I currently run a gaming rig consisting of; AN8 Fata1ity SLI mobo 4800+ 939AMD CPU 4GB G.Skill CAS 2 Hi Speed Ram 2x 9600 GSO XXX Gfx cards It was built when the gear all fell off of the TOP chart price some 3+(ish) years ago (I could never afford or justify TOP ££) I generally build MID range rigs from TOP ££ kit after it’s fell off the peak price point… Its run like a peach on Win7 64bit and is still nippy however, I’ve followed FEAR as a benchmark and now I’m at FEAR3 the 4800+ has hit minimum spec… time to move up. I tend to spread the load by shifting the mobo/cpu/ram set up to a sustainable level and move over my existing gfx – followed by an SLI upgrade some months later… So lets be straight since K7, I’m an AMD fan boy! Price point for that sweet OC has generally found me in AMD territory… and here I was now looking for a Phenom because the FX bulldozer is out (and not that good by all accounts…) A 1100t would have done nicely, but at £180 when I can get an FX 6200 for £130 …. Speechless, confused and needing help. I’m going AMD – so don’t try to sell me an i5 2500… not happening (as I bury my head in the sand!)…I’m going AM3+ for the future and my AMD stubborn streak etc… LOL, so see if £350 gives good bang for buck as follows… Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 990FX Socket AM3+ 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard .AMD Bulldozer FX-6 6200 Black Edition 3.8GHz Socket AM3+ 8MB L3. Corsair A50 Socket Intel 775, 1156,1155, 1366 AMD AM2 AM3 Performance CPU Cooler. Crucial 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz Ballistix Tactical Memory Kit CL8 (8-8-8-24) 1.5V. I’ll stick with the 9600 GSO XXX SLI setup until I have some more cash to push that on to the next level… There are higher priced FXA motherboards and a multitude of CPU's, but I don’t generally buy the latest / highest priced mobo’s - Realistically this should eat my 4800+ for breakfast… and I’m tying to give myself a future proof setup at slightly higher specs than I would normally aim at, so any thoughts would be appreciated?
From your SLI rig, I guess you are a gamer. Well, Intel Core processors are definitely faster on a clock-to-clock basis but ain't nothing wrong going with AMD. That said, when gaming is concerned, both Intel and AMD CPUs are fast enough for the job, even if you just stick with dual-core processors. 6-core is overkill, honestly, unless you do a lot of video rendering... What you need to concentrate most is in RAM and the graphics card. Even so, 16 GB is overkill, at least as far as games and standard office apps are concerned. I would stick with 8 GB for now. Use the money you save on the processor and RAM and go for a decent single graphics card. As much as NVIDIA would like to push SLI, a single fast graphics card offers better performance per watt or dollar than an SLI setup. Now that the new GeForce GTX 680 is out, you can make use of this opportunity to get a cheaper GeForce 500 series graphics card, or wait for NVIDIA to release the mid-range GeForce 600 graphics cards.
