Or am I crazy?

Here is what I came up with:

- GIGABYTE GA-MA770-DS3 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128081
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103194
- G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820231166
- GIGABYTE Radeon HD 4850 512MB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814125224

Those 4 come to $475

What I was considering before was generally the same type of MB and RAM, but a E8400 and 9800GTX (with the new price drop).

Any reason to go with the 'red team', or would the slightly more expensive Intel/nVidia combo smoke it?

Thanks!

I'd go Intel/ATI, get a decent P45 motherboard, an E8400/Q6600, the same ram and the HD 4850. The P45 motherboards can even support crossfire.

What if I didn't care about Crossfire/SLI?

9800gtx perform the same as 4850, unless it's overclocked. No advantage there.

An e8400, or any one of the intel quads, will smoke the Athlon 64 x2, especially if overclocked. They overclock far better than the amd cpu, "black edition" or not. But they cost more too.

And I assume at stock speeds, the E8400 would run cooler (heat = more/bigger/faster fans = noise, which I do not want a lot of).

E8400 is superior in every possible way, including stock temperature. But you're comparing a $80 cpu with a $190 one. It's not fair comparasion.

You are right - its not fair - but my current CPU was purchased in December 2003 (really), and I would not mind spending extra on the new one if it lasted me. I figure I will do at least 1 graphics card update (as I did on this system, went from a Ti4400 to a 6600GT).

As you can tell, even a bottom of the pile system would smoke my current rig.

If you want it to last, get a quad. Quad core on multithreaded applications are the future. A quad will at least stand a chance against 8 core Nehalem, a dual won't, not matter how highly clocked. Or just wait until the end of this year for a Nehalem. Prices will be high at launch though.

If you don't care about Crossfire.. Look at the MSI Neo-3R. Great board at $119.

Sorta.. P45 cannot provide enough bandwidth for 48x0 in Crossfiree.

dagger - what about a Q9450 and not beat myself up too bad over things?

I hear the dual is better for gaming because you can get higher clocks, but if I am still using this CPU in 3, 4, 5 years (which I probably will...unless I get out of college, get a killer job, and get a new $5000 build every 6 months ), I guess the quad is ready for the future.

Q9450 is fine. It's the best of current mainstream cpus. There are faster "extreme" version of quads, but they cost $1k+, for not much performance boost. It cost money to be on the bleeding edge.

I like the idea of being a few months behind, a few dozen percent slower...and 80% less money.

I like games (FPS, simulations, etc.), but I am not going to obsess about getting an extra 3 FPS.

Quad core is a waste for gaming right now if you're going to game. Look around this site plenty of people are saying it with good evidence to back it up. If you like AMD for some reason then go with them because their Dual cores are great, but if you don't care who you go with i would definitely say stick with an Intel Dual core.

Gaming performance benchmark for comparable dual vs quad, both at stock clock rate and most common clock rate for oced machines:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/c [...] 600_8.html

Great info, thanks.

I would rather trade off some performance today for more performance down the road.