Thuban vs Nehalem vs Sandy

[DeBunnee]

Ah yes the age old debate, but lets do this again. System will be used mainly for gaming. Want to build a silly "little" multi gpu setup. Oh and I'm not to bothered about upgrade paths, games are much more GPU dependent, and all these CPUs should do well enough when gaming. The setups laid out below are in the same price bracket, some new some used, but its whats available to me. Please vote and comment as to why you voted.

Option1:
- PhenomII 1055T on MSi 890FXA-GD70

Option2:
- i7 950 on Big Bang-XPower

Option3:
-i3 2120 on Asrock Extreme3 Gen3

As a "side note" Option3 is not my favorite as it limits me to 2 GPUs and I want 4.

 

[Oj0]

1. Gonna fall over and die on a quad GPU setup
2. Dead platform, limited upgrade path
3. It's OK I guess, kinda on the very underpowered side CPU-wise but you can upgrade the CPU in future

Right. Four mid-range GPUs would be a terrible idea next to two high-end GPUs, so you're probably not cheaping out on the cards. Four GPUs is expensive and hot with poor scaling. Rather lose a GPU, giving you what, R5- R6,000 to play with? Use that money to change the CPU to a Core i7-2600K and the Prophecy.co.za - Asus Maximus iV Extreme-Z LGA1155 DDR3 SLI/CrossFireX (Sandybridge).

Four high end cards are going to be an utter and complete waste on any of the combos you mentioned unfortunately. Oh, you'll also be able to save by getting a slightly smaller PSU with three cards

 

[DeBunnee]

Of course I'm going to cheap out on the system, I'm a budget gaming enthusiast (Read, financially challenged gamer ) Thus I want to try this. Since I already have one and they go for say R850 (Conservative), then tis just R2550 for the other 3 and I can buy them when funds become available...

 

[Snormossel]

What cards are you going to quad sli ?

Did see you mentioning the cards...

 

[DeBunnee]

As per the link thats hidden in there somewhere, 5770's hehe

 

[jasong]

I have precisely option nr 1 - 1055t with MSi 890FXA-GD70. I think between that and the 950 you might find that the 950 is faster overall but not by a great deal. I'd never go for the Sandy option because it's such a low end CPU by comparison and OC'ing is out. The 1055t oc's to 4ghz easily but power consumption goes way up - I find 3.8ghz to be the sweet spot before I need to start cranking up volts. The MSI board is very nice though - quad Xfire with gigabit lan onboard. But that XPower looks really nice.

 

[yourang]

go for the xpower board, nice and big!

yes the platform is dead, but a i7 4ghz-4.2ghz will play any game you throw at it, and wont cost to much

 

[Sarinaide]

Tough choices, having formally owned a i7 960 it is a good platform, though on efficiency numbers, per core performance and price the i3 Sandybridge is a to me the better option, putting the rest away for two GTX580's or 79XX cards (Awaiting Kepler)