Need Advice for building a best price for power gaming system

[boomer76]

Hey all, I've built a handful of systems over the last several years. I am currently looking to upgrade my current cpu with a new motherboard/cpu, video card.

I've toy'd with the idea of sli and using 2 lower priced cards to get better performance than a high end but my knowledge in this area is lacking......I am open to intel or amd type systems.......


I am looking for best performance for the price.....somewhere around 250-350 dollars.....I do have the ram, hard drive, etc.......

Thanks for the help!

 

[Zenthar]

250-350 for the video card(s) only, or the MB + CPU as well?

Most of the time SLI/Crossfire is not a way to get performance for cheaper, it's either an upgrade path or a way to go further than what a single card can do.

What resolution will you be gaming at?

What is the RAM you have, DDR2-800?

 

[boomer76]

The ram is DDR2-800, probably somewhere along the lines of 150-200 for motherboard/cpu and 100-150 for video card....... I don't think i really need the benefits that come with that setup

 

[roadrunner197069]

your looking like a P5k or P5Q for mobo and a E2200 or e7200 for cpu in your budget. And get a 4850 with mir for GPU.

 

[Zenthar]

For that price, you will not get a "power gaming" system, but an entry-level system. For that price, I would suggest an AMD setup, unfortunately, I don't know much about AMD boards, so have someone double-check what I say .
■CPU: Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Brisbane 2.8GHz Black Edition
■MB: GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H
■GPU: Any 4850 card (150-160$ after MIR).

With that MB, you even get Hybrid CrossFire with the on-board GPU to give the 4850 card a little boost. Total: 363$, but you are getting 2 free games with that at NewEgg (1 with CPU, 1 with GPU).