HTPC for gaming at 1080p

[Ramonchino]

Hi!

I'm building this PC for my saloon. I hope it can eat at least 1920x1080 on every game.

Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P Socket AM3
AMD Phenom II 720 Triple Core 2.8Ghz Black Edition AM3 Box (creo que es muy overclockeable)
Mushkin Extreme EM3-10666 DDR3 1333 4GB 2x2GB
Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA2 MAESTRO
Sapphire HD 4870x2 2GB GDDR5 PCI-e
Fuente Alim. Corsair TX 750W
Vista 64bits
Sony Bravia 46" 46X2000

What do you think?

Should I set LCD refresh 60hz or 50hz?

Thanks.

[Richard_Rahl]

Do not go for AMD in case of a gaming pc. And in the topic title you said the pc will (also) act as a home theater pc, so make sure it is silent enough. A HD 4870X2 will get hot as hell, so the cooling will be quite active I think.

[fast1]

why would the AMD not be good?

[Gazz]

Performance wise Intel is simply better. When you look at price/performance AMD is the undisputed winner there. Whatever you choose, don't forget to get a custom cooling solution instead of the one that comes with the processor.

As far as your videocard goes. The 4870 is an excellent card. Don't make the mistake of assuming that the 4890 is also just as good. I have not seen any benchmarks with the latest drivers yet, but Nvidia's new card seems to beat it for now. Both are priced about equally. I would however like to stress out that results mayt differ enormous on the latest drivers. The bench I saw was AMD 9.3 drivers (9.4 is out already and 9.5 is around the corner) vs the latest beta drivers of Nvidia, so later tests may show completely different results and may go so far as to kicking Nvidia's ass.

Don't forget to get a good soundcard. X-fi or something. They take away a lot off stress from your processor and simply give way better sound. A shame that the importance of a good soundcard is so often overlooked. Even the most hardcore overclockers and graphics junkies here ignore the importance and undisputable performance gain (overall gain that is) in gaming.

[Richard_Rahl]

Originally Posted by Gazz

Performance wise Intel is simply better. When you look at price/performance AMD is the undisputed winner there. Whatever you choose, don't forget to get a custom cooling solution instead of the one that comes with the processor.

The Phenom II uses more energy then equivalent Intels a.f.a.i.k., so I am not sure wheter AMD is really that price/performance wise in case of their high-end models (--> energy bill).
And lets not forget that a lot of games run at least as fast on a >3GHz dual core compared to a <3GHz triple/quad core. Most games are not multithreading well enough to have much speed increase when having 1 or 2 extra cores. So I think you should take an Intel Core2 Duo E8400 or E8500 into consideration. Those cost about the same, but they are at least equally fast in most games and are using less energy (--> cheaper in use).

[whitealexander]

AMD is good for gaming.. just need too have a nice cooling system...

Does AMD isn't that good?..