Hey everyone, I'm new here, so please forgive me for being a bit of a newbie. I am currently in search of a new system since my current P4 system is becoming quite aged. Having played alot of pesky graphically undemanding MMOs for quite a long time, the recent release of CnC 3: Kanes Wrath is currently murdering my computer. A budget is being negotiated with my parents, however I suspect it will be around £600 maximum. From my own research, this is what I have come up with: Asus P5N-E SLI 650i Socket 775 ATX Motherboard (1033) I think this is a bit old now, but provides alot of bang for buck. Although it has a few constraining features (memory, slow second PCI-E), I am not going to be buying a second GPU or top-of-the-range memory! Intel Core 1 Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient 95W Socket 775 (2.4 GHz) G0 Stepping L2 8MB Cache OEM I have heard that this particular CPU is nice to overclock and tinker around with. I'd like a decent processor so I can compile software more quickly and it obviously helps with the gaming! 4GB Corsair DDR2 6400 This is on the reccomendation of a friend. Since the motherboard won't support faster RAM, this seems a bit of a bargain! 768MB XFX 8800GTX Extreme PCI-E(16x) 1900MHz GDDR3, GPU 600MHz A decent graphics card. Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 To help with the overclocking. Coolermaster RealPower 700W Modular PSU Power supply reccomended by a friend. Estimated Cost: £571.08 I am keeping my current peripherals and hard drives to save money. What does everyone think?
I would say ditch the P5N, and Go for a P35 Chipset such as the P5K (whichever variation is within budget). Great overclocking, and if you're not using a second video card, there's really no need for an Nvidia chipset. Other than that, great. I assume you'll be using a 64-bit OS?
Agreed with ditching the P5N, also, is quad core for you? You say about gaming but how many games take advantage of 4 cores? I know the 4 cores mean you can watch a film and unzip a large file while gaming (something everyone does regularly ... :|) but I personally don't see 4 cores as an advantage for what I need. Badders has the first hand experience for it though so he can provide more info.
With the Quad-core issue, if the only thing you use your PC for is games, then you might be better off with a 45nm dual Core Wolfdale (e8400?) However, it's great to be able to set core affinity for a multi-threaded video encoder, so that it only uses 3 cores, and leaves me one to play Source Games on, which are still single threaded apps. Command and Conquer 3 uses mostly one core, but does offload some work onto others. I've not had any experience with Kane's Wrath though. Normally though, I've got Outlook, Real Temp, Internet Explorer(10 or 20 tabs over 2-3 windows), Asus Smartdoctor, PVR software, Antivirus, Magicdisc, Putty, Steam, Synergy, and probably a few other things running, at the same time, and I can still play games or encode videos at the same time.
Thats fair. Ive got an E8400 sitting in front of me waiting for a motherboard. It sucks not being able to use it right now
Right now my processor is rubbish, so pretty much anything will do. However, I think I should be asking myself whether a quad-core will have a significant effect on speeding up my software compilers. Especially when I need to re-build a large programming project...*runs off to research some comparisons*...if the performance change is neglible, then a dual core could be a cheaper alternative. With regards to OS, because I'm a student on the MSDNAA I can get hold of most OS's for free or with significant discount. I've not really considered which OS I'll use, but I've been warned to avoid Vista, so it would probably be XP Professional x64.
I'd do the opposite, and warn you off XP-64. I'd recommend Vista 64 wholeheartedly. There's plenty of threads about exactly that on this site - This one for instance.
been warned about vista?? whats wrong with vista lol. Ive been using it for a while now and havent had a single problem with it. Everyone complains about it using ram but unused ram is wasted ram. on vista. esp 64 bit
also i do have the p5n-e sli and it is good but its getting old now. It would be in your best interest to get something newer. Follow badders advice about the mobo. Im still using a e6300 its still chugging along at 2.6 but yea dual core is better for gaming most of the time and quad is for multithread apps. now if you get say q6600 and oc it 3Ghz ur getting the best of both worlds.
... Vista is lovely, fancy features... but i want my RAM back! also I've noticed that it cases some game instabilities, I've had trouble with Battlefield 2 on a number of instances. Then again maybe thats just me.
Strangely they don't have the ultra 120 extreme (or whatever it is called) but other than that, that is what I would go for. By the time you take off the ~£10 for shipping you are about £45 under budget too! You may go for an 8800GTX to use that up EDIT: if you need an OS, get a 64 bit version of Vista
what resolution will you be gaming at?? go with P35 and a good dual core if you only going to game on it
Thankyou for the advice everyone! I'm still looking at the P35 but Cupboards suggestion looks OK! Thanks! I think I'll go with Vista x64 since alot of the "problems" seem rather superficial. I'm going to get 4G of RAM so...meh! I'll proberbly need to learn how to use it too since alot of buisensses have proberbly made the transition already. I'm debating about the e8400 since it seems a bit more expensive, but I use my computer for mostly writing software (I do alot of programming as part of my computer science degree), trawling the interwebs and playing games. So it might be worth it. As far as the budget is concerned, I might as well milk it! The 8800GTX looks quite nice, so I might as well go for it!
Overall, I'd say your choices are looking pretty good. I'd get an 8800gt rather than gtx, because the cost doesn't seem worth the heat and noise, to me. If you really want the performance, though, carry on. As for motherboard, I'd heartily recommend one of Gigabyte's P35-DS3 boards. I have a DS3L, and unless you really want DDR3 or the extra SATA ports, I don't see any reason to get one of the more expensive variants. If you bought it to look at, you might as well leave it on your desk. Vista actually uses your RAM, and well. Contrary to popular belief, Vista isn't eating all that RAM for itself. It's using it to make your computer faster, but as soon as something else needs the memory, Vista will give up most of it and end up using barely more than XP does.
