My Christmas present! Need a little advice.

You can't mix DDR and DDR2 memory together. I would recommend a better power supply (ie 450w-500w) and go for a better vid card (8800gt 256 meg but won't be out in time most likely) could you swap out a vid card from older computer for time being?

Yeah, it should be pretty good. Personally, I would invest a little more in a better video card if you want to play newer games.

No, you can't reuse your old RAM. DDR and DDR2 are not interchangeable.

I think if you get a mobo that isnt SLI you can lower the price a bit. What are the other mobo choices?

What's your budget?

What games do you play?

Do you overclock?

My budget is $600.

I just want to be able to play Doom 3, F.E.A.R, Prey and such at a decent frame rate, and according to the charts on tomshardware.com, that's what i'll get.

Maybe Oblivion too, but maybe with details turned down a bit.

But most of all: Age of Empires 3.

No, I don't know how to OC.

Depending on the monitor resolution & game video settings, 7600GT may be ok. Low res & low quality video.

IMO, you're spending the money on the unimportant part: mobo. Get a cheaper single pci-e board & a much better video. The least would be HD3850. The games you listed are pretty demanding at highest settings.

You can build an 8800gt pc for about 500 u.s.

I'm using a 7600GT right now, coupled with a Pentium 4 @ 3.0GHz. In Oblivion, I was able to play it well at 1280x1024, with distant land/buildings/trees on, and with the low size textures. Also, AA was off. It was definitely playable, but not too impressive graphics wise.

I plan to play games in 1024x768. AA doesn't really matter much to me anyways.

Here's the new setup.



It's a little more expensive, and is just about at my budget limit. But I've upgraded to 2 GB of RAM, downgraded the CPU from 4200 to 4000, and downgraded the Mo/bo to a non SLI one. But see on the Mo/bo description where it says "W/ Radeon X1250 Graphic", what does that mean exactly?

What brand is the power supply ? I would drop the 7600gt, go back to the 4200, use the mobo integrated graphics ( radeon x1250) for now, and wait a few weeks for the 256mb 8800gt.... maybe in those weeks you can save up the $80 or $100 bucks that the 8800gt is gonna cost you more over the 7600gt......but if you can't wait, the 7600gt is a decent card for the games you mentioned at medium to low settings.

He can't afford 8800gt, I think. The latest list is already over budget.

CASE: ATX MEDIUM TOWER CASE 350 WATT (BLACK COLOR)
CPU: (Socket AM2) AMD Athlon™64 X2 4000+ Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
MOTHERBOARD: (Socket AM2)Asus M2A-VM AMD 690G Chipset DDR2/800 SATA RAID PCI-Express MBoard w/Radeon X1250 Graphic, GbLAN, IEEE1394, USB2.0, & 7.1Audio
MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)1GB (1x1GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Memory (Corsair Value Select or Major Brand)
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB PCI Express x16 Video Card
VIDEO CARD 2: NONE
LCD Monitor: NONE
HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (160GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
Data Hard Drive: NONE
Optical Drive: Sony Q170A 18x Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
Optical Drive 2: NONE
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
Price: $579.00

You can build a 8800gt pc for about $500. Why must you buy from that store? Most everything is overpriced. $90 for 2 gigs? It's less than 50 at most stores. 90 can buy 4 gigs.

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5269577;jsessionid=KxGOA37NcB-kCu8HYssznw**.node3?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Hmm, do you know of any other website that could beat that price then? For pre-built PC's, of course.

But aren't they gonna charge you a fee for building it ?

No, I don't think so.

But.. I'm a little concerned. After looking at the forums, it seems most people have had bad shipping experiences and their PC's wouldn't work upon arrival, and they've had to send their rig back sometimes 2 or 3 times just to get it working. There was maybe 2 out of 10 people that had perfectly working PCs.

Yikes...

homebuilt is the way to go....

Why don't you want to put it together yourself? That's half the fun...

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/
http://www.ibuypower.com/
http://www.abs.com/

Abs is rated very highly in PC Mag, but their site may be designed for I.E. It's broken on Firefox.

Hmm.. on second thought, I might just go with that site. Much more impressing. Having awards is always good, and the customer testimonials look alot better than all those disgruntled people at buyxg.

Thanks for the link  

Although now it looks like I won't be getting a new PC till mid January or so. Maybe even February. I've decided to save up a little more and get an 8800  

Thanks everyone for helping.