Hi!

Im finaly getting a new pc and have been thinking on going with the following setup because i have found quite a good offer on one.

Amd phenom II x4 965BE

2x XFX radeon 6850 factory overclocked

Asus crosshair V formula motherboard

16gb of 1600Mhz ram

XFX 850W 80+ bronze PS

and ill be puttin all this into a HAF 922 case

Im also getting a corsair H100 liquid cooler for the cpu so i would be able to OC it a little.

Im also installing windows 7 ultimate on it

What do you think about this setup and how well would it run the games of today and in the future?
What would you value a setup like this?

It will play Skyrim at high/ultra settings extremely well, It's a good rig.
You can take that Phenom to at least 4.0Ghz with a reasonable cooler, Skyrim needs it.

However, Instead of the xfire 6850's i would have got a single 69**/78** with 2Gb's of Vram, Skyrim is also picky about crossfire & the 6850's will start to choke if you use the official HD textures.

how would it do with other games like bf3,sc2 or diablo?

You are off topin in the forum for Sky rim. You need to be here:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1358707-the-community-tech-thread-no-113/

I don't think a crossfire setup with 6850's is the best choice. Crossfire is situational, in that only some games can really make use of it. Skyrim is not that good of a Crossfire game in my experience. Go with a single powerful card, and then 1-2 years from now buy a 2nd card when they are much cheaper if you really want to Crossfire rather than buying a brand new expensive card. The X4 965 is a good choice for $120, the i5 2500k is better by quite a bit and overclocks much higher, but it's $200. If you really want to future proof the computer, go with an i5 2500k and a $250-350 graphics card, and absolutely search for one with at least 1280mb of Video RAM. 1920x1080 resolutions eat Vram and you'll need the extra for BF3, Skyrim, and many others.

No need for 16gb of RAM but it's fairly cheap so that's up to you. A water cooled i5-2500k could potentially be really great, but water cooling an X4 965 isn't very necessary in my opinion. Most cap at 4ghz or less, which is easily achievable on a $25 air cooling heatsink and fan. Either way, buying only 8gb of RAM and saving $50 with an air cooled heatsink could total an extra $100 to put towards the video card or a solid state drive, or a RAID setup with mechanical drives.

You know, I keep seeing threads about computer builds 2 steps below HAL9000, then look at my 3 year old machine I built for about $700 and think - gee it's about time to update:

ASUS M3A78-T AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

SAPPHIRE 100245L Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

AMD Phenom II X4 920 2.8GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor HDX920XCGIBOX

Oirignally ran Vista 32-bit but I did update to Win7 64-bit.

Yet, I fire it up and it plays Skyrim fine (on High Quality) using the DLC High texture packs and running about 25-30 mods. Only issue is within cities (well really walled villages in Skyrim). When I first enter, then is a bit of a lag (noticed that the HD light is glowing/falshing quite a bit when this occurs). However, that is only for a few seconds, then everything runs fine. I originally had the 360 version and decided to trade for the PC version so I could play with the modding. First thing I noticed running the vanilla PC install was how much better the video quality was than the 360, even with my 'challenged' PC.

I am updating the memory - NE still carries the same memory I originally bought, so I just got another 4 GB taking the total to 8GB (again, I am running W7 64-bit). Next, I'll look at updating the VC. Limited to PCI 2.0 x16, so may have some fun with that.

Definitely agree with Eyeless17. Drop the memory to 8GB and put the money into the VC.

If my friends 7 year old computer with 512 RAM can run skyrim, a toaster can run it. And yes his computer can run it, he had to go into the .ini files to downgrade some settings but otherwise it runs

im thinking about going with a GTX680 or radeon 7970 instead. Is there any other AMD processors that would do a better job?

This article names a few http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106.html

On a 512mb 4850? Really?

Absolutely. When I first built this machine, I was playing Crysis at the time on an older Game Machine build. I could play at high quality for about 2/3 of the game, but had to either downgrade at certain parts, or leave at medium. Also could not run on DX10 (new at the time). With this build above, it ran using DX10 and at ultra high for the entire game. Again for less than $700 (not including case - already had that). When I switched to Skyrim PC in March, I was worried that it wouldn't handle it (even though my machine actually met or surpassed most the game specs), or that I'd have to run at med (or worse) quality. But the game auto set to high quality, and the visuals were stunning - again when I started on the PC the only 'mod' I had was the official High Res DLC. The 360 looked like I was running on a netbook compared to the visuals on my PC. Both are hooked up to the same 'montor' - a Vizio 50" Plasma, PC attached through a VGA connection, the 360 through HDMI. I do have issues in certain areas (mainly the walled hold capitals) where the framerate drops for a bit when initially entering these areas (Riften is the worst, Whiterun runs a close second). During the time the hard drive is accessing like crazy, probably loading the textures. However, I wait 2-10 seconds, then it's fine. I am slowly updating the machine. I just ordered an additional 4GB (2 X 2GB) of the same exact memory from the original build. I will look at updating the VC and Hard drives next. Hard drives aren't a problem but the prices right now are little higher than they should be. The real fun will be finding a new VC. The MB supports PCI x16 2.0 only. Took a quick look at the compatible VCs, but they all seemed to models less powerful than what I have, or fanless half-height card designed more for video playback rather than gaming. Still looking ... I don't plan on doing a total replacement, because if I do, I want to go big (well, semi-big) and will spend way more than I should.

I don't see why that would be an issue?? PCIE 3.0 cards are backwards compatable and there is no performance gain from having a 3.0 compatable motherboard.
EG: the GTX 680 has the same benchmark results when used in both a 2.0 and a 3.0 slot,

ANY pcie card will work, EG: a GTX 560 ti is a superb card and will work on your motherboard, Your choices are really not limited in anyway at all that i can see.

Thanks for the info. As I said initially, I have just starting looking, so I hadn't actually begun to do true research into the VCs beyond the the PCIx16v2 line and found it currently very limited. I usually tend to use AMD/ATI based VCs, but have used nVidia on occasion, so I'll look into the 1 you suggested. I am also a cheap b******, so hopefully it's affordable. Time to look at Newegg again.

Thats what i'm trying to say though, It's not limited at all, ALL pci-e nvidia and ati cards made over the last 9 years will work.

The point of getting this setup is because i would buy it from a friend because he is making an intel build.The price he wants for this set is 400€ wich is a very good price i think.I think im going to buy this setup and then change graphics cards and the processor later.