Suggested GPU for Skylake Desctop Build

Roman_Gruber

Hi

I am in the process to build a new Skylake box.

As I only use gnu linux and no windi 95, steam and other stuff I want to ask for advise regarding GPU.

My wish list for the components:
http://geizhals.eu/?cat=WL-583220&wlkey=e22f3ab0f2ea92d5c9a93a10c74bb388

As linux always lacks support for drivers or let's rephrase it, they are just behind of supported features for the newest hardware I just want to settle for the medium segment.

I also know that in windows you need 4gb gpu ram these days.

I am not sure if I should go for a 2GB 950 GTX from nvidia which is similar to 960 gtx from the benchmark side of view
960 gtx has 4gb of gpu ram, lower cards do not have that.
750 from nvidia is a bit cheaper but looks very outdated.

I will probably go for gsync, i have not considered that yet, or amd freesync or what it is called...

What I want to play?
Hard to say, probably mmo. Urbanterror as always. Unvanquised (should be possible with any of those cards)

I will not buy any games. Means I may use steam which i do not at the moment, but I will not buy any games. No credit card here and I dislike those steam only stuff. I prefer pure open source games like urbanterror, unvanquised, ...

I dislike amd gpus. They lack support in windows, and they are such buggy what i saw that I dislike those. The drivers are laggy, windows drivers sucks. I had a x700 in the past, and my brother has some 5xxx from amd and that gpu also sucks in windows. Do not get me wrong, maybe others have decent amd gpus and they work for those but those 2 amd gpus and before those ati cards in year 2000, were all sucky. And i prefer hassle free drivers. intel has also many issues ...

My questions:

Which gpu to choose: and please tell me why, price / cost ratio, good drivers, etc ... I will consider amd when they driver and features of the card is supported.

Whihc power supply to choose: Power Supplies are hard to choose. It is said that any power supply below 100 euros is crap, really hard to choose. Also hard to choose which type of power supply i really need ... advise apreciated...

Mainboard?
I want to have 4 DDR4 Slots. (RAm is very important for the future use)
I want to use 1 Gpu (1x pcie 16x)
1x Wifi expansion card (1x pcie 1x)
spare pcie
m2 slot (would be nice)
Chipset ... i think those overclock z170 are too expensive and do not add too much value ... h170, b170 chipset whatever, hard to say where the differences are with all those pci-lanes and other stuff, i am also not sure why i do need so many usb 3.0 connectors on board, usb 2.0 and such ....

I am not sure If I want to build a desctop build with mini ITX or uATX mainboard or go for the full ATX mainboard.
As far as I saw only ATX mainboards support 4 ddr4 modules. I want ddr4 ram. I have a 6-7 years old notebook, so I only can reuse the SSD and a 2.5" HDD, thats all I have ...
Mini ITX has only 2 DDR4 slots and only one PCIE slot.
Thats bad because I want one wifi card (needs one pcie 1x afaik) and one Gpu (needs pcie 16x afaik). + spare
The mainboard should have gigabit intel lan.
m2 card would be nice but I think just simple sata connected SSD will be also enough ... (i doubt anyone really sees a difference ...)

As with the size or type of the gpu I can choose a proper case at the end so ...

For the case, hmm.
Prefered heigh, 25 cm max.
width 25 cm.
length ~30 cm (not that important)

Depends on the gpu in question, and if I can use uatx, atx or itx...

i prefer something smaller so i can have it on top of my table

Any advise on games which are free to play are welcome.
I think steam is a big source of games, portage overlays too, any other hint also welcome ...
Really no clue what can be games without paying money on linux and what hardware is suggested.

Thanks for reading and for any hints / advise / suggestions..

As skylake costs nearly as much as older cpus I will go for that as I need to buy everything. I think I can reuse the 2.5" SSD SATA, and 2.5" HDD, but thats it.

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 7:48 pm Post subject:

I thought skylake had a built in GPU?

I've had a variety of mobo brands over the years. Gigabyte was the best. Others swear by Asus. I've never had an Asus, mainly because one of my friends buys them and he's always calling me about his motherboard driver problems.

Good power supply advice here: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2150235/choose-perfect-power-supply.html and here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-oem-manufacturer,2913.html I always buy Seasonic or Antec branded Seasonic PSU's. I bought a Kill-A-Watt (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-Kill-A-Watt-Electricity-Monitor-P4400/202196386) at KMart some years ago and was shocked at the low efficiencies of the "free" PSU's that come with cases.

Regarding cases, I mostly have Antec cases. They are solidly built with good fans and features. I go for big tower cases with plenty of room, which is not what you (or most people) are looking for. I bought a Raidmax Smilodon case for my grandson and it's a good case too. I like the fold down motherboard tray and the tool-free design. The blue LED's are attractive as well, not like big beige Antec towers that look like they belong in a business computer room (so what? So do I!).

For memory, I have always preferred Crucial. Never a bad stick and when I did have to do a warranty (lifetime) claim after six years, there was no quibbling or evasion. they replaced it with an apology. Actually since it was Ballistix memory that they no longer made, they replaced it with twice as much standard memory and an apology that the original was no longer made and an offer to refund my full purchase price instead. I chose the double memory).

I also have had trouble with ATI on Windows and replaced it with Nvidia. The computer I'm typing on is one. Strangely, the Radeon driver worked fine on Gentoo but both ATI's driver and Gigabyte's gave BSOD's on Windows. No problems EVGA's Nvidia card. I've bought two video cards from EVGA in the past and never had problems with Windows or nvidia-drivers or Nouveau. Just switched one to Nouveau because it's too old for the nvidia-drivers package now.

Along with you, I'd like to hear about CPU coolers, although it seems the Intel are better than the AMD. I think skylake doesn't have a stock cooler so an aftermarket is required.

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

Skylakes do have a built in GPU, however that builtin GPU is also a intel trash one (which tw04 does not want).

I do recall when I researched my video cards, EVGA brand cards tend to be the highest rating on customer satisfaction (This is by checking on multiple sites, and throwing out the stupid idiot ratings because someone can't read/finding the smallest fault for nothing).
Otherwise, looking through newegg, nearly all of the boards with ddr4 come with 4 memory slots at least; especially with the 2 chipsets you mentioned.
Otherwise, MSI brand boards tended to have atheros ethernet chipset (this is my checking the majority of the boards, limited by chipset and memory requirements). Otherwise, ASROCK almost always used intel ethernet chipset. I don't think you'll find a motherboard with anything less than gigabit ethernet speed, now 10Gbps on the otherhand...
I'm not familiar with m2 cards, so I have no clue about them.

One thing on power supply that I would recommend, is getting one that is 80 plus certified. The reasoning is that the 80+ certified power supplied are more efficient compared to non certified, and the better certified ones should contain higher quality components.

Tony0945 · Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:39 pm Post subject:

I was looking at this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128843 It does have your M2 and it has two PCI slots which is important to me because of my PCI television board. It does, unfortunately, have the Realtek LAN chip, but you can shut that off in BIOS and blacklist the module and buy one of these http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CY0P7G?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00 widely available for under $30, solid as a rock with the Linux e1000 driver. That's what I plan to do.

An alternative more to your liking may be, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128838&cm_re=GA-Z170X-UD5-_-13-128-838-_-Product, howver it has no legacy PCI slots, but it has dual Intel LAN's and two M2 connectors. I think the dual LAN's are more trouble than they are worth. I had dual LAN's on an older MSI board and every now and then the kernel would swap eth0 and eth1, on Windows too.

You can browse the Gigabyte boards here: http://www.gigabyte.us/products/list.aspx?s=42&p=344&v=1 There are 16 of them, but the gaming and SLI boards are of no interest to me. The UltraDurable series has served me well.

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 8:43 am Post subject:

I expect that skylake xeons will be available soon without those intel gpus. As intel lacks basic 3d functionaliy in my expierence on any intel gpu in my life and I want a smooth desctop environment I have to use a decent gpu anyway.

for the case it is the critical component as it should be easy to handle, should have space for the cpu cooler and the components (gpu cards are big, mainboards too) and should have a decent air flow. Some cases only allow some sizes of the power supply units, around 140 mm in the length or so. others do not allow a modular cable management power supply unit because of the 140 mm restrictions.

The air flow is such a big topic. and also the topic about the noise ...

I read one comment that some guys water cooling system was leaky and ruined his mainboard ...

The first things to choose are the mainboard and the gpu. And this is rather tricky.

And in my country the cpus are not available as it seems or only a few pieces ...

I also do not know when intel cashback will be again. I saw it by chance that intel refunds money for some components in the past but I do not know in which cycle and when it will happens again... I could safe a few bucks maybe ..

And just for the gigabyte board.

a z170 board starts here in austria around ~130 euros what i saw on geizhals.at
a basic h170 board / b170 board around ~50 euros, a medium board around ~80 euros.

and z170 is the fancy overclocker board, than you need overclocker cpu (~30 euros more, not that worse), and the rams costs nearly as much as the ordinary one ...

I am not sure if those overclocker / gamer components are such decent. It means consumer. What i have read is that those gamer / overclocker based hardware has issues regarding desctop components. See overclocked gigabyte graphic cards which ruins the benefit of maxwell power saving features....

I have the feeling that ordinary mainboard which costs a bit more than the cheapest is the best for the money.

for overclocking you need:

decent cpu cooler which is necessary anyway when you want a silent box (~90 euros)
z170 mainboard => costs 130=> decent 150-200 euros => in comparison with 50-80 mainboard (~80+ Euros)
overclocker cpu (~30 euros considering intel i5 skylake only)
ram (~10 euro for 16gb or so, ~40-50 euros when going for full 64gb)
maybe better power supply (~100 euro extras when things get worse)
more fans, because of more heat or water cooling system (~100+ euros)

Also when you buy the best from the best you overpay usually and when you save that money and buy the medium segment again later it may be wiser...

Well I am still evaluating on what I may need, want and what it costs.

Msi is said that it can only update its bios from windows, but i see on recent mainboard it can be done form the bios. whatever which is true
Asrock is said to be crap, cheap brand from asus with issues, others claim to have no issues.
gigabyte seems to have had issues or still has.

Asus is the only brand which i saw hardly any issues. though my nexus 7 2012 from asus sucks, the other asus components hardly had any issues in my past ... Asus is pricy in comparision with other brands...

---

I think i go for the medium price segment. cheapest i5 which is not that expensive ...
gpu whatever no idea ...
mainboard hard to tell, but i will check out those links and consider it, thanks

[edit]
Regarding mainboard: I do not need thunderbolt, usb-c (just makes the board more expensive)
and also that m2 hdd thing, may be exotic, not really a requirement.
2-3-4 way sli / amd multi gpu stuff, who really needs that. multi gpu have issues, bad driver support. thats why we have gsync, amd free-sync now ... Mostly needed for gaming on windows ... every game 50 euro plus, windows license 100 euros or so, unsecure platform, sucky platform whatever, not worth ....
I only see the need for pcie lanes because the gpu needs 16 of those, wifi card and such ... but else ... anything else is fancy ... even usb 3.0 hardly any components here and i do not buy so much harddrives or pen drives. And for a mouse i doubt it really requires usb 3.0 from the bandwidth.

Basic functionality is prefereed. wifi is really nice to have an expansion card is cheap but needs a slot ...

Thunderbolt is like firewire or esata, hardly used in past 7 years though i had it. and i ruined several esata cables, i used them maybe once every few months honestly ... broken cable

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128838&cm_re=GA-Z170X-UD5-_-13-128-838-_-Product

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 9:42 am Post subject:

Regarding measuring the power of devices i bought ages ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_clamp

Which has for sure higher accuracy as those 20 dollars watt-meters... These can not be trusted honestly.

It also depends on how you measure and thats an endless topic, ... I doubt these measure true rms anyway.

---

The thing about power supplies is that the 80 plus standard costs money to let it certificate.
Some models are not really certified.
Some models are changed silently, so only the first charge meets teh specifications and the later charges not.
there is no right, no one is behind to guarantee that the certificate is correct, the standard is not enforced.

and those certificated 80 plus models, for example are measured on teh 110volt side, when you buy a certified one with 220 volts only than this is a fake one.

careful about it, means nothing at the end of the days because no one really checks every psu which leaves the factory, and if the certificate is a real one and such.

also that haswell certified stuff, means nothing. as there is no real standard, intel changed it several times. you just have to disable those extra power states when your power supply does not support it ...

in short you do not know when you buy a power supply if you get a decent one with proper electronics which prevent failure and if it is efficent ...

and those tests are nice to read but when the manufacturer changes the schematics.

Also lengths and diamaters are also different for the cables. a shorter cable may not be such an issue but when the diamater is too small you ask for troubles ...

in general it is said that a good psu for it desired rating has some price and that is one of many criterias to see if it is a good one or not...

Tony0945 · Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 11:01 am Post subject:

Well, the 110v vs 220 is certainly relevant and I have no experience there. Also, is Austria 50 Hz or 60 Hz? I have lived in the USA only. The Kill-A-Watt is not a laboratory instrument but always agrees with the display on two different APC UPS's. Besides, when one power supply draws 100W and another draws 160W with the same instrument, the relative disparity overides any question of the meter's accuracy.

My eyes are not that good and I don't game, so built-in video or under $40 cards have also been good enough for me. I'm surprised at your description of "Intel crap video", but if it's no worse than AMD A8 GPU, which we had on our office PC's (Win 7) that's great because we all thought it was great for web surfing and document reading. The mobo video from ATI and Nvidea has also been good enough for me. I've bought separate cards only because of driver issues. However, better hardware seems to come only on gaming boards. The thought seems to be that there are gamers and stripped down cheap boxes. The needs of Linux and Gentoo in particular are such a small market that the big manufacturers just don't care.

Of course manufacturer advertising is full of glitzy nonsense. It's universal here. I'm glad for you if it's different in Europe. I gave no the links to read the technical details such as number and type of sockets.

One final thought, I have read great reviews of the coolers made by Noctua, a company based in Austria and Taiwan. They are expensive but their cooling is impressive and everyone comments on how quiet they are. I totally agree with you about water cooling.

My last Intel CPU was my first, a 486DX-100, so I really can't comment on i5 vs i7, except that when doing big builds, faster is always better. There is a difference between 35 minutes and 75 minutes to build the web browser from source.

You and I seem to be the only one's posting. I had hoped to here from people experienced in intel rigs, as I'm sure you did too.

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 4:16 pm Post subject:

well we have here 230 volts (ac) with 50 hz. the standard was a bit changed with the allowed percentage for overvoltage so the new margin is still in the old margin, just the base voltage was a bit rised to 230volts somwhere in between last 30 years since i am on this planet ...
The thing is the voltage is chopped on the primary side of the transformer and than used as needed on the secondary side, the 50-60 hz does not really matter. usually an integrated circuit does this, in the old days it was probably hardwired with transistors...

110volt and 220v capable psu are a bit more efficent but when you never leave europe than is the 110 volt kinda not needed on the input side.

Yes those noctua air coolers are awesome, and always in stylsih brown. i have used a few in the past and they were awesome. though really pricy..

Yes market is all crap, i kindly agree. I just wanted to point out that this mobo had so much unneeded stuff on it.

I also do not get the point why peeps need 4-8TB harddiscs? maybe for adult videos but who knows ...

I still remember my days with suse linux 6.2 and 4gb harddrive and floppy discs around 1.44 mb.
than i had an awesome 128mb usb stick, with usb 1.1, which i still have, and that was big enough for possible anything ...

I mostly read notebook reviews. but the amd apu thing seems to be a bit misdesigned on the driver and on the hardware side.
also just marketing ...
I do not want to buy the fancy stuff, just medium proper hardware.

well hard to give an opinion on such a topic.
amd vs intel fanboys
nividia fanboy (myself) vs amd fanboys
this and that ...

I also was curious on teh water cooling stuff and saw guys use 300-400 euro cases to build a proper tower. they are nuts in my eyes to use such expensive cases. I do understand that 30 euro cases are junk, most of them, and a proper costs around 70-100.
i also checked out that water cooling stuff but that adds another 400 euros or so.

The processors are hardly available here in austria. only a few pieces. so the price is high probably.

I do not know when intel has its next intel cashback thing and when its the best to buy but probably around february i believe, after xmas...

thanks for your opinion, advise.

Tony0945 · Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 5:01 pm Post subject:

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 5:12 pm Post subject:

did you tried undervolting your cpu?

Yes a decent cooler does wonder. But also a good path for the air flow.
gpu should be up afaik what i read,

Yes i prefer smaller boards, like itx, uatx. i think uatx is probably the choice but i want those 4x ddr4 which are only on atx boards.
And when you realize that you have no free expansion board, which is called pcie these days, than you need an atx board, sigh.

well europe has its issues. maybe anything which is far away sparkles the best. and the fairy tales about it than makes it more sparkly.

I think the smart choice is to watch out, and than buy when it is a good bargain.
Skylake should be 10-20 percent faster as haswell, that sounds interesting, but we also have haswell-e / skylake now ... both are rather new.

The big thing for myself is to decide waht I really want. Sounds easy but it is very difficult.

i saw r370 or so amd gpu costs only 200 euros and has awesome gaming power.

powersupply / case are the big money takers, there are good cheap ones and expensive crap ones too. hard to tell what makes sense when i hardly can decide on gpu / and such. and also teh mainboard and the cpu cooler need its space too.

I just may go with the integrated intel gpu first and than buy a decent gpu when i find one on second hand or what i really need or want than ... it is not like that that you need to buy everything at the same moment with those desctop boxes, they can be changed on demand ...

Tony0945 · Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2015 12:28 am Post subject:

http://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/86585-legendary-cpu-architect-jim-keller-leaves-amd

I guess I can forget about Zen. So that leaves Devil's Canyon vs Skylake.

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 5:49 pm Post subject:

Well.

I did the maths and I came to the conclusion it is far too expensive.

Therefore I bought an used laptop:

https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/G75VW/specifications/

Intel® Core™ i7 3610QM Processor. Basically decent i7, 3rd generation, with 8 threads, 4 cores. 2.3ghz and turbo.

It has two free ram slot modules and 8GB installed. 2x4GB Modules installed. Max installable is 4x8GB => 32GB.

The most annoying thing so far is the gpt partition stuff and how asus / microsoft partitioned the disc.

Manufactured 2012 - 11. YAY.

And yay 2 ordinary 2.5" SATA / sata2?? slots who cares. it is for sure sata and thats enough when i compare my old hardware here.

660m with 2GB GDDR ram. No idea what i can do with that but very decent gpu. So unvanquished will run at full bell and whistles for sure. urbanterror also and for other games no idea.

4x usb 3.0 (wow) i still live in usb2.0 and usb 1.1. world

displayport and hdmi (no way to test that because i do not have cables)

Blueray readable drive, and as usual dvd / cd writer. (i never ever had a blueray disc in my live (who needs that ..))

Only cons, teh screen is 16:9 1920x1080 (shitty blueray resolution) i lack 120 pixel in the heigth compared to my asus g70sg with 1920x1200 and 16:10 in 17 inch.

cons, slowest i7. but it is upgradeable but not affordable as insane guys want 500 euros for i7-3840qm (i think thats the name of the highest possible before the unlocked cpus, well also same 45Watts specs) (I will watch out for 3820 / 3840 cpus on second hand market over the years if there is a decent deal, but i will not overpay ... not urgent!)

Decent Design with proper thermal management / airflow management. Fans are easily cleanable / accessable.

Same 180 Watt Power supply as my asus g70sg. I can not claim that something got more efficent when the same gamer notebook line needs the same wattage. The summary is the same. Also no shitty optimus. I doubt the intel graphics is usful. i suspect it causes lags / well i suspect it, i can not claim it, but i say that any decent desctop envirionments with it fancy stuff needs a proper gpu anyway. I see it positively. and somewhere i have read it has a very high hdmi standard because it does not utilize intel gpu and therefore hdmi 1.4 or so (read it once a few days ago ..)

pro: 8gb ram / up to 32gb. as 4gb was too less for google chrome, i have enough of room to upgrade. yay.
---

First thing was to open the cover, to clean the fans. Check the sata drive bays. free ram slots.
And cleaned the dust on the usb 3.0 connectors.

---

My search has ended now.

~3 years old hardware, proper i7, up to 32gb ddr3 ram yay, 2 sata bays yay. 17 inch. proper cooling. proper gpu.

my current box. ASUS g70Sg (6 years and 8 Months as of now.) Time to say goodbye. decent screen 16:10 1920x1200.

skylake was too expensive for myself and the cpus were too scare as of now in my area.

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 6:11 pm Post subject:

Good Luck! You are giving up a lot of horsepower, but being used, I'm sure it's a lot cheaper. This comparison shows the Devil's Canyon, your new CPU and my present CPU.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2275&cmp[]=891&cmp[]=393 Showing I can double performance going to Intel. Skylake, by all accounts, adds 5%. Since I need a new mobo and memory anyway, I'm still leaning towards Skylake, although it appears that I need a 4.3 kernel to get GPU support. Prices are close. Performance is close. Your search has ended, Mein Freund, but mine continues, although it is more meandering than searching.

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 6:55 pm Post subject:

it was more a money issue. And those desctops are also too power hungry. yes they are much stronger but when you consider the power efficency ...

i5 skylake => 300 euros
decent screen => 350 euros
mainboard => 100 Euros
power supply => 100 Euros
gpu => 200-300 euros ...
16GB RAm => 100 euros
case => decent 100 euros, shitty 30 euros
hdd => ...
keyboard => 30 euros
mouse => needed for both desctops and laptops.

gamer notebook 600 euros with a lot of bargain. (round up -> 50 euro travel expenses) And I will reuseu 128GB SSD (sata 6gb/s), very decent, was expensive in the days. 1TB HDD reuse, still decent.

Selling 750GB SSHD (odrinary hdd wiht 8gb ssd) ~30-50 euros on second hand market hopefully (after i managed to duplicate install windows 10 ...)

I expect i can use this hardware for another 3-5 years. 600 euros / 3 years => makes 200 euros a year.

the old notebook was 1800 euros / 6 years => 300 euros a year (witout 4 times replaced a keyboard ~30-50 euros each, 4 display cables (darn asus, the only issue with asus g70sg, broken display cable after 2nd year, 3rd year, 5th year and such ...) Well the
keyboard is worn out now again / display cable same ... was up to dying after 6 years and 8 months now... I will still use it to write texts because it has 16:10 screen with 1920x1200 and not the shitty 1920x1080 blueray resolution. With google cloud it is not that big issue to transfer documents these days.

I serached for around 1-2 years to find something which suited my tastes. Another guy wanted 1000 euros for the same or similar hardware so ...
3rd generation => 4th generation should be nearly close what i saw benchmark wise. 3610qm (i think i have that) vs 4720qm (or what it is called, only 20 percent faster)

And i still have the option to swap out the cpu later. i have the slowest i7 with 4 cores in it. and it is the last notebook with replaceable cpus ...

---

Yes when you buy the newest hardware, you overpay the hardware dealer and than you need to wait for support. It may be different when you dual boot windows. And play on windows.

I think my hardware has now the support in linux. 660m kinda old. cpu is also kinda mature.

Thanks for all your comments ...

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 7:34 pm Post subject:

Yes, we have different goals and situations. For me, there is no cost for monitor, case, or power supply because I am replacing the "guts" only, moving the loaded motherboard down the line. Phenom II goes into the present Athlon II case . The Athlon II & mobo go into the Athlon64 case. That Athlon64 (M2 with bigger & later memory) goes into the Athlon64 socket 939 case whose mobo is finally retired after eight years, probably nine when I actually do it (bought in 3/13/2007). You wish to game, so the GPU performance is important, I only edit, read e-mail, and surf the web, so motherboard or CPU graphics are fine. The main reason I need performance is compiling software and running portage, which is getting slower and slower. Generally, this means big caches and multi-task performance is more important than single task performance which is paramount in games. I lean towards the Devil's Canyon but the reported high temperatures deter me. I've had enough of that with the 125W Phenom II and won't even consider a 220W FX. I want to compute, not cook a meal.