[Touriqunet]

I have a big dilemma, and i cant solve it myself. I tried googling it but unfortunately no good results.
I might be buying a PC soon, and i dont know whether i should get a PC with the new i7 920 (2.66GHz * 4) processor and an ati 4890 1gb ddr5 card or a quad core Q8200 (2.33GHz * 4) with a nice GTX 295 1.8gb.
The i7 920 PC has 3gb DDR3 1600mhz branded ram, and the Q8200 with GTX 295 has 8gb 1066mhz DDR2 ram (also branded, OCZ)

They both look very nice, but both have good and bad points (by the way, i want to play Crysis maxed out on my 22'' monitor with a 1680x1050 res.)
The i7 is a future-proof processor, but im guessing it would need the 4890 upgraded at a later stage, i cant afford to keep upgrading it.
The Q8200 setup however, has a very good graphics card and i dont think i would need to buy any upgrades for about 3-4 years. But isnt the Q8200 be bottlenecking the GTX 295?

Well thanks anyway for reading my long post, im hoping for some good answers ray:

 

[emosun]

I would go for an i7 setup. Generally you wanna try and get whats newest , and support for that i7 machine will continue much longer then the q8200 would. Both those video cards will easily max out crysis at that res , while the gtx 295 is faster then a 4890 , I would still rather have a newer machine with a slightly slower video card then an older machine with a faster card.

It can be put in simpler terms like saying in 2005 "would you rather have a 478 cpu with a fast card? Or a 775 cpu with a slow card?" Obviously years down the road you would have easily said the 775.

 

[Touriqunet]

Hmmm... i guess youre right, when the Q8200 gets a bit old (at this rate of technology improving, it will soon...) and i decide to change to an i7 CPU it will be like the cost of a whole new PC because of the DDR3 ram i would need to buy, the motherboard compatible of the 1366 socket ... and if i ever do want to upgrade the graphics card, it will be a single purchase which wont cost as much.

Thanks, im still open to more opinions from other people

 

[Wrench97]

The Q8200 is EOL(end of manufacturing life) this month I believe. The Q8400 in July.

 

[Touriqunet]

Oh, thanks for those interesting news, i was wondering why the Q8200 was so incredibly cheap.
I have an option to customize the set i want to buy, just 1 more question, do you guys think the 4890 1gb is faster than the GTX 260 or maybe GTX 275? i might ask the guy seeling it to me to double the ram to make up 6gb 1600mhz DDR3 and maybe a GTX 260 or 275, what do you think the average FPS will be with games like Crysis and CoD4? around 30 for crysis and 100 for cod4?

Thanks again!

 

[emosun]

The 4890 should be actually a little faster then both the 260 and 275. The regular 4870 is on par with a gtx 280.

 

[Touriqunet]

Wow, i didnt expect that. I saw quite a rare GTX 285 yesterday after looking around, its the Sparkle GTX 285 with a stunning 2gb ram. I cant seem to find any reviews of it though, and it might be a hard choice between the Sparkle GTX 285 and the 4890 1gb.
I always wondered, is gameplay different without CUDA and PhysX? All Ati cards dont have either if im correct. So during a game, eg. Crysis, with CUDA and PhysX a tree thats been cut down would fall down more realisticly (if thats even a word lol)
The GTX 285 sparkle with 2gb ddr3 memory is the same price as the 4890 1gb DDR5, but i always prefer geforce cards for their good reputation of drivers and compatibility.
So compared to the Sparkle, which one should i get? the Sparkle is a cheap card compared to other GTX 285 with less memory, and it worries me a bit that it might be one of those badly-performing cards that are low budget

 

[Wrench97]

The Sparkle cards are low budget, EVGA is one of the better Nvida manufacturers.

 

[Touriqunet]

Ah, thats what i thought. So does that mean it looks better on paper than in reality?
Ill go with the 4890 because its got potential for an upgrade, if i bought a GTX card, the motherboard in the pc set isnt compatible of SLI (thats what it says...) but somehow IS compatible with CrossfireX?! its the Asus P6T-SE with 3 PCI-e x16 slots.
Oh, so thanks, you helped me solve my problem, and i decided to go with the Powercolor 4890 1gb. I would still like to hear what the advantage of CUDA and PhysX is ^^