Twilight Wolf
Frequent Poster
Serious question... how much did you spend on this setup?
robm's "Hey look I'm buying a PC" thread
- Thread starter robm
- Start date
bic
Well-Known Member
I am disappoint.
- Socket 775 is old. It was on the cusp of obsolescence when I built my PC over a year ago, before the i5s and i7s came down in price. Now a quad-core 2.66 ghz i5-750 with hyperthreading and twice as much cache as the Q9400 is only $30 more, there isn't a reason to compromise anymore. If you're on that tight of a budget, you would have been better off shopping for AM3 parts or going with a dual-core i5. With LGA775, the Q9650 is the end of your upgrade options; anything better than that would call for replacing the motherboard and memory along with the CPU.
- That motherboard will only run video cards in SLI/Crossfire at x8 speeds.
- That video card is a baby step above Intelgrated video. The 5500 cards make up the lowest tier of ATI's 2010 lineup, and according to Tom's Hardware Nvidia's old GeForce 9600 consistently averages 10-15 FPS higher than the 5570 in benchmarks. Basing the price off this one on NewEgg, the two cards put together cost $160. ($190 before rebate.) For that kind of scratch you could have gotten a 5750 or 5770, which by itself will blow the two small cards out of the water. When you buy a single card (and have an SLI/Crossfire capable motherboard), you can always upgrade by buying another one later on and adding to what you have. When you buy two cheap cards and want to upgrade later on, you have to remove both your old cards to use the new one, effectively wasting the money you invested in them. Here's a 5770 for $140 after rebate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102858
Building a PC isn't just about the bottom line; you have to consider price-to-performance and upgrade potential in order to get your money's worth. Buying cheap parts every couple years is, in the long run, more expensive than buying something decent every few years. Believe me, I've been down that road.
That build may have been decent back in January, but better parts have come down to comparable prices since then.
- Socket 775 is old. It was on the cusp of obsolescence when I built my PC over a year ago, before the i5s and i7s came down in price. Now a quad-core 2.66 ghz i5-750 with hyperthreading and twice as much cache as the Q9400 is only $30 more, there isn't a reason to compromise anymore. If you're on that tight of a budget, you would have been better off shopping for AM3 parts or going with a dual-core i5. With LGA775, the Q9650 is the end of your upgrade options; anything better than that would call for replacing the motherboard and memory along with the CPU.
- That motherboard will only run video cards in SLI/Crossfire at x8 speeds.
- That video card is a baby step above Intelgrated video. The 5500 cards make up the lowest tier of ATI's 2010 lineup, and according to Tom's Hardware Nvidia's old GeForce 9600 consistently averages 10-15 FPS higher than the 5570 in benchmarks. Basing the price off this one on NewEgg, the two cards put together cost $160. ($190 before rebate.) For that kind of scratch you could have gotten a 5750 or 5770, which by itself will blow the two small cards out of the water. When you buy a single card (and have an SLI/Crossfire capable motherboard), you can always upgrade by buying another one later on and adding to what you have. When you buy two cheap cards and want to upgrade later on, you have to remove both your old cards to use the new one, effectively wasting the money you invested in them. Here's a 5770 for $140 after rebate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102858
Building a PC isn't just about the bottom line; you have to consider price-to-performance and upgrade potential in order to get your money's worth. Buying cheap parts every couple years is, in the long run, more expensive than buying something decent every few years. Believe me, I've been down that road.
That build may have been decent back in January, but better parts have come down to comparable prices since then.
XCVG
ModRetro Legend
Yeah, I don't want to sound like a jerk but I agree with bic here. It's a nice rig, but doesn't have a lot of upgradability of headroom.
Core 2 Quad and LGA775 are outdated, they perform okay, on par with Phenom II for the most part but unless you got a deal on them, you're better off with LGA1156 or even AM3. There's no upgradability here. Maybe not a problem, but it just doesn't fell right, at least to me, to buy outdated parts.
Two crap videocards is not better than one good videocard. I guess you get bragging rights, but if bic's numbers are accurate, you could get have got a card that's better than both put together, for less. You could also add another later.
But don't feel bad, it's pretty good compared to the flax I've had to put up with. For years I had an LGA775 motherboard that supported DDR and DDR2, AGP and PCI-e. I didn't have enough money to get a proper all-new rig. It was outfitted with a then-brand-new Core 2 Duo E6300, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and an All-in-wonder 9800 Pro. It didn't work properly with the AIW, and barely worked at all with its successor, a Radeon HD 4670. It also had a power supply only rated for 230W, and for quite a while a tiny 80GB hard drive. There are limits to how much you should upgrade your PC, and pushing them is a really bad idea.
Core 2 Quad and LGA775 are outdated, they perform okay, on par with Phenom II for the most part but unless you got a deal on them, you're better off with LGA1156 or even AM3. There's no upgradability here. Maybe not a problem, but it just doesn't fell right, at least to me, to buy outdated parts.
Two crap videocards is not better than one good videocard. I guess you get bragging rights, but if bic's numbers are accurate, you could get have got a card that's better than both put together, for less. You could also add another later.
But don't feel bad, it's pretty good compared to the flax I've had to put up with. For years I had an LGA775 motherboard that supported DDR and DDR2, AGP and PCI-e. I didn't have enough money to get a proper all-new rig. It was outfitted with a then-brand-new Core 2 Duo E6300, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and an All-in-wonder 9800 Pro. It didn't work properly with the AIW, and barely worked at all with its successor, a Radeon HD 4670. It also had a power supply only rated for 230W, and for quite a while a tiny 80GB hard drive. There are limits to how much you should upgrade your PC, and pushing them is a really bad idea.
