Sandy Bridge is Back

[madmattd]

Indeed, Microcenter pricing on CPUs pwns anyone else's, they price-compare twice a week to make sure they are beating Newegg, TigerDirect, and so on. They've got one near me, fun place. I was confused by your tax from Newegg until I realized you are from NJ...I'm sorry

The i5-2500k looks like an awesome chip. The fact that it nearly matches even the previous gen 6-core CPU's from Intel (and we know that those crush anything AMD has, though are VERY overpriced) is insane. The only difference between the i5-2500k and the i7-2600k is that the i7 has hyperthreading and 2MB extra L3 cache. For over $100 more. I've recommended the i5 to a co-worker who is looking to replace his 10-year old Dell desktop, lol (he will be building it with Microcenter goodies I am sure, he is an instant gratification type). There is not a better price/performance on the market right now. AMD's 6-cores aren't even in the ballpark in performance at practically the same price point.

Now maybe AMD will respond with something good.

By the way, I did order my laptop, it came in Thursday, 2 weeks before Dell said I would get it (and over a week before they were going to ship). I'm going to do some gaming tests today, unfortunately the screen does not even support 1280x1024 so I cannot run Vantage, even at other resolutions (fail programming). But so far I am very happy with it. Specs in sig. WEI: 7.5 CPU, 5.9 RAM (wtf...1333 MHz...), 5.8 Aero, 6.9 gaming, 5.9 HDD. On the dedicated card of course. It has ridiculous sound too for laptop speakers. Empty second HDD bay so I can add a SSD at some point down the road. Too bad it had 75 processes out of the box...reformatted and even with Steam and crap installed it is only 65 now. GG bloatware...

Enjoy your toy Computah, looks like a nice system core you've got there.

[IM A COMPUTAH]

Indeed, Microcenter pricing on CPUs pwns anyone else's, they price-compare twice a week to make sure they are beating Newegg, TigerDirect, and so on. They've got one near me, fun place. I was confused by your tax from Newegg until I realized you are from NJ...I'm sorry

The i5-2500k looks like an awesome chip. The fact that it nearly matches even the previous gen 6-core CPU's from Intel (and we know that those crush anything AMD has, though are VERY overpriced) is insane. The only difference between the i5-2500k and the i7-2600k is that the i7 has hyperthreading and 2MB extra L3 cache. For over $100 more. I've recommended the i5 to a co-worker who is looking to replace his 10-year old Dell desktop, lol (he will be building it with Microcenter goodies I am sure, he is an instant gratification type). There is not a better price/performance on the market right now. AMD's 6-cores aren't even in the ballpark in performance at practically the same price point.

Now maybe AMD will respond with something good.

By the way, I did order my laptop, it came in Thursday, 2 weeks before Dell said I would get it (and over a week before they were going to ship). I'm going to do some gaming tests today, unfortunately the screen does not even support 1280x1024 so I cannot run Vantage, even at other resolutions (fail programming). But so far I am very happy with it. Specs in sig. WEI: 7.5 CPU, 5.9 RAM (wtf...1333 MHz...), 5.8 Aero, 6.9 gaming, 5.9 HDD. On the dedicated card of course. It has ridiculous sound too for laptop speakers. Empty second HDD bay so I can add a SSD at some point down the road. Too bad it had 75 processes out of the box...reformatted and even with Steam and crap installed it is only 65 now. GG bloatware...

Enjoy your toy Computah, looks like a nice system core you've got there.

I found a whole lot of coupons from microcenter that I used otherwise the prices wouldn't have been nearly so good. Slickdeals is the best for coupons. I used: $25 off any Intel mobo, 10% off any PCI video card, $15 LG Burner (original price $40), & 10% off any case. I also found a decent 1 TB Mechanical HD that WD is trying to clear out so I got that.

Newegg currently has a better deal on a video card, but I'm too lazy to return: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread ... &t=2766265

Deal on the Hard Drive: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread ... &t=2752655

Microcenter Coupons: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread ... &t=2747681
The better deal would be the WD hard drive.

[madmattd]

I still have to laugh at Sata 3 spinners...the good ones can't even hit 50% of Sata 2 speeds...

I'll keep slickdeals in mind, though Microcenter is pretty reasonable for in-store pricing to begin with. I'll also let my co-worker know. The one by me just got a crapload of 6-series boards in yesterday, they went from 4 models in stock to like 13.

I'm getting over 100 fps pretty steady on my laptop in TF2 at 1600x900, everything maxed except no AA. That's a fair bit better than I was expecting. Now I can play with you all when I am not at home during trips/whatever! (maybe not a good thing for you all? lol.)