Verify My Build Before I Buy Things?

Abyss

Abyss

I put the BRO in brony!
So I'm building a gaming pc this year and I figured that I'd ask people with more knowledge.

Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 20extreme3
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231428
CPU: Intel i5 2500k at 4.5 Ghz
GPU: http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?nam ... 1G&show=p#
Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139021
Heatsink (will be adding another fan to it): http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-Hyp ... B002G1YPH0

Found the guide on Reddit (not discussing that in this thread), so I figured I'd check for validity. Seems like a pretty good guide to me, but I'm not overly intelligent with computer stuff.

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. :)
 
I would recommend different RAM; you should be able to find a 2x4GB kit for around $30, as well as a different GPU. I have the 2GB version of that, and I paid less than that price. I would suggest looking for either a cheaper 1GB card or a similarly priced 2GB card. The 6950 itself is a great card, I unlocked mine to a 6970, which you can do on the PowerColor cards for sure.
 
Id stick with that RAM. Most any 2x4gb kit is gonna be 1333, not 1600, and you'll never complain for having bought too much RAM. Absolutely worth the extra $16. The GPU, however, is an awful price. With a quick bit of looking, I see that you can get the 2gb version for the same price with a rebate from several places, such as this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131393

If you arent set on the 6950, I would recommend an Nvidia 560 ti instead. They benchmark very very similar and cost about the same, but, the Nvidia card will always have better drivers, and more features. Unless you want single card eyefinity, the nvidia has a better feature set, and gets a bigger performance boost if you go SLI in the future. (you'll need an SLI rated board though)

Thats a fine power supply, but this would more than suit your needs (I have one, running my 560ti @ 1ghz and my i5 2500k at 4.4ghz) :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371031
 
samjc3 said:
If you arent set on the 6950, I would recommend an Nvidia 560 ti instead. They benchmark very very similar and cost about the same, but, the Nvidia card will always have better drivers, and more features. Unless you want single card eyefinity, the nvidia has a better feature set, and gets a bigger performance boost if you go SLI in the future. (you'll need an SLI rated board though)
Click to expand...
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
While the 6950 is generally only about 2% faster than the 560Ti(Slightly faster for pretty much everything), it can still unlock the a 6970 and OC nicely. Also, Nvidia's 5XX series scaling is flax compared to HD6XXX cards in crossfire.
But yeah, drivers.
Also, refer to this for up to date buying guide stuff. Not the best, but a good start.
http://www.tinyurl.com/falconguide/
Lastly, POWERCOLOR ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
 
herp derp

>attempting to disprove Nvidia

The 6950 is okay, but like Sam said, Nvidia cards have a much better feature set, better drivers, et cerera.
 
No, Mako is right.

Yes, the Nvidia drivers/control panel are a lot nicer, but you can unlock the 6950 to a 6970 and it will piss all over the 560ti. Iirc Thursty did that with two of them and was getting some crazy performance.

Nvidia is a really good company and brand loyalty is nice and all, but don't let it blind you either. Just because something says Nvidia doesn't automatically make it better. You have to do research.

So no, it's not "okay", it's superior in this case.
 
I wouldn't touch an AMD video card with a 10-foot pole until they whip their driver team back into shape. Their drivers are a heavily forked, unstable mess.
 
bic said:
I wouldn't touch an AMD video card with a 10-foot pole until they whip their driver team back into shape. Their drivers are a heavily forked, unstable mess.
Click to expand...
Funny how I just had my Nvidia drivers crash, then. :p
Nothing from my 5770 in months, though.
 
Mako321 said:
bic said:
I wouldn't touch an AMD video card with a 10-foot pole until they whip their driver team back into shape. Their drivers are a heavily forked, unstable mess.
Click to expand...
Funny how I just had my Nvidia drivers crash, then. :p
Nothing from my 5770 in months, though.
Click to expand...
Rather bizarre. I have two PC s that I have to deal with with AMD cards. The catalyst control center is the worst piece of software I've ever used, other than maybe itunes. I ran the computer lab at my old school and we put nvidia cards in every PC in there (35) and never had any issues. Not to mention Ive never had issues with any of my personal nvidia based PCs. And I hadnt seen about unlocking the 6950 to a 70. With that being the case, I suppose its better, but, Im still a big fan of stability and and Nvidia's features.
 
I don't think I've ever had CCC crash or randomly break, I was referring more to how it's laid out a lot worse than Nvidia's control panel, and how the updates are meh. Certainly not ideal by comparison, but saying you wouldn't touch AMD cards because of it is a little silly, since you usually don't have to mess around with it too often anyway.

With that said, the 6950 is still better. :p
 
I've been using ATI cards since 2007, the only problems I've had are when I fried my laptop a week after getting it (Playing Halo 2 vista on a laptop with a 256mb ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650, on a bed, in a house without AC, durring the summer, in the south = bad idea) and when I play around with windows too much and get the annoying can't find MOM.cfg or whatever on every boot. Didn't really mean much, but annoying nonetheless.

CCC hasn't really given me any problems other than it's kinda flaxty to use on the few occasions I've actually had to (re-installing windows for the Heck of it)
 
AMD cards or at least the drivers handle on-card scaling like flax. It scales to your DESKTOP resolution rather than a separately set resolution, and with some games I got severe crashes when trying to run at native resolution (above the scaled resolution). nVidia cards actually handle this properly. It's pretty trivial, but very annoying for me, because my monitor is retarded and requires you to manually switch between 16:10 and 4::3: (with no option for 16:9).

On my HD 5470M laptop, I've had issues with tearing in videos (I think) caused by 3:2 pulldown which cannot be turned off. nVidia also has better 3D support, not that it matters much. Lastly, nVidia cards support CUDA, which is used by Adobe products. Again, most of this isn't a big deal for most people. For my applications, however, nVidia was a better choice. I love my MSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II.

That being said, if an AMD card is a better deal, go for it. They've really improved their drivers, as far as I can tell. You don't even have to uninstall to upgrade now.

EDIT: Adword win. Still, I wish they were differentiated from normal links *wink* *wink*
 
CUDA is truly fantastic. You know its good when my 560 ti can handle gpu physics simulation as well as my dad's Ati firepro v9800. (Solidworks 12 Advanced Simulation package, i7 2600k + 16gb ram+ firepro v9800 Vs i5 2500k + 8gb ram+ 560 ti) Ati stream is a joke in gpu computing. Also raytracing in luxrender is faster on nvidia. I maintain that I am not a fanboy. If Ati puts out a card that performs better in more than simple gaming I'll be happy to buy one.
 
My gaming library will likely consist of Fallout 3, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and Minecraft for the most part. Based on that, which would be the better card to get?
 
AbyssPWNS said:
How would I go about ensuring that? Would it tell me in the product info?
Click to expand...
From what I hear, its mostly the reference design ones and the 2gb ones that are easily unlocked. Google is your friend.
 
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