E8200 at $110 or E8500 at $160?

What do you think?

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
2GB RAM
In need of a case - don't have one yet. Looking to get a Smilodon Black or [preferrably] an Antec 900.
Sparkle fanless geforce 9400 gt

Might end up with only 65 bucks if i get the 8500 - what case should I get then or do I save up for the antec? The clear cases are only like 60. . .don't know how well cooled they are.



Plan on playing Supreme Commander . . .Crysis looks cool, but haven't bought it yet. Can always upgrade.

What do you say? E8500 at $160 or E8200 at $110?

That system won't run supreme commander or crysis very well.

A much better graphic card methinks.

Yea, the 9400GT is crap on a card, dont even waste your time installing Crysis.

As to your CPU choice, I say neither, grab an E6300 and spend some money on a decent graphics card.

The Core 2 Duo E8200 is a good processor…I’ve the same one running my factory-built Dell Inspiron 530 PC (being factory-built means no overclock capability). I bought the PC in mid of 2008. Worthy mention, it has 3GB RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card. With this setup, I am able to runs some modern games like Call of Duty 4, BioShock and Mass Effect with maximum settings at reasonable resolutions. But as for Crysis, I am able to run it smoothly at a sacrificing low resolution of 1024 x 768 with mixed medium and high settings (no Anti-Aliasing). NOTE: My Inspiron 530 is driven by Windows XP. I’ll be upgrading my system soon by adding an extra 1GB of RAM and replacing the last generation mainstream/Mid-Level HD 2600 video card with a current generation one (either Radeon HD 4870 or the Geforce GTX 260(Core 216)).

I am not sure what kind of budget you are running on, but you should carefully look around for a perfect balance of processor, motherboard, RAM and video card – you will have to factor in a 500+ Watts power supply. The E8200 is a good processor as I commented earlier, but the better choice would be the E8500 (or E8400 stock-clocked @ 3.0GHz). And as for the graphics card, you would be embarrassing your computer build with the Geforce 9400 GT, which is a Low/Entry-Level video card. My recommendation for a last generation Geforce 9 Series will have to be the High-End 9800 GTX or 9800 GTX+. As for the current generation of video cards, you will not go wrong with either the Radeon HD 4870 or Geforce GTX 260 (Core 216). NOTE: the last generation High-End 9800 GTX is on par with the current Mid-Range GTX 260 video card.

For reference, check out these interesting articles on the web (that's if you haven’t come across them). And make sure you read through all the pages of each of the articles.

Build a Kick-Ass $500 Gaming PC, Play Crysis at 40FPS
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/f [...] ysis_40fps

How to Build a Kick-ass $800 Gaming PC
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/f [...] _gaming_pc

Crysis Warhead Hardware Performance Review
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] eview.html