Three build options... which one is the best?

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compL33Tazn

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I will be OCing and running crossfire.
My primary usage involves up to 50 Firefox tabs, Photoshop and Illustrator CS4 open, w/ 2x 1680x1050
I'm also gaming; examples will include Assassin's Creed 2 and Need For Speed Shift, w/ 2x HD4850 512MB @ 1680x1050 highest plausible detail

1366 Option:
Mobo: ASUS P6T SE Open Box $150
CPU: i7 920 $200
RAM: 3GB 1600 $80
Total: $430

1156 Option 1:
Mobo: MSI P55-GD65 $145 at Fry's (May consider the Micro-ATX variant...) $120
CPU: i7 860 $230
RAM: 4GB 1600 $80
LGA-775 Heatsink Adapter $10
Total: $465 (Micro-ATX $440)

1156 Option 2:
Mobo: MSI P55-GD65 $145 at Fry's (May consider the Micro-ATX variant...) $120
CPU: i5 750 $150
RAM: 4GB 1600 $80
LGA-775 Heatsink Adapter $10
Total: $385 (Micro-ATX $360)
 
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For a gaming machine, the 1156 Option 2 build is really all that you need.

Since you plan on running CF, I'm curious as to which games you will be playing as well as the resolution and level of graphics quality you'll be using.

Also, what does the rest of this build look like?
 
I edited the first post with gaming details.
Many of the parts are reused, here is a list:

Case: Thermaltake Xaser VI
Motherboard: Purchase
Processor: Purchase
Memory: Purchase
Hard Drive: 640GB
Optical Drive: DVD+RW
Graphics: 2xDiamond HD4850 512MB
Power Supply: 500+W
Cooling: Thermalright HR-01
Thermalright T-Rad2
 
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If you use Photoshop and Illustrator more than you game, you may benefit more from the 1366 system (plus, if you can afford to, going for one or two 3x2GB tri-channel kits).

Which specific PSU are you reusing, and how long have you been using it for? If you've had the PSU for more than a couple of years, you may want to consider getting a newer, more efficient one.
 
I don't think the benefit that triple-channel grants outweighs the increase in price compared to the 750.

I believe I will be buying a new PSU, my current one is from a prebuilt, but I'll most likely buy the same PSU no matter which build I choose.

If 750 is sufficient for my usage, what kind of usage would demand the likes of 860/920?
 
OK, what specific PSU are you considering?

The Core i7 processors (the 860 and 920) have Hyper Threading, which allows the system to allocate resources to the processor as if it has twice the number of CPU cores than it actually has. The long story short is that they're best for programs that take advantage of multiple cores and/or HT.
 
I haven't chosen a specific PSU yet. How many watts should my PSU have?
 
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For photoshop, you'd benefit from more RAM and a RAMDisk. How intense is your photoshop and illustrator usage? Depending on that, you may or may not benefit from HT.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=442160&postcount=5

Joe Average said:
... I built a RAID 0 box for a small image studio 2 weeks ago, a new startup here in Vegas that is making waves. They wanted a "demo" workstation to see what's possible for processing as they don't want to create a massive server-type situation in the office, but 3-4 workstations that are equal in performance and then just using simple file sharing as required. Very simple setup in terms of the network, but the workstation I built used 2 300GB Velociraptors (tried to sell 'em on SSD but the amount of data they're dealing with wouldn't be practical - again, a price-to-performance and ROI issue).

The hard part was getting them to spring for 16GB of RAM because of the cost, but a few weeks ago I saw that sale for 4 4GB sticks of RAM for about $450 and made a few phone calls and snagged a similar deal.

I set up Photoshop CS3 for 'em (their legit retail copy) on Vista Business x64. They started messing around with it, loading some rather large TIFF files in excess of 150MB a pop, several at a time, performing some basic scripted actions on 'em, blurs, filters, etc. Using the Velociraptors in RAID 0 meant very snappy and consistent performance, as well as having 16GB of RAM too. Also, it's a Q6600 based machine running rock solid at 3 GHz.

They were very pleased with the performance at that point, but I had a surprise for 'em. ;)

I asked if I could have 20 mins 'alone' with the workstation to "rewire it" as Tim Allen might say. That consisted of grabbing a trial version of SuperSpeed Software's RamDisk Plus 9 and installing it, doing the simple configuration, and then creating a 10GB RAMdisk and told Photoshop "Ok, you want a scratch disk? Here, try this on for size."

After I did some tests of my own using the same scripts they'd done earlier, boy... I tell ya. You haven't lived till you see 225MB TIFF files literally snap onscreen in the blink of an eye, multiple huge TIFFs with resolutions like 5000x5000 and even higher. That's what's possible with RAMdisks, because even Velociraptors in RAID 0 pumping out something like 280MB/s sustained pales to the close to 5GB a second in bandwidth of that RAMdisk.

I told 'em to come back in and rerun their test scripts.

Jaws hit the floor, folks. Well, not quite but figuratively speaking, at least.

They asked what I'd done, I told them I put the scratch disk in RAM where it should be if you have the RAM to make it happen, and they bought 4 licenses of RamDisk Plus 10 mins later, and I got a signed contract to construct 3 more workstations identical to that one top to bottom and also be their "geek" if any issues come up.

It was a very good week... ;)
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the tips :D, but my usage isn't intense enough to create Joe Average's masterpiece. I ended up going with the MSI and i5 750.
 
You can do it right back here in this thread or do another thread here in General Hardware.
 
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