Hello,

Does there exist a website that allows you to compare today's relevant hardware easily? I'm interested to see stats like a small amount of benchmark numbers, power consumption, price, of CPU's, graphics cards, motherboards, etc..., that are currently relevant.

I was thinking of tom's hardware, but it's chaotic, the cpu benchmark graphics are way too big, and the articles on CPU's are dissapointing:
- Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: July 2011: limited to gaming and price/performance
- 16 CPUs, One Core Each, And 3 GHz: What's the relevance of this article, why would you use only a part of a CPU?
- AMD A8-3850 Review: Llano Rocks Entry-Level Desktops: Review of a single budget CPU?
- Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: June 2011: and the circle is round, we're at the previous month of articles

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

I would use the Steam Survey . They poll all steam users every month to get an idea of their current hardware. Best thing is it shows percentages so you can get an idea of a good target market. IE if you want to recommend 4gb of ram you can see that you're going to hit 90% of current PCs.

The downside is the data is probably skewed a little on the high side due to the fact that steam is a gaming portal and gamers tend to have higher specs.

Does there exist a website that allows you to compare today's relevant hardware easily?[/quote]

For what purpose?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php
Take them with a grain of salt. Remember overclocking some cpus makes a huge difference.

Any bench review is somewhat slightly skewed toward higher end systems. If you're benching your system then you typically have a system you at least think is bench worthy.

Does there exist a website that allows you to compare today's relevant hardware easily?

For what purpose?
[/quote]

Good question

It's almost 5 years ago since I built a new PC, so the time for a new one is nearing.

That means I need to dive into the world of current hardware again, but some websites are just too chaotic or require you to have followed the hardware trends for the last years.

Thanks for the Passmark and Steam links, looks pretty useful!

That means I need to dive into the world of current hardware again, but some websites are just too chaotic or require you to have followed the hardware trends for the last years.

If you're building one yourself then go with the i7-2600k and a compatable motherboard then plop in a 580 GTX and 16 GB of ram (newegg has deals). The nice thing about the i7-2600k is you can just overclock it to 4Ghz without much hardware knowledge and it won't overheat or anything. That would give you another 5 year computer. Hardware has gotten simple recently.

If you need a powerful video card now, you're pretty much stuck with nVidia -- not because AMD's cards are bad, bet because all the powerful AMD cards have been snapped up by bitcoin miners. What few you may find are typically sold at a nice premium due to that additional demand. nVidia makes a fine GPU, but AMDs mainstream cards tend to offer a bit more bang for your buck, by a small margin. They scale better in multi-GPU setups too.

Its also worth noting that AMD is on the cusp of releasing their new Bulldozer CPUs, probably before the end of next month. And they've got new GPUs that will probably be out before the end of the year.

Intel has a fine processor and platform, don't get me wrong, but the decision is a lot more complicated than "buy Intel and nVidia". Personally I've been needing an upgrade too and I'm waiting on the AMD parts because I'm interested in what they're doing architecturally. I think AMD is more aligned to where the PC is heading architecturally, as shown by Bulldozer, Graphics Core Next (Radeon 79xx series), and how they tie in with AMP, the new heterogeneous computing API.

[quote name='Lode' timestamp='1313494036' post='4849801']
That means I need to dive into the world of current hardware again, but some websites are just too chaotic or require you to have followed the hardware trends for the last years.

If you're building one yourself then go with the i7-2600k and a compatable motherboard then plop in a 580 GTX and 16 GB of ram (newegg has deals). The nice thing about the i7-2600k is you can just overclock it to 4Ghz without much hardware knowledge and it won't overheat or anything. That would give you another 5 year computer. Hardware has gotten simple recently.
[/quote]

Don't bother with 16 gigs unless you actually have a need for it.

I paid extra to stuff my board with 16 to run a single project in a timely manner. (Nature of the problem's data set meant needing to work across about 14GB or so of data at a time, and paging it off the drive could have taken a month or more.)

However, I have yet to use more than 1/4 of than on average. Get 8 GB of ram at max, and put the rest toward a SSD for your OS drive.

Don't bother with 16 gigs unless you actually have a need for it.

I paid extra to stuff my board with 16 to run a single project in a timely manner. (Nature of the problem's data set meant needing to work across about 14GB or so of data at a time, and paging it off the drive could have taken a month or more.)

However, I have yet to use more than 1/4 of than on average. Get 8 GB of ram at max, and put the rest toward a SSD for your OS drive.

BUT I MUST FOLD PROTEINS AT MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY!