Again, thanks for the helping hand. If it doesn't explode in an orange fireball when I plug it in I'll PM you as to how it worked!

@tdw,
you and me sound like on the same level as building computers. now heres some questions... i had two 570s SLIed in my last build. so this build im actually thinking about doing a single gpu setup this go round. so your saying that the 500 such as a 560 will do just fine? and how do you feel about the asus z77 notherboards because it looks like i can get some good deals on those. how do you feel about the i5s and 3 cuz i had a i7 so i dont know how i feel about back stepping to those. thanks for your replies.

Two 570s SLI'd will kill any single 500 series card except the 590. Compare the 600 series cards to your SLI'd 500 series...it's quite interesting the results. I'm holding out on buying the 690 because my current motherboard only supports PCI-X 2.0 spec and in order to use the full potential of the 690 you need PCI-X 3.0 spec. The 590 is a great card - I've had mine for over a year and am very happy with it. If you're going to go single GPU from an SLI setup of 500 series or less I would definitely go with the GTX680. If the GTX680 is too pricey next in line for me would be my current card, GTX590.

The Asus z77 motherboards are killer if you're building an Intel setup. The z77s will fully utilize SSDs to their full potential. My current motherboard is only letting my RAID 0'd OCZs max out at 584MB/s whereas the same RAID0 setup on a z77 is cranking out over 1000MB/s :huh:

The I7 is an amazing processor. I have a 2.8GHz I7 in my Qosmio laptop. It smokes my AMD X6 1100T BE. The 1100T is OC'd at 4.1GHz currently and the I7 in my laptop still outperforms it at 2.8GHz. You can never go backwards in computer hardware! You must always go forwards. If you have an I7 why would you want to step backwards into an I5 or an I3? Why is the I7 so much better? Mostly because it has a higher IPC (instructions per clock). This means it's able to crunch more numbers (do more work) per clock than the AMDs (hence why the I7 in my laptop outperforms my 1100T in my gaming system even though the 1100T is clocked 1.3GHz higher).

There are more factors as to why the I7 is superior to AMDs line of processors but they mainly deal with the processor's architecture (pipeline depth, number of ALUs, branch prediction, cache size, types of cache used, etc.). I may sound like an Intel fanboy but I'm not - I love AMD because of the value I get for the money spent. AMD realized that they couldn't do the same amount of work per clock as Intel (IPC) so they did what they had to do - increase the GHz of their processors to stay 'competitive'.

Have you ever read any documents on processor architecture? It's quite fascinating reading, well at least to me it is. How many of you know that the processor has it's own microcode contained in it (akin to BIOS)? I've always wanted to read out this microcode from the CPU but I've never found anything that references how to access this 'memory' :hmmm:

hmm, that may be the direction ill go but it can be quite pricy in the terms of just wanting to run sh5 smoothly. thats practicly the only pc games ill play now(wife and kid not a bacholar here) because i get carried away. i do believe a computer with a i7 860 2nd gen. with a 570 superclocked and 8 gigs of ram should be able to run SH5 as i had no problems with the computer i sold. im waiting on buying SSDrives because the money vs space even with RAID doesnt balance out. 80 bucks and you get a 1T these days. im defintly going to research some more on that setup above. money will be an issue and when i say i got rid of my computer that means i have to build one to whole which means keyboard,mouse,speakers,monitor/s, and tower. so it will be hard convincing my wife of this as thats why i had to sell my computer before and it almost drove us to a divorce, but as of now ive grown a little older and more responsible with my time so we'll see.:up: i was actually considering a whole AMD setup because of the price and thats what i want to know is basing it between Intel/Nvidia Vcard and AMD/AMD Vcard. so what would it take to run SH5 with AMD products?:06:

I run an AMD setup (CPU) with an nVidia card. I would think a good quality Asus AMD motherboard with an AMD 965BE or an X1100T CPU and a good 500 series video card would suit you well. Somebody from here upgraded their video card (was either a 200 or 400 series) to a 500 series (570?) and they were absolutely thrilled with it.

Something else to think about:

If you sign up to be a preferred member with Newegg.com you can get 12 months no interest financing on orders over $500. This can greatly help with the purchase of a new system :yep: I always take advantage of this - give me 12 months to pay with no interest - sure!

I think it was me.I went from 260 togtx 580 it has run perfect for almost a year now.

well im very well aware of how the 500s performe. i had three 9800 gtx 512s 3wayed at first in my computer and they still would lag slighty with SH5. then i baught those two 570 superclocked and ran them together and i found my bottleneck and SH5 didnt even flinch, flicker, or nothing. smooth. it was like night and day. i am curious about the Radeons and which ones are suited for SH5 but im a huge Nvidia fan and ive check the prices for on Radeons that would compare to 2 570s and it gets really pricey.

sh5 isnt a very demanding game. i have a gts250 , 4gb ddr2 ram, and a 1st gen quad core. i run the game maxed out and have no problems. the rigs u guys seem to talk about seem more applicable to cliffs over dover.

but building bigger and better is always fun.

when deciding on a systems specs its not as bad as it used to be (outdated before its built) but there is a level where your not going to be spending much more to get the better components so you really do NEED to build the best you can within your budget and build for more then your needs today so newer games dont leave you behind.

heck with the release of sh3 a system with any single core and 2 gigs ram with a 512mb video card was an advanced computer and dual cores were considered over kill where today it is a very limited system as far as gaming goes

money is tight so the rule of thumb i use is whatever was the ultimate best there was 2 years ago i start with those specs and after 2 years the prices usually come back down to earth for those components so it can usually be done for equal to or less then you spend on the average dell or hp pre-built setups ($1,000) yet get something you would have to pay double what you spent on it to buy it pre-built that way

well this is why im stressing the point of im really only going to be playing the SHunter series. im not considering my build based on the future of upgrading it later. im trying to narrow my decision based on what i need just to run those games because that really is the only thing i can play over and over. i do play some games again but not like SH3,4,5. i really do not see a SH6 coming out at all being that the SH Online is being released. I apsolutly love the graphics in SH5 and the pics you all have posted that ive seen are amazingly beautiful for what it was a couple of years ago. SH5 has become the next SH3 for the generations wether we want it to or not. i know the sh4 community has desputed this as i dont like to see one of our SH series just be left alone like SH4 was because of SH5, but it happens. not a big deal. but my main focus is to spend my money wisely for exactly what i need it to do for the next 20 years or how ever long it takes me to get completely tired of playing SHunters under the sharp eyes of my wife, lol.:oops:

Get the best mobo you can afford .
Get the best psu you can afford .
windows 7 64 bit .
8 gigs of ram.
Gaming mouse .
Get a large case , the larger it is the cooler it will be inside .
Get a fast single gpu .
Get 2 ssd , 1 for the operating system and 1 for sh games .
Get a hdd for everything else .
Get yourself a good set of headphones , i use bose .

just to clarify my comments,

i wasnt refering to upgrading options for later since as we all know its rare anyone really does that other then maybe a video card or if you do find you want to upgrade later its often not very practicle to do it.

my comments were based on getting the most out of the system "as built" for the long term (hopefully 6-10 years)

sobers recommendations are good but i think you "could" make do with only 4 gigs of ram but 8 would be best if the cost isnt that bad and just getting one regular sata III hdd with high cache speed will serve you nicely and save you some money there if you arent planning to do newer games or extra fast loading isnt necessary

a little heads up - i havent been following computer tech very closely lately so maybe someone else can inform which board setup is better but there are some boards that MUST use a set of 3 ram chips and some MUST use 2 in pairs so i dont know what the advantage is or even if there is one depending on the design you choose but be aware the board you choose tells you if you need to buy ram in sets of 3 or in pairs

i do thank you all for your responses and i do have til the end of the year to decide all this. chances are i probably will do an ASUS mother board as TDW is defintly correct as i have also heard from my oldtimers that built computers back in the day that ASUS is very reliable. ill find an intel cpu that fits my speed and 8 gigs of ram is not pricey and most likely ill do a 500 series nvidia as i know their performance. if the prices are right i might do the 600 series. again thank you for you responses.

regards,
drakkhen20:salute:

Intel setups use triple channel which is the 3 ram sticks (I'm not sure if this is a must or a can use as I've never built an Intel setup)
AMD setups can use dual channel which is the 2 ram sticks

Since we are on this topic what do you guys think of this build? I was really looking at it for SH4 but how do you guys think it will run 5? I'm talking the 500$ build. I'm thinking it will smoke SH4, since it's a 2007 game and at least play SH5 ok.

http://newbcomputerbuild.com/newb-co...e-2012/#build1