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bp9801

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Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum but not new to the site. I've always used OCC to check on reviews and news, I've checked out the forum some but I've never signed up until today. I know I'll be here a lot more often, it seems really friendly, much more so than some other forums I've been at. Now on to my questions.

 

I've been contemplating a new system to replace my aging E6600, 680i SLI and 8800GTX. I thought about Core i7 but I can't see myself ever having the use for something like that, at least now that I've changed my major to history. So, I've been thinking of going the Phenom II route because it has plenty of power for games, Photoshop, and the like. So far, I've settled on these parts:

 

Antec 1200

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE

G.Skill 4GB DDR3-1333

WD 320GB SATA2

WD 1TB SATA2

SATA DVD burner

 

My motherboard choices are the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, ASUS M4A79T Deluxe, and ASUS Crosshair III Formula. I'm leaning towards the Crosshair III, but the other two seem to offer similar performance and cost a few dollars less. For a video card, I think I may go with the HD 4870 1GB and wait for the HD5000/GT300 series to launch to get even more performance. I happened to win myself the Antec CP-850 power supply from a contest so I'll use that to power my new system.

 

What all do you think I should do for the motherboard and is there another RAM option to consider for DDR3? I may switch out the hard drives for different brands, depending on the reliability of Western Digital, but is there anything else I should consider with it?

 

Thanks for the help in advance.

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Hey everyone, I'm new to the forum but not new to the site. I've always used OCC to check on reviews and news, I've checked out the forum some but I've never signed up until today. I know I'll be here a lot more often, it seems really friendly, much more so than some other forums I've been at. Now on to my questions.

 

I've been contemplating a new system to replace my aging E6600, 680i SLI and 8800GTX. I thought about Core i7 but I can't see myself ever having the use for something like that, at least now that I've changed my major to history. So, I've been thinking of going the Phenom II route because it has plenty of power for games, Photoshop, and the like. So far, I've settled on these parts:

 

Antec 1200

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE

G.Skill 4GB DDR3-1333

WD 320GB SATA2

WD 1TB SATA2

SATA DVD burner

 

My motherboard choices are the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, ASUS M4A79T Deluxe, and ASUS Crosshair III Formula. I'm leaning towards the Crosshair III, but the other two seem to offer similar performance and cost a few dollars less. For a video card, I think I may go with the HD 4870 1GB and wait for the HD5000/GT300 series to launch to get even more performance. I happened to win myself the Antec CP-850 power supply from a contest so I'll use that to power my new system.

 

What all do you think I should do for the motherboard and is there another RAM option to consider for DDR3? I may switch out the hard drives for different brands, depending on the reliability of Western Digital, but is there anything else I should consider with it?

 

Thanks for the help in advance.

Personally I think you ought to get a 940 X4, still get the 790X (but the ddr2 equivalent), and if you have 4gb's of 800mhz 4-4-4-12 paired with the e6600 then you can recycle that since it wouldn't bottleneck the 940's overclocking potential.

With the extra money you could pop in a 4890, or maybe get a bigger storage and faster system hard drives. :thumbs-up:

 

welcome to the OCC

Edited by IVIYTH0S

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I thought about going with the AM2+ and DDR2, but I'd been planning on giving this system to my girlfriend so she has something that can actually play Fallout 3, Oblivion and the like. Her current laptop is a Celeron M I believe, its enough to run Sims 3 on medium settings but it can't even do anything on other games.

 

My RAM right now is at 5-5-5-15, I haven't tried anything lower with it though, I've never messed with overclocking memory that much. The X4 940 does sound nice though.. but I'd like to get an AM3 system so that when the Bulldozers come out, I can recycle the memory for it. Unless DDR4 is used with them, but every indication says they'll still use DDR3 so I should be able to recycle for that.

 

By the time I figure out what I want to do, the new processors will be out by then haha.

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I thought about going with the AM2+ and DDR2, but I'd been planning on giving this system to my girlfriend so she has something that can actually play Fallout 3, Oblivion and the like. Her current laptop is a Celeron M I believe, its enough to run Sims 3 on medium settings but it can't even do anything on other games.

 

My RAM right now is at 5-5-5-15, I haven't tried anything lower with it though, I've never messed with overclocking memory that much. The X4 940 does sound nice though.. but I'd like to get an AM3 system so that when the Bulldozers come out, I can recycle the memory for it. Unless DDR4 is used with them, but every indication says they'll still use DDR3 so I should be able to recycle for that.

 

By the time I figure out what I want to do, the new processors will be out by then haha.

Just call the 940 a 955 in your mind, you won't notice the difference (and certainly you'll forget about the 955 once your 940 is overclocked). By the time the 940 is an old horse, we'll probably be on AM4 or AM5. I could see what you mean about sharing the memory but why not do that now with your old machine (unless you don't have 4GB's or something). Like if you intend on getting a better AM3 down the line, then i don't see why the extra money should be spent now. The 955 is pretty much an AM3 940 with a multi boost (and tweaks to it's memory controller), it's not worth the price difference in the least when they both have unlocked multipliers. My old Q9450 is a great machine and the 940 is better than it and my machine can play any game to it's max. The bump in graphics card you can buy from not blowin' money on ddr3 or the 955 will give you a much more capable gaming machine. heck you could save a ton of money and get the x2 550 or a little money and get the x3 720. (though even though those are am3, I still say you oughta get an am2+ ddr2 setup with em). Just food for thought

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