PC Config for May

Well, it's been a while since i wrote about the PC industry. Last time i wrote, i had gone ape over AMD's resurgence in competitiveness. Let me admit it, ever since Abu Dhabi picked up a major stake in it, i have become even more of an AMD guy. Misplaced sense of loyalty i agree.

Back to topic. AMD followed up the lacklustre showing of the original Phenom with a reworked Phenom II that has finally allowed them to march in step with Intel's Core 2 lineup. Look up on the net for reviews of the Phenom II 920, 940 and 955. I will sum up simply that rupee for rupee, AMD and Intel are evenly matched at the moment.

But, the fly in the soup still remains. AMD has NO product that can compete with the Intel i7 lineup. But since AMD has been targeting the lower and mid segment of the market, they remain viable options as of now.

On the graphics front, the ATI acquisition is finally beginning to make sense. The failure of the 2xxx and 3xxx series did not deter them and they've followed up with a master stroke in the form of the 48xx series. AMD's strategy of not trying to top Nvidia's Top end performance and instead focus on the sub 200$ market has meant tremendous paisa vasool for us.

But on the pricing front, the Indian market sticks out like a sore thumb by pricing the 4850 at 8k upwards. One can buy the vastly more powerful 4870 at these prices abroad. Here's hoping that a price correction happens pretty soon.

Onto my dream specs for the summer.

Amd Phenom II X3 720 - 7500/

Biostar Tforce 790GX 128M motherboard (for a shot at unlocking the X3 720's fourth core) - 5000/

Corsair 2x2 GB DDR 2 800  - ~3000

Seagate Barracuda 500 GB - ~3000

500 W SMPS - ~1500

Regular ATX cabinet - ~ 1500

Geforce 260 192 Core Card - ~ 11000

BenQ 22 " LCD monitor - ~ 8500

The rest like K/B and Mouse can be found for around 600, and you could get decent speakers for around 2000 more. throw in a 1000 for a DVD writer. 

This gives you a decent gaming rig for under 40 K that should serve most of your gaming needs (barring Crysis) for the next 2 years at the very least.

you could also throw in a 4850 instead of the 260, and give yourself future breathing space with the option to crossfire in the future, when the prices for the 4850 drop.

well, that's about it for my rig recommendation for the summer. 

I will throw in my next recommendation around September.

AMD IS BACK BABY!!!

as a certified fan of the UAE owned semiconductor giant, and as a long time athlon fan, i am tremendously excited to see AMD's fine return to form with the phenom 2 x4 920 and 940 processors.

i know that benchies on the net give them a negative rating vis a vis core i7, but for me it was interesting to note that clock for clock, outside of hardcore video editing environments, they ran neck and neck with the core 2 quads (45 nm) and almost matched the core i7 in a few benchmarks.

for me, that's a tremendous achievement if you consider the fact that right now, the phenom 2 is only working with DDR2 ram. once we get the AM3+ mobos readied and throw in a couple of DDR3 sticks in, i fully expect the phenom 2s to leave the C2Qs in the dust.

but let's get down to where it really matter, gaming. i was most excited to see the phenom 2 perform outstandingly in games, where it was a 30-40 % faster than the older phenom quads. 

and the price!!! for the price of a phenom 2 quad, and with AM2 mobo and a 4 gig stick of DDR2 ram, i will have more than enough cash to throw in a 4850x2, a 260 core216 or even a 280 video card, for the same price as a bare bones core i7  setup.

that to me seems like a tremendous value for money proposition, which will give us a reasonable system that can finally answer the only question that has mattered to PC hardware in the last year and a half.

yup, we got an answer to " Can it Run Crysis Bro?"

yeah man, 1250 $ will give you what you need

Nehalem headaches for AMD

oh my god!! that was my first reaction when the nehalem(aka intel Core i7) benchmarks hit the net.

they say that imitation is the best form of flattery, but what happens when the imitation outperforms the original?

Intel's version of the AMD Hyper Transport is called Hyper Connect, and boy, does it connect or what..

even in the conroe days, AMD always held the edge in Memory latency and read write tests due to the pioneering integrated memory controller design they implemented in the athlon 64 over 5 years ago. (has it been that long? wow)

well, intel decided to bury the grizzled Front Side Bus and usher in their version of the integrated controller in the core i7. where they really blew AMD away of course, was by making it a triple channel controller, over the dual channel approach that AMD has favoured.

while the Core i7 is an absolute delight for workstation applications, gaming scenarios arent all that clear.

the cheapest core i7 (which would be the 920), isnt all that faster in games when compared to the similarly price Q9770. in fact, if you get right down to it, you could get a much cheaper dual core, say an E8500, add in a solid water cooling kit, OC it to near 4 Ghz and get double the gaming performance.

this is because most of the games right now are written to take advantage of dual core systems as the lowest common denominator in performance.

the few games that do utilise the extra cores (which right now seems to be supreme commander, not convinced that Crysis, Bioshock or UT3 make good use of quaddies), benefit far more from the much higher clock speed that u will get with a dual core.

there's the rub. since the i7 is in it's infancy, u have to shell out huge money, to get a decent motherboard, DDR3 memory(it wont run on DDR2).

plus there's also the fact that intel offers much better performance when it revises and refreshes product lines. it happened when it made a transition from 65nm to 45 nm and will happen again when they move from current 45nm to 32 nm sometime next year.

bottom line is, the i7 is mostly a fancy piece of nanotech that will be an absolute must 6 months down the line, when prices drop.

my suggestion till then, is to get an 8500, OC it to 4Gs, pair it up with a pair of radeon 4850s in crossfire(much better than the 4850x2 imho) and pack in 4 gigs of ddr2 1066 ram and u will have a system that will serve u fine for atleast 2 years.