Hey folks, computer noob here. It would be nice if someone could answer the following questions.

1) What is turbo boosting? If a computer can run at 3.0ghz, why not let it run at that speed instead of giving the option to turbo boost to that speed from 1.7ghz? I read an article about this on gizmodo but the comments say the article is bs so I'm unsure.

2) Why is there so much love for ssds? Does it help me for what I use my computer for? Poker, pokertracker, diablo iii, dslr quality video editing, microsoft powerpoint?

3) Why are all my friends saying that i7s are overrated and i5s are enough for my next computer? As a side note, how come some i5s run at 2.0ghz-3.5ghz whereas some i7s run at 1.7ghz-3.0ghz?

1. Turbo boost is just what it sounds like. The reason CPUs don't run full blast all the time is because it would be hideously inefficient in terms of both energy and heat.

2. In general, because hard drives are what tend to hold up the show in modern computers. All programs that access the drive will benefit from an SSD to some extent, especially those that are hard drive intensive like PT3. I'm actually a little tired about taking about SSDs, given prices I think people should be justifying mechanical drives instead of the other way around.

3. For desktops, there is very little different between the i5s and i7s, same with the last generation, at least as far as most users can appreciate. The i7 has a feature called hyperthreading, which is nice, provided you're running applications that are able to address all of those threads. If not, you might not notice any difference at all.

Side note: Every CPU line has a ton of variations. Some are very closely related, some aren't. Some can be overclocked while others can't (much), others are special low-wattage versions that trade off performance to run cooler (in notebooks, or HTPCs for example).

Cool thanks for the help. One last question.

Which is better, a gt630m with 2gb of ddr3 vram or a gt640m with 1gb of ddr3 ram? Whats the difference?

1) I thought some CPUs turboboost by disabling other cores? So instead of 4 cores at 2GHz you get 1-2 cores at 3GHz (simplified example). Is this not the case?

2) SSD is worth every penny. Agree with everything Gonso said about them. Best upgrade you can make for overall system performance.

If you plan to overclock, turn off turbo boost by going to the bios and disabling it. Just thought I would mention this because that is what everyone does.

I don't know all the mobile graphics chipsets that well and don't use one myself, nor to I game. There's so many, the numbers usually don't make sense, and a lot of those 600-series are just updated versions of 500-series cards.

How come i don't hear more about Hybrid drives?
How do they work and what is the relative speed difference between say a 7200 RPM drive a Hybrid and an SSD?

I gues my biggest "issue" is that fact that i have a LOT music/photos/video.
I need a lot of storage on my PC.
What is the best way to setup and SSD along with a mechanical or hybrid as storage.
Where do programs( other than the OS) get installed..the ssd or the secondary? and how to you set this up to be "automatic" and have everything else(saved) on the secondary?
Hope that made sense...

I think hybrids are a little silly. If you are going to invest in a HD and go through the hassle of having to move files/OS then might as well go to a full blown SSD. It will be the best investment you will make in a $ per productivity basis

Other will disagree but I've never had much interest in them. I think to really appreciate an SSD, you want (a) a fast one, and (b) enough space to fit your operating system and all of your programs on it. A person has a lot of other options between just going with a regular hard drive, an SSD, or a combination. They definitely benefit from the flash memory but it's still a very watered-down solution for the cost.

If you want to see some benchmark graphs for a popular hybrid matched up against some SSDs and regular hard drives, start on this page and go forward, it will illustrate their strong and weak points quicker than I can detail them.

Let's say you've got a typical Windows 7 64-bit install, 25GB or so with updates and future updates, with a healthy 40GB worth of other programs, and then 1TB worth of movies, music and media. Obviously putting all of that on solid state even at today's prices would be cost-prohibitive for most people.

The idea is to get a SSD large enough to run Windows and all of your programs for the performance benefit there. A 120GB-ish good SSD is $90 on sale so there's that. That covers your programs and HEM stuff you need to be fast.

Then you grab a giant regular hard drive and pack all of your media on that. It takes longer to access files on the old school drives, but you won't care once you start playing a movie or mp3 beyond the extra second it needs to access it. You don't have to do much of anything to set up the second drive, you can practically treat it like a folder and drop stuff right into it.

You'll still need somewhere to back both drives up, like an external, or a large other drive. I have this slow laptop drive I wasn't using for that (speed doesn't matter for backups so any POS will do).

And obviously you can carry over your current drive(s) into your new desktop. If you were going to a notebook, there are other possibilities for multiple drives. One newer thing is mSATA drives, which are basically small SSDs and some notebooks can accommodate one of those plus a mechanical. Here's a list of them here. You could also get a model with two drive bays, or use an external, or in some cases replace the DVD drive with a hard drive caddy.

Thoughts on using Intel SRT with a 20gb slc ssd to boost performance on a physical non-system drive?
Have a 256gb 830 for system and a 3tb 7200 rpm Hitachi for everything else.

thanks for the reply Gonso I guess i was a little confused as to how to integrate a mechanical drive and and SSD together.
What i mean it this... ( i know this is simplistic but...)
SSD i install OS and any programs:
Mechanical drive i use for storage:
Right now on a single mechanical with OS/data stored on same drive i just use windows explorer to navigate to "my documents" or "my music" or "my pictures" etc you get the idea..
Those folders are installed on to the drive that the OS is installed to correct?
SO, if i want to use a ssd with a mechanical, i just move or create those folder on the mechanical drive and delete the ones on the ssd?

If you go to properties of one of those folders you have an option to move it which will move all contents and set that as new path. Then you can still use the folder normally as My Documents instead of navigating to the folder every time. Call the folders
Documents
Pictures
Videos
Music

After you move your folders they will appear as "my documents", etc
You may need to delete the old empty folders in c:/users after

Perfect, Thanks
Going to start the parts list for the new system using a SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC128B/WW 2.5" 128GB (likely)

I kept running out of space on my 120gb system SSDs so I just went with the 256gb 830 for 200