fender62 said:
GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3R or ASUS M4A79XTD EVO
what is the better of the two for gaming sli not req, bang for buck
amd or intel ? board
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-131-402-S09?$S640W$
Has two video slots for Crossfire. Takes DDR3 memory.
Has enough Vcore phases for just about any processor you
could throw in there. In the list here, are 140W
processors, as well as some six-core ones.
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=M4A79XTD EVO
The board has two PS/2 connectors as well (I like them).
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-131-402-S08?$S640W$
On page 2 of the reviews here, someone managed to run a 1090T six core.
It isn't in the Asus list.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813131402
The 1090T is about $300. Do you really need six cores ? No. It would
be useful on a server though. On a desktop, a lot of that silicon
is going to be snoozing.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849
*******
GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3R LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-128-401-Z09?$S640W$
It has some PCI slots, which I like. I like to plug in my older
cards, like a sound card I've moved from system to system. The
Vcore has plenty of phases.
It has a single PS/2 connector, for either mouse or keyboard, but not both.
I prefer two full connectors. (I get lag and jitter on my USB mouse -
the PS/2 was always rock solid.)
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/13-128-401-Z08?$S640W$
It looks like that board stopped shipping near the end of the year,
so there is probably a model to replace it. They're always introducing
new models.
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/products/list.aspx?s=42&jid=1&p=2&v=11
This is the CPU support chart for the GA-P55-UD3R. It'll accept
a Core i7-875K LGA1156 processor...
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=3162
and that processor is $330. I presume Intel offers this one, to
try to compete in the mid-range with the top end AMD. The 875K is
roughly the equivalent of the 870, except the multiplier is
unlocked for overclocking, and the processor list price is cheaper.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116368
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core_i7_875k-core_i5_655K.html
There are some benchmarks here, comparing an 870, to some of the older
AMD Phenom quad cores. This isn't the ideal article, because the
AMD six-cores aren't in here.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-870_10.html
The SuperPI benchmark is one way to compare a single core on one processor,
to a single core on another. Here, the Core i7-870 2.93Ghz quad core LGA1156 ($330)
completes its SuperPI run in 131.7 seconds. The Phenom II X4 965 3.4Ghz
Quad core ($180), is slower at 247.6 seconds. So you can't compare clock
rates directly, as a performance metric. The Core i7 seems to do a bit
more per clock cycle, than the AMD one. You'd think 3.4 > 2.93, but
you'd be wrong. Only a benchmark tells the whole story.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/core-i7-870/Charts/superpi.png
You really need to do your own benchmark research, to be happy.
I can't do it all from here. Presumably, there is some
relationship, between processor power, high end GPU, screen
size (like using a 2560 x 1600 screen) and the like. But I
can't give you a nice recipe in a ten minute search.
(A 2560x1600... Nice.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824002419
In games, core loading is asymmetric. On a four core processor,
you're likely to see 100-30-30-30 loading pattern. And that
tells you, there is some advantage to the cores running with
a high clock. If the game loads one of the cores to 100%, that
core is the limiting factor. And you can see from that as well,
that if you had six cores, what are the odds that the extra
cores would contribute to a game, in a meaningful way ? Some
programs don't have enough threads to spawn, to use them all.
However, on some "perfect scaling" multimedia application,
like some kinds of movie encoding applications, you might see
things scale nicely with the number of cores. If you grind movies
in the background all the time, then a four or six core might make
sense. But for a lot of other purposes, the extra cores could be
a waste. At the current time, a quad is plenty. I'm still using
a dual core (E8400 3GHz), and my only regrets might be, when working
on movies. Then it feels slow.
Paul
