Won a Gigabyte P55A UD7

eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
The win's going to accelerate my build schedule slightly, but I'm not sold on LGA 1156 vs. 1366. Most of this is not practicality, but the desire to once in my life own a bombastic gaming rig in the heyday of what I call "the muscle car era" of home computing. Pretty sure as processes shrink my next next build (and every one else's) will be more Honda Civic than Plymouth Roadrunner.

My needs are way more modest than my wants, but the first battle will be between building the P55 with i7 760? 860? 875K? vs. an i7 950 and try to trade the mobo for an X58 UD5.

I don't even want to bring the 1090T into the equation, because I know squat about mobo for those, but it's also at my price point.

Anyone want to proffer advice? Remember 2 things: budget is almost everything, and I tend to upgrade very infrequently so I want something that's going to far outlast the short window of gaming e-penis I can afford because of my windfall.
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Congrats on the win. That's a smoking hot motherboard!

There's nothing out there right now that an i5, 4GB of memory and a good video card can't run at a very nice clip. Even my i3 530 and 5770 both at stock are flying along through just about everything on a 22 inch monitor (1680x1050) as long as I don't let AA get out of control.

I'll be checking out Metro 2033 later tonight and hopefully Assassin's Creed II by the end of the week to see just how soon I'll get the stink eye when I mention upgrading my CPU to my wife but I suspect my video card will be the limiting factor before anything else.

That's the complicated way of saying you can have a screaming rig without breaking the bank or trying to trade off your gear.

I know you said that you don't want to think about the 1090T but if you were entertaining the idea I would save the money and go with a 1055. You can overclock it to 4Ghz although it's not a Black Edition processor so there will be more work involved where there is no unlocked multiplier but you get the same performance for less money. It's a completely different beast than overclocking an Intel setup too so there will be a bit of a learning curve as well. Even a high end Phenom II X4 would do the trick when it comes to gaming.

While I'd like to have the biggest and baddest box on the block I know that I don't need the best of the best in order to do what I do. I'd say evaluate exactly what you plan on doing before you plunk down $300+ on a processor.
 
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DarkStarr

DarkStarr

Tech Monkey
If you don't have a massive budget go AMD, my 955 BE is insane along with my 5750 OCed I can run most things maxed out. Like for example DiRT 2 and COD: MW2 everything else I play is pretty maxed out too and I get 60 FPS in most games at 1080p max settings and I have much more ram then I need for gaming and storage space but it all depends on budgets and preference.
 
eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
DarkStarr said:
If you don't have a massive budget go AMD...
Click to expand...

Thanks! A lot of people are telling me this, but I suppose I'm feeling rich because of the win, so my budget is a little higher for CPU-mobo combinations. The idea is to start on a foundation that will have some shelf life.

Optix said:
It's a completely different beast than overclocking an Intel setup too so there will be a bit of a learning curve as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks also! Hence the pre-build angst. I did most of my homework on triple-channel i7 setups because that's what's advertised most aggressively to gamers, and there's info on every detail of these setups, but starting with a 6-core is intriguing, though I don't need even 4. The UD7 I won is the Cadillac, but will LGA 1156 be the worst of the 3 options when I look back 3 years from now?
 
DarkStarr

DarkStarr

Tech Monkey
I also say AMD for the fact that when they release the next processors they will be AM3r or something, essentially like AM2+ and AM2 meaning you can get AM3 stuff now and then later upgrade. Personally I hate Intel's upgrade options.
 
eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
Thanks again, good article and smart comments. You pretty much make your bed and lie in it with Intel. Like one of the commenters, I likely wouldn't upgrade a CPU-mobo (drives and a second video card are another story) that's why the foundation of this build is giving me fits.
 
Optix

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
I agree, Doomsday. 1156, 1366, 1155, 1157, 20...something.

What happened to the good ol' days of milking a socket for everything it has like 775 or the AM's?
 
Tharic-Nar

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
1156 becomes 1155
1366 becomes 2011
Just waiting for the shear volume of article and review typo's that'll be made. 1366 and 2011 are easy enough to tell apart, higher is better, it's a quad memory controller and PCIe 3.0. 1156 and 1155, that's going to be a problem, the 55 is the newer version with the built in GPU.

I can partially understand the reason for new sockets, people generally don't upgrade their CPU's, unless they're going from a celeron/pentium, to a full blown CPU. Apart from that, people just buy a new system, maybe carry over GPU's, Sound, Drives, etc. Memory depends on if the new system can support it or you need higher densities. You generally want more oomph in a system, not a minor upgrade. Can only upgrade a GPU so many times, can only add so much more memory before you need a new system.

AMD is releasing a new socket as well, AM3+, it just has backwards compatibility, so you can use your existing CPU till prices settle. But you still need a new motherboard and CPU to use it, so there isn't much difference.
 
Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Intel's upgrade paths are ridiculous... huge kudos to AMD for not complicating things. That's a great board you've won though, and right now, LGA1156 is a great platform, and like some have mentioned here, it's not going to go out of date anytime soon. CPUs on that platform have HT, and also great overclocking ability. The only main reason I went with X58 was because I wanted as much RAM as I could pack into the machine... 8GB wasn't enough. I'm kind of an oddball with the way I multi-task and run multiple VM's though.
 
slugbug

slugbug

Coastermaker
I won a P55-UD6 from Gigabyte a few months ago and when I asked if I could exchange it for a board with SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 they said sorry no can do. The board is still in the box waiting for me to get a CPU for it.
 
Tharic-Nar

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
16GB was the limit for 4 slots (4x4), but 4GB modules were still expensive so largely impractical. Thankfully, prices are now coming down to more sane levels (approx. 20-25% premium per GB, used to be around an 800% premium!). People went for 2GB modules due to price and that caps at 8GB. 1366 has an extra 2 slots so it can handle 12GB fine, or 24GB if need be. Technically though, the 4GB per module is an arbitrary limit since modules can have much higher densities, HP for example sells 8GB DDR2 modules for servers. It is just a limitation of the chipset/memory controller, and trying to cover the expense of the modules. For consumers, 8GB of RAM is more than enough... a lot more, and i doubt you'll need more any time soon, at least for the next 2-3 years (by which time we may have the next generation of memory). Unless of course you suddenly take a fancy to Virtualization or 3D rendering, then the you will quickly run into limitations, lol.
 
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eunoia

eunoia

Partition Master
Update!

"Hi Sir,

Due to there's no stock for GA-P55A-UD7, we agree to send GA-X58A-UD5 to you as the prize."

The die is cast!
 
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