My fucktard friend who I am totally jealous of right now got the following for about $400. He is a lead tech at retail chain up here in Canada and was able to buy straight from the manufacturers at sick prices as a payoff to push there products.

Intel i7 960 3.2GHz Processor (4 Cores, 8 threads)
12 GB Triple Channel RAM
ASUS Sabretooth X58 Motherboard with onboard USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 GB/s support
ASUS ATI HD5770 1 GB Video card
All in the NZXT M59 Gaming MidTower

Reynolds the 5770 isn't that expensive, I would think that altogether that should still be under $500 off newegg...

Not only that Gman, but anyone who wants to do anything involving music making, or rendering - or doing multiple things at one time would benefit from multiple cores. I don't know any programs that can utilize a full 2.8ghz processor to the maximum, so really the benefit of having more than that is limited. Where you would see huge speed increases is when you're doing multiple things at once, music, movie, game, internet. The 5ghz dual core would shit itself, whereas the multicore 2.8ghz would perform fine under the duress.

In other words, Fraggle, whoever told you that is wrong.

I just ordered a few more items so I don't have to tear apart my existing rig -- I'll keep it as a spare.

2x 2TB HDDs (to put in a RAID1 for downloaded stuff)
DL DVD-RW Drive
730W Modular Power Supply
24" Samsung LCD

What the hell are you talking about Hooker? He got everything on that list for $400 and all that stuff on newegg comes out to $1184.95 before shipping and taxes. The cpu alone was almost $600 on newegg.

Solid. Kinda jealous of that lcd :< frownpants that my preferred got denied... I'd like to not use my 32" tv as a monitor.

Edit in response to reynolds:

The 12gb of ram is useless, and if the processor is seriously $600 alone, then that's the only thing pushing it over $400... my entire system is going to run me $1.3k and that's building one from ground up. (And my video card is better.)

You'd be surprised how much memory some newer games use, man. 12GB isn't useless, but it may be a tad overkill. Still a slick deal for $400. Don't hate, HOMOSEXUAL.

I was just saying. I assumed the processor would be like mine and be around $200, cause it's only 4 cores.

What games are we talking about here? I didn't even know systems could really utilize more than 8.

Well, for starters... Empire: Total War's installation is about 15GB (not that it'll ALL load into memory, but still). It comes on like 3 DVDs. That + your OS running + steam + any other programs = pushing 8GB, maybe more.

Is that Samsung an LED-backlit display? Or if it's a regular LCD is it 120 hz?

As far as utilizing cores go, games may not be there yet, but if you do any kind of 3d modeling/animation, it is fun to see your render times get reduced proportionally.

Looks pretty good. Once I save up enough I want to try a 120 hz monitor. I've heard that it's great for fast paced games.

Once I get my credit card paid off I'm going to build a new system. Since my buddy bought Intel for himself he is seeing if he could get a deal through AMD for a cpu for me. I want to get one of the new 6 cores.

I doubt it would run even close to all 15gb at the same time. Wouldn't it have to be instanced?

Heheh..

Okay. Ill tell you how I know this....

I run FlightSim, which has "multicore" support.
LOL. Its held back by the OS.
You put a 3k Quad up against a 2 core 5k and the 2 core will out perform the quad.

Same with rendering..... To a point.
If Im not rendering with full scene lighting and caustics, the 2 core 5k will beat the 3k quad every time.
As soon as I turn on caustics though, the 4th core gets slamed.

You gotta remeber that Windows is still being written on the NT4 core componenets. Thats a single core OS with "Support" for multi cores.
Right now, the only multi core devices on your computer that are running true multi core functionality are your GPUs. The bottle neck is Windows.
Infact, an OS is already out there written by a pair of fellows that used to work for MS. But its not windows compatible.

True dat,

I never had an issue with Empires (though I bet I would have a smoother performance if I packed more (it's more dire especially during the main map when you have like 15 factions making out moves and what not)

I had a memory issue when playing ArmAII, sure though I guess some if it has to do that it's not a major studio work, but I still had to modify some settings here and there so that in some instances I wouldn't have the game auto-shut because of lack of memory (both physical and page).

I am sorry to point this out, but you are utterly wrong :) Let me explain why.

The operating system is not the bottleneck. Multithreading and multiprocessing support is completely there on OS level in Windows. What it means is whether all cores of a processor, or whether more than 1 processor gets used is entirely upto how a software is programmed.

As someone who whose final project for Advanced Operating Systems involved creating multithreaded and multiprocessor programs, I can tell you this with certainty :)

Some software (most games) are simply not optimized for multicore processors, and how high the clock speed is (along with how much cpu cache you have) decides the performance in cases like that.

Some software have full multicore support. If you run any of the major 3d modeling/animation package, once you get to the rendering stage, only the CPU matters. The GPU does nothing. It has been time tested to show how as the number of cores in a CPU increases, the render time is proportionately reduced. Essentially it means a 4 core CPU renders an image/animation approximately 4 times faster than a 1 core CPU, and 2 times faster than a 2 core CPU. All of this is done in Windows.

Here is the bottom line - parallel processing is entirely dependent on parallel programming. The OS fully supports it, whether you are talkinga bout Windows XP/Vista, OS X or Any of the *nix variants. It is entirely dependent on the programmer to utilize all the cores.

Poorly programmed programs/programs that are not optimized for utilizing multiple programs, that rely more on CPU than GPU will perform poorly compared to a processor with a higher clock speed. It's not the fault of the OS :)

If a GPU can utilize multiple cores, it's because the Operating System permits it to. To make the low level system calls for parallel programming, the OS needs to provide the supporting libraries. That is why *nix and Windows based OS's have entirely different ways to do it. If the OS does not have the support, not a single program (no matter if it's GPU instructions or not) will have any kind of multi core operation. The OS is letting the instructions use the resources :)

n00bfest has gone RIG CRAZY!!!! All these new and sexy computers being built makes me wanna Jizz

I was gonna get a Samsung 55" 3D LED TV + glasses + 3D Blu-ray player frm Amazon for $2100, but they only gave me a $900 credit for some reason :(

I'm assuming Cpt. Reynolds' friend got the processor from Intel's channel bundle. Cheap as hell. They do it every year.