So i've just ordered 3 new components off of NCIX.com (the canadian newegg) and i wanna see what you noobs think of em. are I leetsauce? or am i noobfodder?

Processor: Intel i5 750 "Lynnfield" LGA 1156 socket quadcore,  no Hyper threading. 

So i'm thinking that this is the right way instead of the i7 LGA 1366 path, cause after doing alot of reading i've found out that the i5's are actually alot more advanced than the i7. 

CONS: no upgrade path, no gulftown hex core (LGA 1366 only), and only 16x total lanes for the PCI-E controller. if you only run one graphic card, it's perfect, but SLI or Crossfire will reduce each card to 8x lanes. (or 16x on one, and an additional 4x handled by the mobo chipset on the bottom one, super laggy)

PROS: the PCI-E bus is now handled by the CPU, so now that's all internal alongside the RAM controller, making that actually faster than the original i7 models. all the motherboard has to handle nowadays is glorified southbridge functions, like hard and optical drives, usb, ethernet, etc. Also Intel has gotten alot more bullish with their "Turbo Mode" since their first attempt with the first-gen Nehalems, these new Lynnfields can auto-OC themselves about double what the old ones could. but all of that might get disabled if i do my own OC, haven't decided yet. 

Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D

i went for the $140 vanilla version, not the lite version, but not the pro either. great tradeoff, and GREAT 12+2 phase power, which should make overclocking very stable and amazing. the better versions of this board come with internal power/reset swirches, and a buzzer, i don't think that i'm missing much.

Also, the heatsinks overtop of the dope ass 12+2 phase power (around the cpu socket) look like superman's fortress of solitude. oh, and it actually had one IDE thingy, which is pretty much legacy nowadays, but great for my old ass optical and HDD.

can't wait to try overclocking this bitch, people say that it's the easiest OC they've ever done, getting 3.8ghz without breaking a sweat, i had one of the old Q6600 GO's but it was bunk, and didn't hold an OC over 2.7. 

RAM: Patriot Sector 5 PGV34G1600ELK 4GB DDR3 2X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 9-9-9-24

So i got OCZ with my last build and wasn't that impressed, so i'll take a gamble on some patriots. Even though the lynnfields are officially rated at only 1333, i got em some 1600, so that i can have some headroom in either push up the bandwidth, or tightening up the timings. anyone ever used Patriot before?

So yeah i got all of this for under $500 and that's $500 crappy canadian dollars. you amuricans could probably do alot better. should arrive on friday, and hopefully i don't have to do a whole OS re-install (planning on doing it for BC2 release) just to get it up and running, shouldn't be a problem.

LOTS OF WORDS! oh well, comment if you'd like, i wanna know if anyone out there has a better idea of what the ideal system to build right now on a budget would be. Especially cause i've already ordered my shit and there's no going back. But i think that there are a few guys who might be looking at an upgrade themselves, so we should pool knowledge and figure out what's teh best planz. the only one i'm skeptical about is my RAM, but we'll see, doesn't have to look flashy. 

You nubs are jumping the gun on upgrading. Unless you average 20fps just wait till release. You remeber how Frontlines was in beta then the final patch that was the RC was twice as fast.

Yeah I think mine were at like 75% load on low so it wasnt even max load I need to turn it to high to check it.

i hear what your'e sayin turis, i guess when i go over my history for the last week i can post some stuff in this thread. i've been looking at benchmarks out the wazoo lately, like it's sad, i need help. it's all i do, i haven't played a game in 4 days, i spendd 7-8 hours a day looking at tech specs. not saying that i know anymore than anyone else, but from what i've read, some people get gimped with dual cores on this game, some people rock with them (when they're oc'd it seems).

here's some data of someone running the bad company 2 on a dual core e8000 series cpu OC'd to 3.4 i think. note that it isn't even fully taxing both cores:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/screenshots/original/2010/01/185488d1264712648-sammelthread-battlefield-bad-company-2-bc2-beta.jpg

^^ copy link and paste to new window, it's being gay

imo, it's not worth it to upgrade to an almost obsolete technology. i don't know about a %5 per gen law, but what i'm seeing is 45-50% frame boost from my stock q6600 to a stock i5 750. both similar clock speeds. (also the 750 is cheaper than the q9550 that you're talking about, almost $100 cheaper)  not %5. of course this is all with current-gen graphic hardware. the big thing is that current graphic cards are insanely throttled by older cpus. even core2quads. trust me, i have exactly that. i have an ati 5870, and a q6600 quad right lightly OC'd, i get the same frames per second at the lowest settings as the highest settings. i know that that sounds crazy, but it's true. i get the same FPS at 640x480 at all low, as with 1920x1200 at all high (medium for beta). the graphic card isn't even being challenged yet. all cause the cpu doesn't have the power to keep it fed. it's da 2th yo

...cause you don't gotta take my word for it, read any review on the internet, the i7 and i5 series is the biggest technological step forward in performance since the introduction of the pentium. (how's that for marketing speak?) don't dismiss it though, i'm a diehard AMD fan, but i've been following the development of these new intel chips on paper since they were announced in 2005. now that they're out, the amount of kickass per clock cycle is significantly more. i'd think of upgrading from a dualie to a quad of the same tech to be more like a 5-10% boost if you're lucky.

we are talking specifically game benchmarks here, not how fast you can encode an mp3 either, could care less about that. this is what this can do for me, the fps gamer. the performance gain by spending 600 dollars or more vs just plopping down 100 dollars (cause i can sell my dual) is just not worth it for 15% if that.

P.S. 5-10% difference. If that and sometimes less on some games and thats with the i7(althou lower i7's) .

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread...2067 

alright, you got a point, i was always looking towards the q6600 as my baseline for core2quad comparisons as that's what i have, and it is about a %50 boost from what i got. 

also, things like crysis aren't really multicore, they said that quads work better, but that's mostly BS, it was a intel cashgrab at the time.

it's looking like BC2 PROBABLY likes at least 3 cores, but i've definately seen people with dualies with either 10fps, or actually getting 50 like everyone else. 

well, for $100 seems like a good upgrade, i'm with your bro though, i wouldn't ever suggest SLI, better to get some cash for the old one, and get a better singlecard.

i wonder how the 8800's will handle the actual release, forcing DX9 seems to work well from what i've read. i'll have a second box with an 8800 and my old q6600, so i might get another copy of the game, so that i can run a mini cafe. 

EDIT: Reading back through the posts I see it was just a CPU upgrade.