The Ultimate Developer Machine 2.0

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Pete Brown - 28 July 2010

Here's the summary of the new bits I bought for this build. I already own the locally bought stuff. The NewEgg items will be here this week.

Category	Purchased	Price
OS	Windows 7 x64	Prices vary
Video Card	Sapphire Toxic Radeon HD 5850 (NewEgg)	$345
Processor	Intel i7-980x 3.33ghz 6core Processor (NewEgg)	$1000
Memory	Corsair XMS3 6gb kit (x2) (NewEgg)	$340 total
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9 (NewEgg)	$479 after combo deal
Primary Storage	Crucial C300 256GB SATA III SSD (Purchased Locally)	$609 locally
Secondary Storage	Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200 RPM (Purchased Locally, Retail kit)	$79 locally
Power Supply	Corsair HX850W 850W 80+ supply (Purchased Locally)	$140 on sale locally
Case	Cooler Master HAF-X (Purchased Locally)	$200
Optical Drive	LiteOn iHAS324-98 SATA DVD writer (Purchased Locally)	$25 locally
Total		$3217 (not including cooling)

Hardware geek Ultimate PC

posted by Pete Brown on Wednesday, July 28, 2010
filed under: Hardware geek Ultimate PC

Reply
Hurr Durrsays:
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 9:03:44 AM
Radeon? Feel bad for you. ATI is okay when it comes to hardware, but a vidya card is only as good as its drivers, and ATI's drivers are to NVidia's drivers as cowpies are to shoo fly pies.

ATI's drivers are cow turds, if you didn't get that analogy.
Reply
Daniel Augersays:
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 11:13:15 AM
I think the Radeon was a good choice. Sure, the new NVidia cards are marginally better performance-wise for the $, but they are loud, hot, and suck power. Both venders have buggy drivers, so it just depends what bugs you can deal with. The only caveat there is that NVidia's linux drivers are are very good, wheras the ATI drivers aren't mature yet.
Reply
Petesays:
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 11:31:22 AM
It's a real risk, going back to AMD. In the end, I decided because I wanted a single card that would handle 3 displays, wanted lower noise/heat and lower power consumption.

The nVidia 480 is a really really good card, the best per-wise right now. It's also the hottest and loudest.

Hopefully I won't hate myself for going this route. If so, well, it's just a video card :)

Pete
Reply
Defconsays:
Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 9:56:11 AM
The ati drivers are very good these days, and every month, you get a new WHQL driver, beta driver and hot-fixes! Their driver team is one of the best in the world! You wont regret it Pete.