[IamLakota]

Well finialy after a few years of hard work and much determination I have the cash and have ordered new parts for a new system,i7 cpu,new Intel X58 mobo,new ddr3 mem, the only questions I have are should I wait on new vid cards,(continue using my sli'ed G92 8800 512's) or get something better??
Also should I get 4 gigs of mem or 8 gigs??? pardon me I'm just to Happy about now.

[Chaos]

I would go with 8GB of ram and upgrade your video to either GT260 216 or 4870 1GB

[CDsDontBurn]

congrats on the new build!

who's x58 board did you get?

i say you get the 8GB of RAM though. it'll be better for you in the long run

[Judas]

i would go with 6gb ram.. considering it's not so great with 8gb or 4gb seeing as the x58 and i7 is triple channel..... (3x1gb/3x2gb/3x4gb)

[billionairebum]

WOW MAN here in SA it costs more than a car to get that system right now. But yeah 6 gigs of ram and 260 would be sweet

[billionairebum]

Hey could you give more detailed specs??

[GigaWatt]

Originally Posted by Judas

i would go with 6gb ram.. considering it's not so great with 8gb or 4gb seeing as the x58 and i7 is triple channel..... (3x1gb/3x2gb/3x4gb)

well, in that case, why not go for 12GB or RAM (3X4GB), he is going to be using a 64bit OS anyway...

what do you think Judas...?

[Judas]

if you can find 4gb DDR3 sticks.... sure go for it...... but it'll cost the other 2 limbs as well..

[procupine14]

Originally Posted by Judas

if you can find 4gb DDR3 sticks.... sure go for it...... but it'll cost the other 2 limbs as well..

yeah no kidding.....I think after doing all that you could have bought a nice sports car

[Judas]

well depends on your definition of nice and sports

[Neshi]

Originally Posted by Judas

well depends on your definition of nice and sports

.. and your definition of car..

but indeed a nice system you've got there. I would go for 6gb, as I imagine the 4gb sticks are pretty pricey!

[Judas]

well the 2x(3x2gb) 6gb packages i have are about $370 each so for 12gb it's a little over $740 just for the ram

the 2 motherboards cost me just about 900 together

and the 2 920 cpu's cost me approx 930

[CDsDontBurn]

Originally Posted by procupine14

yeah no kidding.....I think after doing all that you could have bought a nice sports car

Originally Posted by Judas

well depends on your definition of nice and sports

Originally Posted by Neshi

.. and your definition of car..

but indeed a nice system you've got there. I would go for 6gb, as I imagine the 4gb sticks are pretty pricey!

that's comedy right there

[IamLakota]

Specs are as follows
intel i7 920 most bang for the buck
6gigs of ram
3 VelociRaptors 1 standalone 2 in raid O
X-Fi Titanium pcie ya know the little slot,..lol
2 Nvidia GTX 260's SLI
and the mobo I finialy went with was eVGA's X58 version
just waiting for the mobo to come in everythimng else is sitting and waiting.
Normaly I'd be real impatient but work has me staying real busy and I'm thankful for that.

[ROBSCIX]

Sound nice. My new rig will be very similar. I am waiting though to see what new boards come out.

[kris23]

i dunno...... i wouldve gotten an SAS equipped Foxconn or ASUS X58 board.

[ROBSCIX]

That is why I want to wait and see what the next quarter brings for new boards etc..

[Judas]

Na, for the cost of the good SAS drives..... it's be nearly pointless...


I mean seriously, if i were to get the SaS, i'd only get the one and only drive worth getting, and it's be those seagate cheetcha 15.6k (i think) that sustain essentially the maximum throughput of the SaS controller. but at nearly $1000 per drive..... i'd rather spend it on something more worthwhile. I mean you better off with multiple seagate 7200.11's in raid 0 with more space to boot. at a fractions of the cost.


My GA-ex58-UD5 boards are amazing... but are they freaking heavy, you lift the box and you figure your lifting a power supply.... a good one....

and even when you pull it out of the box, it's still bloody heavy.

I guess that's what happens when you line several layers with copper.

according to the box, 17 layers total.

Main selling point for the gigabyte board is the onboard realtek and the other design layouts of the board, not to mention it's performance lvl.

[CDsDontBurn]

Originally Posted by Judas

Main selling point for the gigabyte board is the onboard realtek and the other design layouts of the board, not to mention it's performance lvl.

the EVGA board also has the RealTek HD audio controller as well...

[ROBSCIX]

You should never buy a motherboard because of the onboard soundchip. They will never sound as good as a quality add in soundcard.

In my opinion that would be a crime, loading a new X58 board with all new gear and actually using the onboard soundchip. Unless your going digital to a receiver or similar but still...
There are some wicked soundcards out now and some other slated for release very soon.

[CDsDontBurn]

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX

You should never buy a motherboard because of the onboard soundchip. They will never sound as good as a quality add in soundcard.

In my opinion that would be a crime, loading a new X58 board with all new gear and actually using the onboard soundchip. Unless your going digital to a receiver or similar but still...
There are some wicked soundcards out now and some other slated for release very soon.

or if you're going 3-way SLI...

[ROBSCIX]

So your saying going 3-way SLI, but use onboard soundchip? There wouldn't be a whole lot of room left but there is a new card that is going to be released the X-fi Forte' that is native PCI-E 1 X and half height card... could fit almost anywhere. There are a few cards that can fit the bill.

I find it a shame when guys build awsome gaming rigs but leave out the audio as part of the equation. Games are made better by good sound reproduction.

[CDsDontBurn]

well yea. the reason for that is because the current 3-way SLI configurations do not allow for any further expansion. perhaps that creative card you're talking about will fit the bill, but will it fit almost anywhere?

[ROBSCIX]

Actually, it is a Auzentech card and it is a half height card with a PCI-E 1X connector so it it quite small. Have a look here: Auzen X-fi Forte'
I think this is one of the reason they designed it in this manner so it is nice small and will fit almost anywhere..

I am buildign a X58 I7 system but I haven't decided on Crossfire or SLI as of yet. Have to wait and see. I would never sacrifice audio for GFX though. A great audio card makes games so much better in my opinion.

[CDsDontBurn]

if the picture is what it looks like, then i don't think it will be able to fit. it will still require it's own PCI bracket on the rear of the PC, and current cases do not allow for any additional devices to be installed in the rear of the computer in a 3-way SLI configuration as all the brackets will be consumed as can be seen in the picture below.

EDIT:
after looking at this picture, this particular board being used does have a single 1x pci-e slot. it's a bit hard to tell, but it's there. it's just above the "graphics by NVIDIA" sticker/logo on the top card. so, in this particular board being used, any pci-e sound card would work there.

[Judas]

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX

You should never buy a motherboard because of the onboard soundchip. They will never sound as good as a quality add in soundcard.

In my opinion that would be a crime, loading a new X58 board with all new gear and actually using the onboard soundchip. Unless your going digital to a receiver or similar but still...
There are some wicked soundcards out now and some other slated for release very soon.

personal oppinion granted..... however

The realtek HD audio solutions have proven themselves a number of time to be vastly superior to that of creatives offerings let alone any other sound card out there unless your willing to fork over more for a sound card then you would for your high end video cards.


Dealing with considerable number of solutions.... Realtek simply just works and produces some incredible audio.

Highend machines have produced far worse results with even creatives top end sound cards or higherend sound cards then realtek solution.

ADI however is a bloody mess...... though, don't touch em.

ATM though, Realtek ALC 889a or the newer ALC1200 series are excellent onboard solutions. They excell in windows vista and windows 7 enviroments.


BTW.. with the gigabyte board i mentioned... it has a 4x PCI-ex slot above the primary video card slot...... so you'd have zero problems installing triple crossfire or triple sli.

[Liqourice]

Those onboard audio circuits are still only half of a good soundcard since they have to use the CPU for audio processing. Compare this with for example X-Fi cards that has it's own hardware processing. In general it's not a big issue but for some games out there that rely heavily on the CPU, onboard sound can steal a lot of performance.

[ROBSCIX]

Originally Posted by Judas

personal oppinion granted..... however

The realtek HD audio solutions have proven themselves a number of time to be vastly superior to that of creatives offerings let alone any other sound card out there unless your willing to fork over more for a sound card then you would for your high end video cards.


Dealing with considerable number of solutions.... Realtek simply just works and produces some incredible audio.

Highend machines have produced far worse results with even creatives top end sound cards or higherend sound cards then realtek solution.

ADI however is a bloody mess...... though, don't touch em.

ATM though, Realtek ALC 889a or the newer ALC1200 series are excellent onboard solutions. They excell in windows vista and windows 7 enviroments.


BTW.. with the gigabyte board i mentioned... it has a 4x PCI-ex slot above the primary video card slot...... so you'd have zero problems installing triple crossfire or triple sli.

Sorry, No. I have looked at the new specs for the ALC 889 and those #'s are nowhere close to most of modern soundcards. Not to mention, I doubt those #'s are real world anyway, considering most of the true numbers for onboards I have seen. They relay spec values not realworld #'s there is a vast difference.
Now the newest soundcard out are MANY TIMES better then anything onboard audio currently has to offer. for Dynamic range, SNR, THD%..IMD%..etc, You also lose gaming effects and hardware accleration. HW-accel. is not such a big thing as it used to be however most gamers I know still want it for their audio.

If you want to stick with onboard audio great, enjoy. Please don't pretend that people with soundcards are wasting money because most of us enjoy audio that is much greater then onboard audio. The X-fi I recommended because of size is not a Creative brand card, it is made by Auzentech. You say more for a soundcard them video card? I though your recommending 3-4X SLI, so that is quite the price tage to get nice high FPS. Some of the best soundcard out right now are less then $200.

[Judas]

I gotta go dig up an article that clearly states that the realtek ALC889a while didn't perform AS good in the SnR tests or some of the other tests, it did perform quite excellently. Using rightmark audio analyzer.....

i can't find the exact article in which not only creatives X-fi cards but Auzentech's higher end cards were all put to the test. The Realtek ALC889a series onboard solution went through all the same tests.

heres a quick one i found... i beleive the rightmark test was done on a ALC882 or ALC883 however...

The ALC889a is far better, and the ALC1200 series is better yet.

Creatives and auzentechs cards scored fairly similare to that of the realtek solution. In some cases realtek surpassed both marginally as well.

And i'm not recommending SLI or Crossfire, i never said anything of the sort.

I was just stating the FACT that onboard solutions today are conceiveably just about as good, if not as good, and under specific circumstances ARE better then any sound card purchased today that is sub $400+

Hell even the proffesional series audio solutions from say... an example being Motu, while may be superior in thier connections and mixing capabilities, SnR ratios, and whatever, but unless the drivers are up to the task where your not having problems constantly, well obviously it just sound great... when it works.


In the end, i'll just state this.

I would rather sacrifice nearly inaudioable differences, to gain stability, capability, user friendly. And in essense, under windows Vista, the hardware excelleration is pretty much moot, if i also recall a specific set of tests done, the auzentech was consuming more resources/cpu power then the realtek audio solution doing an identical job.

And lets not bring windows xp into this, it's a dead horse, people should have stopped beating it nearly 2 years ago.

[ROBSCIX]

You can believe what you want. I never said the onboards were bad, they just do not sound as good. If you want to talk yourself into "believing" you have good quality audio that can surpass anything, Go ahead. Others have much better and it is not inaudible differences nor unstable cards.

In Vista hardware accleration is not a "moot" point. Only for Directsound. OpenAL still performs hardware acclerations just the same as it always did and direct sound games can be patched to OpenAL so again full hardware accleration in Vista.
I prefer straight sound quality to harware acceleration if I had to choose. You don't need to buy a $400 card to get better audio then ANY current onboard. Umm, lets see, the Xonar DX is one of the cheapest cards you can get right now and is sub $80 and would smash if not obliterate any onboard audio for sound quality.
Onboard is getting better but is still not up to par with the current cards. If you want to compare a current cuting edge onboard to a card that is what; 3-5 years old then maybe, you may be getter close but will still lose out to features and overall sound quality.
As I said, if you like your onboard, then enjoy but please don't ever think your onboard soundchip is the end all of audio even at a budget price because you are sadly mistaken. Can we get back to the X58 now?