P67 or X79?

[Burty117]

Guys,

You've all probably had this arguement.
But I have been given the opportunity to get (work is paying up-to £300) for a new motherboard?

I want this computer to last at least 3 years and at max 5-6 years.

Would I be better off with P67 Core i7 2600K or X79 with the quad core?

I will be gaming on it mainly but I do the odd bit of Virtualisation as I am training to be a VMWare administrator and Hyper-V certification etc...

Thanks for any suggestions anyone bring forward.

 

[Burty117]

Also to note below are the two motherboards I'm interested in:

x79:
http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/SABERTOOTH_X79/

P67:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/SABERTOOTH_P67/

 

[Arris]

Do you need up to 64GB of ram? Do you need 6 cores for the "work" you do with this machine?
If not, get a P67 with 2600k. Although if you don't need the Sabertooth model I'd be tempted to grab a Z68 board, so you can overclock (as with P67) but also use the onboard video as a backup. Prices don't seem to be that different.

 

[Burty117]

Thanks,

I have decided on the 2600K, to be honest overclocking doesn't bother me that much, ,I was fed up with having to do it on the old Phenom II.

I have ordered the Sabertooth and a 120GB OCZ Solid SSD, I've already got 4GB 7-8-7-20 DDR3 1600Mhz RAM to use, now I need the 2600K and a power supply, already got case, CD drive and windows.

Cheers!

 

[Mizzou]

It's really the right way to go from a bang for the buck perspective, the 2600K is going to handle pretty much anything you throw at it. Keep us posted on your results and take lots of pictures

 

[Burty117]

Haha! I will don't you worry gotta think of a graphics card to use now? Would prefer to have just one mean single card? At the moment the GTX570/580 seem to be the way to go?

 

[slh28]

Good choice on the processor, I think it's wisest to go for whatever is the best value at the moment rather than worrying about futureproofing because in 3 yrs time Intel will have a new socket.

GTX 570 is just awesome plays everything on max, plus I think it's much better value than the 580 (you can clock it to 850-900 Mhz pretty easily). You can get one for £220 from pixmania using topcashback and the discount code

 

[Burty117]

Good choice on the processor, I think it's wisest to go for whatever is the best value at the moment rather than worrying about futureproofing because in 3 yrs time Intel will have a new socket.

GTX 570 is just awesome plays everything on max, plus I think it's much better value than the 580 (you can clock it to 850-900 Mhz pretty easily). You can get one for £220 from pixmania using topcashback and the discount code

thanks for the heads up on the deal, that is a seriously sweet deal!
I was going to go look for the EVGA GTX570 Classified as thats pre-overclocked a ton! But for those prices I could actually get two and SLI them?

 

[slh28]

It's because I was shopping around and got one just 2 weeks ago heh.

Personally I have never bought a pre-overclocked card, they usually come with quite a price premium and I think the difference between an OC'd stock card and an OC'd pre-OC card isn't that much (if any). FYI mine runs at 850 core 2000 memory @ 1.06V and never gets above 65C load.

 

[Burty117]

that is fairly impressive, the thing is i'm tempted to wait a little bit longer to see what kepler or what ever ATI have up there sleeve? i've still got my old GTX260 lying around so I may just use that until the new stuff comes out although it is very tempting indeed.

 

[slh28]

Well, I guess it depends how much you want to game between now and when Tahiti/Kepler come out, but I don't think AMD or Nvidia have given any release dates yet.

If you're not desperate I would wait it out, the next gen cards sound quite good (twice as fast apparently)

 

[Mizzou]

A number of sites have been reporting that the new AMD cards will be out in January. According to the rumor mill the HD 7970 is supposed to perform on par with the HD 6990. The HD 7970 will likely carry a price tag around $500 which isn't bad if it's really twice as fast as the current generation. Of course, until the cards actually come out and we see some benchmarks this is merely conjecture.