I'm always amazed how the average simmer knows nothing about hardware, but believes that knows everything...

This nonsense topic - with the amazing initial question and all discussion - is the final proof that I need.

People waste a lot of money for nothing in performance, as usual.

You know this sort of attitude really gets to me. It all depends on what you consider a waste and your financial circumstances.

To me it's not a waste of money because I want my games to run as smooth as possible, it's my past time, my hobby, my escape from work.

I work hard for my money and I like having the best and most up to date hardware, so I upgrade every 12 months or so. My last upgrade was in Jan 2010 and guess what, I'll be doing it again in March for CoD.

Instead of bitching about what other people do with THEIR money, why don't you contribute to the original question ... or better yet get a job.

I think it's best if we drop this. And foul language won't solve anything, it only makes things worse. We want a forum that stands out from the rest. We're here to learn and unbased remarks about someone's financial status, level of knowledge and other personal preferences or topics which are beyond the scope of this flight sim and our computers are not well suited here.

Personally, I like AMD, just because it's the underdog with the ability to surprise at times. The most power is delivered by Intel but since we don't yet know how CoD will run on multiple cores and how efficient the engine will be on the different architectures there's still a lot of guessing involved.

You are an educated person. People who can't even use Google to know the basis of the two major brands of personal computers CPU and ask abou Oleg's personal preferences between AMD or Intel, no comments about...

The same to people that likes to say that spend all your money to maximize the "gaming experience". This kind of people is really strange, because they usually know NOTHING about hardware and even bought the best hardware to maximize their experience. Peoplo who knows about hardware don't buy the most expensive rig, but the right rig.

And the question about AMD X Intel is really stupid, without any context. Simple as that, people can use all foul words they want, but will still stupid.

LoBiSoMeM, out of curiosity what do you have in your rig, or plan to have?

And this is the flaw in your statement. You ASSUME people know nothing. I'm not going to get into slanging match over this but to me you've clearly got a closed mind set about why people ask such questions.

Getting back on topic. The question can be answered simply, what is your budget and do want to do with your rig?

For my last upgrade I wanted a crossfire rig. At the time socket 1156 just came out but socket 1366 was the "fastest" on paper. I built my rig on the 1156 socket rather than 1366 even though I could afford a 1366. Why?

a) Because at the time there were no games (and I believe still no games today) that can max out 2x 8xPCI express SLI/Crossfire setup.
b) With a little over clocking I could get the rig to perform close to a 1366 with a 970X chip. That's getting the i7 860 $300(AUS) chip to perform close to the i7970X $1200(AUS) chip.
c) price - Overall the 1156 based system was about 1/3 cheaper than a comparable 1366 system, hence the money I saved allowed me to get crossfire.

The "right" system is a myth, the "right" system for me may not be the "right" system for you. As I said, it all depends on what you want to do.

If my goal was bragging rights on overclockers.com or extreamesystems.org then yeah I'd go for a 1366 system with 980X chip / Quad SLI and bucket load Liquid Nitrogen for cooling, but I'd be up for a $7k+ system, great for getting the CPU to 5GHz but not very practical for everyday gaming.

Edit: Right now the Intel Core i7 2600K / Sandy Bridge is the new king. At $400(AUS), it even beats the 980X in pure memory bandwidth and processing power which is dam sexy.

The "right system" will be upgraded more often for less $, while the top end machine lasts a bit longer.

In fact you just change the investment point on the timescale, not more, not less.

Well maybe you could save ~15-20%, by upgrading more often, the question is: Is it worth it?

(I am one of the second group btw)

All this right system is a right laugh:) I remember when i first got il2 10 years ago and i started to upgrade my computer. intel to amd another 2 AMDs back to intel and so forth every year or 18 months i upgraded. I never bought the latest of fastest just good value components. Dont get me started on Graphics cards because i have changed them every 12 months at least over the last 10 years. Get the best Vlaue system you can afford and hope it runs il2 COD at a decent speed. then look to the future because i see more upgrades on the way.

a quick reminder of the chips i ran il2 with from memory.

intel pentium III 667mhz (speed demon)
Amd 1500 (I think this was the speed)
Amd 1700 (this overclocked well)
Amd 2500 (another good chip for overclocking but ran hot)
intel core 2 pentium 2200 (overclocked well and ran cool)
intel core 2 pentium 2500 (i think this was my last intel chip cant remember)
AMD Athlon 2 x4 645 runs at 3.3ghz (mycurrent system which tied with 4 gig of ram and a AMD 6850 i hope to get decent fps out of the upcoming il2 COD)

I am pretty sure that i have missed a couple of chips out of the list due to my advancing age but it does give you an idea of the path you will be taking when this new sim comes out! an expensive path :grin:

Whilst the I7-2600K is the fastest kid on the block (especially when overclocked up to 5 or 6 Ghz) most gaming sites are recommending the i5-2500k for gaming because the hyper-threading you gain by paying extra for the 2600 series is rarely used by games.

Their was a recent recall of early Sandy Bridge motherboards (due to occasional issues if you had more than 2 SATA devices) . In theory none of these early faulty boards should still be out in the wild but its best to double check when purchasing.


EDIT:

By the way there are only two current Sandy bridge chipsets. These are:

H67 – Enables the ability to use the onboard GPU on the CPU. Does not allow overclocking (even with a K processor). For low end/mid range systems.
P67 – Disables onboard GPU, you require a graphics card to use it. Allows overclocking with a K series processor. Suited to gaming.