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$1000 build
Blargus333
Member Posts: 7
First time building my own pc, hoping someone can help me come up with a build. Only restriction is the video card must be nVidia. I do some modding on older openGL games which have problems with most of the radeon drivers. I do need a copy of windows 7 home, but I don't need a monitor or any peripherals. I would like to avoid fancy cooling systems, since this is my first time setting up a pc. I have a nice $85 pair of headphones (sennheiser hd555), so hopefully I can afford to put a decent soundcard into the build. Any help is appreciated 
Edit: I would prefer whats cheap now over rebates, not interested in overclocking, live in CA USA, 500gb hardrive is more than enough, 250gb will work fine. Also the room in which I use the computer is HOT during the summer: 100-110*F.
Comments
A few questions:
1) Do you do rebates? More to the point, if part A is cheaper than part B after rebate, but part B is cheaper before rebate, which would you prefer?
2) Do you overclock?
3) Are you in the United States?
4) How much storage space do you need?
-----
You should be warned that Nvidia has pretty much lost this generation. They do have cards on the market, of course, and you can buy them, but they're usually not that good of a deal.
AMD's video drivers are about as good as Nvidia's drivers for modern games. I'm not sure if that extends back to older games, though, so you might be right that you need an Nvidia card.
1. Don't see hgow the rebate thing is even an issue, most rebates I dealt with take upwards of 4 months to get back. It's best to buy the best parts for said build and not worry about rebate cost savings, also free shipping deals are always great to look at.
2. I doubt he OC's, Quote: "I would like to avoid fancy cooling systems, since this is my first time setting up a pc."
3. Good question
4. I doubt hes looking for a ton based on what he said, maybe 250-500GB max would be enough for him.
You admit that nvidia isn't that great but are against similar performing AMD (ati) brand cards which cost $60 less and are 1-3 fps off the nvidia card which has a higher clock and memory clock then the ati version, makes me wonder.
OP you really should stay with nvidia for open GL it's a lot better then ATI, but for 3D gaming rendering your going to want to go with ATI. I would build you out a PC but let the guy above me do it cause he's the expert and it saves the time to having him examine every component.
2 years ago this is what $1000 dollars got me
4 gb of ram
ATI Radeon 5700
1TB harddrive
2.8ghz
and Windows Vista
(a few months before W7 came out)
Nowadays, i can get
8 gb of ram
AMD Radeon 6870
3TB harddrive
3.4 ghz
Windows 7
Max performance on a low budget,
Yeah pretty awesome how prices went down.
1.) I would rather get what's cheaper now and avoid rebates if possible.
2.) Overclocking is something I would like to avoid.
3.) I live in CA, USA (duh, knew I was forgetting something)
4.) I don't need much storage space, 500gb is more than enough, 250gb is fine.
5.) One more thing I forgot to add, this pc will be used in a room that gets HOT during the summer. Not uncommon for the room to be 100-110*F.
The video card situation is tough. I know I'll be taking a hit by going with nVidia, but their drivers are far more reliable for the openGL programs I use and the performance is also much better. I spend more time playing/modding old openGL games than I do playing modern 3D games so I'm going to go with nVidia on this one.
Thanks for the responses
All prices including shipping and ignoring rebates:
Processor/heatsink combo deal: $225
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.640921
The stock heatsink with Sandy Bridge processors is terrible, so I'd get a better one even if you're not overclocking. An extra $15 doesn't get you a great heatsink, but it's massively better than the stock heatsink.
Motherboard: $155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131705
Case: $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129073
Memory: $40
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277
If 1600 MHz memory isn't any more expensive than 1333 MHz anymore, then why not? The Sandy Bridge memory controller doesn't offcially support anything above 1333 MHz, but two modules at 1600 MHz won't be significantly harder on it than four at 1333 MHz.
Operating system: $100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116986
Windows 7 Home Premium with service pack 1. Or with a combo deal with the memory, you can make it Windows 7 Professional for only $5 more.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.653372
Normally I'd say don't bother paying extra for Professional, but for only $5 more? Well, maybe you still shouldn't, but I thought I'd mention it.
Optical drive: $20
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136238
Hard drive: $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319
A Western Digital Caviar Black is significantly faster than most hard drives. The 640 GB version is actually the cheapest today, and cheaper than either of the 500 GB versions, for some odd reason.
Power supply: $65
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371044
Be warned that this does not come with a power cord. The idea is that if you've got a power cord laying around from a previous computer, you can re-use it. Antec tries to tell you that this is to save the environment, but the real reason is that they want to save money. If you don't have such a power cord laying around and need a new one, then get this instead for $11 more:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207013
Video card: $240
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565
Comes with an excellent cooling system, so your video card won't overheat even if you do.
And finally, the obligatory warning of, make sure you really want an Nvidia card. For the same price, you could get a Radeon HD 6950 with better performance, less power consumption, and a better feature set.
Total: $980
Make sure you purchase your items from Amazon since you live in CA. This is to avoid paying an extra 5%-10% in sales tax since technically Amazon does not have a "brick and mortar" store in our state. Do it sooner rather than later because the Communists that run our state (CA) are trying to change this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128473
better motherboard than the piece of junk above
Ah, New Egg does ship some things from California, don't they? Well, I'm not willing to dig through the Amazon site to find good deals for you, as their search function basically doesn't work.
No, it's not. That's got an inferior chipset, fewer expansion slots, no USB 3.0 support, fewer memory slots, less power delivery hardware, fewer heatsinks for cooling, and is probably inferior in a number of other ways that I wouldn't catch from a cursory visual inspection.
I agree the above board is terrible for the price range. Hes not OC'ing so he doesn't need a hotrod of a midrange board.
Since he needs help I will give some opinions to this build. Not being a OC'er he doesn't need high end parts which we can save him money by buying the best parts for an entry build with a great stock speed core i5 ot i7 and a great gpu but not overkill.
OP what size monitor you using and resolution please? And do you play lots of high end games or willing to? If you can get back to me on that I will put a build together, if your not going to be pushing for best gaming but standard open GL use and moderate gaming then you wont need a $1000 build at all, go with a $600 to 700 build and save some cash.
I guess it's a question of whether he'll only use it for some old OpenGL games, or whether he wants a modern gaming machine that can also do modding with old OpenGL games. If it's the former, then sure, save some money and get something cheaper. But I assumed it was the latter.
Qty.
Product Description
Savings
Total Price
1
LG CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS70 OEM - OEM
Item #: N82E16827136238
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
Free Shipping
$19.99
1
Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1x Top 140mm ...
Item #: N82E16811147153
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
Free Shipping
Awesome case, it should keep your components cool in the summer time as well. Good amount fans pushing pulling air.
-$5.00 Instant
$59.99
$54.99
1
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136770
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$2.99 shipping
500GB was way more then you needed, so how about 320? Saves money and still a fast hdd.
$39.99
1
GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Item #: N82E16814125333
Return Policy: VGA Standard Return Policy
Free Shipping
This is the only card worth getting for what you need, offers great future useability and also has a rebate of $30 which can be good pocket change later on when that rebate arrives.
Plus it has dual fans and should remain at safe operating temps when your room gets to over 100 in the summer time.
$185.99
1
SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold ((SS-650KM Active PFC F3)) 650W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V V2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD ...
Item #: N82E16817151088
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$11.30 shipping
Modular design and GOLD rated 80Plus certified which means power savings, also I chose it because your room will get really hot and PSU tend to be the only component that can fail faster with excess heat. This one has a great fan and temperture controlled system and great warranty and Active PFC.
I went modular for you because it will give you less cludder inside your case and will improve airflow and cooling inside when your room is so hot in the summer time.
-$40.00 Instant
$179.99
$139.99
1
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL
Item #: N82E16820231311
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy
Free Shipping
$84.99
1
GIGABYTE GA-H67M-D2-B3 LGA 1155 Intel H67 SATA 6Gb/s Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813128473
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
Free Shipping
Went with this board because your not overclocking, it is a stable out of the box great working motherboard. Paired with the i3 you can't go wrong with what your looking to do. No wasted money on extra features your never going to use or exploit to your advantage.
This has no usb 3.0 but that is okay as usb 3.0 is still ways off from being mainstream use.
$99.99
1
Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I32100
Item #: N82E16819115078
Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy
Free Shipping
I went with the dual core i3 instead of an i5 because your not doing anything where your going need 4 cores, based on your description of what your looking for. Dual core is plenty for what your doing. I just don't see quad core being worth the extra cost.
$124.99
Subtotal:
$750.92
"500GB was way more then you needed, so how about 320? Saves money and still a fast hdd."
Your post doesn't say what hard drive it is. From the picture, I'm guessing a Western Digital Caviar Blue. And no, that's not fast. Caviar Blue is Western Digital's low cost line, and doesn't even keep pace with modern hard drives from Seagate or Samsung. All hard drives are slow, but a WD Caviar Blue is slower than most desktop hard drives, and you don't want to run real programs off of that.
-----
"This is the only card worth getting for what you need, offers great future useability and also has a rebate of $30 which can be good pocket change later on when that rebate arrives."
Hold on a minute. Are you assuming that he's going to play modern games or not? Above, you seemed to be assuming that he wouldn't, and should get a lower end system that wouldn't fare so well in modern games to save money. But if not, then why not just save some money and get a lower end card, such as this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121397
Now, the answer to that should be obvious: because it won't run newer games well, which you're assuming doesn't matter. But even if you do want a GeForce GTX 460 1 GB, then why not a cheaper one?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500202
-----
"This one has a great fan and temperture controlled system and great warranty and Active PFC."
Now you're really confusing me. In the other thread, you said to go ahead and go low end on power delivery on the motherboard. I figured you just weren't that into reliability. (Actually, if you're pushing Sandy Bridge to 4.8 GHz, you're not that into reliability, no matter what parts you use.) But now you're saying to go super high end on the power supply? Over $150 on a power supply on a $1000 budget? So it only matters how well the power gets from the power supply to the motherboard, but not what happens after it reaches the motherboard? You do realize that, like the power supply, the motherboard also has to convert voltages, don't you? But I digress.
And warranty and active PFC as selling points? Saying a power supply has active PFC these days is kind of like saying an x86 processor is 64-bit. While it's possible to find ones that aren't, everything remotely near the class of product that you should be looking at has active PFC. And while a longer warranty is nice, the real problem with a power supply failing isn't that you have to replace the power supply. It's that the power supply might not be the only thing you have to replace.
If you're trying to sell the Seasonic X-650 as a great power supply, then how about talking about voltage regulation, ripple, and energy efficiency? That is, how about talking about the things that matter? Power factor correction is something for electric utilities to worry about, not end users.
Don't get me wrong. The power supply you've picked out is really nice. But I don't think it makes sense to spend that much for a power supply on a $1000 budget. If you do want to spend that kind of money on a system that will never pull 300 W from it, you might as well go all the way and get something better.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121080
Now, I'm not saying you should actually get that one, either, for the same reason as the Seasonic X-650: it's too expensive.
------
The processor/motherboard combination you've picked makes no sense at all unless you're really sensitive to power consumption. If you want to save money, then an Intel Core i3 is the wrong platform to be looking at. You could get a Phenom II X4 and a much better motherboard for cheaper.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.644858
USB 3.0 isn't the only difference. It's all SATA 3, more expansion slots, more memory slots, better power delivery, more USB ports, and a number of other things.
A Core i3 2100 is typically a little better than a Phenom II X4 955 in single threaded performance. But not by a huge margin, and four cores will crush two in programs that scale well to four cores. That is where games are headed, after all.
Better motherboard, better processor, lower price tag. What's not to like? Well, the power consumption, I guess.
-----
You're missing an operating system.
Owned.. lol
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
Please explain.
Thanks for the responses, I appreciate the effort. I like Quiz's build, it looks like what I'm going for. I mostly work with openGL right now but in the future (a year or two from now, possibly sooner) that may not be the case. It's highly likely I'll switch over to more modern 3d games before I upgrade or buy a new system. Sorry about my lack of clarity, I've had a bit of trouble deciding exactly where I want this build's strongpoints to be.
That said I've changed my mind on the video card. I'll go with the radeon and I'll just be careful about upgrading drivers until I know they work with openGL. Even if radeon is inefficient in openGL with a card that powerful I don't think performance is going to be a problem, at least not with the programs I'll be working with. Then when I switch over to DX11 I won't be kicking myself in the ass for having an nVidia card.
Which HD 6950 should I go for?
Edit: Monitor is 22", 1920x1080
"I picked that card because a.) his room gets to 100-110 in the summer time, that card runs really cool and b.) was a better cost/performance for that range of card."
I'll bet you that the MSI Twin Frozr II card that I linked earlier will run cooler than the one that you linked.
"I already know what your thinking, if it can't play at 60 FPS or higher it's not going play them very well and if it's not at 1920x1080 or higher resolution forget about it. Have you ever even thought a large portion of gamers still game at 1440x900 and lower."
I play games at a resolution of 1280x1024. So no, you're not very good at detecting what I'm thinking.
But I'm also thinking that future games tend to be more demanding than past games, and a faster card today is likely to still be faster in a couple of years.
"What? Where did I say go low end on power delivery for a motherboard, man don't be putting words in my mouth."
In the $800 Build thread, you were saying to get a Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3 to overclock a processor to 4.8 GHz. You argued that having a motherboard a little higher up the product lineup, in order to get something designed to handle that sort of overclock, was a waste.
"this is one the only handful I know of that can operate well enough in a hot environment and still work."
Hard OCP and Hardware Secrets do their power supply testing at higher temperatures than that, and many do just fine. Some do not, of course. For example, the XFX Core 550 W that I linked is basically a rebranded Seasonic S12II. Here's how the latter did in a room with a temperature of 113-122 F.
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Seasonic-S12II-Bronze-520-W-Power-Supply-Review/954/7
"BTW the PSU is $139 not $150 which you said, it's also a steal with $40 off the original price."
Follow your own link and read it. $139.99 base price plus $11.30 shipping comes to $151.29. That looks like over $150 to me. Now, when the Seasonic X-650 was briefly $96 after a promo code, then it really was a steal. But at $151.29, not so much.
"Active PFC is found on PSU in the $70+ range starting but not all have it, most use a passive PFC."
Active PFC is one of the requirements in order for a power supply to get 80 PLUS certification, which many hundreds of power supplies have. Indeed, this is my speculation, but active PFC may have been what motivated electric utilities to create the 80 PLUS program in the first place, as they really, really hate passive PFC power supplies. The power supplies that I linked have active PFC.
"This was the best PSU in line for a 650watt which had what I wanted to put in his build for the known factors involved, here are the others cheapest started at $109 which was garbage and so on."
Why insists on 80 PLUS Gold certification? Bronze is a lot cheaper, and the price tag difference is a lot larger than you're going to make up by a 5% difference in energy efficiency.
For what it's worth, the Kingwin Lazer Gold, which is the $110 power supply that you refer to, isn't quite as good as the Seasonic X-series, but it's not that big of a gap. It's hardly garbage, and while Super Flower's gold platform isn't as good as their Platinum platform or Seasonic's gold, it's still the next best power supply platform on the market at under 1000 W.
"As heat increases regulation becomes degraded due to capacitor heat build up, and a 100-110 degree sauna of a room factored into this will make things tough on a passive PFC on a modular design, the cheapest active pfc modular is $109 for a 550watt PSU."
What is with your endless droning on about active PFC? Essentially all of the power supplies of decent quality are active PFC. Here you go: active PFC for $30:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817815007
It's probably also junk. Now, modular is more expensive, but still, active PFC and modular for a lot cheaper than $110, especially since you seem to ignore shipping costs.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256065
"Ripple is only really a concern with overclocked systems as you want the cleanest power as possible. This PSU has low ripple does that matter in this case no, so why bring it up."
Excessively high ripple will damage hardware. And yes, that does matter, I think.
"Well the thing is this PSU was in a price to performance range that got my attention when it had $40 instant off"
If New Egg claimed a base price of $300 and the same price as now after discount, would that make it an even better deal yet? The price that matters is the price that you pay if you buy it today, not the all time highest price that you would have ever paid.
Or here's a Radeon HD 2900 XT at something like half price as compared to what it originally cost:
http://www.amazon.com/ATI-Radeon-2900-PCIE-Graphics/dp/B000Q6J17G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305387698&sr=8-1
That doesn't make it a great value. It's not even competitive with a Radeon HD 5670 that you can easily find for well under $100.
"quad core is still not really used efficiently enough because apps and games rarely are built around more then utilizing 2 cores."
Programs usually aren't designed around saying, we're going to use exactly two cores. Either it's single threaded, or else they try to thread it to scale to as many cores as they can. Often the reason why games don't show improvements beyond two cores is that they're no longer processor-bound at the given settings. Sometimes it's because the game programmers just couldn't thread the code very well.
But which way do you believe that we're headed in the future? Will programmers become worse at threading code, and make it scale to fewer cores? Or do you think they'll get better at it, and more and more programs will scale well to four cores? If even Bobcat, Isaiah, and ARM are moving to quad cores, and Atom likely is, too, though that hasn't been announced, then I'm betting on the latter.
If you pick up a game in the future that really needs four cores to perform well, then a Phenom II X4 will be ready for it. A Core i3 won't. Games that don't need four cores won't assume that the cores you have get Sandy Bridge's IPC, or else they'll be pretty much unplayable on most dual core systems and nearly all laptops. Bulldozer should be competitive with Sandy Bridge in IPC, but there probably aren't Bulldozer dual core systems coming. I'm not sure how much longer Intel will keep making dual core processors of their top end architectures, either; at 22 nm, it doesn't take much die space to put four cores into Ivy Bridge. Well, I guess there will always be a market for things like the Xeon X5698, but that's a small niche product.
"Better CPU? You just said above the i3 is typically better, which is it?"
A Core i3 2100 wins in single threaded programs, while a Phenom II X4 955 wins in programs that scale well to four cores. Your own link basically shows that.
-----
"That said I've changed my mind on the video card. I'll go with the radeon and I'll just be careful about upgrading drivers until I know they work with openGL."
This Radeon HD 6950 is the same price as the GeForce GTX 560 Ti that I linked on the previous page:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150523
It will probably be fine for you, but it's not nearly as good of a cooler as the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Unfortunately, the 6950s with premium coolers cost quite a bit more than that, as AMD's board partners decided to go with 2 GB of video memory on their high end 6950s rather than 1 GB.
A couple other nice cards that will be somewhat slower but have premium coolers are these:
Radeon HD 6850:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127576
Radeon HD 5850:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127500
The 6850's cooler wouldn't be able to handle some higher end cards, but it can handle a card with a 126 W TDP quite well. The Radeon HD 6850 should perform comparably to the GeForce GTX 460 1 GBs that we linked above.
If you want an excellent cooling system in order to handle your high room temperatures, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti that I linked earlier would be a pretty good choice on that budget even without a preference for Nvidia. The problems with Nvidia cards this generation is that they tend to be too expensive and use too much power for a given level of performance. But the former is only a problem when you can't happen to find a good deal.
I'm not sure how modern drivers compare in OpenGL performance. I know that Linux games and professional graphics cards mostly use OpenGL performance, and while Nvidia has a reputation for better drivers in both of those, AMD has been closing the gap. AMD would tell you that they're just as good now, while Nvidia would tell you that it's still a huge gap. I don't think there are any OpenGL games that push modern high end video cards very hard, though.
If you want higher image quality on older games, you might appreciate AMD's SSAA and MLAA to allow anti-aliasing even in games that don't support anti-aliasing. SSAA brings a pretty big performance hit, but for an older game, that probably won't matter. MLAA looks nice in some games and terrible in others, but you can turn it off if you don't like it.
-----
Another option that I'll mention is to save some money on the video card, and get something like the Radeon HD 6850 that I linked above, and use the remainder of the budget for a solid state drive like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148441
With the promo code, that's $115, and gives you 60 GB of usable capacity. Basically, if you tell your computer to do something and have to sit and wait for it, then unless you're waiting on a large download from the Internet, it's likely that you're waiting on a slow hard drive. If you were running the program off of a solid state drive, then you wouldn't have to sit there and wait nearly as long. It usually won't improve your frame rates in games, but it does make a computer feel a lot faster and more responsive. Here's my usual link to explain why everyone should want an SSD:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-special-sauce-sf1200-reviewed/6
See the Western Digital VelociRaptor down at the bottom of those charts? That's generally regarded as the fastest consumer hard drive on the market. And it gets completely destroyed by the solid state drives. And yes, longer bars are better. The Crucial M4 that I linked above is newer than those graphs, but roughly equivalent to the older Cruicial RealSSD C300.
You probably need more than 60 GB of capacity, but that doesn't mean you need a huge SSD. The basic idea is that you install the operating system and whatever programs you use the most on the SSD, and then they'll be fast. You put everything else on a hard drive, and they won't be as fast as they would be if run from the SSD, but that's less important because you don't use the other programs as much. If you're like me and tend to play one main game at a time, then you can have that game installed on the SSD, and when you switch to another game, you can move the old one to the hard drive and install the new game on the SSD.
On your budget, you could get an SSD or not. But I thought I should bring it up. Whether to get an SSD depends on whether you're annoyed that your computer feels generally sluggish (in which case, an SSD will fix that), or the problem is that you're not getting high enough frame rates in games (in which case, an SSD usually won't help). Presumably there's something about your current computer that you're not happy with, or else you wouldn't be looking to replace it.
Explained..!!
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
About the whole core thing, this might be an interesting read:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31520674&postcount=28
Might I suggest you shave a bit off your build budget and use it to purchase an airconditioner?
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Thanks for that link, as I hadn't seen it before.
We've long known that Civilization V has been a weird outlier in video card performance. Increasing the resolution would often not decrease the frame rate at all, which is the hallmark of a processor bottleneck. Yet it seemed weird that the processor bottleneck would constrict AMD cards so much more sharply than Nvidia cards, even if a processor bottleneck at 80 frames per second wasn't really a problem on AMD cards, either. That explains why, I guess.
On the other hand, I'm somewhat skeptical that that's the only reason for Civilization V being such an outlier. When even the highest end video cards from both AMD and Nvidia routinely turn in minimum frame rates of 0 or 1, something is amiss.
It also strikes me as peculiar that neither AMD nor Nvidia would bother to implement a major DirectX 11 feature in their drivers until a year and a half after DirectX 11 was out. Even before DirectX 11 launched, Intel marketing's take on it seemed to be that multi-threaded rendering was the single most important feature of it. That's understandable, given that Intel is mainly a processor company (well, you could argue that Intel is mainly a chip fab company, but they're certainly not mainly a graphics company like Nvidia, or to a lesser degree, AMD), but it wouldn't make sense for both AMD and Nvidia to ignore it.
Civilization IV had a rather severe case of being badly coded, so I figured Civilization V had the same problem. When a Radeon X1300 Pro video card doesn't meaningfully limit performance, but a Core i7 860 does on a game released in 2005, you're doing something wrong.
Civ5, when played in DX11 mode, relies heavily on tesselation, which favors nVidia cards. Another reason which helps to explain the difference. The threading thing was new to me too, but doesn't surprise me, and I'm glad that multithreaded rendering is starting to get some published attention from big developers.
If tessellation is the limiting factor, then a Radeon HD 6870 should completely destroy a Radeon HD 5870. The 6870 has better than double the tessellation performance of the 5870. Yet a 6870 performed somewhere between a 5850 and a 5870, just like in virtually every other game.
Yes, the higher end Nvidia cards do win big when tessellation is taken to ridiculous extremes. But that isn't indicative of performance in real games--even in games that do use tessellation extensively.