what I'm looking for, as both these laptops would surely cover browsing, minecraft, movies and music more than good enough. Also, if these are way overpriced and I can find better if I look more, do tell
edit: resolution is like 1366x768
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On December 27 2012 04:58 Aocowns wrote:+ Show Spoiler +This is a quick laptop question, I dunno if that's answered here but found it too silly to make a thread for it Intel Core i7-3610QM Ivy Bridge 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz 500 GB harddisk Radeon™ HD 7670M 2GB -About 1000$ I think GeForce GT640 2GB Core i5-3210M 8GB RAM 500GB HDD -Costs maybe 30$ more than the other one Which one of these would be best for games like SC2, CS:GO, Dishonored, Shogun2(Can it even play Shogun?), Dota2 etc. That's mainly what I'm looking for, as both these laptops would surely cover browsing, minecraft, movies and music more than good enough. Also, if these are way overpriced and I can find better if I look more, do tell edit: resolution is like 1366x768
What kind of price conversions did you do? That probably sounds reasonable in price, unless you're actually talking about 1000 USD from a US retailer, in which case that's bad.
The first has a better CPU but worse GPU. Beware huge inaccuracies in notebookcheck reported figures, but see here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-7670M.69483.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-640M.71579.0.html
GT 640M is maybe some 50% or so better? Despite the name, the HD 7670M is based on an architecture from 1-2 generations ago (depending how you count) and is using the older 40nm as opposed to 28nm process, which means slightly lower performance for the power / heat / battery life. Does the first laptop have switchable graphics? Nvidia's Optimus has historically been better than AMD's switchable graphics (now Enduro), though the gap seems to be closing.
Most games (not SC2) won't trouble a i5-3210M, and the difference between the processors is pretty small until you need to max out three or more threads. So for gaming, effectively they should be pretty close in practice.
Would you make use of a quad core? Do any transcoding, have any desire for streaming, running calculations, whatever? If not, the second one is probably a better choice.
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On December 27 2012 02:07 Myrmidon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 18:03 Belial88 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +You know you could get a way better quality z68 motherboard and just replace the bios chip. You basically get higher quality at half the price of a z77. I'm planning on buying a 3570k, but I dont want to pay $120 for a shitty z77 motherboard with bad VRM and lack of features, I'd rather pay $60 for a high quality z68, with lots of features and SLI and crossfire, and then $10 for a bios chip to install or maybe it already has IB supported bios because it was used. Which brings me to what I'm doing: I plan on buying a used ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3 for $60. I literally checked out every used lower end Z68 chipset motherboard on ebay and searched on their features and how they overclock. Spoilered because it's fucking huge: + Show Spoiler +ASUS P8Z68-V LX No SLI 4+2 No Heatsink VRM Offset voltage only asus "L" is budget weak version Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2218705Micro ATX heatsinked VRM, SLI support but need to put on bottom slot (which is fine on mid tower case, only issue on micro atx case) Requires bios F13 cant overclock well ib on gigabyte older chipset? not a great board? MSI Z68A-G43 4+1 heatsinked phase, wow, avoid unless super cheap no core voltage adjustment no sli, no crossfire (second gpu slot is only x4) Whereas for G45/G43, there are no voltage adjustments for the vcore. avoid this pos MSI Z68MA-G45 4+1 nonheatsinked phase no vcore adjustment? $48 ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3 bios is 0302, it will work out of box? 12 phase VRM heatsinked single at x16, dual at x8/x8 SLI/crossfire $55 ASRock Z68 Pro3-M micro atx Single GPu 6 heatsinked vrm compatability issue with corsair cs430? ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 huge heatsinked phase 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/09/asrock_z68_extreme4_gen3_motherboard_review/6hardocp says it sucks. i'll avoid it. BIOSTAR TZ68A+ http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=18833355.8ghz@1.596vcore so obviously can allow oc/volt. crossfire, no SLI, crossfire is x16/x4 2x pci 2.0 x16 $64 MSI Z68MA-ED55 10 phases (2x4+1, 8+2?)heatsinked. Micro ATX No SLI 16/x4 in crossfire $65 Evga z68 SLI 8 heatsinked phase SLI + crossfire bios r16 for ib? cannot overclock on r16 bios for ivy bridge? Unstable bios? this is going on right now... http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1820030&mpage=1$68 ASUS P8Z68-V Pro high count heatsinked vrm 2 x pci e 3.0 slots (dual at x8/x8) SLI and Crossfire support 5ghz, 1.4v, overclock well apparently Hardocp recommends! $70 GA-Z68A-D3-B3 4+1 partially heatsinked no sli, only crossfire $78 Msi g43no voltage control, bad vrm G45 can adjust up to 1.5v with new bios! MSi GD55/65/80, these boards have a bigger range of voltages and bios OC adjustments gigabyte MA will not go above 1.5v? My question to you guys, was basically sort of confirming my findings here, and that the Asus Maximus iv gene 3 is a good overclocking board. I'm just looking for a motherboard that overclocks well, plays well with IB as long as it has the right bios, and doesnt have any limits on the voltages or frequencies. I'm also interested in SLI support and both CPU VID and Offset voltage options but it isn't necessary. A higher quality VRM is more important, but most of these boards have larger phases. I know the asus maximums iv gene 3 has a removable bios chip. Any kind of Asus ROG board is overbuilt, ready for subzero benching. Normally I'd say most of those options are overkill, but seeing as you have no qualms running chips 0.3V over nominal etc., then sure. That Maximus Gene price isn't even high. Personally I don't see much point upgrading Phenom II to socket 1155 under most circumstances, but go ahead. It's not like Haswell / 1150 would be available soon for cheap used prices.
I'm not upgrading, I'm replacing. And it isn't tommorow.
I agree the asus rog is overkill but of what's currently listed on ebay at the current price ranges, it appears to be the cheapest board that allows ivy and can overvolt to at least 1.4v. I don't see haswell being affordable, especially the mobo included, anytime soon, nor being a massive improvement (estimates say only 10%, igpu and power focused) but who knows how good haswell will be. I might not even get this upgrade until haswell gets released anyways.
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@Wes2000 & @Myrmidon
About the 7850 1GB: we know from many benchmarks that more than 1GB of VRAM doesn't really matter at 1920x1080, unless using copious amounts of AA and/or mods, but with that kind of upgrade cycle I think it's worth getting the 2GB card (or even upgrading to a 7870 as suggested by Myrmidon).
The 1GB 7850 actually chokes in Skyrim @1920x1200 4xAA with the high-res texture pack (close enough to 1920x1080, better to be safe than sorry vs 1680x1050 which might lead you to believe 1GB is fine):
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6359/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-review/15
Not something I'd try to save $20-30 on considering a 5-yr upgrade cycle.
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It would be better to go slightly higher and go to the 7870 then. The 2 gb 7850 is a bit of a waste. Depends on how much you value $20.
2gb 7850's and 7870's are so close to eachother in cost.
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Yeah, that's a fair point to make. Personally I'm not so impressed by high-res textures, but certainly within 5 years more than 1GB would be the norm / next-gen consoles will have arrived, and thus texture memory usage would correspondingly jump.
That said, I'm not sure whether or not to believe peoples' 5-year upgrade cycles including graphics cards, in general. Is somebody cranking up the details now going to be happy with whatever they can't run 4 years later, and is this person seriously not going to spend $200 or so and pop in a new card? Or is this somebody who doesn't really care about details settings and is fine playing everything on low-medium, which should still work later even with 1GB VRAM?
Just upgrade to 7870 and forget all this discussion happened, IMHO. 7850 2GB price is too close to 7870.
On December 27 2012 05:41 Belial88 wrote:+ Show Spoiler + On December 27 2012 02:07 Myrmidon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2012 18:03 Belial88 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +You know you could get a way better quality z68 motherboard and just replace the bios chip. You basically get higher quality at half the price of a z77. I'm planning on buying a 3570k, but I dont want to pay $120 for a shitty z77 motherboard with bad VRM and lack of features, I'd rather pay $60 for a high quality z68, with lots of features and SLI and crossfire, and then $10 for a bios chip to install or maybe it already has IB supported bios because it was used. Which brings me to what I'm doing: I plan on buying a used ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3 for $60. I literally checked out every used lower end Z68 chipset motherboard on ebay and searched on their features and how they overclock. Spoilered because it's fucking huge: + Show Spoiler +ASUS P8Z68-V LX No SLI 4+2 No Heatsink VRM Offset voltage only asus "L" is budget weak version Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2218705Micro ATX heatsinked VRM, SLI support but need to put on bottom slot (which is fine on mid tower case, only issue on micro atx case) Requires bios F13 cant overclock well ib on gigabyte older chipset? not a great board? MSI Z68A-G43 4+1 heatsinked phase, wow, avoid unless super cheap no core voltage adjustment no sli, no crossfire (second gpu slot is only x4) Whereas for G45/G43, there are no voltage adjustments for the vcore. avoid this pos MSI Z68MA-G45 4+1 nonheatsinked phase no vcore adjustment? $48 ASUS Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3 bios is 0302, it will work out of box? 12 phase VRM heatsinked single at x16, dual at x8/x8 SLI/crossfire $55 ASRock Z68 Pro3-M micro atx Single GPu 6 heatsinked vrm compatability issue with corsair cs430? ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 huge heatsinked phase 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/09/asrock_z68_extreme4_gen3_motherboard_review/6hardocp says it sucks. i'll avoid it. BIOSTAR TZ68A+ http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=18833355.8ghz@1.596vcore so obviously can allow oc/volt. crossfire, no SLI, crossfire is x16/x4 2x pci 2.0 x16 $64 MSI Z68MA-ED55 10 phases (2x4+1, 8+2?)heatsinked. Micro ATX No SLI 16/x4 in crossfire $65 Evga z68 SLI 8 heatsinked phase SLI + crossfire bios r16 for ib? cannot overclock on r16 bios for ivy bridge? Unstable bios? this is going on right now... http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1820030&mpage=1$68 ASUS P8Z68-V Pro high count heatsinked vrm 2 x pci e 3.0 slots (dual at x8/x8) SLI and Crossfire support 5ghz, 1.4v, overclock well apparently Hardocp recommends! $70 GA-Z68A-D3-B3 4+1 partially heatsinked no sli, only crossfire $78 Msi g43no voltage control, bad vrm G45 can adjust up to 1.5v with new bios! MSi GD55/65/80, these boards have a bigger range of voltages and bios OC adjustments gigabyte MA will not go above 1.5v? My question to you guys, was basically sort of confirming my findings here, and that the Asus Maximus iv gene 3 is a good overclocking board. I'm just looking for a motherboard that overclocks well, plays well with IB as long as it has the right bios, and doesnt have any limits on the voltages or frequencies. I'm also interested in SLI support and both CPU VID and Offset voltage options but it isn't necessary. A higher quality VRM is more important, but most of these boards have larger phases. I know the asus maximums iv gene 3 has a removable bios chip. Any kind of Asus ROG board is overbuilt, ready for subzero benching. Normally I'd say most of those options are overkill, but seeing as you have no qualms running chips 0.3V over nominal etc., then sure. That Maximus Gene price isn't even high. Personally I don't see much point upgrading Phenom II to socket 1155 under most circumstances, but go ahead. It's not like Haswell / 1150 would be available soon for cheap used prices. I'm not upgrading, I'm replacing. And it isn't tommorow. I agree the asus rog is overkill but of what's currently listed on ebay at the current price ranges, it appears to be the cheapest board that allows ivy and can overvolt to at least 1.4v. I don't see haswell being affordable, especially the mobo included, anytime soon, nor being a massive improvement (estimates say only 10%, igpu and power focused) but who knows how good haswell will be. I might not even get this upgrade until haswell gets released anyways.
Whose estimate was 10% for Haswell? It's not like anybody has published benches yet, so it's not like I know either, but I think a little higher is reasonable. However, that'd be still not worth it if you're sniping used prices.
It's not as big a change as Sandy Bridge was, but aside from all the usual cache widenings and scheduler / branch predictor / etc. improvements, Haswell is for the first time in a while adding two new execution ports. That's six ports to eight, though behind those ports, the actual execution resources are hardly being increased by 33% as the ports are not at all equal.
Also, aside from the usual SSE / AVX / whatever x86 extensions, Haswell's getting TSX, Transactional Synchronization Extensions. That could actually make a big difference in multi-threaded code efficiency by taking the burden off the programmers and making the processor core logic do the dirty work of concurrency control and so on. Supposedly all the major compilers are getting support pronto. So for applications that can make use of this, gains could be greater in practice than for the usual balls-to-the-walls synthetics where everything is just single-threaded or is multi-threaded and pretty much scales perfectly by core count.
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Nobody sane expected 20% IB improvement over SB (at least per clock), just saying. Architectural changes were known to be minimal; it was a "tick" after all. Given the changes SB -> IB, if you count that as 5-10% and look at the changes IB -> Haswell, why in the world would you expect that to be 10% as well? edit: okay I know that's stretching the 5-10% range, where 10% is too optimistic, but the kind of CPU (not just iGPU, power) changes are not comparable at all—that's the point.
So anyway, expectations are 10+% now? More than 10%... probably, but not a whole lot more. Definitely not anything like 25%. And this is not including benefits from TSX, though of course those x86 extensions are always a "wait and see", is anybody actually taking advantage? kind of situation.
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EPT
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