mamecade I hear ya.. I used to go with top of the line stuff on all my builds but the fact i was doing it every year made it impractical from a price point .. And extra $1000 in my retirement fund every year starting at 35 is a heck of alot of money at 65+ :) DANG that AGE thing.. pre 35 I would have never thought that :) And of course the fact that i game 95% of the time with my home PC (my work PC (thankfully I get to pick and build those too, and not pay for them) does all the ..err work) I no longer go top of the line, I go best bang for buck... and this time.. just a BANG it seems :) My new system looks a bit like yours.. I only started with 8M of ram (but have slots to add 8 more.. it is cheap enough now, and dang it you got me thinking now!. 5870's in cross fire and my big step up was a 128 SDD, swap my old raid Raptors my OS was on over to my "fast" gaming partition.. though right now I am sitting waiting for people to load 99% of the time anyways (wow, L4D2, etc..) Your system is a bit more like what I use at work (err. same CPU less ram (8m again) and ALOT LESS video card (quadros for 4 monitors) I did OC mine to 4 (waste of time, it only gained me a bout 2FPS in crysis when I drug my video cards to work and hooked it up to test but Im not 100% sure the PSU was enouhg, may have had issues there).
You wont need an upgrade for a long time with your setup, you run neck and neck with the 2600K on most stuff and are ahead in some of the pure number cruching stuff, and I think the memory controler is still a bit faster on those chips. Me I was still on a 2 core E8400 at 4.2 (or was it 4.4?) played pretty much any game, I didnt need an upgrade, unless you feel s cores inst enough (right now on 90% of everyting it is, but there are more and more multi core things comming).. but the tinkering and OC potential of that shiney new chip (and the ability to upgrade to a SDD, etc..) got the better of me. So i bite the bullet and got bit back it seems. Of course I have been out of the upgrade loop for about 3 years (longest I have ever lasted) and just started researching an upgrade about a month ago.. Im so out of the loop nowdays so if any of my "figureing" on benchs is way off forgive me.
I think you are right.. its a BUG for sure..
But the Sandybridge problem isnt quite as bad as most make it.. New product with a flaw=BAD! no doubt about it. But its just the SATA II connections, the SATA III are fine and a $25 SATA III add in card is a temp solution until a new updated chipset board. Newegg sent me a Email saying I could RMA now or wait until the new replacement boards where in and RMA then, they will send an email when they are in stock. So overall, annoying, but still 100% useable.
mamecade I hear ya.. I used to go with top of the line stuff on all my builds but the fact i was doing it every year made it impractical from a price point .. And extra $1000 in my retirement fund every year starting at 35 is a heck of alot of money at 65+ :) DANG that AGE thing.. pre 35 I would have never thought that :) And of course the fact that i game 95% of the time with my home PC (my work PC (thankfully I get to pick and build those too, and not pay for them) does all the ..err work) I no longer go top of the line, I go best bang for buck... and this time.. just a BANG it seems :) My new system looks a bit like yours.. I only started with 8M of ram (but have slots to add 8 more.. it is cheap enough now, and dang it you got me thinking now!. 5870's in cross fire and my big step up was a 128 SDD, swap my old raid Raptors my OS was on over to my "fast" gaming partition.. though right now I am sitting waiting for people to load 99% of the time anyways (wow, L4D2, etc..) Your system is a bit more like what I use at work (err. same CPU less ram (8m again) and ALOT LESS video card (quadros for 4 monitors) I did OC mine to 4 (waste of time, it only gained me a bout 2FPS in crysis when I drug my video cards to work and hooked it up to test but Im not 100% sure the PSU was enouhg, may have had issues there).
You wont need an upgrade for a long time with your setup, you run neck and neck with the 2600K on most stuff and are ahead in some of the pure number cruching stuff, and I think the memory controler is still a bit faster on those chips. Me I was still on a 2 core E8400 at 4.2 (or was it 4.4?) played pretty much any game, I didnt need an upgrade, unless you feel s cores inst enough (right now on 90% of everyting it is, but there are more and more multi core things comming).. but the tinkering and OC potential of that shiney new chip (and the ability to upgrade to a SDD, etc..) got the better of me. So i bite the bullet and got bit back it seems. Of course I have been out of the upgrade loop for about 3 years (longest I have ever lasted) and just started researching an upgrade about a month ago.. Im so out of the loop nowdays so if any of my "figureing" on benchs is way off forgive me.
I think you are right.. its a BUG for sure..
But the Sandybridge problem isnt quite as bad as most make it.. New product with a flaw=BAD! no doubt about it. But its just the SATA II connections, the SATA III are fine and a $25 SATA III add in card is a temp solution until a new updated chipset board. Newegg sent me a Email saying I could RMA now or wait until the new replacement boards where in and RMA then, they will send an email when they are in stock. So overall, annoying, but still 100% useable.