Windows 7 Gaming PC?

[quantus]

Ok, with sandybridge out, I'm considering building my first desktop in more than a decade of laptops. Without the house, I'd probably not bother with a desktop still, but it'd be nice to have one for either gaming or home theater or both. So, who's willing to help spec one out for me rather than make me read about PCIe and all this other new fangled stuff? :-p

I know I'm looking at getting a mobo with a P67 mch. These may be slightly pricey, but I think 2 PCIe 16x slots could be useful. Apparently the flash drives are coming also with a PCIe interface these days that could use one of those slots (need to read into that a bit)? I'm leaning towards an ASUS board.

Is an i5 sandybridge good enough? Is it worth springing for the i7 version?

What RAM speed will be worth while? I guess I should also ask how much overclocking is possible of the processor before choosing RAM?

PSU will likely be 700W or better. Any recommendations here?

What else?

[George]

I picked up an i7 2600 (not K, I got over overclocking back in 2001) at Microcenter on launch day because they were only $250. I can't say anything useful about its performance, as I haven't replaced my graphics card and have only one non-demanding game installed. I have been running a program that manipulates a large XML data set inefficiently, and I can say that that seems qualitatively faster than my old 2.2 GHz Athlon X2.

Unless you're overclocking or planning to run high-end SSDs in RAID, you can probably just pick the entry-level P67 motherboard with your favorite set of ports from your favorite name-brand manufacturer. I strongly recommend against the Gigabyte P67A-UD3 board. It's given me a bunch of problems, but inconsistently enough that I'm not sure I can return it. It has two BIOS chips and twice after I flashed it, it got a checksum error several reboots later and reflashed itself back to the original firmware. It frequently refuses to boot from CD, which made installing Windows almost impossible. There's at least one other Newegg review suggesting someone else had problems with the early BIOSes too. It's unfortunate, because I have historically had good luck with Gigabyte products. You'll probably better be off with the ASUS equivalent, though their software is universally crappy. I had one bad experience with MSI, and have never gone back, but they might be acceptable also. Ditto Biostar.

If you're willing to spend the money or wait for a sale, get the Seasonic Gold power supply. The 650 is probably overkill for any realistic load. I've also got a OCZ ModXStream 500 in one of my other systems. It's a third of the price, but as quiet as the Seasonic. I can't speak to its capabilities, as that system is never really loaded.

I think none of the P67 boards have true dual x16 PCIe. I wasn't planning to run crossfire, so I didn't care, but I noticed on most of them, if you use the second slot either both scale back to x8 or the second only gives you x4. I think its a chipset limitation. I don't have a feel for how much that actually hurts crossfire or SLI performance. I'm going to toss in a Radeon 6950, which I'm comfortable will be adequate for my needs, rather than trying to fool around with two cards. That's about $300. If you want cheaper, look at the 6850 or 6870, which should be in the $200s, or the 5850, which performs comparably to the 6870. Below that price point or over in Nvidia-land, you'll have to ask someone else.

I'm pretty sure the P67 has no SSD related features, other than native SATA 6Gb. There's certainly nothing in my BIOS settings that suggests SSD caching. I'm relatively pleased by my Samsung 470 64GB drive, but its in my laptop and replaced a 5400 RPM drive, so the bar was set pretty low. Historically, you'd get the best experience with an Intel drive, but they tend to command a price premium, and that may have changed in the last year.

[Jonathan]

Ok, with sandybridge out, I'm considering building my first desktop in more than a decade of laptops. Without the house, I'd probably not bother with a desktop still, but it'd be nice to have one for either gaming or home theater or both. So, who's willing to help spec one out for me rather than make me read about PCIe and all this other new fangled stuff? :-p

I know I'm looking at getting a mobo with a P67 mch. These may be slightly pricey, but I think 2 PCIe 16x slots could be useful. Apparently the flash drives are coming also with a PCIe interface these days that could use one of those slots (need to read into that a bit)? I'm leaning towards an ASUS board.

PCIe is 4Gbps per lane. SATA 300 is 3Gbps. New SSDs are bottlenecked on SATA 300 connections. As a stopgap until SATA 600 is widely integrated, some manufacturers ship PCIe drives. It's not a trend you need to worry about if you're buying a 2011 chipset.

Is an i5 sandybridge good enough? Is it worth springing for the i7 version?

Give me some model numbers and usages (FPS or RTS?). Assuming discrete graphics and no overclocking, for RTS you'd prefer i7, for FPS you'd spend the money on better gfx.

What RAM speed will be worth while? I guess I should also ask how much overclocking is possible of the processor before choosing RAM?

Overclocking doesn't affect your memory bus any more. Buy cheap 1333 and be happy.

I skimped on display and regret the choice.

I picked up an i7 2600 (not K, I got over overclocking back in 2001) at Microcenter on launch day because they were only $250. I can't say anything useful about its performance, as I haven't replaced my graphics card and have only one non-demanding game installed. I have been running a program that manipulates a large XML data set inefficiently, and I can say that that seems qualitatively faster than my old 2.2 GHz Athlon X2.

Confirming this: SNB is faster than an Athlon X2.

I think none of the P67 boards have true dual x16 PCIe. I wasn't planning to run crossfire, so I didn't care, but I noticed on most of them, if you use the second slot either both scale back to x8 or the second only gives you x4. I think its a chipset limitation. I don't have a feel for how much that actually hurts crossfire or SLI performance.

A pair of x8s does 5% worse maximum than a pair of x16s in tests today. I am reasonably confident this relation will hold (ie penalty of x8s is not noticeable) for 3D over the lifetime of this box.

I'm going to toss in a Radeon 6950, which I'm comfortable will be adequate for my needs, rather than trying to fool around with two cards. That's about $300. If you want cheaper, look at the 6850 or 6870, which should be in the $200s, or the 5850, which performs comparably to the 6870. Below that price point or over in Nvidia-land, you'll have to ask someone else.

I wouldn't bother with anything below $150. There's a big gap down around the value cards in perf/dollar. The sweet spot is around $200, but you can always go big and no one will make fun of you. The 560 just launched and I am considering one of those because ATI runs like crap on Linux.

I'm pretty sure the P67 has no SSD related features, other than native SATA 6Gb. There's certainly nothing in my BIOS settings that suggests SSD caching. I'm relatively pleased by my Samsung 470 64GB drive, but its in my laptop and replaced a 5400 RPM drive, so the bar was set pretty low. Historically, you'd get the best experience with an Intel drive, but they tend to command a price premium, and that may have changed in the last year.

George is correct.
There has been another generation of drives since Intel's last launch, so you may wish to do some comparison shopping and read a review if you're buying in the next month or so. Intel will probably launch new drives at some point.

[quantus]

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_ ... ck_check=1

The affected chips aren't the main processors, which are based on the so-called "Sandy Bridge" technology that Intel announced in January, but a support chip. The flaw means it may degrade with use over a period of months or years, slowing down the transfer of data to and from the computer's hard drives and DVD drives.

Intel said consumers can "continue to use their systems with confidence, while working with their computer manufacturer for a permanent solution."

The company said it has already started making a new version of the support chip, and hopes to start delivering it to PC makers in late February. While they wait for the new chip, production of computers using Intel's "Sandy Bridge" chips will be on hold.

The delay will reduce revenue by about $300 million in the first quarter, Intel said. It put the repair and replacement cost at $700 million.

Argh, now I can't build my damn system until the end of the month at the earliest. F'ing Intel.

[Jonathan]

Only if you were planning to use the 3 Gbps SATA ports. The 6 Gbps SATA ports (0 & 1) work as advertised.

[quantus]

Most places pulled the boards out of their listings. There are no P67 boards listed on Newegg and most other places because of the recall. I can't order the motherboard I wanted, so no use in ordering anything else and have their short warranties run out before I can make sure they work.

[George]

Is there any chance this flaw could be affecting me already? I had a spell where my system was laggy as hell. Unplugged and replugged stuff and it got better. Then the C drive disappeared for a few boots.

And who do I get a replacement from? Microcenter (the retailer I bought it from) or Gigabyte (the manufacturer)?

[George]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/inte ... ins-recall

Wow, yep, exactly the symptoms I'm seeing. Damn you Intel. Ironically, this is the first Intel product I've bought in a decade. On the other hand, they admitted the problem which puts them way ahead of Nvidia.

[quantus]

Argh, no boards until end of march at the very earliest it seems. Damn you Intel! You must've known I'd want to build a system for the first time in over 10 years and picked now to screw things up.

[quantus]

And who do I get a replacement from? Microcenter (the retailer I bought it from) or Gigabyte (the manufacturer)?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4146/giga ... nt-program

The key messages are as follows:

1) Gigabyte has stopped shipment to and recalled any unsold 6-series B2 motherboards from distributors and dealers.

2) Any Gigabyte 6-series B2 motherboards that have already been sold will be accepted back for replacement with a B3 board, regardless of condition. I asked Gigabyte if this meant that non-working boards could also be returned, Gigabyte said yes - all eligible 6-series models with B2 stepping chipsets will be accepted back.

Elligible Gigabyte 6-series Motherboards

Code: Select all

GA-P67A-UD3	 GA-P67A-UD3P	    GA-P67A-UD4	 GA-P67A-UD5	 GA-P67A-UD7
GA-H67MA-D2H	GA-H67MA-UD2H	   GA-H67A-UD3H	GA-H67M-D2	  GA-H67M-UD2H

3) Gigabyte says that it should have 6-series B3 chipsets in April.

4) The replacement program will happen at the dealer/distributor level. You will have to exchange your board at the location you purchased it from.

5) Customers can either exchange their board (you'll have to wait until April for this to happen) or you can get a full refund sooner (immediately?). Gigabyte recommends going the refund route as that gives you more flexibility for what you want to do next.

6) The replacement board you get will be a brand new motherboard based on the B3 chipset. Gigabyte isn’t ready to disclose if there will be any new design features to these boards as well.

7) The cost of the product exchange will be handled by Intel and Gigabyte (presumably Intel is footing the entire bill).

April is two months away, that’s later than the end of February. I’m guessing the first recipients of B3 stepping chipsets will be large OEMs and notebook manufacturers. The component guys will likely come second. Getting replacement motherboards won’t happen on April 1st if that’s when Gigabyte gets chipsets either. This could end up being an April/May thing instead of March/April.

[Jonathan]

SSD preview (the drives don't come out until Q2/Q3).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4159/ocz- ... 2500-ssd/2

[quantus]

It's mid-March and Newegg is listing the boards again, but they're "Sold Out" or more likely, not yet in stock still. Seems like the end-of-march estimate is going to be accurate.

[quantus]

Some boards have been in stock for a week or so, but the board I wanted just got in stock and I ordered it today. For RAM, I went with 10666 CAS 7 since I figured the CAS rating was the main differentiator given your comment about over clocking not affecting the memory bus. For graphics, I went with a Radeon HD 6950 which is flash upgradeable to a 6970 (thanks AMD/ATI marketing). I'll deal with getting an SSD later if I feel programs are still loading a bit slow. I picked up a blu-ray writer too so I can move the standalone blu-ray player into our bedroom where my laptop has been residing to hook up with the tv. I'm planning to leave this computer hooked up to our main tv, but we'll see if this actually works out when I want to play games and stuff. I may just have to spring for a better monitor for my desk and move it there.

Oh, we got a googletv box through Dish made by logitech and it's pretty convenient for being able to do most web browsing on our main tv. It basically does HDMI pass-through so that it can put tv in a PiP box in the corner while browsing or layer its menus over the tv picture. In some ways, it's a lot like most modern blu-ray players since it interfaces with providers like Netflix. I'm waiting for them to get around the block that Hulu is putting in place and to start offering Android apps. It can access our NAS box to play videos, but its been having issues with some videos lately, especially since the last update which makes me rather use an actual computer still. My wife likes it though because it has the android equivalent of voice over to access the program guide and she can now control the dish dvr from her iphone through the googletv box.

[George]

Well, I finally replaced my graphics card. Also a Radeon 6950, but I don't plan on reflashing (couldn't if I wanted to, not a reference design). After an hour of playing oblivion, the 6950 seem quantitatively faster than the Radeon 5450 it replaced.

And, it came with a registration key for 3DMark 11, so I went ahead and ran that before and after the swap. Turns out the new card is quantitatively faster too.

Now I just need to swap out my dying pre-NCQ harddrive and this machine will actually have decent performance.

[quantus]

You can probably still run a utility to overclock the card while you're gaming. Overclocking the processor to 880MHz and the memory to 1375MHz will give you most of the performance bump and if you only do it while gaming, you won't be running your card hot all the time. I actually underclock the card for typical use to make sure it stays cool. No flashing is required.

As a side note, my motherboard has an automatic overclocking feature where it'll try out different settings and keep pushing up the clock speed under load until it hits a programmed temperature, voltage and current threshold. My 2600k is running stably at 4.4GHz without even having to tweak any settings in the BIOS myself And with speed step, windows 7 throttles the speed down to 1.6GHz during idle to keep it nice and cool around 32C.

[Jonathan]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4330/asus-p8z68v-review

SSD caching is a feature on the new Z68 boards. A standalone SSD drive is faster, but if you want to cheese out with a super small SSD then this is for you.

[quantus]

I will likely get one of the 3rd generation SSD's that are out now, but after the prices drop some.

[Jonathan]

I think none of the P67 boards have true dual x16 PCIe. I wasn't planning to run crossfire, so I didn't care, but I noticed on most of them, if you use the second slot either both scale back to x8 or the second only gives you x4. I think its a chipset limitation. I don't have a feel for how much that actually hurts crossfire or SLI performance.

Answer: essentially not at all.

Now you know!