Hey guys and gal. The time has come for me and the housemates to upgrade. It just felt right and core duo just sounds so good. Heres the current list of components going into the rig. Since we all already have the basic hard-drive, monitor etc all we require is the main hardware. Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13Ghz - £154 Abit AB9 Pro iP965 - £105 Connect 3D X1900XT 256MB - £163 Corsair 1GB DDR2-6400 - £93 We are fairly confident we have a good setup for the money (£527 inc from ebuyer), however we would like a bit of confirmation/suggestions from the community. Graphics cards especially seem to be appearing in different forms and clock speeds almost every day so i am still slightly confused. This setup is at the top end of the budget so no "swap this for XXX more expensive ones" please although is you think something should be sacrificed for another i'm all ears. Usage is very varied. From gaming, browsing to large simulations and programming. All help muchos appreciated. m0jo
Yup. Unfortunatly i have ooodles of DDR but no DDR2. Will be buying the second stick nearer christmas or something like that.
Are you able to find 2gb of ram? Otherwise the setup looks fairly decent. Would say it's worth spending a little less on the GFX card for more ram, might well make the whole experience a little less laggy Might also be worth dropping to an E6300 and spending a bit more on the ram if the GFX budget can't shift.
Although ram may be an issue now, if you upgrade to 2GB soon, there won't be a problem. I would probably keep it if you can reasonably by end of year get the 2nd gig of ram. Its easier to add ram later then to buy a new CPU and video card later.
looks good...i was in same situation you are in in terms of needing to be under a certain dollar amount. i chose to lower my gpu from the 1900 to the 1800 and the e6400 to the e6300 so i could get 2 gigs of good ram, and glad i did...i compare my 3dmark06 scores to people with 1 gig ram and 1900 cards and i destroy them...some of that has to do with my cpu being overclocked so massively o.0 ...but some of it is good ram speed and size
Still though, if you are only going a few months with 1GB, then its probably worth the higher CPU and video card, since once you get the ram, they will be more useful. Its not like 1GB will make those months agonizing on you, just not as powerful
I think the extra money invested in the CPU and GPU is much more worthwhile because the ram will be bought the month or 2 after when all the other pesky things such as food and rent are taken care of. Plus this PC is going to be the main one for another 2+years so i'll have plenty of time to upgrade it.
I would say that it'd be worth dropping to the 6300 and putting the money towards more RAM, even if not now. Depending on where the rig is going to be you could maybe look at a different cooler, although my stock one did me very well even when overclocking. Main reason for dropping is the sheer aw3s0m3ness of the C2D's overclocking potential - you could easily bring the 1.86GHz 6300 up to ~2.2GHz to match the 6400 provided your mobo can support it, mine has been running at 2.6 with nary a worry or care and I know there's plenty of headroom left in it.
Flat mate bought the above setup this morning. I'm still waiting to pawn off my rig but it will happen sometime in the future. Cheers for all the suggestions.
