Originally posted by sammorris:

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The i5 750 has no HT. In my mind, that's almost a good thing. By not including it, look at how much cheaper the CPU is, and it outperforms the much more expensive i7 920 in games.
The coolers for the i5 are slowly improving - you can get basic midrange level coolers from various manufacturers now, and Thermalright are now producing coolers for the i5 based off the Ultra-120A (not the extreme) but with pushpins rather than a backplate. Not sure I approve, but it's still a far better cooler than the others that are currently out there. I believe Noctua have adjusted their NH-U12 to work with i5s as well, so the cooler range is almost covered for i5s now.
To say that the basic i5 boards are featureless is complete nonsense, unlike with AM2+ or 775 there are no featureless motherboards, since i5 takes the middle ground between exclusively high end (i7) and mainstream (775/AM2+) so while there are expensive boards and reasonable boards, there are no cheap bad ones. Yes, the cheapest i5 boards don't offer much beyond your average board, but that's because they are average midrange boards, and are priced accordingly. I can get a decent enough P55 board from Gigabyte like the US3L for less than a P5Q-E or P5Q Pro, less than the TPower I45 as well. That's not bad.
As you've seen, you can pretax a system for as little as $385 for the CPU, board and RAM. Foxconn boards like that are reasonably basic, and while I wouldn't perhaps choose the cheapest RAM, I would have no concerns using basic RAM from a better brand and producing a basic i5 system with it, that's a lot of performance for that much money.
The P55M-UD2 you have there is a good example of what I'm on about - it's the cheapest Gigabyte board in the UK, and yet it's had the i5 750 at a 50% overclock to 4Ghz. It's still got two 16x PCIe ports, 10 rear USBs and an eSATA, along with the usual optical audio out and so on. Stuff like this in a MicroATX format is pretty high-grade specifications. The ability to run dual graphics in a microATX system is very powerful, never mind the fact that it overclocks well to boot, and is the cheapest board on offer.

Shaff: I modified the Win7 taskbar to look more like Vistas. It's an option somewhere, but I forget where it was.

Omega: If you encode WMVs, you want a Phenom II (assuming you won't overclock, else then the Phenom still loses to the i5), but other than that, the i5s and i7s are in a league of their own still at the moment.
Russ: I don't think DVD quality has anything to do with video memory, it's more likely to be with the image optimisations of the newer cards. The old geforce 7 series was still the tail end of nvidia's 'sacrifice image quality for performance' era. Only the GTX200 series (not the 250 though obviously) and above truly rids us of that - and that is one of the reasons I think why it was so even between nvidia and ATI in the 2008 generation stuff.

Omega again: I'm always an administrator. I forget how I did it, but I've never been told 'you need to run this as administrator' - everything runs as administrator for me. The main things that bug me about Win7 are that it's blatantly Vista service pack 3 - and they've given it a new name solely due to how many people refused to buy Vista. Any of the problems they solved are negated by the fact that everything has been moved around needlessly and is more difficult to find - it's like Vista is a supermarket with a pretty shoddy image. It gets taken over and changes its name so lots of people go there, but they moved everything around - and because you always used to shop there, it bugs you!

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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True, when you consider what say the US3L offers compared to the UD4, it doesn't seem like much extra to get more stuff on it, but then again, that does rather go against the whole argument of cheap PCs that many people are pushing these days. It isn't much more to step up from a dual core to a quad core for example, or get a better graphics card etc. Add them all together though, and the price skyrockets without warning!

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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So far, I don't really know anyone who's had good fortune with NICs in Windows 7 - be it the Realtek chipset Gigabytes use, the Marvell from Asus/DFI or the nForce LAN adapter.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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1366 came out first as that was the initial high-end platform. It allows the full 6 channel memory control and was the business-style prototype for the i5.
Will: Boards don't play anywhere near as much a part in quad core overclocking since 775. Remember 775 was FSB limited, i5s and i7s work completely differently - the cheapest boards can still get big overclocks, you don't need an expensive one for that any more.

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Originally posted by bigwill68:

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My Question is Y did Intel come out with the 1366 pin first b4 the 1156 pin is'nt that kinda backwards? now provider is scambling to make a decent heatsink to fit the cpu right and cool it properly..I don't feel right using those adapters either that's extra money that can be used on a good Quality 1...i'm gonna wait until the beginning of the year to build a 1156 rig by that time atlease the i5 will be alittle down in cost Micro Center got it now for $179 they always out do the egg in cost of cpu's but don't carry as must as the egg.that's something they need to work on...

@Russ

i think you would like the P55-UD4P better ,alot of people...I know got the old P45-DS3R and wished they bought the UD3P instead just because of the luck other people are having with Q9550 & the Q9650 onboard in the oc catagory

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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965P-DS3, not DS3R :P
But yeah, the P35-DS3R is one of the boards that in my opinion, really got gigabyte noticed. The combination of that and its predecessor the 965P-DS3 catapulted Gigabyte towards their current status from nowhere.
In all honesty, I see the i5 750 as a mainstream to the i7 series, and a very good one, and for that it will be the most popular of all. The i7 860 is essentially an 'i7 930' between the 920 and 940 - it is suitably priced and has all the features of a full-fat i7 but at a lower price, and still overclocks fabulously well. I can see that being a good seller. Sales for the 870 will be weaker due to the higher thermal requirement for overclocking with limited extra gains, and much higher price. That plus, for that sort of money, an i7 CPU makes more sense. The 750 and 860 are in my mind the best offerings.

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