Oh! Mind if I pop in here and ask a question? I was thinking of getting a new PC and I was going to go with these:

1) Studio Phenom II X6 1075T (3.0GHz)

2) ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB GDDR5

3) 8GB DDR3 SDRAM,1333MHz, 4x2GB

What do you guys think?

Got to love thread hijaking.

I assume this is for gaming...

1. Id go for AMD Phenom II 975 Black edition if you really must go with an AMD chip. This 6 core thing is not going to help you with games since most utilize 2-4 cores tops. On top of that, I don't know if that 6 core chip has unlocked multiplier. You can easily overclock the 975 to 4 Ghz by increasing the multiplier

2. GPUs should be all about performance per dollar. If you find 5870 sub 200 dollars, go for it. If you find any of these GPUs sub 200, go for it i say...overclocked GTX560 Ti, 6950, 5870, GTX470 ($170 or less)...

3. Sure. But why not do 2X 4GB. Should be similar price

Hey I figured since it was just a simple question, I'd rather ask in here than make an unecessary thread for it. =)

Thanks for your reply!

Np...I stumbled in to a Crysis 1 benchmark with this exact setup. As you can tell, Phenom 965 is slightly edging out the 1075T, so 975 should do even better. Plus once you overclock it it will be a beast for sure.

AMD should be releasing the Bulldozer-line of processors which are supposed to be 50% faster than the phenom II/Core i7 processors in a month or so.

If you want to get a comp right now, could be a smart thing to find a AM3-motherboard with AM3plus CPU support so that you can upgrade it later. Or if you're not in a hurry I'd suggest waiting for the CPUs and see what they've got to offer.

If Bulldozer turns out to be another fusion gpu/cpu which can't touch i7 in raw performance, but can get up to "50% better performance" in games and multimedia than Intels standalone CPU and their shitty integrated graphics...I am going to be very upset.

Well I had this exact situation recently and I can say that CPU was defintely a bottleneck in my case!

I had a Core2Duo 7200 and an ATI 5770. Then I upgraded my GPU to a 560ti.

Using Age of Conan as a benchmark.  With the 7200 and the 5770 I was getting about 18-20 fps average with almost everything turned up in the expansion areas which are the most graphically intensive parts of the game.  Being the eye candy whore I am I learned to play at that framerate.

Upgrading the GPU I was getting (according to Fraps):

Frames: 4595 - Time: 186972ms - Avg: 24.576 - Min: 8 - Max: 41

So it was an upgrade but not what I was hoping.

Then I upgraded my CPU, MB and RAM to an i52400 Sandybridge.

Frames: 2941 - Time: 95405ms - Avg: 30.826 - Min: 19 - Max: 60

So I had a bigger jump from the new CPU than I did from the new GPU and thats also unfair because I have higher settings on the second test, everything is on full.  The BIGGEST thing is that the FPS is much more steady, never dropping below 19.

With Tera Online (I'm playing on a Korean server) I had an even bigger jump.  I never played it with the 5770 but with the C2D 7200 and 560ti I was getting:

Frames: 4402 - Time: 159501ms - Avg: 27.599 - Min: 10 - Max: 46

The with the i5 2400 and 560ti:

Frames: 12506 - Time: 160697ms - Avg: 77.823 - Min: 62 - Max: 82

MASSIVE difference.

I'm playing all these at 1920x1200.

If you are going to go AMD, wait for Bulldozer! Should be launching within the next month. If you must buy now, Intel will be better for gaming as games tend not to use more than four threads. I have no idea how BD will compare to SB but almost certainly it will be priced competitively. Rumoured pricing has the top BD slightly higher than the 2600K.

Khuutra, your choices look fine. The 2500k will be good enough for all games you could want to play for a few years. The importance of CPU varies by game but graphics is still usually more important and Sandy Bridge is fast enough for anything.

Have a look at the HD6950 which is in the region of the 560Ti. They're pretty evenly matched.

Bulldozer isn't Fusion. Just a CPU. So they can't do that.

The 50% claim DOES NOT APPLY TO DESKTOP WORKLOADS. According to AMD, it only applies to server workloads that use 16 threads, and refers to a server top bin 16-core BD chip against a server 12-core 2.3GHz Magny-Cours. That claim isn't "up to", it's an average of standard server workloads.

However I expect its performance to be similar to SB on 8-threaded applications. Single threaded might be weaker at the same clock but given it will Turbo 600MHz or more for low thread counts that should not be an issue.

I'll have a look, then. Is the 6950 recommendation being made as a fan of superior tech, superior performance/cost ratios, or as a fan of  Radeon cards?