$800-900 Gaming build needs critiques

wareagle316

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Apr 7, 2009
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APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Hopefully by the beginning of May BUDGET RANGE: $800-900

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Playing Crysis, Call of Duty, using photoshop, and surfing the web. I want to be able to run ANYTHING i choose to play on MAX settings

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: Keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, DVD-RW, and POSSIBLY the computer case(depends on how much money is left over).

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com i like ordering from them since they are based in california and im in florida (no taxes paid) and their customer service is excellent.

PARTS PREFERENCES: I am going with an AMD cpu and I picked a radeon video card (not sure if this is a wise choice) because of that.

OVERCLOCKING: I've NEVER overclocked before and am just starting now to learn how. I DO plan to overclock on this machine.

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: I plan to in the future. For the initial build im not sure if there is enough money in the budget to do so however. You guys can help me out with that decision hopefully.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: Right now i have a 19' LCD monitor not in use so i'll be using that for a while on 1280x1024 but i will eventually be moving on to a +22' widescreen.

These are the parts i think i might want to use for this rig:

AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
SAPPHIRE 100270SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler

I need help choosing a power supply that will be capable of running a crossfire or sli. I just havent read enough (i am workin on rectifying this) nor do i understand enough about how power supplies work to make an informed decision.
 

Tech-Boy

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Nov 28, 2008
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Everything looks good except change the Graphics Card to a gtx 275.

The 4850x2 is a awesome card but seeing that your main goal is to max a out crysis the gtx 275 will perform much better. The reason behind this is because crysis does not scale well with more than one ati card and the gtx 275 can be overclocked to surpass the performance of the 4850x2 in most games. You are also future proofing as adding another gtx 275 will give you waaaay more performance than adding another 4850x2.

Also any Corsair, OCZ, Thermaltake or Acer Power Supply with 750w or more should be sufficient.

Overall Nice build, you should be very pleased with it.
 

wareagle316

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Apr 7, 2009
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ok thanks for the power supply suggestion. I've added it to my shopping cart. I have a question about the motherboard i chose. it has the 790FX chipset in it. What i want to know is what is the difference between the 790GX and the 790FX. The reason i ask is because instead of purchasing the 790FX i could get the 790GX for way cheaper.

I have been looking at this 790GX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131366

This is my original 790FX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131363

Which one should i go with? What benefits am i losing by going with the GX over the FX?
 

wareagle316

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Apr 7, 2009
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So what your saying is that the 790FX is worth the extra 50 bucks?

I've also decided to drop the 4850x2 for the 4890. thx for the advice.