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On January 21 2013 10:00 skyR wrote:
Well the 3570k is sort of a direct replacement for a Q6600 since both are quads, both are unlocked, and a Q6600 was $300 (later dropped to $200).
For under $150, you're looking at Sandybridge Pentiums like the G850 for ~$65. It'll be significantly better than the Q6600 in most games but slightly worse in multi-thraded tasks (eg. encoding).
For under $200, you're looking at a core i3 3220 for ~$120 which will be an overall improvement from the Q6600.
For both, you're looking at getting a ~$60 B75 or H77 motherboard along with 1333 / 1600MHz DDR3 memory.
Alright, first of all thanks a ton for helping me out!
I was looking at the benchmarks for the G850, it all looks great for that (super loooow) price. Looks like it would outperform the q6600 by quite a bit on most of my applications. I am slightly worried about it doing music rendering poorly comparatively, as that is something the q6600 did annoy me with, but I think FL Studio's multicore support is weak so it should be similar.
So if you think thats the best CPU for ~100 I'll take it. For the motherboard pairing can someone throw out a specific solid one to go with it?
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United Kingdom20275 Posts
You should give budget for CPU and motherboard total, not just for CPU, at least i think its easier that way
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What is the point of modern sound cards? They don't seem to offer much / anything over integrated audio.
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A sound card provides (much) better audio than the Realtek on the motherboard, given you don't have shit equipment which most people tend to have. If you need to ask then you probably don't need a discrete card. It's like asking what's the point of modern discrete GPUs when I have integrated.
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Does anyone know what shipping is like for us.ncix? Newegg has it nice and obvious for each item but I only see shipping weight for us.ncix
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Free shipping on orders over $100 otherwise it's like ~$10-$30 depending on how fast you want it. This is to Florida, not sure if it's different if you're closer to the west coast since that's where two of their warehouses are.
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I live in minnesota so I don't think the distance is too much further than florida.
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Oh wat. It used to be free slow shipping on orders above $50, like... last month?
On January 22 2013 11:42 Craton wrote:
What is the point of modern sound cards? They don't seem to offer much / anything over integrated audio. - More inputs and outputs, maybe even balanced inputs / outputs or MIDI or whatever else interfaces
- Support for proprietary technologies like Dolby / DTS formats
- Or support for the sound card company's proprietary technologies like EAX (not used anymore)
- Lower latency for real-time audio processing and playback, on certain models
- Different drivers, maybe with more features... that said, drivers are generally worse
- Higher analog audio conversion quality (i.e. less distortion, less noise, flatter response) for both inputs and outputs
- Integrated headphone amplifier on some models, for driving headphones
In general, nothing worth caring about for most people, as you say. Or rather, those that care already know, which is more or less what skyR said too.
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On January 22 2013 11:42 Craton wrote:
What is the point of modern sound cards? They don't seem to offer much / anything over integrated audio.
Biggest advantage in having a modern sound card is faster input processing. When I record music, trying to do any sort of multi-track recording without fast, dedicated memory sucks, because if your tracks are too long they'll start to noticeably not line up after a while, which makes editing really difficult. The tone fidelity/distortion is also a bit better, but it's less important than the truer timing. Unless you're doing anything like this where you're not counting on things lining up exactly (thousandths of seconds don't matter for much else other than music), it's not that important. Even if you have good speakers, using integrated memory is kind of the equivalent of using mediocre cables -- it gyps you a little, but it's not that important.
In other news, I'm thinking about upgrading my desktop system to Ivy Bridge, probably i5 3570K, and I'll probably OC to about 4.3ghz (I'm not really sure I want to try to push 4.5 or anything like that). I've had good experience with MSI MoBos and will probably stick with it. Is there any appreciable difference in parts or construction between the Z77A-G45 and the GD55 to justify the current $35 price gap on Newegg? They look like they provide similar support, from what I've found. Also interested to hear about current perceptions on Asus mobos because I've been hearing good things.
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There are all kinds of perceptions out there, most of which may not be that accurate. Unless somebody builds a whole bunch of systems, like a contractor or a shop, or is talking about features available for a certain model (and not experiences / reliability), I wouldn't pay much heed.
All that said, Asus tends to be overpriced based on features provided, particularly in the mid and lower-end parts of the market. The higher-end boards often use more expensive and better-regarded chipsets for Ethernet or whatever else, for what that's worth.
I'd get the G45, unless you really really like those power / BIOS reset / OC Genie switches.
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GD55 has better VRM, likely more options in the BIOS, and extra buttons. Not that big of a deal for 4.3GHz. MSI's major fault is that it does not offer offset voltage.
ASUS doesn't offer any comparable board to the G45 fyi. Their LX and LK (lower end boards) are mediocre compared to everyone else. I use an ASUS board myself and as much as I love them, I don't think they're as good as they once were. But their UEFI is awesome, probably the best one right now I'd say.
Motherboard rant: I don't want to use non-Intel USB3 and most people don't need more than the two Intel ones either, we just need regular USB2 ports!! Get this through your head Gigabyte, Asrock, and ASUS please. MSI knows this but too bad they don't have enough USB ports on the back... and EVGA knows this, too bad their boards are shit and overpriced. Please, will someone make a good board? )=
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When I look at motherboards over at newegg it shows a Memory Standard like this : DDR3 3000+(OC)/2800(OC)/2666(OC)/2400(OC)/2133(OC)/1866(OC)/1600/1333
What does it mean by the overclock portion?
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Intel only supports up to 1600MHz, anything higher is considered overclocking.
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Hello,
I have been running on 2 x 4gb ram since I purchased my computer (LGA 1155: i5-2500k). I have recently started using a program called SAS for data manipulation. I had a 4gb ram stick lying around and after doing some reading, I tried putting the 3d 4gb ram stick in the computer. This is helping out a lot with my work as some of the steps (merging data) is much faster.
Now my question is, will this hurt my gaming performance (and more importantly potentially risk the safety of the computer)? as to be completely honest, I really dont understand how memory modules and dual channel and etc work.
Should I be taking the 3d stick in and out depending on what I am doing or completely leave it out if it could damage the motherboard or something?
Thanks :s
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On January 23 2013 00:32 Ata wrote:
Hello,
I have been running on 2 x 4gb ram since I purchased my computer (LGA 1155: i5-2500k). I have recently started using a program called SAS for data manipulation. I had a 4gb ram stick lying around and after doing some reading, I tried putting the 3d 4gb ram stick in the computer. This is helping out a lot with my work as some of the steps (merging data) is much faster.
Now my question is, will this hurt my gaming performance (and more importantly potentially risk the safety of the computer)? as to be completely honest, I really dont understand how memory modules and dual channel and etc work.
Should I be taking the 3d stick in and out depending on what I am doing or completely leave it out if it could damage the motherboard or something?
Thanks :s
It's fine. Although it will hurt some synthetic benchmark somewhere as when you have more than 2 DIMMS installed the memory goes from dual-channel to single.
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If you get another 4 gb stick you can run in dual channel mode, which could be beneficial for your SAS program, but won't matter much for anything else.
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I only play SC2 on PC. My biggest question is since sc2 benefits from a better cpu than gpu would it be worth it to get like an i7(anything) and a 60$ gpu since i dont care much about the graphics? All i really want is no lag when i play. Or even like a i5 3570k or 3470 with a 60$ gpu?
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On January 23 2013 06:30 ImANinjaBich wrote:
I only play SC2 on PC. My biggest question is since sc2 benefits from a better cpu than gpu would it be worth it to get like an i7(anything) and a 60$ gpu since i dont care much about the graphics? All i really want is no lag when i play. Or even like a i5 3570k or 3470 with a 60$ gpu?
SC2 can only utilize 2 cores. Therefore buying a quad-core is useless if SC2 is the only game you play.
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EPT
