Amd vs Intel for Mid-Rig

[Decimus]

So I am helping out my brother-in law with a new computer build and just seeing what the Guru's advice. My main big question is if I should go with a Phenom II 965 BE and overclock it for cheap and get a better GPU or go with either an E3-1225 Xeon Sandybridge or even a 2500K and just get an ok GPU.
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
He will mostly be low end gaming(League of Legends) but he wants the option to play newer stuff as well. He will also be using it for the generals as well web browsing/Photoshop
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
His budget is $750-850 with exceptions if I can show a big perfomance boost for relatively little over that. I have already purchased a few parts so what is left is $620-720
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Eastern Washington. Not close to a Microcenter or Fry's or other fun places.
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU, GPU, Mobo, Hard Drive(Probably a Samsung F4 2TB - $60), and CD/DVD Drive
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Already purchased the case, PSU, and RAM.
Case - Coolermaster Elite 430, I have a couple of 120mm fans that I am going to add to it
PSU - Antec Neo Eco 620W
RAM - 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600
6) Will you be overclocking?
That is the big question. I will if it is available since I understand most Intel unless you go K series isnt really easy to overclock.
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
No idea what he is getting but knowing him he will probably go max 24" 1600x1200 and that is being optimistic. He did tell me later he might want to go Dual monitors but kind of doubt it.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Wants it done by mid October.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.
As long as it will hold the DDR3 1600 nothing else fancy.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
No but he has access to get a legit Windows 7 32 Bit for $30 through work/school.

 

[tiraides]

Are you ready to grab everything this weekend? If not, hold off until you are.

Some of your responses are confusing me, so I need to ask a few follow-up questions.

- Does your BIL have a monitor already? If so, what's the brand and model name/number? If not, what is he considering?
- Is your BIL even thinking about overclocking? Or are you the one driving that train?
- Which "modern games" does your BIL want to play?
- Besides gaming, Photoshop, and web browsing, what are the "generals"?
- Can your BIL obtain a 64-bit copy of Windows?

 

[Decimus]

Yeah I can grab everything this weekend if I wanted to. I have been kind of grabbing parts as the go on sale but no need to hold off unless something is going to come out within the next month dropping prices. As far as the rest
- No monitor yet and he told me he is taking care of that so I honestly have no idea. I figure plan for something like a Dell U2410 and anything he gets wont be better for sure.
- As far as overclocking he doesnt even know what it is. Whatever I build for him will be as is once i give it to him unless I go over and tweak it which since he is 5 minutes away isnt a problem.
- Modern games are more for his kids but I am planning on getting him into Borderlands and that will probably be the most taxing he will see for the next year. He does want to keep his options open there though so I had planned to err on the side of caution and go a little overkill.
- By generals I pretty much mean web browsing and photo storage.
- As far as 64-bit windows not through the cheap route but I suppose to take advantage of the 8gb RAM it would probably be a good idea.

 

[iconiK]

All you need is a license for Windows - it covers both 32 and 64-bit. Just download the 64-bit ISO.

 

[tiraides]

The Dell U2410 has a resolution of 1920 x1080. You're going to need a decent video card to better persuade your BIL to play some of the more modern games.

$190 - Intel Core i5 2400
$95 - MSI H67A-G43
$60 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB SATA 3Gb/s HDD
$17 - LG GH22NS70 SATA DVD burner
$270 - XFX HD-695X-CNFC HD 6950 2GB
=====
$632 - Subtotal (not including shipping, taxes, or rebates)

An Intel Sandy Bridge quad-core processor paired with an H67, a P67 or a Z68 motherboard will outperform virtually anything AMD currently has to offer. Since the likelihood of your BIL overclocking is slim without your presence, I saved you some money by going with the i5-2400 and an H67 board. The "savings" went towards a high-end video card.

If you can only buy one hard drive, you should buy a performance 7200RPM hard drive. The Samsung HD103SJ is one of the best around. You(r BIL) should try to save some money for a 64GB to 128GB SSD at some point in the future.

Out of curiosity, is that $30 copy of Windows an Upgrade version? Which edition of Windows 7 is it?

 

[Decimus]

The $30 copy of windows is the Windows Professional Upgrade with discount Microsoft does for college students. You see it all over the place on Slickdeals. Just out of curiosity why save up for the SSD? My buddy who is the one who got me on the forum to start says he hasn't noticed an appreciable difference with his over his other rigs using the Samsung F3's so for the price difference wasn't worth it.

 

[Deleted member 88227]

The $30 copy of windows is the Windows Professional Upgrade with discount Microsoft does for college students. You see it all over the place on Slickdeals. Just out of curiosity why save up for the SSD? My buddy who is the one who got me on the forum to start says he hasn't noticed an appreciable difference with his over his other rigs using the Samsung F3's so for the price difference wasn't worth it.

Your buddy must be doing something wrong then because an SSD is noticeably faster than any HDD on the market. Unless he has a bad SSD or something. It's the single upgrade you can do to almost any computer that will make it seem a lot faster (more so than adding more RAM)

 

[tiraides]

To repeat what Skillz said, you need the right SSD for a noticeable difference.

What SSD is your friend basing is opinions off of?

 

[Decimus]

He used Agility 2 60GB and ended up switching to two Spinpoint F3's in Raid 0 because he got tired of the small hard drive size and not enough speed boost for the difference. He would probably go back to SSD if the larger ones weren't so expensive

 

[tiraides]

The ones we recommend are the Intel 510 and Crucial C300/m4 SSDs. They're much faster on their own than those Agility 2s.

We don't recommend SandForce-based SSDs in general because they have a highly-reported number of stability issues.

 

[Dangman]

Yeah those Agility 2 SSDs weren't all that great to being with. To expand on what Tiraides said:
The Agility 2's real world performance was slow to begin with, at least in comparison to other SSDs. It couldn't provide anywhere near its rated speeds once you began using actual apps. Its random read/write speeds were also relatively poor. In addition, there have been a lot of reports of failures, stability, reliability issues.

Then OCZ decided to switch to a smaller but slower NAND flash type to cut costs on those SSDs. Unfortunately the switch lowered performance even more.

So basically your friend bought a crap SSD. As with virtually every other PC parts, there are huge differences in performance and quality between different models of SSDs.

 

[munkle]

So basically your friend bought a crap SSD.

This!

I had a vertex le which was some funky sandforce controller that ocz said was not a SF 1200 nor a 1500, they said it was like a 1400. Thing was junk, my kingston value drive ended up being faster.

I would recommend a ssd, an intel or crucial. As for the op. Amd has nothing compelling right now really. Intel beats them on the low and high end. The i3 2100 beats the x4 955, only advantage to the x4 is you can oc (and comsume like 2.5 times the power of the 2100), going lower the pentium and celerons are beating out amd's dual cores at the same price.