Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Gaming Rig Help.. confused on what to get

Last response: in Systems
Share

Hey all I want to build a new gaming rig. Here are my goals, any advice is appreciated. Budget I would like to keep under $800 if possible.

I am not a big over clocker and I will be playing games like WoW, CoH and the like.

Hree is what I had thought of getting:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Asus Mobo (not sure which probably SLI see below)
2 GB Corsair XMS Ram (on sale this weekend).
eVGA 6800GS

I have an Antec Truepower 430 watt PSU and will be getting a new case most likely.

My thought was go ahead and get the Dual Core now and the SLI mobo. Then next year or later this year get another 6800GS and go SLI.

I want this PC to last 3 years with minimal tweaking. Maybe add more RAM if Windoze can ever handle it. Even if at the end it's average/below average but still working.

Thoughts and suggestions?

Thanks for any and all help!
-Chris

-Chris

More about : gaming rig confused

Register or log in to remove

What else are you reusing?
Three years of a PC is going to be difficult especially with $800
-------------------------------edit------------------------------------------

$109.99 ABIT KN8 SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

$189.00 eVGA 256-P2-N391-AX Geforce 6800GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
after $10 mail in rebate

$191.00 CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200)
after $40 mail in rebate

$328.00 AMD Opteron 165 Denmark 1GHz FSB 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
yes it is compatable with this board

$817.99 Total after rebates plus shipping and tax

I am reusing the following:

WD 160 7200 ATA HD. -> Will upgrade next
Sceptre 20.1" LCD Monitor
Creative Audigy 2 Gamer Soundcard (not a huge sound freak. it sounds good and should for a while).
Antect Truepower 2.0 430w Power Supply

The inital $800 is the core. I plan to upgrade the HD and add the SLI Video Card in a year. That should give me a good lift.

There are sales this weekend to where I can get the following:

CPU - $279
Memory - $179
Video Card - $169
Mobo is $120 or so.

That's $757. Case is extra as I have been needing one for a while

Thanks
-Chris

Is that cpu a refurb? If not that is a good price on a 3800 x2
My other suggestion is buy a 6600gt for now and later upgrade to new video card. SLI in my opinion is not a very good upgrade path.
Nothing wrong with the audigy card they are good cards and nothing yet really to warrent upgrading.
Related ressources
Ask the community

I agree. SLI is not really worth it, if you're going with midrange cards. The biggest benefit from SLI is the ability to run at higher resolutions and detail settings with comparable framerates to a single card. It doesn't make your system get better performance at lower resolution and low detail, like a more powerful graphics card would.

Edit:
I just noticed that the motherboard you linked to has both AGP 8x and PCIe compatibility. If you got that board, depending what graphics card you have in your old system, you may just want to stick with that for a bit.

What is your old graphics card?

Currently I have a Geforce Ti4200 I do believe. It's starting to show it's age.

My LCD Monitor has a recommened resolution of 1650 x 1050.

So I guess I will just save a little more and get a single high end video card.

-Chris
Homebuilt system Expert

"My thought was go ahead and get the Dual Core now and the SLI mobo. Then next year or later this year get another 6800GS and go SLI. "

You'd do better to get a single 7800GT on sale for $280 than to add a 2nd 6800GS at $200 more later....

You might want to wait like a week or two for the 7900 series to come out. It'll likely push the 7800 down in price or, if you have the cash, you can get a brand spankin new card around launch time.
Register or log in to remove
 
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Systems categories
!