Would this PC spec be up to the job?

[baldinie]

OK, so am buliding a new tower on a shoe string budget, since my student over draft just will not clear and the government have me on crappy emergency tax! (the gits) but anyway... this is the spec i've come up with.

Coolermaster centurion 5 case with a 550W extreme PSU (bundle offer)

a P5E mother board (with a second 16x PCI-e for addition of a card)

E8400 (not overclocked)

HD4850 512MB

2gb corsair (4-4-4-12) PC5400 RAM

500GB 32mb cache HDD

now...would that keep me happy with most games? playing on a 17" crt at 1024x768, which may become upgraded to a 20" LG TFT at 1680x1050. I want a PC that can keep up and play games like CoD and new strategy games at a good resolution.

Thanx for any input.

 

[baldinie]

Also, just incase people who've helped me before read this. Yes i did want to get ther HD4870 and the corsair 750W PSU and the Antec 900 case. Buts that before i knew that my employers were guna take a full 25% of my minimum wage pay! so thanx for ur help! but now i'm having to down scale.

 

[aevm]

Change the MB to P5Q Pro. It's about $75 less, and you still have the Crossfire option for later. At 1680x1050 or less, in Crossfire, it's almost as good as the P5E so you don't lose much.

I think you'll be happy with that setup.

 

[baldinie]

but the P5Q pro doesn't support dual 16x PCIe

 

[aevm]

No, it only supports 8x+8x. But, apparently that doesn't hurt that much at smaller resolutions.
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/intel_p45_vs_x48_crossfire_performance/index.html

OK, if 16x+16x is important, how about this:
K9A2 Platinum (about $150)
X2 6000+ ($113)

That saves you $100 or more compared to the E8400/GA-X48-DS4, and has the full Crossfire speed. The CPU is fast enough not to bottleneck games, so it will get the same fps as the E8400, even if it's slower in benchmarks. Your fps will normally depend on the video card/game/resolution, not the CPU.

 

[baldinie]

if i go with the AMD, what is the bus speed of that? is it 400mhz? get PC6400 ram to get a 1:1 with it.

 

[aevm]

The bus speed of the K9A2 Platinum is 2600MHz. But you can't compare with the "fsb" on Intel motherboards (1600MHz, 1333, etc.), because it has a different meaning for AMD.

Anyway, you should probably use PC6400, yeah. No need for the more expensive PC8500 unless you're overclocking a lot.