AMD Athlon 64 3500+
2GB OCZ PC3200 RAM (from my current system)
MSI 7800GT 256MB
Foxconn N-force 4 Motherboard
Aspire 520W PSU
Seagate 200GB HDD

I know the video card will need to be upgraded in a year and a half, but what about the other stuff? I'm 14, and my parents won't let me do any big upgrades on this for at least a year and a half, but I'm also on a budget of about $800, so should this last? Should I get an X2 3800 and get a 6800gs instead? BTW, i don't plan on overclocking for a while either.

hey scarface
yea, i'd think ur system wuld probably last at least a year, the only thing that mite drag u down a bit is the 3500+ amd. i hav the exact same processor, and it works fine, but its already becoming old and i'm planning to replace my whole computer by the summer with the new tech thats coming out.
one thing i dunt understand is why wuld u replace a 7800gt with a 6800gs???
if thats the case, i wuldnt hav to agree for obvious reasons in performance differences.
As for ur ram, mobo, and hd, it shuld all b fine for at least a year as well. the mobo, foxconn nforce4 i believe u said shuld work fine. it is a slightly older technology compared to the newer sli and crossfire boards, but its a good call waiting for the new tech to come out and to replace this in mayb a year or two
hope this helps
l8r

I would maybe go for a DFI / ASUS / MSI / Epox nForce4 board and an Antec, OCZ, Fortron / PSP group, Silverstone or other nice PSU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/0 [...] age19.html

Your PSU is a very important part of the build expecially with a high-end 7800GT which sucks a lot of power.

It should be good and last for a while. Im not ugrading till next year. The only thing that I would be upgrading this year should only be the windows vista when it comes out.

So basically it's just a toss-up between the better CPU and worse graphics card, or the worse CPU and the better graphics card. Depends which one you plan on upgrading first.

Since in a year and a half more games and that will be optimized for dual cores, I would take the 3500+ and the 7800 now for that reason, because for me it's a tie between the two setups otherwise.

EDIT: hashv2f16 I must have been typing this at the same time your were submiting yours I'm going to leave it though I did'nt copy you I promise


I think what he means is he can only aford one or the other,either a X2 3800+ and a 6800gs or a 3500+ and a 7800GT. If thats what he is asking that is a good question.
I would think the X2 3800+ will shine given more time because they're still working on making games that will use there full potential and drivers that do the same. On the same hand I have a 6800GT which is comparble to the 6800gs and a 3000+ athlon 64. I don't have to much of a problem with my cpu yet but the games that are out like Fear and COD2 KILL my graphics card if I want all the eye candy plus I only have 1GB of ram.I would recommend the 3500+ with your 2GB of ram and with that 7800 gt It should last a little while I would hope.

but this I'm still a little confused on which choice would be the best, maybe others can chime in here with there 2cents.

Get the 7800GT on the A64-3500+ , the minimum weighted frame rate will be higher, even if the average and maximum frame rates is lower.

You are after a good minimum weighted frame rate right ?

Also, it'll take a long time to get games (or should I say for developers to start digging, very deeply into hardware) to benefit from 2+ processors cores, the easiest way is just to manufacture 4-6 issue (single core if need be) processor cores, with typical feature sets, then clock them as high as possible for good game performance.

http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/default.aspx
http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/opteron/default.aspx

Dual-Core won't 'double' the speed in games, nor will 'x64/Win64' EXEs (vs 'x86/Win32 ones), it won't even come close for many years.... As the major bottleneck is the video card when gaming at reasonable resolution during heavy / slow scenes. (eg: A single frame, lasting around 16ms, is 36 million clock cycles to a processor most games don't even come close to that, it is all timeslice overheads and waiting to draw the frames).

Ages ago, in more basic 3D games the processor was a bottleneck, games of 2005 - 2007 era are going to be far more video card intensive.

Dual-Core will not help games for quite awhile, which may even be 2 upgrades passing of time for most the readers on this forum. Just look at how well Quake 4 and CoD 2 scaled. Sure they scaled, but they scale better with a 7800 GT, than with dual-core on a 6800GT/GS.

Building both your 'hypothetical systems' to check this confirms the results.

Hey thanks a lot guys, you've helped a lot.

ohh no problem.

to the guy who said dual cores don't help games like video cards do,
thats true, dual core CPU wont but for games with the likes of fear it seems to have a positive impact on performance, even if it isn't 20 extra frames... hmm that one needs rethinking before i post another reply like this again.

But yeah come to think of it lately, is there any part of the computer that nowadays there isn't two of? Two video cards, two hard drives, two CPU cores, dual voltage rail power supplies (ok thats different but still), 2 pieces of memory for dual channel... only thing they need now is dual motherboard and we'd be able to have another extra set of two of everything