New build dilemma.

[Joel~]

I answered it in a previous post.

You did? I don't see it...

 

[JogaBonito1502]

Hmm. I'm going to read some reviews of the two cards and see which one I think would be more suitable for me. One issue I have is the idea of going SLi/CrossFire in the future. Is it really worth having two high-end graphics cards? Is there anything that would get full use from them?

When you SLI a nVidia card, you get about 40% performance of the second card in addition to the 100% from your first card. With crossfire you get 60%. I'm not sure on the numbers, I could be slightly off. The best advice I can give you, if you don't really care for price, is to wait for the release of the HD4870X2, which is essentially 2 HD4870 in one card.

edit: Why do I always miss the second page :?

 

[Joel~]

To be honest, I don't really care about it at all - one single 4870, or equivalent nVidia card, would do it for me at the moment. I was just interested in the subject, seeing as I have never really looked in to it.

But thanks for your input

 

[JogaBonito1502]

No problem. But yeah, an HD4870 is more then enough. Should satisfy you until April of next year or so. Then you could be looking at an unnecessary upgrade, if you want to stay on cutting-edge. I'm just going to get an HD4850 at the end of the year. Hoping for good price drops on that and the Q6600.

 

[worshipme]

To be honest, I don't really care about it at all - one single 4870, or equivalent nVidia card, would do it for me at the moment. I was just interested in the subject, seeing as I have never really looked in to it.

The 790FX supports CF, not SLI, so the HD 4870 would be the sensible choice.

 

[Joel~]

The 790FX supports CF, not SLI, so the HD 4870 would be the sensible choice.

Seeing as the chances of me using either are slim-to-none anyway, it wouldn't matter too much anyway. But I was starting to think along the same lines. Besides, the HD 4870 is £30-40 cheaper than the G2xx series cards and, according to the reviews, outperforms the 260, which is about as high as I would spend.

Thanks for all the help so far, I intend to keep throwing questions out until I'm satisfied, though

So far, I've decided to go for the Phenom 9950 and I'm 95% sure about upgrading from the 9600GT to the HD 4870. So, now, on to what is likely to be my last question for now...

Is it worth getting a 10,000RPM drive for the operating system and the programs that take a while to load up on my current system (Crysis, MS Office etc.) and just using my 500GB 7200 for storing data and things I use less often? Or is the speed difference not noticable enough?

 

[MooseMan1]

I don't have one, but I know someone who does, and he says he notices the difference. Load times in games are quicker as well as boot time, specifically game load times, though.

 

[Joel~]

Hmm. Well, it's £100 for a 150GB drive which, most likely, would hold all of my games, programs and the operating system, so I wouldn't need to go much higher than that, if any higher at all.

So, that's something to consider, although I may leave that until later on - it's not the most important thing and, seeing as I will probably not be actually building the computer until the end of August/start of September at the earliest, it gives me another payday to prepare for it. I already have the case, motherboard and PSU (now that I've decided on the Phenom) so it's just memory, processor and graphics card to go, for the moment, though I could potentially leave the card until next month and get by on my 9600GT for now.

 

[worshipme]

Is it worth getting a 10,000RPM drive for the operating system and the programs that take a while to load up on my current system (Crysis, MS Office etc.) and just using my 500GB 7200 for storing data and things I use less often? Or is the speed difference not noticable enough?

I honestly do not think Raptors are worth it unless you've got money to burn.
And 7200RPM drives are pretty fast these days. The Samsung Spinpoint F1s are almost as fast as the Raptors, yet they're a lot cheaper and you can get 750GB for the same price as a 150GB Raptor.
I have one of the older Spinpoints, and Mass Effect, which is known for it's long loading screens, never takes more than a few seconds each time.

 

[Joel~]

Okay then, that's £100 that I don't need to spend, bringing my total expenditure on new parts to around £400, which I am quite happy with.

Thank you all for being helpful and guiding me in the right direction.