Comp upgrade advice

[DrBiggles]

I built my current system a few years ago, but haven't payed attention to the hardware market since then, so looking at upgrades now I'm rather at a loss as to where to start. AMD or Intel? If one or the other, which CPU type? I mostly use my rig for gaming and some graphics design, so that's what I'm aiming for. Money isn't a huge issue, but it would still have to be somewhat affordable. Any suggestions?

 

[HotFoot]

If you're into gaming, and you have a reasonable budget ($800+), then I think you'll do very well with a Core 2 Duo system. I generally recommend getting a good P965 board and 1 or 2 GB of DDR2 RAM at 667 or 800 MHz (these speeds will allow for overclocking, and the P965 gets past 400 FSB pretty consistently - stock base speed of 266MHz). I'd very much recommend overclocking, at least mildly. I'd buy one of the lower-end C2D chips, and then crank up the FSB to reach the performance of the higher-end chips... just watch your temperatures (you'll probably want an after-market cooler if you're going to push towards 3 GHz). Use the money you save on the mainstream motherboardboard (over SLI/x-fire) and low-end C2D to get yourself a good graphics card. The 8800GTX is king right now, but the R600 from ATi is expected out soon.

Get a good quality PSU. It should have active power factor correction (PFC). Pay attention to how many ampres are available on the 12V rails. The biggest power consumer will probably be your graphics card, so check the specs on that to see what the minimum recommended power supply is, and add 5-6 amps to the 12V.

 

[dragonsprayer]

either one will blow you away with performance when properly clocked!