r1 upgrade or r2 basic?

Hi Guys,

so Dell has been working to replace my wife's R1 with an R2. So far i received 2 R1's, they are stacked in my office. She's still using the original. (Core2-2.4, 250g, single gtx 260, no bt, dvdrw, 900p and 4gb 1066)

The 1st replacement is an R1 q9000, 250g, dual gtx 280's, bt, dvdrw, 900p and 4gb 1066) over all its overclocked to 2.45ghz [1300 fsb]. Its very stable i have been using it to check out it's performance while waiting for the next replacemnt.

A second R1 arrived and it was another q9000 but gtx 260's so the first replacement was way better.

I just logged in and saw an order for an R2 thats suppose to arrive tomorrow. Its an I5 540, single 5870, 250gb hd, 900p, dvdrw, 4gb 1066.

So the real question i have is which is better long term? I'm sure the GTX 280's sli are stronger than the single 5870 but im not so certain about the processor. 4 cores at 2.45 vs 2 with HT at 2.9....

any advice? recommendations?

I did post this in the R2 owners lounge but it quickly got skipped over by another topic. So i though i'd post it here...hope thats cool.

 

That's a tough one in my opinion. If the game/application can support SLi the dual 280's are stronger than a single 5870, but if it doesn't the 5870 smokes a single 280 and if you were to add a second card there's really no question the 5870's would win there too.
On the CPU it's really going to depend on what you want to use it for and if you want to upgrade in the future, the C2Q may be better right now in applications that can use 4 cores but they aren't going to be releasing anything newer or better in the C2D/C2Q line of chips, the i5 will be better in applications that can't use all 4 cores. The q9000 probably won't be stable for long at that high of a clock either.
So the biggest factors you have to ask is:

1-What is it going to be used for? 2-Do you want the option to upgrade in the future? 3-The R1's have proved to be less stable than R2's so are you willing to take better specs now("better" depending on your answers to the other questions) for the possibility of more instability/problems down the road? And you're not supposed to post in multiple threads just for future reference.

I would personally go for the R2 for a lot of reasons.

 

R2 all the way, you can get a second 5870 from Alienware directly if you call them up for 350 which is really cheap i think considering the amount of power you're getting and what other retailers would sell it to you for, the same if not more.

 

thanks for the advice, i'm leaning towards the R2 even though the 280's sli are stronger. Just because as you say, I can add faster i7's and additional cards