Building a new PC and what the heck has happened?

[WizardStan]

So it has been about 5 7 years since the last time I built a computer. My current one still crushes pretty much everything I throw at it, but it could crush them better. My brother gave me a good offer to buy my existing one and I planned on using that money to build an all new one. And apparently in the intervening 5 7 years where I wasn't really paying much attention to the desktop processor market a lot of things have changed and I am confused.


Apparently AMD is no longer even close to considered competition with Intel anymore. I guess that makes that decision easy. Cores, processor speed, cache size, all straightforward and easy to compare.


But when I was investigating these new Intel CPUs, I encountered something that definitely wasn't there before: GPU architecture. I can't find a single website which explains to me what this actually means. Does the CPU actually have a GPU on it now? How does that even work? Do motherboards not come with onboard GPU anymore? If I buy a separate graphics card am I effectively wasting money buying a CPU with built in GPU? I found a number of comparison sites that seemed to compare "onboard" graphics with graphics cards and any recent card seemed to always edge out (and in some cases completely blow away) the onboard (which I am assuming means the GPU in the CPU) graphics, so it makes me wonder why they would even bother. I don't want to pay for something I'm not going to use, my current motherboard didn't have onboard graphics either. And even if I do just use this onboard graphics processor, there seems to be mixed information about whether Linux can take advantage of it (or in fact anything less than Windows 7).


This is frustrating. What happened to CPUs being CPUs and RAM being RAM and graphics cards being graphics cards?


edit: I've apparently had this desktop for 7 years.

 

[ferrule]

A core i5 is considered best bang for your buck. Vt-x and vt-d are important enough to choose a CPU that supports both.


Gigabyte is considered to be among the best mainboards these days. I had one recommended to me and am happy to have taken that advice.


You get a cheap gpu with almost every CPU these days, if it's good enough, use it. Otherwise throw an nvidia card at it and you're good for windows or linux.


Oh, and go SSD for the boot volume, for the speed and reliability.


Ian

 

[JeFF]

Lot's of intel's new motherboards include an integrated GPU chipset (intel HD3000-4000 depending). If you're looking for gaming, try to get a nice graphic card when choosing an intel board.

 

[WizardStan]

Motherboards have been coming with cheap GPUs since the dawn of time. I'm more concerned about what seems to be the inclusion of GPU into the CPU itself at no insignificant cost. I've never liked the onboards, I don't want to spend $100 more on a comparable CPU for a build in GPU I have no desire to use. If I want an even more modern i7 it seems I don't even have that choice, they just all come listed with built in GPU.

 

[skeezix]

yeah, i5 is the way to go these days; i7 has a leg up for fairly specific applications, but in general, i5 is the better price-performance point.


The onboard Intel GPU is akin to the old crummy Intel GPU, its just got some good bits bolted into the CPU now; its not really worth considering .. they did it to keep prices down for netbooks. If you ever want to play a game, then you'll want to pick up an AMD (ATI) or Nvidia, same as always.


If your machine is 7 years old, it didnt' crush anything, not even your pandora (that said, my 3 year old laptop does in fact still crush a lot of things.. the nvidia 8800m gtx in it is not half bad, and the X9000 cpu is utterly freakish in its performance.. but it still can't catch snuff to anything you build nowadays.)


Same story as always.. if you want to build a 'serious' machine thats not too much money, you buy motherboard (50-100), RAM, CPU (the expensive part :/), GPU (expensive or not, your choice), case (cheap .. you can get a coolermaster with decent power supply for $50 at Canada Computers or ncix etc) .. hell, even monitors have gotten cheap and gorgeous in this time span so you might want to ditch your nasty old CRT


You could put together a usable machine for a few hundred or a 'killer' game machine for a bit over 500, if you're careful.


jeff

 

[ferrule]

Motherboards have been coming with cheap GPUs since the dawn of time. I'm more concerned about what seems to be the inclusion of GPU into the CPU itself at no insignificant cost. I've never liked the onboards, I don't want to spend $100 more on a comparable CPU for a build in GPU I have no desire to use. If I want an even more modern i7 it seems I don't even have that choice, they just all come listed with built in GPU.

I don't think you can get an i5 or i7 without it, so how can you compare what it's 'cost' is?


Ian

 

[WizardStan]

I looked up Sandy Bridge on wikipedia and compared relative prices between similar specs; 2500 (without GPU) against 2550 (with GPU) for example. I exaggerate when I say $100, but it wasn't insubstantial at retail. That being said, the Ivy Bridge doesn't have any without GPU apparently, and that's where the process seems to be most improved (duh). I think I'm going to go with the i5-3570, seems to give the most improvement over my current setup within my price range.

 

[skeezix]

Or splash and get the K edition, which is 'unlocked' for BIOS overclocking and such, but costs more :/


jeff

 

[ferrule]

Or splash and get the K edition, which is 'unlocked' for BIOS overclocking and such, but costs more :/


jeff

They're the same price here (Canada). The K is enticing, but you miss out on vt-d, which becomes important when you get into virtualization. Basically it gives a facility to pass control of the physical devices into VMs without having a software layer as mediator. I think in a few years, most people will be running virtualization of some sort or another, probably without even knowing it.


It's not a showstopper not to have vt-d, but I bought the non-K.


Ian

 

[elwing]

using a processor with gpu integrated also offer some technology like "quick sync video"...

 

[ghostpatch]

Those integrated GPUs are not that bad. The 3000HD runs Left 4 Dead 2 on minimal graphics adjustments and they improve low coast, mid range laptops and media computers. You don't need a separate graphics card except for gaming.


I use a SSD for the OS and a HDD for data

 

[kirkanoss]

why all the amd hate anyway running asus Sabertooth 990FX MoB with AMD FX-8150 Zambezi 3.6GHz8 core cpu, 16gb of gskill ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti , Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 240gb sata3 ssd.all stuffed in a cooler master haf. love all my usb 3.0 ports have about 15 terabytes in WD external hard drives and usb 3.0 is a must when moving 500+ gigs around at one time. love my 8 core cpu too bad windows still can't make use of all 8 core only my video encoding program does, can re-encode a 30 min show to h.264 ,1280x720 about 5000k bit-rate in about 10 mins. the MoB has soo much going on from uefi bios (soo easy overclock+overvolting) also has Thermal Radar (monitors temps in critical parts of the motherboard in real time, has 10 sensors on the MoB). i was looking alot at intel but i always ran amd my last pc was a very old amd that was still kicking alot of ass but was just too out dated i really needed the usb 3.0 and a system that wouldn't bottleneck somewhere when moving my terabytes of data around. as for the apu's they have come a very long way in the last few months and can really bring some great gaming power in a small package

 

[pmprog]

why all the amd hate

Where are you seeing this? I haven't read anything in this thread that is hateful.


TBH, I got lost when building my last PC... I've got an i7 I think, but it's not the same as the other i7s... or something. I've got something like 4 spare graphics cards around my house that I bought for the machine before the current, but for various reasons weren't compatible/had the wrong output etc.


I almost gave up building them, but I'm glad I didn't, my current one is pretty nice

 

[WizardStan]

Remember when numbers meant something? A 486 was better than a 386. 100Mhz was better than 60Mhz. Socket 3 was better than Socket 2. More cache was strictly better.


Now i7 is sometimes better than i5 but sometimes the i3 is better but not in every way, one CPU running at 2.4Ghz can outpace another running at 2.6Ghz, the LGA1155 is newer than LGA1156, and this "smart cache" thing intel has come up with seems to mean 6MB of L3 can be better than 8MB of L2. Too much choice for my tiny little mind

 

[kirkanoss]

was really joking about the amd hate and yes i know how you feel stan everything changed so much from my last pc to my current took along time to catch up with the times. had alot of fun doing it tho.

 

[MrChops]

which encoding program were you referring to?

 

[WizardStan]

So I got the 3570K. They didn't have any non-k in stock so there was nothing to think about. Hopefully the lack of vt-d won't have too much of an impact on the minimal virtualization that I do (mostly just running a virtual windows box so I can use IE to remote in to work without infecting my base OS with crappy "security" features)


I'm currently on my fourth install of Xubuntu though. I made a small partition to install XP first, because sometimes an actual Windows install may come in handy. I then tried installing Xubuntu beside it. First attempt: reboot, always boots into Windows. Second attempt: grub loaded properly, can boot into either Xubuntu or Windows, but it's not accepting my password for some reason. Third attempt: "grub recovery >"... right then. If this fourth attempt doesn't work I'm just going to try Mint.


edit: apparently I just needed to re-install grub.