New system on the cheap

[MrMaestro]

Hey,

I'm gonna get a budget system sometime in the next few months, and it'd be great if i could get some advice on the CPU and motherboard.

Firstly, I'm not gonna get a Core2Duo CPU, cos they're outside of my budget, so I reckon I'll get a Pentium. Is the extra few dollars (like AU$40- not really much at all) worth it to get a dual core model? I really have no knowledge about the dual core Pentiums.

But this begs the question, should I go for Intel at all. Being a budget system, will an AMD processor of the same price as an Intel be better?

Now for motherboards, I have no idea about what to get except that I would prefer a decent brand (gigabyte or asus for example), but still on the cheap, like around AU$80. I do not plan to overclock. But am i screwing myself over gettin such a cheap motherboard, in any aspect at all?


Thanks,

MrMaestro

 

[HotFoot]

I think the consensus is right now that AMD still owns the budget space, at least until the Intel E4300 chips comes out later this month. Also watch for price drops expected in Q2 if you can wait that long, but then the waiting game can be a trap since there's always something better just around the corner.

Dual-core will certainly have advantages over single-core, especially if you plan on running any modern software or doing more than one thing at a time. These days, when I go back to using a single-core machine, I become easily aggravated because I've forgotten how I used to have to give the CPU time to switch between tasks.

I cannot recommend the P4 or PD product. An A64 or X2 would be far superior at a competitive price. When pricing the AMD CPUs, keep in mind that the motherboards tend to be cheaper than for Intel.

So, for a CPU I would recommend either the AMD X2 3800+ or the upcoming Intel E4300. As for motherboards, I don't know much about the sub-$100 category, so I'll leave that to other posters. You should be able to get a recommendation for something easily under $80.

 

[f1nal_0men]

Let's start with Intel processors.
It is just not worth it to buy a single core Intel processor anymore, they are all garbage and for the most part be beaten in price and performance compared to AMD's single core options.

As for dual core from the Intel camp, the 805 isn't bad, and it does well in games that support dual core, but games that don't, it wont perform much better then an Athlon 64 3200+.

Now for AMD. If you want to spend as little as possible, single core AMD is probably your best bet. The Athlon 64 3200+ and MSI K9N4 Ultra-F Socket AM2 would be about $140.00, which translates into about $180.00 AUD. Of course this is assuming you can find prices as cheap as Newegg in Australia.

As for AMD and dual-core, you'd be looking at an extra 80$ AUD for the 3800+ X2, and of course you could use the same board.