Phenom II X4 Or, X6?

[MC3craze]

I think the only reason you need 6 cores is for video and image editing.

My graphics card is a BEAST!

It is a Nvidia Geforce GTX 550 TI.

That\'s terrible. the 550 ti is a really bad value, you can get a better 6850 for the same price.

The 550 ti is a 560 with half the shaders lasered off.

[Cooly568]

That\'s terrible. the 550 ti is a really bad value, you can get a better 6850 for the same price.

The 550 ti is a 560 with half the shaders lasered off.

Well my 550 TI is much better than my 210.

[MC3craze]

Well my 550 TI is much better than my 210.

That\'s true, but you still could have bought a GTX 460 or a 6850.

6870 isn\'t worth it in most cases, you can just overclock a 6850 to get the same or better performance than a 6870.

Oh, and if I were you, I\'d go for the Phenom II X4 if you haven\'t already bought a CPU.

[Cooly568]

I was actually showed a website on which it compares the prices of different parts across different websites so I actually could get a i5 2400.

Also, about the graphics card, I only had $130.

[Amram]

in fairness, any step in the right direction, is still a step in the right direction.

likewise, not everyone knows enough of the world of PC performance parts to make such judgment calls. I\'d love to hear you opinion on which antibiotic is the best for the distribution cost for combating meningitis?

Odds are, you lack the knowledge to make that judgment, and probably also lack the knowledge to find appropriate texts on the matter and maybe reach an ok judgment.

Stating someone made a terrible choice, without knowing the terms of that decision, or their level of knowledge is elitist in the extreme. Would I have bought a TI 550? no. Would I have bought a radeon 4850? no. I am not however, bound by a budget in this regard, it leaves me free to reach higher levels of performance, something not everyone can justify. i also know damned well that my monitors native resolution, with 8x or higher AA and AF will make the 4850 cry while the 4870 soldiers on at noticeably higher frame rates.

You think a 4850 and 4870 would perform the same if you OC\'d the 4850?. at what resolution, 1024x768 with AA and AF disabled? At no time will a card with 1/4 the vmem compete favorably at large resolutions, with such demanding features enabled unless it has significant advantages in frequency. now keep it fair and overclock the 4870, and it will hold its lead, easily. If you were right, there\'d be hardly any enthusiast builds out there sporting the xx70 series cards when the xx50 series were available and superior. it isn\'t smart for a company to release a cheaper and superior product while simultaneously releasing a more expensive product to compete with it. It\'s self sabotage.

The only time 4850\'s make sense vs the 4870, speaking strictly of performance, is in xfire. Support for xfire is incomplete, has to be built into the games, can be buggy and troublesome, doubles the radiated gfx card noise of your tower, demands more power, doubled risk of hardware failures(two cards that might fail, instead of only one), and so on. Your better buy is still to buy a faster single card, until such time as you seek performance beyond the single card solutions available. of course, 4870\'s in xfire will outperform the 4850\'s, with ease.....

Compared to the 4870 512mb, fine, i\'ll grant you that. but no 4850 reached 2gb of vmem, and at high res with maxxed out AA and AF, you need that ram. Running anything less and you\'ve no right to take the elitist stance in the first place, you need to join the club first of all.

Cooly568

Since you mentioned earlier that you use Tigerdirect, im assuming then your Canadian, www.Shopbot.ca is very useful in finding out what supplier has the lowest prices, but they only index those that exist in, or ship to canada.

And now that you\'ve brought it up, I will point out, the intel iX series are very well priced. intel in the past has always been the more expensive, but these days its very competitively priced, and considering the performance gains to be had with iX vs AMD cpu\'s, the slight if any increase in cost is probably worth it if your thinking of going that route.

note that an i5 2400 will soundly outperform an AMD x4, X6, or FX, at all frequencies. Its kinda sad how far back AMD is in performance given how good the initial Athlons were.

[Cooly568]

I am actually Californian. Lets stop with the graphics card discussion please? I have a 550 TI and that is not changing. Thinkin about buyin the new i5 through newegg. (Horrible Grammar Today)

[Amram]

if the 550Ti serves you well enough, thats all that really matters anyways. won\'t be more from me on that front.

i feel kinda dumb too, had no idea tigerdirect was as big as they are. its been a long time since i looked at them though, aside form browsing their catalogue i mean. shortly after I posted that i looked, and sure enough, spoke too soon... Ah well.

the i5 is a good solid chip, most of the systems i\'ve built for friends recently have used i5\'s. Your call in the end, but i\'d suggest it over the AMD offers personally, there\'s a pretty big performance gap there.

[MC3craze]

-snip-

You have got to be kidding me, especially the whole bit about 'being an elitist.'

It is simple fact that the 550ti is a poor value card. The 6850 is a better card hands down.

No amount of inane, fallacious, rambling will change that.

And cooly, I apologize for high-jacking your thread, and persisting with this argument.

[Cooly568]

And cooly, I apologize for high-jacking your thread, and persisting with this argument.

It\'s okay. My new shiny I5 2500 should arrive at my house tomorrow.

[Amram]

It\'s okay. My new shiny I5 2500 should arrive at my house tomorrow.

new parts, always a mood booster

[Cooly568]

new parts, always a mood booster

And my new shiny Vengeance 8GB 1600MHz RAM, and a new motherboard.