Gaming Setup on a Budget, what do you recommend?

I would get a 1950pro instead and invest the money on a better cpu.

ok, say I go with a 1950pro, I can save $50 on newegg by picking that one.
with the extra $50 which CPU woould you recommend?

(all prices listed are newegg)

The 4000+ Brisbane. Or the E4300.

how does the e4300 compare against the e6300?

There pretty much the same, performance wise, the E6300 is faster by like 5-7%.

ok, so the setup could then look something like this:



CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Allendale 1.8GHz LGA 775$170

MoBo: ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX $130

RAM: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) $167

Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100176L Radeon X1950PRO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP $150

total would be $623

That looks good, although i would get this mobo instead, saves $25.

Why not get an AGP version of the X1950 Pro and just add that to your current system?

For around $200 you can continue to use your old hardware for another 12-18 months. You aren't going to get more than about $150 for your current setup, and the performance you gain by spending $600 isn't going to be astounding versus just purchasing the video card on its own.

Here is a link to an article that uses your CPU with an X1950 AGP:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/10/agp-platform-ana...

because I dont think my current vid card is the bottleneck on my system, rather the cpu.
My card gets good scores in Vista but not the cpu

it does look nice, altough Ive always but either ASUS or MSI mobos, the one time I bought an ECS didnt turn out so good. I would rather use one of the first 2.

should I wait for the DX10 cards that cost around $150 coming out in March? or will this radeon x1950pro be good enough?

If you can wait 2 months you can take advantage of not only cheaper DX10 cards, but also Intel's upcoming price cuts which I believe are supposed to hit on April 22.

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/46129/Prijsverlaging-Core-2-...

I'd wait.

I agree wait until april price cuts.
Save money on cpu if not mobo and GPU also.

P5NSLI, this is a budget gamer board. Has onboard sound and Gigabit LAN. Not a good board for overclocking from what I have read, then again, I have not read that you are interested in OC.

I own this board, it's a cheap entry point into SLI, but I have had no complaints so far.

A very crude generalization is if the cpu is at least dual core (and so reduces system overhead to negligible), and the graphics are decent (like any of the graphic mentioned), then roughly speaking putting extra money into the graphics card pays better than extra money into the cpu for a gaming computer.

It's a good strategy to put even twice or more the money into the graphics, even a $300 card with the $110 3800, IMO, if you don't mind doing a modest, easy overclock 2.2 Ghz. This overemphasis on graphics pays up to the point where you finally get up to a big enough difference like an 8800 GTS vs an X2 3800, for example, which would be too much. But less difference than this is fine for gaming.

So the advice to cut the graphics card down for a better dual core isn't good advice for gaming at the levels mentioned.