Need advice about upgrading computer

[sanjoa]

Hi, guys! I'm going to do a major upgrade to my computer. So I need your advice. I'm going to buy a GA-870-UD3P Gigabyte motherboard, an AMD PHENOM II 975 QUAD CORE Black Edition, a WD Caviar Black SATAIII 1TB HDD, an 8 GB RAM memory module (or two of 4GB) DDR3-1600, and HDMI capable video-card and a 21-22 inches HDMI capable display. So what brand and model of RAM memory module , what brand and model of video card and display do you recommend me? I've got a 600 watt power supply, should I upgrade it to a more powerful power supply too? (I do some work at Photoshop, some video edition, audio edition, and when I'm bored, I do play action games :P)

[toyo]

Don't buy now. Keep the money, save some more, wait for Bulldozer AMD CPU to come out and possibly for the next GPU gen. Have faith in this: "Good things come to those who wait" - never rush for hardware.

If you REALLY, REALLY need to upgrade... or if you have enough money to throw around and don't really care about this investment... then we'll continue this :)

[sanjoa]

I don't have enough money yet to buy all this stuff. I'll buy all them separately every month. I've readen that Bulldozer is being released in August, but in Argentina until September it won't be available.

[toyo]

That's only two months. You already said you need to save more. Trust me on this one, do not buy them month by month. Be patient, I mean, REALLY patient. Buy only when you have ALL the money. Why? It's simple: because by then the first things you would be buying now will be already almost obsolete. Never, ever buy computer pieces like that.

If you crave the stuff, just stop thinking about it and concentrate on saving money. This is your goal - save money :)

[LeetPirate]

Spend the same money on intel hardware and cut the power usage in half. Plus that AMD Phenom II architecture is old and inefficient, not to mention Phenom II L3 cache is practically useless because it most often misses and does not cache anything useful. Clock for clock my i3 (dual core with hyper threading) is way faster than my friend's Phenom II quad core. LOL. My friend and I play this online game together and he is always raged about how my game loads so much faster than his despite the fact that he is using a Phenom II quad core with all the power saving features disabled and I am using my dual core intel i3 with every power saving feature enabled.

If you decide to buy the Phenom II quad core then I suggest you buy an Athlon II quad core instead because the Phenom II just wastes more power and the L3 cache makes it perform worse than Athlon II in most instances.

[Nima]

Very Good.

1. For Motherboard I highly suggest you to buy an ASUS one, ASUS is the very best brand out there; but about the chipset, it's better to wait/buy a 9xx series and because ASUS has not produced any default 990 FX chipset yet, you may consider 970 chipset, they are similar to them; (990FX chipset are came in 2 models, SABERTOOTH and Crosshair; both of them are special and very high performance series and the bad part of story, Expensive; for that I recommend you to buy a 970 chipset that came in 3 Default models, choose what you prefer)

2. For VGA I see no waiting time, you can go buy one AMD best graphics out there, 69xx series if you can buy or 68xx series, about the brand again I suggest you Sapphire in my opinion it's No. 1 in AMD chipsets.

3. For CPU, agree with toyo, wait and go for Bulldozer series, these are new and different series and will be much more poweful than past ones.

4. For H.D.D you have already chosen the best! I highly agree on WD Black Series, but why SATA III? your main (ASUS or GB) support SATA 6 Gbps and I suggest you to go for SATA6 series of Caviar Black, they have also 64 MB cache.

5. For RAM I can give you Corsair and then Crucial, they are gratest in my opinion again, Corsair come in 3 series, XMS (Normal series), Dominator (High Performance), Dominator GT (Highest Performance), difference in GT and normal Dominator is only that GT series have much more frequency without increasing latency, it's good but expensive, but I suggest you Dominator series because of your mainboard.

6. For Monitor, I can tell you about new Samsung LED series, you can go and see some of them.

7. For Power, it's highly depends on your VGA, if you choose Dual-core VGA you need to upgrade, if you for example select 68xx AMD series, it's enough I think, it depens on many other thing (CD/DVD ROM/Writer, Number of H.D.D.s, etc.)

Useful Links:

ASUS 990FX Motherboard Series

ASUS 970 Motherboard Series

Sapphire HD 6900 Series

Sapphire HD 6800 Series

AMD Bulldozer Series

Western Digital Caviar Black Series

Corsair Dominator Series

Corsair Dominator GT Series

Samsung LED Series

[SyafaTahvBroentoeng]

if you want to save more money, wait for about 3-4 month after buldozer launch

and you will get 2/3 from the origin price

[sanjoa]

Thank you all for the advices. @Nima your advices are the best one.

[phantom04]

i prefer intel series core i + motherboard chipset z68

[toyo]

AMD 28 nm Southern Islands GPUs will be soon out on market (this year, most probably this autumn). Keep your shorts on and don't buy anything yet :)

[avmad]

Didn't you just build a pc not long ago Jose? :o

[sanjoa]

Three years ago, avmad :P

[mara-]

There is no better advice then LeetPirate's. Just go for Intel, ADM is way behind.

Cheers ;)

[LeetPirate]

Bulldozer got bulldozed before it even hit the market. :lol:

Just go give a realistic idea, AMD K10 architecture on the Phenom 2 and Athlon 2 can only compete against the Intel Core 2 duo and Core 2 quad series. Intel destroyed AMD K10 in processing and power efficiency with their release of the 1st generation Core i-series. Then Intel released the second generation Core i-series based on the Sandy Bridge architecture that bulldozed AMD's Bulldozer before it even made it to retail channels. Once again AMD will face several delays in getting their Bulldozer to retail channels so don't count on them sticking to their deadlines, Bulldozer will probably hit mainstream by the end of this year and by that time Intel will start producing Ivy Bridge that comes with their new tri-gate transistor technology and a 22nm die shrink.

I'm no fanboy or anything, I just make reasonable deductions based on history, facts, and statistics. The current standing is that if you spend the same money on an Intel system you will end up with better performance and energy savings for your buck. And if you buy a currently marketed Sandy Bridge Intel cpu you would have already defeated Bulldozer so no need to wait.

I'm waiting to see what the new Radeon 7000 series has to offer.

[toyo]

Until I see the real-world benchies for Bulldozer, I won't be sure that it can't perform like a Sandy Bridge. I mean, I already have lived through a period of utter complete Intel dominance, just to see the first Athlon coming into existence and smashing everything. Not to mention it quickly positioned itself at the 999$ much hated price point :P

And just when AMD seemed to consolidate at the top and Intel was totally lost counting their GHz with their ineffective PIV architectures (clocked at almost 4 GHz - and that was back in 2005-ish), Core 2 came and put Intel back on top.

So I'd not be very surprised to see Bulldozer taking the top-spot at least until Ivy.

Important PS: By the way, my suggestions in this thread could be interpreted that people should wait for Southern Islands/Bulldozer and buy these. I only suggest waiting for their releases, with the sole purpose of being able to check the benchmarks and having a wider (and cheaper) market to chose from :)

[Nima]

@toyo: Your suggestion about 7xxx series is acceptable and logical, but you don't even think about the prices, maybe he can not spend that too much money.

At least I myself can't buy the very new computer pieces, my suggestion was based on normal people's income; there are not too many rich people like you who can buy latest ;)

Thanks

[toyo]

That's why I wrote the "PS" in my previous post: I don't suggest buying a AMD 7000 series GPU; just wait for their arrival, so the 5000/6000 series and corresponding Nvidia GPUs become cheaper ;)

[avmad]

Three years ago, avmad :P

That's what I said. No need for a new one for another 4 years yet :D

[sanjoa]

What power supply should I buy? Someone with 800 watt or more power?

[DKT27]

What power supply should I buy? Someone with 800 watt or more power?

Try adding them here and here.