Want to upgrade my computer, need opinions

my current setup is 4-5 years old

gigabyte GA-P35-Ds3L motherboard
intel Core 2 Quad
4gb ddr2

thats all I am looking to upgrade since thats the oldest of everything I have and what I am looking at is this stuff:

intel i7 2600

ASRock motherboard

G-skill memory

anyone have experience with asrock motherboards, are they any good?

looking for another setup that will last another 4-5 years, I dont overclock, I dont do too much gaming but I would use it for programming. $500 is my limit to what I want to spend

You could get a quad core AMD cpu for 50 percent of what that i7 costs.

the only AMD one I would consider would be the AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core

anything else has terrible benchmark scores compared to the i7

That 8core amd is a lot slower then the intel lol

yes I looked at the benchmarks wrong, so thats out too. does not seem any AMD can really compare to the i7 2600 at $300

Go the high end i5 or that i7

I have a quad core phenom amd because at the time it was a good value the i7 is now a better value

The FX eight cores are useless compared to the Sandy Bridges.

If I was you, I would save and go with a Core i5-2500k. Newegg price is $230 for it. This is what Toms had to say on the matter

CPUs priced over $220 offer rapidly diminishing returns when it comes to game performance. As such, we have a hard time recommending anything more expensive than the Core i5-2500K, especially since this multiplier-unlocked processor can be tuned to great effect if more performance is desired. Even at stock clocks, it meets or beats the $1000 Core i7-990X Extreme Edition when it comes to gaming.

Our tests demonstrate fairly little difference between a $225 LGA 1155 Core i5-2500K and a $1000 LGA 2011 Core i7-3960X, even when three-way graphics card configurations are involved. It turns out that memory bandwidth and PCIe throughput don’t hold back the performance of existing Sandy Bridge machines.

I know they mention gaming performance in that, but if you look at the charts http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833-16.html you’ll see that in terms of productivity the difference is very very slim and the $70 difference doesn’t justify it. Put that to good use in something else.

i7 waste of money for what you do.

I wish I would have went intel; I really wanted to dual boot with osx and it’s basically impossible with amd.

( I still have a 7.7 windows rating for processing and RAM, 7.9 for graphics and HD)

You’ve got the basics pretty much on point. Motherboard seems very vesatile.

What are your plans for I/O? ie. hard drives

I have a 120GB SSD for windows and a regular 300GB for everything else

Yea the Core i5 2500 or the i7 2600 are the best for the money right now I was looking at building another computer since my stupid quad core setup I have now only takes DDR2 and the give away DDR3 lol

I just added 8GB to my iMac for $40. Thing FLIES now.

---------- Post added at 10:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:29 AM ----------

nice :tup:

always go intel the sandy bridge i7 is faster than an 8 core amd… I usually stick with asus board … just did a build a couple months ago and love it. i7-2600k, 16 gb ddr3 ram, 1000w psu, water cooled cpu, asus bored , two 6950 clocked to 6970’s, 3 single tb hdd’s.

The and fx is a great chip, intel is a waste of money because kno one actually does anything impressive like crunch SETI or massive amounts of high end programs, for the price of a fx chip compared to a quad intel chip your better off getting the octcore fx amd, stats don’t mean shit to me because none of you use the chips to the fullest ability. If you wanna blow your money on intel go ahead your just wasting your money when you can get better for cheaper. I just made a octcore fx amd system for my friend with 16gb ram and it’s over kill for anyone unless you are gaming, rendering video, encoding video etc, I’ve seen comparable amd and intel systems load programs and the intel did it slower then amd, fuck my friend bought a $1,000 core 2 quad extreme before and it was good until the new chips poped out a few months later. It’s a never ending battle with technology because it changes everyday, basicly if your on a budget and want a good system go with amd if you want big dick baller status that loves to blow money then go intel…

Speak for yourself lol

I run a shit ton of vms and am loading up the next pc with video cards for password cracking

I check my email on my quad core i5 machine

Wow I really love brain dead AMD lover/Intel hater logic. Grammar check and spell check please, and there are these things called paragraphs.

Tunerfreak, How quickly do you need this system. If your shit is still working, wait until April for Ivy Bridge.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/ivy_bridge_benchmarks_specifications_and_q2_2012_release_date_leak

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel-to-Release-22nm-Ivy-Bridge-CPUs-on-April-8-Say-Taiwan-PC-Makers-243276.shtml

I wanted to get one with that saves more power. 35 watt is there best it looks like. I hope they made like a Atom + i type CPU in one chip so you can do the power way down then up to 35 watts when you need it. But for just Text and web stuff you don’t need to use all that power.

-Raymond Day

First comment on Maximum PC…who the fuck cares about power? If you’re getting a high end chip, it’s not going to be “green”. The Atom processors suck dick (not literally that’d be awesome).

I play Battlefield three, do graphic design and some other stuff, so I don’t want a shitty CPU.

get i5 2500k if you are going to OC, i5 2500 if you aren’t. save the extra money and put it elsewhere.

IMO, figure out how to get an SSD in there, won’t own another computer without one.