Audley's Upgrade Build Project

[d3monic]

  On 9/29/2015 at 8:21 PM, Quinnbeast said:

'Upgrading' from an i5 Haswell to an i5 Haswell isn't likely the way to go for workstation use, or even gaming use, depending on the game. Of course, you can certainly get a good deal more performance from the K chip with the right CPU cooler, but my gut feeling is that it's a fair outlay to be moving to a chip with exactly the same architecture and a few more mhz. Personally, I'd either go the whole-hog to an i7 (assuming you can justify the cost and the software you use will make full use of the hyper-threading) or stick with the 4670 and enjoy the extra responsiveness of a good SSD and the extra bananas* of the faster GPU.

 

* Insert preferred unit of measure.

That's definitely true if you're trying to squeeze every bit of available performance out. My goal is to update from an ancient 2007 build and get the best performance/price ratio available on the market while I do it, so my choices may appear modest by comparison.

[echo451]

  On 9/29/2015 at 5:36 PM, z929669 said:

Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) pertains to the components of any hardware. Much hardwre is rebranded by a label or outsourced by a designer to an OEM.

Licenese for windows come in two forms. OEM and what you can buy at Staples. At least they use to.

 

Someone builds a machine and installs an OEM version of windows. 

 

If Audely is upgrading and they are already running WIN8.1 then I was curious about the $100 set aside for the WIN10.

 

Was it an inability to upgrade the license.

[GrantSP]

  On 9/29/2015 at 2:46 PM, z929669 said:

Yes, me!

Good enough, sure, but not as good as offloading the task to an expansion card if you have the slots, especially if you are interested in more advanced capabilities. Agree it is probably negligible for basic HT sound, but it is consistent within the larger paradigm, so I do it.

 

Refs:

https://www.tested.com/tech/569-integrated-vs-dedicated-sound-cards-whats-the-real-difference/

https://techreport.com/review/23358/asus-budget-xonar-dgx-and-dsx-sound-cards-reviewed

https://techreport.com/blog/21742/are-sound-cards-still-relevant (see editor's note at bottom)

Recent MB manufacturing and layouts render most of the arguments for discrete add-on boards redundant now. Since those links were to articles 3 or 4 years old you can consider them ancient history.

 

Take my recent Skylake capable MB. It has an architecture that even eliminates the sharing of PCI slots when you have a GPU and perhaps a m.2 SSD. This used to ba an issue as they effectively halved the bandwidth if used together, now that doesn't happen.

 

So to with network, audio or other "add-on" cards. Most MBs these days are so well designed, the onboard architecture more than makes up for any perceived loss of performance.