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spaceman

[H]F Junkie
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Joined
Jan 7, 2005
Messages
14,959
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming, BF FPS mostly
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$550
3) Where do you live?
VA
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget?
CPU, mobo, ram, maybe psu if neccessary
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing?
5850 1gb, Antec EA-650 psu, X-fi, dvd drive, 74 gb raptor, 1 TB WD Black
6) Will you be overclocking?
Hell yes.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
22" Sony G500 CRT, usually run 1600x1200 at 85hz. Can do 2048X1536 max
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
April
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.
Multi gpu, want to be able to do sli or xfire if possible. Will be upgrading GPU next.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
I have Vista 64 and Win 7 32 bit.

Thinking 2500K build. Would like a easy ocing Mobo like my Gigabyte P45. Building mostly for BF series.

Cheers
 
When in April (specifically)?

How old is the EA650?

Which games (besides Battlefield)?

Do you live near the Fairfax Micro Center store?
 
Whenever is best in April. I am not impatient.

EA650 is about a yr old. It ran a 4870X2 just fine.

Witcher 2, maybe Guild Wars 2 but mostly I play BF. Tried plenty of games. I keep going back to BF.

Not near Fairfax.
 
I assume that I would want to upgrade the psu if I add another gpu on the same level as the 5850 right?

I think that the 2500K upgrade will give me more fps than a gpu upgrade. Plus, it will give me a platform to build on for a few years.
 
Thanks. That mobo does not appear to be an overclocking board? I would prefer something that oc's easy.
 
If you want to overclock, you need both a "K" processor with an unlocked multiplier and a P67 board that enables overclocking. hossdaddy's build doesn't meet either requirement. Grab the following instead:

$252 - Intel Core i5 2500K & Cooler Master Hyper 212 combo
$250 - MSI P67A-GD65 & G.Skill Ripjaws X 2x4GB DDR3 1333 combo

These combo deals expire tomorrow, the last day of March.
 
Ok. No hurry though right? The april deals should improve on that combo. I will have much more $$ next week than atm. I could get that deal now and my wife could then cave my nuts in. lol

Does the 2500K need an aftermarket cooler? I don't mind getting one. Just want to know if it is worth it or not. These chips seem to run pretty cool at stock?

I was eying the MSI or Asus P67 offerings. Also the ASRocks mobo rec by Tom's Hardware.
 
They're fine at stock speeds but we still recommend a good third-party CPU cooler for overclocking.
 
Ok. I like the msi/gskill/2500K combo. Will keep an eye out for something like that next week. I anticipate a fps boost from this upgrade hopefully. BF BC2 runs well enough now but does slowdown at times.
 
Seeing the Ivy Bridge and potential E class Intel cpu release. I am wondering if I should hold out longer now. My 9450 does 3.6 and does chug a bit in BFBC2 but nothing crazy. I want a setup I can rely on to keep up for at least two years. Pretty sure a 2500K would but the new chips might be 20% faster?
 
spaceman said:
Seeing the Ivy Bridge and potential E class Intel cpu release. I am wondering if I should hold out longer now. My 9450 does 3.6 and does chug a bit in BFBC2 but nothing crazy. I want a setup I can rely on to keep up for at least two years. Pretty sure a 2500K would but the new chips might be 20% faster?
Click to expand...

Best advice I can give is this: Wait until you can no longer wait. Then buy.
 
tiraides said:
If you want to overclock, you need both a "K" processor with an unlocked multiplier and a P67 board that enables overclocking. hossdaddy's build doesn't meet either requirement. Grab the following instead:

$252 - Intel Core i5 2500K & Cooler Master Hyper 212 combo
$250 - MSI P67A-GD65 & G.Skill Ripjaws X 2x4GB DDR3 1333 combo

These combo deals expire tomorrow, the last day of March.
Click to expand...

If you're going to go through with your original plans, +1 to this. You could alternatively swap down to the MSI-P67A-GD53 or GD55 and lose a few features. But this is very solid.

I'm trying to think of a way for you to wait for Ivy Bridge but get your rig to play BFBC2 smoothly. Maybe drop $245 (before $30 MIR) on a 1 GB Radeon 6950? I'm not sure if that would really provide enough of a performance boost to get you over the edge because I think your bottleneck is that CPU. The reason I suggested the 6950 is that IIRC you can crossfire it with a 6970 down the line (like when Battlefield 3 comes out.) Alternatively, since you're still using a CRT, you could try to turn the resolution down a notch until you feel comfortable upgrading.
 
Cpu is the bottleneck no doubt. I really think I need to go ahead with it sooner rather than later. When it hits the fan in BFBC2, fps goes waaaaay down. I want to have a decent min fps above all else.

All I want, I think, is a mobo for the 2500K that has software based oc like my gigabyte P45 and the ability to add another gpu.

What could I possibly run in a dual gpu setup with my current PSU? I would think two 5850s, 6850s, or nvidia equivalent, 460s and 550s? cards would make a great budget bump up for my next step.

On a side note, what is a good, cheap network card? I believe Realtek is not a good thing to have when playing PB enabled games. Keep getting occasional internet loss on my gaming pc when playing bfbc2. I switch to my backup Dell pos desktop and it is still connected just fine. I have read that PB has been having conflicts with Realtek audio.

Thank you for the help. Kind of like therapy. I am obsessing about it lol.
 
win7 keys work for both 32 and 64 bit. so you should just use win 7 x64 on your new install

p67 is great. you can get awesome performance, especially if you dont buy into all the bells and whistles

Any dual pcie mobo should do you fine, with sandy bridge basically everything is on the cpu so buying highend boards/ram is pointless

IMO a nf200 chip on the mobo is pointless. [H] review shows that the difference 16x/16x is negligible to 4x/4x and the nf200 can just cause more problems/lag

So my advice to you is, buy the cheapest mobo from a reputable mfg. that suits your needs i.e pcie-lanes, LAN/Audio chipsets etc.
Id recommend this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131706

same thing with RAM, get anything @1.5v with heatspreaders will fit with your components. 4gb should do you fine, but I sprang for 8gb since RAM prices are so cheap, and I can run without the pagefile, and who knows when eyeinfinity gaming will start knocking on my RAM more. With sandy bridge (unless you are benching) there is really no reason to get anything over 1333mhz.

also, I hardly think an aftermarket NIC is necessary. I have never had a problem with my realtek drivers and PB, if it really bothers you look for a p67 board with an Intel NIC.

doing that you should be able to save a decent amount of money while getting the same performance, and you mine as well just pick up a 2nd 5850 instead of gettign new gpus. they have great crossfire scaling that can rival todays highest end cards.
 
Your power supply wouldn't be enough for a dual-card setup using good mid-range cards.

We normally recommend power supplies of at least 750 watts with at least 60A of power on the 12V rail(s).
 
spaceman said:
On a side note, what is a good, cheap network card? I believe Realtek is not a good thing to have when playing PB enabled games. Keep getting occasional internet loss on my gaming pc when playing bfbc2. I switch to my backup Dell pos desktop and it is still connected just fine. I have read that PB has been having conflicts with Realtek audio.
Click to expand...
Some of the best NICs out there:
$32 - Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000Mbps PRO/1000 GT PCI-E x1 NIC OEM w/ 1 x RJ45
 
I'm actually building a system tomorrow with similar components (just no Crossfire or SLI... yet.) I ended up with the MSI P67A-G45 motherboard. It has Realtek audio and network though. I'll be playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 on it in the next week, and if I have problems I'm sure I'll be posting here.
 
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