New Rig for SOW:BofB What should i get

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

3-4 graphics cards? Come on

I mean, it's your money but isn't that a bit extreme? Going to all that trouble just to run one title at full detail a few months earlier? All you gain is seeing some features a few months earlier, that's all.

I never do SLI/crossfire for this very simple reason...today's double GPU solutions cost more and perform less than the single GPU of 6 months in the future.

I agree with what the other people are saying...the way PCs evolve today, you could buy a $2500 rig and it could be surpassed before you even have the chance to stress it to the maximum. If it doesn't get the chance to get used and stressed to its limits, it's wasted money plain and simple. What would i do in your position? Get the best foundation for a good PC by buying a good case, PSU and CPU, ie the things that don't get rendered obsolete every 6 months. Then, use mid-range components for the things that might need more frequent upgrades.

That's actually exactly how i'm set up right now...i have two 1.5 TB disks, an Asus P6T Deluxe, 3GB of RAM and a 700W power supply. I run a stock i7 920 with an Ati 4890 1Gb. All in all, i've spent about 1500 Euros on this rig over a few months (high quality IPS monitor included in the price). I could have gone for dual 4890x2 or 12GB of RAM but i didn't.
I wait for the 6xxx series cards to hit the market and nVidia to regain some lost ground that will force Ati to further drop the prices. Then i'm going to buy a 5970 or something like that for a mere $200 and have the same performance as someone who built a rig the same time as i did, but decided to spend $500 on dual 4890x2 right off the bat. In a similar fashion, when i7 prices drop due to the release of sandy bridge CPUs, i can exchange my 920 for a high end six-core at half the price it costs now.

Yes. Why would I pay a premium price "now" for hardware to play a game that is not yet released? I could wait until it is released and pay less for the same hardware. Or I could spend the same amount of money in the future that I would spend now and get BETTER hardware.

I won't be upgrading the day the game comes out. I'll wait until other people report back on how their rigs, their new hardware, runs the game.

Most of the time when I upgrade, I end up saving a lot of money by just buying the things that will get me the most increase in performance right now. I have been burned in the past by buying video cards and CPU's that the game I was intending to play could not take advantage of. Oh, eventually something else comes out that justifies the excess hardware, but by that time the hardware in my system could have been bought for 60% of what I paid.

Think about it, the hardware companies WANT you to buy the bleeding edge components to play the latest software, that's why they often work with the development companies. Development companies walk the line between providing a product that can be used by the bulk of gamers right now (medium and low settings) and the gamers that must have the latest and greatest hardware (bleeding edge expensive hardware). There is a push/pull there between hardware companies and developers that I just don't want to be involved in with my wallet.

It's gonna suck if you spend $400 extra for a CPU with maximum cores right now when the games won't use those extra cores for a year or two. Been in a similar situation myself and it didn't feel good.

I mean, unless you have money to burn and in that case, who am I to tell you what to do with your money?

Splitter

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by szala11

Dude! If you want to run BOB flawlessly you should get at least the 6 core i7980X. Anything weaker will struggle with BOB.It is just a few more bucks! It is said there will be lots of planes flying at the same time in SOW. and more important : drop in another gtx480 if you plan to fly near buildings. But i'd wait for the gtx580. 2 of them.

We really have no way of knowing this at this time. Although SOW will be multi-threaded it is fully possible that 4 cores will be sufficient to do the job. Anything more may be of no benefit - it may even be that clock speed for the individual cores may be more of a factor. We don't know!

Also, I'd be surprised if any current games even use more than 3 cores.

Ditto on the graphics....this is the area where I'd be most cautious. I think there are subtle indications (speculation yes..) that nVidia may be the way to go with SOW.

But Szala, your strategy of going for the absolute best (most expensive) on every level could well not be the best one - in that the extra expenditure over a more modest i7 say could be wasted. We really do need to learn a little more about how the game will respond to more cores versus clock speed, and just how CPU V GPU dependent it will be.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Apparently Intel has high hopes for Sandy Bridge!

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/san...-i7,11464.html

Unless you need to upgrade now, I'ld put off the upgrade.

Cheers!

[Triggaaar]

Another vote for:
Wait

Unless you have to build now, wait until we know more. We don't yet know if BoB needs 6 cores to run at max (it might) - you may for example be better with a 4 core i7 or and AMD cpu, then spending more on the GC - with the amount you're spending, I'd think of going better than the 480, either 580 or 6xxx series, but again you need to wait to see what BoB wants.

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Apparently Intel has high hopes for Sandy Bridge!

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/san...-i7,11464.html

Unless you need to upgrade now, I'ld put off the upgrade.

Cheers!

"Sandy Bridge represents the largest increase in computing performance in our history"

wow .. you do not normally see Intel saying things like that