Help me design a VALUE gaming system

[IAM27]

What I want is a value gaming system. I want to design this to run modern games, and maybe for about 1 year max in the future. I want it to run these pretty well though. I also want the price to be fairly low. What I was thinking was to get a cheap AMD, but I'm not sure which one would be best for value/price/performance right now to just run modern games. I don't want it to be extremely future proof, as I will be building a Conroe system in the next 6months or so to be my futuring system. What I want is something I can build for a fairly low budget right now, that will get great frames and good performance on games that are out there or to be released soon. Doesn't need to be Vista ready, as I will probably just run XP on this system until I decide to get rid of it. I think XP compatible games will still be availible for the next year or two atleast, so I don't think thats too much of a problem.

I have a monitor/keyboard/etc.

I also have a ATI x1900xtx I will be transfering to this machine, as the machine I have it in right now is not giving it its due.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

 

[tyh]

I also have a ATI x1900xtx

And you want a VALUE gaming system????

 

[The_Prophecy]

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+

Mobo: Asus M2N-E

RAM: Corsair XMS2 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR2-800

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2

Power Supply: Antec Truepower 480W

 

[IAM27]

Looks good. And this should run faster than my crappy dell with the prescott P4 3.0 ghz on games right? The thing runs great for apps, but the mobo and CPU majorly bottleneck on games.

And you want a VALUE gaming system????

Yes, as I said I plan on building a conroe system in the future. But I want to wait until the prices stabilize and they come out with some more mobos for it. So right now I just want a streamlined gaming system, and with the prices of AMD chips so low I figured it wouldn't be too hard to make one that could run all current games for fairly cheap.


Also, since the AM2 socket is so supposed to be used in the next-gen chips from AMD would it be worth spending an extra 50 bucks to get a better mobo now?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Actually.. I'm going to revise my earlier suggestion with the Athlon X2 3800+. This way it will definitly perform better for gaming than your current system until you build the Conroe rig.

The Asus M2N-E is about the best AM2 board you can get. I say this because SLI is a waste of money unless you're going to be gaming at a screen res over 1600 x 1200.

 

[shadowduck]

Actually.. I'm going to revise my earlier suggestion with the Athlon X2 3800+. This way it will definitly perform better for gaming than your current system until you build the Conroe rig.

The Asus M2N-E is about the best AM2 board you can get. I say this because SLI is a waste of money unless you're going to be gaming at a screen res over 1600 x 1200.

Or you can get the 4000+ from ZipZoomFly for $184. Get the extra cache.

 

[The_Prophecy]

The 4000+ is another good option.

 

[IAM27]

Alright. Sounds pretty good. Still only about 600 bucks. I can manage that off two paychecks savings.