I have been contemplating recently about doing a fresh build from scratch, but I was thinking about using this i7 thing I keep hearing about. Supposedly it simply obliterates my poor little Phenom... I have never built an Intel rig and I have been in the hobby since the Athlon XP days. I wouldn't say I am a fan boy, simply someone loyal to the brand. I am comfortable with AMD and as such never saw a real reason to switch. I guess I never felt there was much of a performance gap worth switching over until now. This Nehalem seems to be the best choice for whatever type of high performance computing you wish to do.
Would someone mind getting my up to speed on whats what with Intel and what supporting products I should look at. I will be using Asus for the mainboard as they have always taken care of me with my AMD chips over the years and prove to be rock solid. I will be using an nvidia GPU and would like to have the option to go SLI in the future, and I plan to water cool, so cheaper CPU and then an overclock to get me up to the speeds of the $1k parts. The computer will be mainly a gaming rig and will be used secondarily for your standard web surfing and downloading. I would like to get this build at or barely over $1000. This would be no sweat with an AMD build, however, I believe will be near impossible with Intel. I can save a little by using my current equipment. Carry-overs will be the case, fans, dvd drives, hdds, power supply, GPU (for the meantime), and thats all I can think of right now. I guess another issue to address is power. Will my current PSU be enough? I really have no idea what kind of power an Intel system draws as compared to AMD. Really my only focus for research at the moment is the CPU, Mainboard, and Ram. What are advantages, disadvantages with different products and so forth.
Thanks in advance for advice.
Josh
Would someone mind getting my up to speed on whats what with Intel and what supporting products I should look at. I will be using Asus for the mainboard as they have always taken care of me with my AMD chips over the years and prove to be rock solid. I will be using an nvidia GPU and would like to have the option to go SLI in the future, and I plan to water cool, so cheaper CPU and then an overclock to get me up to the speeds of the $1k parts. The computer will be mainly a gaming rig and will be used secondarily for your standard web surfing and downloading. I would like to get this build at or barely over $1000. This would be no sweat with an AMD build, however, I believe will be near impossible with Intel. I can save a little by using my current equipment. Carry-overs will be the case, fans, dvd drives, hdds, power supply, GPU (for the meantime), and thats all I can think of right now. I guess another issue to address is power. Will my current PSU be enough? I really have no idea what kind of power an Intel system draws as compared to AMD. Really my only focus for research at the moment is the CPU, Mainboard, and Ram. What are advantages, disadvantages with different products and so forth.
Thanks in advance for advice.
Josh