Nividia or ATI, Intel or AMD

[TonyD]

Originally Posted by ICDP

335th_GRAthos posts a very good system. The only caveat is his lack of experience of current AMD cards. ...

I have another – while there is nothing wrong with the performance of LGA1366 i7’s, it is difficult to recommend them with SandyBridge available, the 2500k being the pick of the bunch. I recently built a Core i7 2600k system and was impressed with the performance, but the large additional cost for the HT capability is not worth it IMO (unless you need it, of course).

I am about to build my son a new system (he cannot wait to see how BullDozer might shape) and based on current prices would recommend the following. The total cost here in SA is around $1000 (based on 7 ZAR=1 USD), where you are pricing and availability may differ, and you would be hard-pressed to improve on performance without increasing costs significantly.

Mainboard: MSI Z68A-GD65 (4 SATA-3, 4 SATA-2, 6 USB3, Sli/X-fire)
Cpu: Intel Core i5 2500k 3.30 GHz with large Intel vertical cooler
Memory: name-brand DDR3 1333MHz, 2 x 4GB
Graphics: MSI Radeon HD6970 2GB ($200 cheaper than a GTX580 1.5GB)
OS: Windows 7 64-bit (cost not included)

If you are not interested in the cpu’s integrated graphics capabilities, a P67 mainboard will be a bit cheaper, the equivalent to the above is the P67A-GD65.

Good luck