Best build for September 2009?

[Gunthr]

I have an Asus p4b533-e, Pentium 4 machine, and I need to upgrade. 

I see that about 10 months ago Skuzzy went with a P5 board and core 2 cpu - which was a very sweet spot then.

Where are we ten months later?

I'm thinking it would be wise to go with an i7 920 cpu and a x58 board like the Asus p6 deluxe v2.

Am I on the right track?  Or would I be better off going with the core2?

[sethipus]

The Core i7 would give you better performance, which means your machine will be "powerful enough" for a longer period of time into the future.

[Mace2004]

Consider that even though the i7 prices have come down a bit the best 775 stuff has fallen further.  When shopping my build it was about $150-$250 more for the i7 and the only game I play is AH so I went with the C2Duo.  Will the i7 be more future proof?  Sure, but your wallet lives for today.  If AH is your primary concern I don't think an i7 provides any advantage at all but then you may play lots of other games that can really benefit from the i7.  The biggest driver for me was to avoid the proprietary trap of manufacturers like Dell who make it very difficult to upgrade without buying a whole new computer so went with my own build (plus it's fun to do).  If I need an i7 in a couple of years to deal with HiTech's latest update it'll be a breeze to slap in a new board and i7 into my Tempest case.

[guncrasher]

I upgraded to the e8400. Which is great for ah and a lo cheaper than the i7. Will upgrade in a year or two once the i7, i5, i3.  Get all the bugs worked out, as well as windows 7.

Semp

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The cheap i7 920 has gotten way up in price when i5 came out.

The i5 is a neutered version of i7 but it has great performance according to tests. Better bang for buck in gaming than i7.

[TilDeath]

Locally here the E8400 is 22 dollars less then the i7 920.  If you should decide to go i7 way over a dual or quad 775 socket, stay away from the ASUS entry level boards.  The P6T (nothing after it meaning the vanilla model is the only good entry board from ASUS) or the Rampage II Extreme boards (I use this one), or the EVGA x58 SLI not the x58 SLI LE.  For the 40 dollars more for the x58 SLI over the ASUS P6T giving you a lifetime warranty upon registration is well worth the extra investment.  Gigabyte makes good x58 boards but again not until your into the higher 200's, making the EVGA x58 SLI a better buy because of the warranty.

Be warned thought DDR3 triple channel memory prices have been slowly climbing over the past 5 weeks.  6GB kits that were 130 five weeks ago are not close to the 160 to 170 range again.

TD

[Fulmar]

What are you constituting a better board?  More options?  Better reliability?  More overclocking potential?  Better stock performances?

[TilDeath]

What are you constituting a better board?  More options?  Better reliability?  More overclocking potential?  Better stock performances?

The amount of BIOS upgrades, Memory compatibility being able to actually run the memory at its rated speed (over 1333 ie 1600, 1800, 1866. 2000), ease of fine tuning (not overclocking) and all around reliable board out of the box.

The P6T has the best memory compatibility and ability to OC memory (over 2300Mhz) but limited to 3 year warranty, the x58 SLI from EVGA OCs the CPU best with a good FSB and memory (1950 to 2100Mhz and still be stable).  Any board you get if the memory is over 1333 your overclocking.  Also the EVGA boards when you give it a voltage it is much closer to what you set it at then any of the ASUS boards.  Something wrong there with the way the BIOS read the voltage and the actual voltage.  I have a Rampage II Extreme, it has connections for checking all voltages with an outside the box meter.  The voltage that is set in the BIOS is 99% of the time .2 or more then then the actual voltage when you use a meter.  Not good on an x58 chipset when the memory wants to run at 1.65 volts and you set it at 1.65 but when you meter it its at 1.8 or more could poof your mem real fast.  This has been a problem with ASUS boards for a few years, but has yet to be addressed.

[def1]

My 8 year old system wouldn't let me play AH at a reasonable frame rate so I went with getting a computer from Digital Storm.  I set up my own configuration, but they sell a number of fast pre-configured computers with a wide price range.  I got a i7 920 that is OC'ed to 3.5 on air cooling...DS does the oc'ing for you and warrants it for 3 years!!  They thoroughly benchtest their overclocks to make sure they are completely stable.  I also got 2 GTX275's in sli.  (BTW, DS uses only eVGA video cards and perfer to use eVGA motherboards...mine is the X58 SLI)  I only got the system 2 weeks ago, but it has been flawless.  (I don't work or have any thing to do with DS except as being one happy customer.)

I been playing a number of games on it and my FPS has been pretty darn good.  I had some trouble setting up my new flight gear so I didn't get on AH until the other day.  I ran it at texture size of 1024 and highest settings on everything else.  I used the Hi Res texture set from HiTech.  My monitor is a 26in LCD running at 1920x1200.  During playing my fps stayed constant at 59 no matter where I was or how much action was going on.  The only exception to that was once for 2-3 sec it went down to 57fps... not sure what the extra load was, but only happened that one time.  I have to say the game looks and plays beautifully compared to my old system.