With the amount you'll save on the motherboard you can grab a 2x2gb DDR2 800 kit to double your ram (yeah I know 32-bit XP will not use 4gb but it will use about 3.25gb) and maybe upgrade the HDD to a Seagate 7200.11 500gb or 750gb drive.
If you have money to burn you could go with an 8800 GTS (512) card over the 9600 for better performance, though for moderate gaming at medium resolutions the 9600 will probably work.
If you plan on doing much overclocking you'll want to grab a heat sink fan for your CPU too. The stock one on the Q6600 isn't all that great.
Message edited by uguv on 03-26-2008 at 04:34:07 PM
Well no money to burn just really like to know if this set up will run medal of honor Air borne smoothly with good graphics, it would be nice to have the ultimate in graphics. Is the processor going to handle it??? this system needs to last me a few good years.
If you're gaming at a low resolution you should be able to play maxed or near enough but if you're playing at 1920*1200 you won't be maxing but could play at low/medium smoothly.It all really depends on your resolution but you will be able to play smoothly.
ok so what would be the best resolution? in the past I would just load up the games and let it set its self up. lol here I thought I had it all figured out. The monitor is a 19 inch crt vga ...does that make a differnce also? I guess what I am saying is that I want to use the whole screen for gaming.
I think I would look for a E8400 cpu. The 45nm parts run cooler and are faster. Only if you are into heavy multitasking would I look into a quad; take the higher clock speeds for the same price. The limiting factor in your games is the vga card, not a E8400 or Q6600.
For a new build, get Vista, either 32-bit or 64-bit. It will run dx10, and be supported much longer than XP. As a shopping tip, get the upgrade version instead of OEM. You will get a retail version which entitles you to support, and for $10, microsoft will send you the 64 bit dvd . There is a letigimate two step installation process to install an upgrade version on a new machine. I recently saw it for sale at Costco for $85.
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E8400-stock, GA-P35-DS3R(rev2.1), Corsair 4x2gb 6400C5, EVGA 8800GTS-512-G92, Vista home premium-64-bit, WD velociraptor-300gb, PC P&C silencer-610, Antec SOLO, 2 x Samsung 275T, Samsung-203b-dvd
ok so what i get out of this yes the q6600 can handle the game but up grade to vista but also get a heat sink fan. I'll be remoting into my desk top at work from home running CADD and spreadsheets also.
Get an 8800GTS 512MB. Make sure it's the 512MB, not the 320 or 640. It will last you longer than the 9600GT, and it adds only another $100 or so to the price of the PC.
Make sure the DVD is SATA. E.g. SH-S203B at newegg.
