AM2 Gaming Rig Over Summer

[Brutus506]

Building a gaming rig over summer break (excluding a vid card), and this is what Ive got in mind so far. Newegg Wishlist

My budget is bout $900 w/o shipping, and Im just wondering what u guys think about it. Also some questions Ive got are:

1. Should I wait untill the 4400 is available in AM2?(When will this be?), and do you think 512kb more cache will really be worth the $120+ more ill be spending for it, if its for gaming?

2. I plan on replacing my X850 with a (nvidia)DX10 card maybe soon after its release, and buying another later, and sli the two when the price of the card has gone down a bit. Is this smart to do, when ive been reading articles saying how ati's R600 "will have the edge with unified shaders" etc. Would you rather get an ati card?

 

[ishtar]

Is that x850 of yours a pci-e? Most of them are agp, and that mobo on your wishlist doesn't have agp

 

[leo_vader]

1.Yes the 512 extra cache should make some difference, the 3800 is more economy class while the 4400 is more mid-level, it depens on whether you are whiling to spend that money.
2.Ati's r600 should really be better than whatever nvidia will have(i am no fanboy ) and the only thing sli/xfire can offer is high resolution(needs expensive monitor) and high antialiasing(not worth it by itself) so just get the most expensive r600 card you can afford !
Further advice:
-get a 16 mb cache hd
-get 2gb ram at least
These would be good invesments and anybody here would confurm, to get them you could buy a ,,cheepo,, single core cpu and upgrade when you have more money(2 cores arent really needed in today games but beeond vista youl need it so chose wisely)
Hope i helped!

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

Get a single GB stick of decent RAM, a single core Athlon 64 AM2, an MSI AM2 motherboard.

If your video card is AGP, forget AM2 for now, at least if you need a new compy immediately. Your AGP card won't work. If it is PCIe, you're in luck. Just upgrade the CPU, get another GB stick of RAM, and buy a new video card when your budget allows.

 

[emogoch]

There won't be a 4400 equivalent. AMD has announced that they're discontinuing all the 1MB L2 Cache chips (4000, 4400, 4800, etc.) in favour of keeping thier products stream-lined. The extra cache doens't do that much anyways.

Secondly, if you're going to be building the system over the summer, wait for Conroe to get released and see how it compares once the full benchmarks start to get released and retail prices emerge.

Third, don't ever think that you'll ever be able to wait out for a graphics card to drop in price. Retailers would rather let a card sit on the shelf then sell it at a discounted price cause the card is now beat by something more powerful and less expensive. The best you'll get is slight price drop after the initial high-demand phase is over when prices are artificially increased.

 

[kcorman]

Drop in 2 - 1GB RAM; matched pair. Nvidia boards like hair 2-memory chips in and having a matched pair from the start does give you minor benefits (a couple of FPS) but also sometimes its cheaper. And if you're planning on this being a Vista machine you will have to realize that over time programs will begin eat up a lot of RAM. Vista is going to start by munching at least 512MBs of RAM and its going downhill from there.

Get the CPU you want now and upgrade it later since, AMD seems to be consolidating thier lines a bit and its hard to tell what's going to end-up being the real upgrade path. Hopefully they keep that socket for another 2 years so its a viable upgrade path.

You're going to have to bite the bullet and get a new video card with this system since it won't take your old card, the 7600 is an good cheap card that still works nicely in a gaming rig. As for ATI vs. Nvidia battle DX10, I'd adopt a wait and see attitude.

I'd change the HD to the WD 150 Raptor since its a whole lot faster (and louder). If your budget is tight a pair of 74GB raptors in Raid will work well and be cheaper.

 

[Brutus506]

Is that x850 of yours a pci-e? Most of them are agp, and that mobo on your wishlist doesn't have agp

ya mines a PCI-E card, thx4 teh_help gg

 

[emogoch]

When you consider the cost/benefit of a raptor drive, it gives you one of the worse turn-around on your dollar. If you're on a budget, spending the cash you can save on a raptor on a better CPU / GPU / more RAM will give a more tangible performance increase. Really, a raptor is only useful if 1) You're doing disk intensive tasks or 2) you have extra money to spend.