Great to get an estimate, but it's usually on the high side... My system uses about 804Watt according to that calculator, but I have a 750Watt power supply and it's rarely running in the 700+ Watt area. Never had stability issues.

Well what's your point here? Why is a Phenom 9850 which consumes more power than a Q6600 plus a HD4870 which consumes way more power than a HD4850 being a different story? With that said your 500 watt plus recommendation is a bit off the scale...

When talking about speed differences there are no huge differences between a 9850 and a Q6600. The Phenom is faster on these applications and the Q6600 on those applications. So the Phenoms disadvantage is the power consumption while the advantage is the cheaper price for mainboard and memory plus downwards compatibility for future CPU designs to come...


There's hardly a difference between DDR3 and DDR2 RAM except for the fact that DDR3 is way more expensive...


I'd just make sure that there are 64bit drivers for all your components (especially printers and scanners) existant so you actually can use them...


Well I'm sorry but this is totally wrong. Currently we just have reached the state where most titles support two cores. There still are extremely few games that really support four cores and even if they do things like 40 to 60% increase is just insane (as you can't really parallelize games to such an extent). The only examples of a good use of a quad core is Supreme Commander (although the difference isn't THAT big here), Assasin's Creed and Race Driver Grid (which actually reacts pretty good with four cores). With that I'm talking about a siutation actually being real and not some benchmarks at 640x480 with all settings at low. The GPU still becomes the bottleneck way faster (especially with AA and AF) and so you in most cases better use a Dual Core with higher clocks which doesn't really make a difference in modern games and is faster in games which don't use four cores yet. I also don't see the broad use of four cores coming THAT fast. I mean have a look at how long it took to have a dual core support about everywhere. Quads are something only a rather tiny percentage of users own already and so it'll take quite a while until you'll find such a support in nearly every game.

You now can think of getting a quad now if you want to keep it for quite a while (under the presumption you'll mainly use the PC for gaming). On the other hand you won't really have a huge advantage from that as your graphics card will limit you way sooner in coming games. So from a gamer's point of view it makes more sense to switch to a Dual Core with high clock and spend the money into a better graphics card like a HD4870...

To prove what I said have a look at these benchmarks:
Assasins Creed
Crysis
Unreal Tournament 3

EDIT:

I still don't see your point. Well even if we pretend that the Q6600 would drain 100 watts (which it doesn't because TDP is not power consumption) and the HD4850 like 120 watts then we end up with 220. Add up all the rest which are quite small consumers and you still should end up below 300 watts. So why is my recommendation of around 450 watts not enough or not appropiate. I even could get a tad lower but as you (I think it was you) said why not keep some room for the futre...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

I have no intention of arguing with you about numbers, percentages and what more, but those graphs show how the GPU in those games become the bottleneck, not how much a multi-core increases performance in those games.

As said using a Q6600 or a Core 2 Duo 6600 to run Crysis makes a lot of difference. I could list many many more games in which I've experienced myself that it matters, but I feel it would be pointless.



As far as this game is concerned.. it's obvious it's not optimized for quad cores, but more so for single or dual cores... so yeah, doh, not much benefit of quad cores there. It's still pretty likely that the game will run better on a quad core still as background processes could run on different threads and so on.



A good quad core really isn't all that expensive anymore. A good 3D card will easily be far more expensive if you choose right.



Because it won't run.. simple as that. A HD2900XT, Core 2 Duo and 350Watt power supply WON'T boot. I know this, because I've actually thought the same thing, tried it and found out I had to buy a bigger PSU. You're pretty stubborn aren't you?

Also, why else do you think that Nvidia and AMD/ATI both recommend much higher PSUs, especially with Quad Core high-end PCs and multiple graphics cards... even for single card setups the bare minimum is about 450Watt,

Cheers

Huh? I have not run into a single problem running any of my 32-bit components under Vista 64-bit. I have an older Canon scanner, an older Canon printer, a Netgear wireless WiFi PCI card, etc and the drivers are all 32-bit for them. However, they function quite fine. That is not to say that there isn't something somewhere out there that will refuse to run, but I have not had this problem.

About the quad core issue:

While an application may not be designed to take advantage of a quad core, that does not mean it is a waste to get one. Since there are four cores you can run four apps (if you like) at full efficiency (each one taking advantage of a core) and zip right along. However, for those applications that DO take advantage of it ... well ... then you will certainly see another advantage.

As was already pointed out: quad core prices are not very high these days (not at the lower end). Unless you want the latest and greatest CPU then the price is very nice (as much or less than a decent video card). I know my video card was much more than the CPU.

Well I don't understand what you want to prove with this. You say a quad core gives you more performance but admit at the same time that a former high-end GPU already limits in today's games but still don't think it's a good idea in such a situation to invest more into the GPU if you're a gamer? Quite contradictory...


I didn't explicitly mention Call of Duty 4 at all so why are you arguing about it? It actually proves my point of little state-of-the-art games having a quad core support now that you mention it...

And even for those tests where the quad core is better - you do know how this was tested? They just "deactived" some cores of their quad core and so they kept the clock. Because of this the difference will be smaller in reality (without OC at the same level) because dual cores have higher clocks. With that said and looking at it price per price you can get an E6850 clocked at 3GHz for the same price as an Q6600 clocked at 2,4GHz (plus the small Penryn advantage for the E6850 making it some percent faster). As today's games currently gain more from higher clocks rather than additional cores this is why you'll mostly find dual core recommendations in hardware forums when the situation is like here and you're a gamer on a budget...


In this example here it's the recommendation to choose a dual core from the E-series (or an AMD alternative if that's wanted) and go for a HD4870 instead of the HD4850. Makes more sense for a gamer as you indirectly admitted...


Well first - if a power supply features 350 watt or even more this doesn't say a system like the one you mention will boot at all. There are other very important features like especially the 12V trail and how many Ampere you have there (and the number of trails if there are more than one). So tell me which power supply you tried with that system and give its specs...

That's also the reason why get such high watt numbers for the graphics cards: The problem is modern cards really have way higher requirements (especially on that 12V trail I mentioned) and so they had to make sure that nobody will try to run their new system on an "ancient" system and so they gave those high watt numbers because those power supplies most likely would deliver what was needed. You can also see this when comparing what was told to have when you did SLI with two 6800 GT back then and what you are told nowadays. Although the power consumption of the GPUs really went up there is little to no difference (I don't know the exact numbers people were told) between the recommendations today and back then. You also can look up power supply proceedings in forums. When it's about old supplies apart from the watt it can deliever there also comes (i.e. should) the question about the 12V trail. Today you'll rarely find people with such an issue but back then you really had to ask if the 12V trail could deliver around - well let's say 18-20A or not. If not the system most likely didn't boot even if the supply had 500 watts or more...

Apart from that I'm not stubborn: Not only does my system prove you wrong but I'm also a moderator in a hardware board for some years and have recommended dozens of systems (if not hundreds up to today) with such dimensions and guess what: There never ever came back a bad review like "this system doesn't boot". Simply because you have to know which specs or recommendations to trust and which not and power supplies was one of the more special topics because people didn't simply fall into the "watt delusion" (which means more watt = better the producers advertised) but also didn't give the power supply much attention giving this an often too tiny budget buying some "junk" with high watt-numbers printed on it (which it couldn't deliver in reality at all)...

So you see my knowledge isn't based on rumors but facts and has been proven for many many times. Just don't believe everything you're told - there is so much "bullshit" out there. Things get tagged as "silent", people compare the dB numbers the producers give to compare the noise it makes - the list goes on and on and I think you too know some other examples for this...


Well you're lucky then - you'll find lots of people using old (well "old" depends on how you define it) pieces of hardware who just can't get their things to run under Vista 64Bit and that's why my standard recommendation here still is to check if all your stuff will run and if not if you really need a 64Bit Vista at all...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Woah!
Thanks a lot guys! Thats a lot of information in here and I'll surely consider it when doing some further research about the best buy.

Ok so it depends on the use of my system.
Well I'll mostly use it for gaming and game development, whereas I'm a scripter/programmer so I'll not use it for heavy rendering or high poly modeling.

The thoughts I grabbed from here are:
- Better get a 550 oder even 600 Watt power supply, as its long-lasting, and yes I currently have a 400 Watt enermax liberty and consider to buy either an enermax again or a "be quiet".
- Multi-cores are still not 100% supported, so a dual core with high speed should be sufficient.
I guess I'll take a look at the AMD CPUs, as I'm quite happy with my current CPU which is an AMD Athlon64 3000+
- I also consider taking a different motherboard, which might be somewhat more expensive, but longer lasting and better for upgrading in the future.

The problem with the motherboards is, that the P5K is one of the few motherboards having more than 2 SATA ports for drives. Most other motherboards have also more but thoses are connected to some sort of RAID chipset. So I'm not sure if they can also be used for single devices, as I'm not looking for a RAID solution.
My plan, or rather dream, is to grab a SSD (16 or 32 Gig, way enough) and use that one for the operating system (Windows XP Pro + maybe another OS in dual boot) and the system service programs, such as Firewall, Anti-Virus, drivers and all the stuff that is started on boot-up, to increase the boot speed.

The Data for programs, games and other stuff would remain on my two samsung spin points 160 GB hard drives.
Thus I need at least 3 SATA ports which are not RAID.

What do you guys think about SATA drives for DVD and DVD-burning?

Thanks a lot again!
Your input is really great!


edit:
I think an AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+ with 2x 3000 Mhz sounds good, as CPU cooler I consider a Zalman CNPS9500ALED

edit #2:
At a different place I could get the same CPU as box version for the same price as the tray version in another store.
Guess I'll rather go with the box version, as the fan included in that package should be sufficient, as I'm not going to overclock the CPU.

Motherboards: I have three options:
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe
Asus Crosshair
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
I guess I'll rather go with the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe which is more expensive than the M2N-SLI Deluxe but cheaper than the Crosshair and has the same features as the Crosshair plus two more USB ports.

You of course can use a single device with chipsets that have a raid support too - that's just an option to use if you want to...


Well not only the boot speed but also the startup of all programms on the SSD too...
Unfortunately those SSD are expensive like hell but I'm also looking forward to get one of those with my next upgrade... :P


Today they're a good option - you'll also save you one big IDE-cable this way...


I wouldn't take a Zalman until you're kind of a modder who likes to show his PC's inside to everyone. The reason is that Zalman nowadays just has good looking coolers but things like noise, cooling efficency and price got worse and worse since heatpipes got standard for CPU coolers. I'd recommend a Xigmatek HDT-RS1283 if you want a good cooler. There of course are some which are a bit better but you really have a nice price performance ratio here...


Well this can happen sometimes. The boxed cooler of course is sufficent but not very quiet so if noise is important to you it's better to get a better cooler...


In fact none of them is a good option...
The reason is you should go for an AM2+ mainboard and not just an old AM2. Those AM2+ boards also can take AM2 processors and feature some technical updates for current AM2+ cpus and those to come so it would be stupid to buy an old AM2 board. My recommendation would be an Asus M3A78 Pro or M3N78 Pro where I would prefer the "A" version with an AMD/ATI chipset. The M3N78 Pro is nice too though as it doesn't lack things like a firewire port and has some more USB ports on the back. The M3A78 Pro has a better layout (that ATX power supply is placed quite stupid on the "N" version), things like PS2 connectors for mouse and keyboard and you can use tools like AMD Overdrive with it - I actually bought one M3A78 Pro for my Phenom and I'm totally satisfied. Well - Firewire just as some more USB ports on the backplate would have been nice but that's not too bad. If you want some pictures (and info which water cooling fits :P ) have a look here where I also uploaded some pics:
http://www.forumdeluxx.de/forum/showthread.php?t=517121

Enjoy your meal
Toast

No I did not say that, I said in these particular game tests the GPU clearly bottlenecks the whole outcome making it impossible to see a difference between quad core and dual core setups.



You've posted the links, not me. Anyways, Call of Duty 4 is DirectX 9, optimized to scale well.. it may look incredible and run/play great, but it's not a state-of-the-art game as in demanding the maximum of a system. It was designed around a high end single core system actually.



This is downright false, it has increased hugely.



I'm not going to waste time here proving anything, as you clearly do not even believe what was wrong with my system. I first thought my 350Watt had simply died on me and I even tried a new and different 350Watt psu.

Also, I've tried a 500Watt before buying a 750Watt.. the rather new 500Watt actually also failed when I installed my second 3D card. You can't tell me this has to do with 12V or cables as these two new power supplies where brand new, had the latest things on it and where of the same brand with the same features except higher Watt on one of them, obviously 500Watt just wasn't enough for the system to run.. as was 350Watt when I installed my new 3D card.

This thread is not about my past problems though, so lets keep it clean.



Which is exactly why I do not believe you at all. I was talking about my own experience here, first hand facts, not some bullshit on a site claiming performance figures like you did.

Also, I've just tried deactivating cores in several games, and low and behold it did NOT INCREASE PERFORMANCE as in these tests, in fact the decreased. Explain that to me...



I'm well aware of this, yes. But it doesn't matter as it's a relative issue. Power supplies in the past tagged 350Watt probably didn't output exactly 350Watt either.

In fact, power supplies nowadays get more and more efficient, losing less energy by heat. So I would have expected that the 500Watt supply I used would run fine with 2 3D cards. It didn't and it wasn't a budget supply at all.



Vista 64bit runs 32bit applications fine, it however can not handle x86 drivers. Rumor has it Microsoft will change this in the near future though as they want to push the 64bit platform more,

Cheers

use linux!

here we go...