New PC soon!

Sep 1, 2010

Yay! My last PC still runs strong, but it's time to upgrade. Socket 775 is finally at that point where it's safe to call it a dead end. Socket LGA1156 and even socket LGA1366 are here to stay. The Core 2 architecture is dated and Intel's i3, i5 and i7 processors are where the real performance is at! The new systems don't even use front side bus anymore. I had no freaking clue. The processors now communicate with memory/graphics directly. The Core i3, which is the most budget-friendly of Intel's current lineup, puts even Core 2 Quad performance to shame! It's built on a 32nm process, runs cool and packs a ton of punch. It has 4mb of L3 cache, it's own integrated memory controller, it's own discreet GPU that runs at 733mhz(!!!), and runs at 2.93ghz (easily overclockable to 3.0ghz and much higher - the i3 chips are downclocked so you won't even need to apply any additional voltage to get to 3.0ghz).

Anyways...I've chosen i3 over i5 and i7. Quite simply - it's cheap, and the performance has been rated and reviewed to be awesome. The price to performance ratio of the i3 makes the i3 an absolutely ideal solution for the budget-minded. It performs as well as i5, is built on a newer manufacturing process than i7, and has built-in support to decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA bit streaming over HDMI...which is EXTREMELY important to me, as I use my machines secondarily as multimedia centers.

I'm rambling now. Anyways, here's what I'm upgrading to (thanks to Trillance [www.trillance.com]...the very awesome photographer who gives me the honor of working for him):

-Cooler Master Elite 335 case
-Raidmax Hybrid 2 530W modular power supply
-EVGA P55V SLI-ready motherboard
-Intel Core i3-530
-4gb Mushkin Silverline DDR3-1333(mhz) (PC3-10666) RAM

I'll be tossing in my 9800GT (1gb, 600mhz, PCIe 2.0), and work on getting a second 9800GT to run in SLI mode.

I can't wait! It's been a year since I put together my last machine.

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