Help with new system

[Mosg2]

I have an 1800 dollar budget for a new machine. I'm looking for someone to help me min/max the system :)

I was leaning towards an I920 with dual GTX285 but I still haven't heard anything definitive about 5x WoW, Windows 7, and dual video cards. Someone care to chime in? I have a 32GB SSD but it's plugged into my current machine and I'd like to get a new one. Other than that, I'm flexible as long as I get the most efficient system possible.

[alcattle]

1800 will buy all you need. Do you play other games? anything else you want to do on this system?

[Mosg2]

Just 5 boxing. I play nothing else at all.

[Ualaa]

i7 920.
12gb of ddr3, faster ram.
I would go with a single card, over 2 cards or an X2 card, for wow.
An ATI 5870 is the top single card on the market now, but a 285 is a strong card if you prefer Nvidia.
And strongly consider a SSD; a generation 2 intel would be quite nice with the OS on it too.


If you are at all looking at the 940, you can overclock the 920 as a better option.

[alcattle]

i7 920.
12gb of ddr3, faster ram.
I would go with a single card, over 2 cards or an X2 card, for wow.
An ATI 5870 is the top single card on the market now, but a 285 is a strong card if you prefer Nvidia.
And strongly consider a SSD; a generation 2 intel would be quite nice with the OS on it too.


If you are at all looking at the 940, you can overclock the 920 as a better option.
I want it ;) so close to my new computer spec. Might have to start slow with 6 gigs and a lesser card, but I will price things out. I am in the same boat as all I do is WoW, I have other systems if needed for webz and e-mail.

[offive]

I run 5 instances easily on an old AMD Phenom 1 (4 core) with 8 gig of DDR2. 280GTX for main screen and an older 8800GTX for secondary screen. I don't bother with affintity and both screens are 24" with native resolution of 1900x1200. Slaves run at 15fps when not active. I recently upgraded to an Intel SSD drive and Win7 64bit.

Your i7 920 should be fine given enough ram. If possible I would save your moola for the i9s next year. I know I always hate investing a large sum only to find out 6 months later that the new and imrpoved model is that much faster! Of course when the i9s hit they will uber expensive, but should future proof you for quite some time.

[Sajuuk]

i7 920.
12gb of ddr3, faster ram.
I would go with a single card, over 2 cards or an X2 card, for wow.
An ATI 5870 is the top single card on the market now, but a 285 is a strong card if you prefer Nvidia.
And strongly consider a SSD; a generation 2 intel would be quite nice with the OS on it too.


If you are at all looking at the 940, you can overclock the 920 as a better option.
Actually it's the top single-gpu card right now, the 5970 came out. :)

As far as going single vs dual/x2 cards don't forget you can use innerspace to split the load of all your alts for some smoooooth playing. (assuming other parts in your system are good.)

[Sam DeathWalker]

This is the top single gpu card:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ati-firepro-studiogpu-cad,8352.html

But it would cost yur whole budget.




http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-firepro-v8700,2154-10.html

[Sajuuk]

Workstation card vs mainstream card. The card being compared is a generation old.

For our needs the 5870 is the better card. And your card vs 5870 is debatable.


AMD tech specs pages:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5870/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5870-specifications.aspx
http://www.amd.com/us/products/workstation/graphics/ati-firepro-3d/v8750/Pages/v8750-specs.aspx





Engine clock speed: 850 MHz
Processing power (single precision): 2.72 TeraFLOPS
Processing power (double precision): 544 GigaFLOPS
Polygon throughput: 850M polygons/sec
Data fetch rate (32-bit): 272 billion fetches/sec
Texel fill rate (bilinear filtered): 68 Gigatexels/sec
Pixel fill rate: 27.2 Gigapixels/sec
Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 108.8 Gigasamples/sec
Memory clock speed: 1.2 GHz
Memory data rate: 4.8 Gbps
Memory bandwidth: 153.6 GB/sec
Maximum board power: 188 Watts
Idle board power: 27 Watts

[thinus]

I believe this is the new top end: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5970-18nov2009.aspx

[Fizzler]

The i9 will be better for sure but I gave up on waiting for the latest and greatest. There is always something better 6 months down the line.

[Sam DeathWalker]

The 5970 is a dual gpu so 5870 is the best single in the mainstream area.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5970,2474-2.html



Radeon HD 5970
Radeon HD 5870
Radeon HD 5850
Total Transistors
4.3 billion
2.15 billion
2.15 billion
Shader Processors
2 x 1,600
1,600
1,440
Engine Clock Rate
725 MHz
850 MHz
725 MHz
Memory Clock Rate
1,000 MHz
1,200 MHz
1,000 MHz
Memory Bandwidth
2 x 128 GB/s
153.6 GB/s
128 GB/s
Texture Units
2 x 80
80
72
Texture Fillrate
116 GTexel/s
68 GTexel/s
52.2 GTexel/s
ROPs
2 x 32
32
32
Pixel Fillrate
46.4 GPixel/s
27.2 GPixel/s
23.2 GPixel/s
Compute Performance
4.64 TFLOPs
2.72 TFLOPs
2.09 TFLOPs
Maximum Board Power
294W
188W
170W
Idle Board Power
42W
27W
27W

Even though hardware seems similar the Firepro can outdo the 5870 by as much as 650 percent on some tests:

http://fireuser.com/blog/firepro_v8750_vs_radeon_hd_5870_benchmarks/


But no doubt for the price its best for us to stick to gaming boards.


Here are some workstation cards doing gaming:

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Nvidia-Quadro-CX-Workstation-Graphics-Card/?page=10


Also keep in mind these are the cards used by the people who create the game worlds we play in .....



But ya the best single gpu is the 285 or 4890 (5870 is better then 4890 but not shown) it would seem:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-cards-charts-2009-high-quality/Sum-of-FPS-Benchmarks-1920x1200,1538.html

[Sajuuk]

Also take into account the firepro has more mature drivers that are optimized/targeted for specific 3d applications vs the newer 5800 series drivers.

I will admit those are interesting comparisons.

[thinus]

Also take into account the firepro has more mature drivers that are optimized/targeted for specific 3d applications vs the newer 5800 series drivers.

Yes, this is the biggest problem with the 5800s.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ya well Im moving up to 6 1G 9800 cards from my current 6 1/2G 9600 cards soon (as I have 6 computers ...) so I guess all this dosnt much matter to me. You cant go wrong with the 285 or the 5870 for sure.

For $130 (each) the 1G 9800's will do me well and they have no fans which is what I really like.

In the past ATI had a very bad rep with drivers which is why I am using the nvida product (on amd motherboards). Maybe times have changed .....

[Sajuuk]

Ya well Im moving up to 6 1G 9800 cards from my current 6 1/2G 9600 cards soon (as I have 6 computers ...) so I guess all this dosnt much matter to me. You cant go wrong with the 285 or the 5870 for sure.

For $130 (each) the 1G 9800's will do me well and they have no fans which is what I really like.

In the past ATI had a very bad rep with drivers which is why I am using the nvida product (on amd motherboards). Maybe times have changed .....

Yeah, for you with six computers in one room I can imagine passive cooling is a big plus..


...I really should get a fan controller and turn down my case fans.