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Guest Redvan

i7 vs q9550 build

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Guest Redvan

I have 2 builds put together, an i7 build and a Q9550 build. I'll start with the i7 build. All prices USD from newegg.i7:i7 920 2.66GHz $295ASUS P6T Delux $340CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 $200PC P&C 750W PSU $140 3x2gig GeIL DDR3 $2092x500GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200 rpm 3.0gb/s $119Logitech G15 keyboard $90Logitech G9 mouse $90Samsung 22" 2ms Widescreen $270LG 22x DVD+-R $25Canon Pixma MX700 $130Tuniq Tower 120 $55TOTAL: $2250 ishQ9550:Q9550 2.83GHz $280ASUS Rampage Formula $2882x2gig Mushkin DDR2 $83TOTAL: $2070 ishsame PSU, Case, Hard Drives, Keyboard, Mouse, Printer, CPU cooler, LCD, and DVD drive, as i7 buildGPU Options:BFG Tech GTX280 $325orXFX GTX 285 $350Trying to decide on the GPU... biggest concern is brand quality.... the GTX285 clocks quite a bit better for $25 more, but like I said, not sure which brand is better to deal with.Either GPU can go on either build (ha! Imagine that! Crazy, I know, right?), that's why I left it out for the end. Above build prices include price of 1 GPU.Leaning towards XP Pro right now... but Vista isn't 100% written off as failure to me... just 99.9999%...

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Go with the i7 with the BFG card - look at it this way, would you eat and enjoy a few years old burger, or one made just a few minutes ago? (Probably neither if you're a vegitarian, but you get the picture). You say you're leaning towards XP Pro for the OS - I'm assuming you mean XP 64-bit? Normal XP Pro 32bit won't be able to take advantage of 6gb of RAM you've specified for the i7, or the full 4Gb you've specified for the 'other' Intel chip.Don't write off Vista64 either, it's a pretty good OS once you get past all the UAC and Admin rights stuff.

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Guest Redvan
Go with the i7 with the BFG card - look at it this way, would you eat and enjoy a few years old burger, or one made just a few minutes ago? (Probably neither if you're a vegitarian, but you get the picture). You say you're leaning towards XP Pro for the OS - I'm assuming you mean XP 64-bit? Normal XP Pro 32bit won't be able to take advantage of 6gb of RAM you've specified for the i7, or the full 4Gb you've specified for the 'other' Intel chip.Don't write off Vista64 either, it's a pretty good OS once you get past all the UAC and Admin rights stuff.
how are 64bit OS's now? relatively no driver issues?yeah, if i do end up with XP Pro, i'd just get 2x2gig probablywhy do you like the BFG over the XFX? Better brand overall?

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Guest Alphahawk3
I have 2 builds put together, an i7 build and a Q9550 build. I'll start with the i7 build. All prices USD from newegg.i7:i7 920 2.66GHz $295ASUS P6T Delux $340CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 $200PC P&C 750W PSU $140 3x2gig GeIL DDR3 $2092x500GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200 rpm 3.0gb/s $119Logitech G15 keyboard $90Logitech G9 mouse $90Samsung 22" 2ms Widescreen $270LG 22x DVD+-R $25Canon Pixma MX700 $130Tuniq Tower 120 $55TOTAL: $2250 ishQ9550:Q9550 2.83GHz $280ASUS Rampage Formula $2882x2gig Mushkin DDR2 $83TOTAL: $2070 ishsame PSU, Case, Hard Drives, Keyboard, Mouse, Printer, CPU cooler, LCD, and DVD drive, as i7 buildGPU Options:BFG Tech GTX280 $325orXFX GTX 285 $350Trying to decide on the GPU... biggest concern is brand quality.... the GTX285 clocks quite a bit better for $25 more, but like I said, not sure which brand is better to deal with.Either GPU can go on either build (ha! Imagine that! Crazy, I know, right?), that's why I left it out for the end. Above build prices include price of 1 GPU.Leaning towards XP Pro right now... but Vista isn't 100% written off as failure to me... just 99.9999%...
I agree with the hamburger analogy....LOL. I went the i7 920 way as I could not upgrade anything and I wanted to be ready to upgrade when the new i7's come out ...maybe in a few months....or as I read somewhere that they are going to come out with dual CPU boards for the i7. I don't know but I will be ready if they don't change the socket. I notice you have a CPU cooler listed there but don't say which one. I don't know a lot about coolers but you will read and see a lot of people talking about taking that CPU to 4Ghz on air. I think in truth that is going to be hard to do. That thing gets hot. I have mine stable at 3.5Ghz but that is as high as I can go. It does make some difference though. The problem with it is that the multiplier is locked and I have DDR3 1600 memory and I can't really take advantage of that as if I had bought the 940...but I am still very satisfied. I also have the M/B you are looking at. I like it except some of them have problems with the on-board sound....you can look at the Asus forum and Google about that but it is not something that would keep me from buying the board again....and I guess I would go with a 64 bit OS as when I tried WIN 7 FSX ran much better than running it on 32 bit XP. Good luck with your build. Regards

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how are 64bit OS's now? relatively no driver issues?yeah, if i do end up with XP Pro, i'd just get 2x2gig probablywhy do you like the BFG over the XFX? Better brand overall?
64bit OS' are pretty good on the driver front now - but obviously check that everything you use with your PC and can't live without has an x64 driver. I actually used a Vista x64 driver on XP x64 for my Printer, so there seems to be some cross OS 64bit drivers you can use too. I really would go 64bit to get the most out of your new hardware.I've heard good things about BFG, and if I remember correctly they have great warranties on their hardware.

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On the 64-bit driver side, I'd also offer that Vista64 has much better penetration than XP64, so you can expect better driver support on the Vista64 side. With a system like yours, Vista is a good choice. It's rock stable, performs well, and despite all the Internet conjecture to the contrary, it doesn't impact gaming performance at all... (doubly so when looking at your system's specs) To echo and reinforce the comment in a previous post above, if you do not use a 64-bit OS, don't waste your money on a full 6 GB or RAM. A 32-Bit OS simply will not use it. My vote is for V64. :)

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Guest Redvan
I would update my other thread with this new info, but i keep getting an IPS Drive Error... ##### ever that is... :shrug: oh well...here's what I have set to build as soon as i get my student loan in:quoted from my post at xtremesystems.org
i7:i7 920 2.66GHz $295EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1 $300BFG Tech GTX285 $365CoolerMaster HAF $150Corsair 750W PSU $130 3x2gig OCZ DDR3 1333 $1402x500GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200 rpm 3.0gb/s $119Logitech G15 keyboard $90Logitech G9 mouse $90Samsung 22" 2ms Widescreen $270LG 22x DVD+-R $25Canon Pixma MX700 $130Tuniq Tower 120 $55$2224 USD including Vista BusinessThoughts? This'll be my first time building... so I want to make sure it's all gonna be compatible.Will the Tuniq Tower, being a LGA775 cooler, work on an i7? Will it fit with the side fan on the HAF case?750W PSU enough? I dont plan on SLI in the near future.I'm planning on getting Win7 when it releases... so I'm not sure what i'm doin in terms of OS right now... probably just get a copy of Vista Business from school for $90, unless i find it cheaper somewhere else. But I doubt i'll find it cheaper. Would Vista Ultimate for $100 be worth the extra $10?All prices are newegg... will be looking around before buying... just utilizing their wishlist for now ;)Primary reason for build is to run Flight Sim X. Which it should do quite fine :D May do some small OC'ing, as I'm new to that, I probably wont want to do too much...
gonna keep it here... started another thread because i was getting some error...if i get Vista 32bit, does that see 6gig?

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gonna keep it here... started another thread because i was getting some error...if i get Vista 32bit, does that see 6gig?
It will 'see' 6Gb, but won't be able to use it. In fact it will probably report only seeing 4Gb of memory, with around 2Gb of that available to programs. You can use the /INCREASEUSERVA setting in Vista to make around 3Gb available to programs, but then you're starving the kernel, or the 'core' of Windows of its full 2Gb which can cause issues. (Using laymans terms here, others can explain it better I'm sure).Seriously, you're better off with 64bit from the outset, less hassle all round.The physical memory limits for each Vista edition are listed here.

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Guest D17S

Go with Vista 64 for sure. The most FS will use under any circumstances is 4G. Generally, hi sliders will run physical ram to 2.5G-ish. That extra 2Gs (4 > 6) really isn't necessary. Also keep in mind, an i7@2.6/DDR3/nforce285/Raptor/et al rig will provide FS performance that will be somewhat - Less - than this core2Q rig at 3.6Ghz. https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedW...aspx?ID=7159746 A builder needs to be careful to gage expectations of this new platform's actual FS capabilities.

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