Performance Comparison Question

If you are going to get a computer with a 9 series i7 processor I would recommend getting the alienware area 51.  The pricing starts at the same price but has the 960 over the 930 and allows for better expansion.  The only drawback would be the 12 Gb RAM limit in the area 51. I assume that you will be installing the Graphics/RAM/Hard Drive yourself so you don't really care about what you get in the computer.  I would also recommend upgrading the processor to a i7-970 because the cores in a  9 series i7 are about 20% less powerful than the sandy bridge.  Getting the alienware area  51 with the 970 would cost $2,200, the area 51 with the 960 (0.4 Ghz faster than 930)would cost $2000.  Getting the aurora with the 930 (0.4GHz slower than 970) would cost $2000 and with the i7-970 it would cost $2,900.  Also getting the area 51 gives more hard drive bays and more internal space for expansion.  Getting a six core processor is a good idea because you can overclock the 970 to about 3.8Ghz with super stability and really low temps and be able to run more games in the future that can utilize 12 threads!  The 6 cores will give you a 50% performance over the 4 cores for some more modern games.  Photoshop greatly utilizes multiple cores and you'll be able to get much better performance there.  As for WOW your performance will go down a little but if it can take advantage of multiple threads it will still work very well.  You also might want to consider using the 6890 that is included with the area 51 instead of your 460.  If you were to get the 930 you would see a pretty significant performance decrease thanks to the really low clock speed (2.8GHz) as well as only four non sandy bridge cores.  The newer version of photoshop really takes advantage of the sandy bridge architecture so the 930 would definetly lower your performance.

I am considering returning my R3( due to the unresolved random lockup issues this model is experiencing)  and moving to the ALX. My question is on how much of a performance hit I will see between my current R3 (Core i7 2600k) and the ALX (Core i7 930)   Specs on the R3 below as well as what the ALX specs would be.    The only game I play is WOW at 2560x 1440 with settings at ultra.   The other main use is doing decal artwork in Adobe Photoshop at 1200dpi where the files get pretty huge on occasion along with Adobe Illustrator work.       Current Aurora R3   Core i7 2600K   EVGA GTX460 2Win - 270.61 Drivers   16Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600   2 x 600Gb WD VelociRaptors - Raid 0   1 x 300Gb WD Velociraptor   1 x 1Tb WD Cavair Black   1 x Media card reader   1 x Blu-Ray Drive       Aurora ALX   Core i7 930   EVGA GTX460 2Win - 270.61 Drivers   12Gb Kingston Hyper X T1 Black Series DDR3 1600   2 x 600Gb WD VelociRaptors - Raid 0   1 x 300Gb WD Velociraptor   1 x 1Tb WD Cavair Black   1 x Media card reader   1 x Blu-Ray Drive

 I think going to the Area 51 instead of the Aurora ALX is the best option. You gain so much more then you will be giving up. You get more PCI-E slots,drive bays,bigger PSU and a case that stays much cooler then the Aurora micro ATX case. In WOW you wont see a change but you may in Photoshop unless you go with a 6 core CPU to offset the lesser memory. You will also be going from DDR2 to DDR3 memory that the new Intels can't support.

The best option would be to wait for the X58 replacment and get it then. Maybe return what you have now for a refund and hold out for the new Area 51's.

In my opinion I would not buy the x58 replacement because the sandy bridge architecture is a really new technology and seems to be a bit buggy.  When the first i7 quad cores/core 2 quad extremes came out they had some issues.  I prefer to go with the previous generation that isn't as new because it usually is cheaper.