Some ramblings

There's a tl;dr version at the bottom.

I'm out of the loop completely in regard to hardware, my current machine is Athlon 3200+ with some bullshit ATI x1600PRO GPU (which went into "legacy" like 2 years ago) and 1gb ram, which basically means I have 3 bottlenecks in my setup. I don't plan on gaming like a madman and "ultra" settings in highest resolutions are not really what I find interesting in games, however it would be nice to be able to run SC2, DOTA2 and D3 and sort, without reverting to obscene 800x600 in lowest details, so the new setup must not go obsolete in next year, preferably still alive 3 years from now but obviously on lower end. I plan on using virtual machines and I need to run one seemlesly, obviously strictly for programing/development and not multimedia. Other than that, I don't plan on doing any video or graphic editing and if I do I can cope with substandard specs. It would be nice to be able to run some sound editing though, either out of the box or as an extension. Considering all that I want a comfortable, budget machine that would still be decent in few years.

First of all, I desperately need multicored CPU. I'm pretty sure I want Intel this time unless someone makes a very good case for AMD. I was thinking 2 cores 2 threads each would be optimal, but apparently only i7 has hyperthreading enabled and there's a HUGE gap in prices between i5 and i7, currently I narrowed it down to i5-2400 and i5-2500, both have 4 cores (no hyperthreading). According to specs I'm seeing only difference is bus multiplier (seems more important) and in turn about 200Mhz less on 2400 (less important), but 2500 one is about 1/8 cheaper and I'm leaning towards 2400.
Other thing is, for some reason all CPUs I'm seeing have an integrated GPU for no apparent reason, is that standard? I don't need one since I'm defenitely getting a standalone GPU.

Graphcis - nVidia and there's no discussion, not only do I have rather bad experience with ATI, I need CUDA v2.1 support. Also, almost defenitely only one card, I don't see the reason to get two, I would rather just get one but better card. Unfortunately that's as much as I know, need serious help here. One I found (selected at random almost) is Gigabyte GTX460SE, 1GB memory GDDR5, 256 bit bus on PCI-E 2.0 x16, but everything here is a guess except for nVidia chipset. Do I need more memory? Bigger bus? According to some benchmarks I've seen it does decently enough for now but it seemed to be right in the middle as far as shading units and internal clocks go. Also, there are tons of manufacturers with cards on this chipset, once again I'm at loss.

Memory - I was thinking 4GB and maybe 8GB, don't really see need for it at least for now. Not much research done here, need opinions once again.

Finally motherboard, vendor I was looking at only had some uATX boards with LGA1155 socket, quick glance at some other gave soooo many results at all prices. I just don't really now what to pick. uATX actually doesen't sound bad since I don't think there's any need for internal cards aside from GPU, if I want a better sound card I will just get an external one. Also, what kind of AC do I need? 600W?

TLDR:

Need new machine for decent gaming time up to one year ahead and poker, need comments on:

CPU: i5-2400
GPU: Gigabyte GTX460SE, 1GB
Memory: 4GB
Motherboard: ??
Power: 600W

0 votes

Comments (5)