Well after mulling over building a new pc for well over a year, I have taken the plunge. Asus RAMPAGE III EXTREME X58 PowerColor HD 6950 2GB x2, jesus. Coolermaster HAF X Case OCZ 120GB Vertex 2E Corsair H70 Hydro Intel 930 Not got the ram just yet, but I am anticipating Corsair Dominator GT 6GB Will use a spare 150 GB veloci raptor and other assorted HDD's for storage. I must be mad. Yep thought so. Can't wait to play with this utter beast.
If you're going to spend that kind of money on a system, add a couple/three of the Samsung Spinpoint 1TB F3s and stick them in RAID0 I wouldn't be using an old 150GB velociraptor when the F3s are quicker I've got 3 of them in RAID0 and they blow away most SSDs, plus 2.7GB of space! Also, i personally would have waited to see what January 9th brings with the socket 1155 stuff, could or should be quicker than the i7 930.... At the very least it may cause price drops, who knows.
I'd wait until Sandy Bridge comes out to see how the market reacts before purchase. Who knows, maybe Sandy Bridge LGA 1155 blows out the LGA1366 Bloomfield cores... deltatux
I'm concerned about the VAT rise in the UK, but I think your both right concerning potential performance of sandy and the possibility of price reductions for 1366. Order on hold. Thanks for the input.
Heh, the F3's in Raid 0 don't do anything compared to the SSD the OP has ordered It gives more raw throughput but does that at seek times about 1000x better than the Raid 0 array. It's always nice to have a lot of raw sequential speed but doesn't mean anything in the world of OS drives. That vertex 2 is specced at 285 MB/s speeds by the way, at seek times that makes it run around in circles around the F3 Raid array you propposed. I am not even touching the subject 'IOPS' lol. @OP, drop the Velociraptor all together and get a single F3. There is nothing to be gained by a Velociraptor. After you've tasted SSD you won't even use the Velociraptor.
How come you cancelled the 6950's? I thought you might be flashing the bios on them so they unlock to 6970's, a few lads on the OverclockersUK forums have done this.
I think unlocking them is a good idea. It's up to you. I suggest you get Sandy Bridge when it comes out as well. Do note that with the P67, like the P55 before it, when CrossFire/SLi'd, your PCIe x16 lanes will operate in x8/x8 unlike the X58 platform. deltatux
Yes, rather unfortunate it would appear... A major rethink is on the cards. Think i'm going to get 2500k + non expensive mobo, use my single 460 or Nv560, and wait for the x16 x16 chipsets (im hoping they will come?!). I'll sell the mobo and cpu down the line if I can. Using x8 x8 will just bug me. Damm it all lmao! Edit- Another option is get the 6990, thus negating the x8 bandwith. Even so I would be tied to dual gpu's to avoid the x8, but then such a set up would be just as costly as my initial proposal and i would be a shade of green when Ivy? is released. At least the items in my current sig will transfer very well, and I have beaten the VAT rise buying them. Ultimately I want a dual gpu set up at x16, with a healthy gap between the gpu's (air flow) Deltatux, do you know of P67 boards that allow the gpu's to be separated as I'd like even at x8 (just for options sake?) Edit 2- The P8P67 Deluxe has a gap, and the x-fire and SLi scaling looks quite good! Price £173 (am i allowed to say that?)
Primary PCIe lanes are on-chip with Sandy Bridge unlike Bloomfield. The 2500K will always be at 16 lanes unless Intel does some major die revision. Even so, 8 lanes are enough for most modern GPUs (at least as far as gaming goes); the HD 5850 loses 2% performance dropping back from 16 lanes (PCIe 2.0) to 8 lanes.
ati 6900 series are awesome on crossfire, they scale better than NVIDIA SLI, imo you should rethink a little about that change . Plus you can unlock in a future. Altho yes, +1 to wait SB.
It's always fun to do up a new system. Just remember, it always gets faster and cheaper when it comes to computers. Unless you're buying a MAC, or anything from Apple for that matter. Anyways, I'd drop the Corsair H70 Hydro from the list too. That's just me though, I know lots of peeps like that easy water cooler setup but you can find cheaper air coolers that will out pace it. Good luck with your future build! :cheers:
I suggest people to go for the Sandy Bridge if planning to build a gaming machine. Not a huge change from the current i7, and i5 to that. I would say a little bit.. I think 4.5ghz-5.0ghz won't be necessary for today's game.
Not sure what you're asking for there... As for x16/x16, you'd need to wait for the LGA2011, which is a completely different socket for the high performance market. It's most likely going to cost you an arm and a leg if the Core i7 2600K costs US$370... deltatux
