Confused over two custom desktops

Sorry if this is the wrong place but the system forum seemed to be for branded only.

I am not very computer knowledgable and i am looking at these two systems

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SILVER-X-BLA [...] .m14.l1262

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/M9-WINDOW-PC [...] temQQptZUK


They are both the same price and yet the top one has a better graphics card (i think), a bigger HDD and is quad core rather than dual core.

The only other thing i see is that the 9800gtx only has 512mb memory and that the 9800 gt has 1gb but i have read quite a few times that the difference between game quality is extremely minimal between 516mb and 1gb cards. Is that the only reason why they are the same price or am i missing something?

Wow, both of those PCs are advertising CPU speeds that's just their actual speed multiplied by the amount of cores... I can do that too, fear my 12.8 GHz CPU! But not really, because that's made of fail.

Both have the same no-name RAM (they say branded but don't say what brand, that means not well known). Same goes for HDD (though... it could be a WD or Seagate, even high quality hard drives are rather cheap these days).

9800GTX > 9800GT, even taking into account the memory differences.

Hmm... personally I wouldn't buy either and build my own. There's no guarantee that they're even using good quality PSUs, thermal paste, etc. so reliability would be a huge concern of mine.

ewwwwww these pcs look dodgy. if its too good to be true it probly is. its a great price though lol

aford10 - it's quite obvious what they're doing, the CPU's aren't actually 5.5+ GHz, the Phenom is 2.6 GHz, and the Core 2 Duo is 2.8 GHz, they just multiply the speed by the number of cores.

To be honest MichaelD_83, some ebay retailers are good value but either way they're always out to make a profit and do this however they can (cheapest parts possible generally gets them this goal while having 1-2 big parts to show off).

That said, I'm someone who'll never trust a prebuilt PC unless I handpick every single thing that goes into it, which is why I build them myself.

I realize that. However, they aren't advertising it that way. Any reputable builder/seller knows that it doesn't work that way. If that's how they advertise, you should tread lightly.