My bro is after a new rig with 700quid to spend: MSI K9N SLi Platinum £ 86.43 inc VAT 2x 1GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400 £199.69 inc vat 1GB Leadtek PX7950GX2 £369.08 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ £131.84 Total: £707.04 I've lost touch with all the latest stuff coming out, but looking round for what to get I came up with that... has anyone else got better suggestions? If theres somthing that could be any cheaper for the same bang it would be much appreciated as he kinda wants an LCD as well Thanks
I think you'll be hard pressed to find anyone that isn't going to say to go with a Core 2 Duo & DDR2 rig.
that is ddr2.. you should be able to get the gx2 for nearer £300 if you shop about a bit. while core2 is better on paper i cant see a huge reason to go for it if you mainly usethe pc for games, plus nvidia chipsets are piss poor on intel boards.
I would suggest getting the lowest end C2D, the E6300, as even it will be a lot better than that AMD processor. If you go for a motherboard that overclocks well, like the plain P5B or one of its more expensive siblings, you will be able to run your 6300 at E6400 speeds with no problems. As M4RTIN said the nforce 5 series chipsets aren't great but the intel ones are rather good. It does seem like a slightly weighted system to me, spending so much on the graphics card whilst skimping on the processor - you could wind up with bottlenecks around that CPU, the graphics card will not be able to achieve its full potential. If you went for just a single 7950GT and C2D setup you would still have an excellent system with money left over to put towards and LCD
LCD and a 7950GX2 !! Do your research (or your brother...) Unless you are going for a 24" + screen - which I know your not because its not in your budget, the graphics card is pretty much wasted money - because of the resolution. You would be better off going for a "slower" card - on paper it is slower but I think you might actually see a performance gain if you have a 7900 gt/x instead of a 7950gx2 on a resolution @ 1024x1280. Lastly I have to say a Core 2 duo would also be a better off system. Ed
POWER SUPPLY Buy: Intel Core2Duo E6300 2x1gb DDR2 667 Gigabyte DS3 Antec NeoHE 500w And whatever video you want. I'd wait on a good video card since DX10 is c oming out in like, a month. You're just wasting money if you buy something good now.
first off thanks for the replys. yeh hes got the essentials already (suitable psu, case, drives, etc) well ive never had an intel before so i just didnt think about that side at all... IF the intels are better how much so? and yeh after lookin about, Im thinkin a 7950GT 512mb would be better suited (he had his eye on the gx2 before) and i mentioned about the dx10 cards coming out next year - but i didnt think they'd be coming out as soon as a month? but he's fried his agp 5900u and cant be using my old 4200ti for too long as hes got clan games to think about. out of interest why do you choose 667 DDR2 over the 800? Bbq.of.DooM also whats the differences between the nforce 590 and 570? cheers
Bit-tech did an article on the new nForce 5 chipset here, but all reports say it's a very shoddy overclocker and thus it isn't a good match for the Core 2 Duo chips which have amazing OCing headroom. Regarding Intel versus Athlon performance, this article is bit's side-by-side comparison of a large number of different cores. They don't habve the E6300 there but it will still be equal or better to a 4200+ X2 in most applications, and again remember it can easily be overclocked to E6400 levels, even without getting a better cooler for it. The 800MHz RAM will make that easier to achieve too. I was planning an athlon system but thankfully C2D came out just in time and after a few weeks deliberation it became obvious that there was no real competition, even after the AMD price drops.
DO NOT GO FOR THE NF5xx SERIES As DarkReaper said, they are atrocious. The 6XX series should be out soon and they are designed for C2D It was a problem with the Northbridge.
ok then, what about: C2D E6600 DS3 2GB Corsair XMS2-6400C5 DDR2 with about 200quid left for gfx and/or LCD Im thinking maybe a cheap card and lcd untill he has more money to spend on a dx10 card?
The 2GB of memory is a good move with Vista just around the corner (it's a little resource hungry). Go for a second hand PCI-e card (6800GTs can be had for ~£65-75) and use the rest for a nice 17" monitor. Don't forget to get a good PSU (Enermax, FSP, Tagan, Seasonic) as this is the heart of the system and will give you stable voltages which mean better overclocking and no crashes in games.
ok well hes just ordered: Intel Core 2 Duo - 2.4GHz Abit AB9 Pro 2GB Corsair XMS2-6400C5 DDR2 7600GT (with a view to upgrading soon) for just under 700quid edit: got the 7600GT for 85quid and its got a better resale price than a 6***
