Helloez. If all goes as planned, next week I'm going to order the following components from mindfactory.de :

Intel Core i5 3570K 4x 3.40GHz So.1155 BOX
8GB TeamGroup Elite DDR3-1333 DIMM CL9
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 Intel Z68 So.1155 Dual Channel DDR3 ATX Retail

which totals around 350euros. (~20euros more per component if I'd order from Finland -_-*)

I'm going for Ivy bridge cpu. I've been hearing that Ivy bridge isn't as big of a leap forwards as ppl were hoping for but it still seems that it provides better performance if you are not going all out with the overclocking (I don't personally like overclocking so I'm just gonna check online for settings that should work so Im looking at around 4,4-4,5ghz). The ram is more or less cheapest you can get. The motherboard should be decent and it has PCIe 3.0 support (planning to update my graphics card later).

Only thing that worries me is that my power supply is only Nexus 450W which however should be enough according to my friend. Might have to buy a new one at least when I buy the new graphics card... My current one is GeForce 460GTX OC. And I have Mugen2 CPU cooler which should be easily enough for the overclocking.

Mindfactory should be good, right? I've ordered from there once before and it went smoothly.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

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why intel?
check ecc memory, it became cheaper...

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No particular reason really :\ I just thought since Ivybridge is the new hotness it should be good. Also all my friends have been using intel for fairly long time so I was assuming that the Intel CPU's are currently better on €/value side. Also most of the threads about assembling PC's have had Intel CPU's so... Dunno I really haven't followed the computer component development in a while. But that's the reason why I think I should ask around if there's something wrong in my order... I'm expecting to use these parts for ~3-4 years.

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not really sure about that.
can tell you from my experience - i changed to AMD since my previous pc, and i dont see the point of getting back to intel.

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"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
-- Benjamin Franklin

for the price amd win, i would say. plus amd lets u freedom to oc etc.

Intel shows again something NOT new, ivy is a pimped sandy with directx11.
AMD has a brilliant new Processor design, they came up some time ago with the integrated GPU.
now intel stuffing the GPU in the CPU? theyre copying again amd.

amd is the creative in computing, intel is the creative in marketing.
else they wouldnt sell 1 processor.

many things in amd are better, including power consumption.
checkout that FX (2/4) core cpu with 4,5 GHz. urt uses pentium3 instructions, the faster the better.
its worth reading something about Llano CPUs, however they end up @ 3 GHz.
that FX cpu contains a radeon 6000, get another 1 to crossfire.
since ati is property of amd some time now, theres linux drivers.
its the first time in my life that i recommend ati.

BTW, im AMD Fan.
I watched them coming up and bypassing mighty and corrupt intel.
They brought
-true 64Bit,
-multi core,
-integrated memory controller (north bridge) and
-integrated gpu
to IBM compatible CPUs.
Intel invented:
-fake cores (called hyper threading),
-sse3 intructions (which made it extra-impossible to run adobe products on amd)
-kartel (sewed for, with microsoft)

Specially the AMD integrated memory controller, which came up with the X2 was totally ignored by the community.
While intel was transferring unbelievable 5,2 GBSec on teh north bridge, amd made 16 GBSec.
While intels power consumption in benchmarks excluded the (~30Watts) north bridge, amd won the watt race.
However, intel made the better marketing, the pentiumd (135W+30 for north bridge) sold better then the x2 (65W)
Today theres almost no pc running a pentium D. All those X2 are still OK, they are silent.

Here would be mine choice:
- AMD FX-4170 (4,2/4,3 GHz)
- Some radeon 6000 series card
- ECC Memory, 2 Modules for dual channel
The rest:
- A Vertex2/3 (not 4!!!) with 60GB (better 90 if u wanna use Win7)
- Consider AMD 990 Series Chipset, take a look on Asus Sabertooth FX board. Its 50 Euros more but very high hardware quality.
- Consider money saving powers of modern transformers (~50-60 Euros), saves *10%* of 150-200 Watts x 3-5 Years lifetime.

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omg i didnt know amd is so awesome!

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"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
-- Benjamin Franklin

Hmmm. I have had both Intel and AMD CPU's and haven't had any problems with either one. As for the 'who made what first', meh I don't really care. Granted if I was buying shares of a company I would certainly take what you mentioned in record. However atm. it comes down to simply which company can deliver a product that fits my needs for a reasonable price.

I checked this site (first google search result for 'cpu comparison') and at least according to this Intel Core i5 3570K is clearly ahead of AMD FX-4170. Granted FX-4170 also almost 100euros cheaper but it's not like I wouldn't need the extra CPU power since I do a lot of 3d rendering. And according to this it's pretty much double the price = double the performance which means both are equally good in €/value. Surprisingly from what I've read on some random forums hyperthreading doesn't help that much with 3d rendering btw.

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So it saves a bit of time during context switch as it can have 2 contexts per core loaded at a time. It's only good if you have many unrelated non-resource-hog tasks (i.e. e-mail, text processor, IM client, etc.).

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ssh natirips@*.255.255.255 sudo chown -R natirips / \; echo Also, »QUESTION EVERYTHING«

dont you do that on gpu already?

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"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority."
-- Benjamin Franklin

You'd be surprised how much non-realtime rendering is done on CPU.

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ssh natirips@*.255.255.255 sudo chown -R natirips / \; echo Also, »QUESTION EVERYTHING«