gaming pc

i have two two questions for all you gamers out there and non gamers alike. fiirst off memory. i am going ddr, now how big a difference is there in dual channel ddr and "normal" ddr? along with that, does the motherboard need to be dual channel compatible? and then my second question is more an asking for input. i am a counter strike player (i am chupacabra is the name if your wondering) but thats neither here nor there. currently i have a alienware area 51 with a pentium4 3.0ghz, 1gb ram, ati radeon x1600 pro. i am interested in building my own pc with an amd 64x2 or fx and 2gb of memory. i have been reading about the geforce 8800 as far as video cards go. but i am looking for opinions, those specs are more just to give a price range im looking at. so please if you have a minute, let me know your thoughts, it would be greatly appreciateted.


"in the wild, there is no such thing as health care. in the wild, health care is owe, i hurt my leg, im a lion eats me, and im dead. well, im not dead. im the lion.
youre dead!
~dwight schrute, the office

As far as the Intel vs. AMD battle goes, from what I have read AMD won the fight. c-net had a great review between the two putting AMD as the winner. But that is just from what I have read. As far as what I play for games, its generally first person shooters: counter strike, fear, the half life series, call of duty, etc.

From my current research this is the basic specs i have gotten.
AM2 motherboard, ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Socket, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ or 4800+ cpu, and then NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT as far as a video card goes.

Thanks for your help

I looked at CNet's reviews of CPUs, and all they had were pretty old systems (PD/P4 and older X2/FX setups).

Check out hardware sites, like THG, Anandtech, Extremetech, etc. for gaming benchmarks.

That said, the system you listed should be more than enough for FPS gaming. If the 4800+ isn't much more expensive than the 4600+, then go that route. Of course, with the DX10 capable cards around the corner, along with Vista, if you can hold off for a few weeks, maybe a month or two, you could get a system that's even better for gaming.

i'm a gamer, all I use my pc is for FEAR, AOE, EVE online. and I went from a 3400+ to a 4800+ and dident see any difference in games. amd dual cores just cant keep up with core 2, there is no reason to upgrade, or build a amd dual core system unless you got a 4800+ for free like I did