first build, what do you suggest

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p_little

Weaksauce
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May 2, 2005
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I am going through the steps of my first build, and I was just wanting to see what was suggested by more experienced people for my usage.

I am basically putting this together for school/gaming use. I feel that the AMD64 3500 in the 939 socket would be about right for me and in my price range. I would like to be able to play HL2 on this rig without much slowdown, which I know will in part depend on my memory. As far as school use goes it would mainly be MS Office and Acrobat, nothing major. I guess the most strenous thing that I have planned is gaming, but nothing too hardcore. I know the games will depend on a video card too. I want a decent chip for under $275 or so.


Thanks.
 
275 - processor only correct?

i would suggest 3500 venice and overclock it, whats your total budget?

nforce4 if you can pull it off, dfi.. .might be a little over your mobo price though
 
it sounds like he want s $275 video card.
either the x800xl or 6800gt.. whichever company floats your boat.

as for the 3500+, it's a good choice. what are you doing for ram and cooling? :p
 
I'm not looking into overclocking at this point. I mean $275 for the processor only. I'm trying to bring the whole thing in under a grand if possible. As far as memory goes I'm looking at either Corsair or Crucial and using 2 sticks of 512 to get dual channel 1 Gig. I was thinking of getting a retail chip so it would have a fan and heat spreader with it, but I might be able to throw down a little more if necessary for more cooling.

Also, what core do you suggest?
 
stock cooling will work, and i'd get crucial over corsair, but i'm heavily biased towards one and against the other ;)
 
yeah, i love it, but i've realized that it's not really worth the money, in light of my testing with crucial value ram. 265mhz at 2.5-2-2 is nothing to scoff at :D
 
I am currently considering the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ ClawHammer/Hammer 1GHz FSB Socket 939. Is the ClawHammer good? Is Winchester better? What core gives the best results overall?
 
i have a clawhamer, its good... but its the hottest one iirc. get rev e, youll have sse3, better memory controller and can oc better :cool:

good night [H]
 
p_little said:
What core gives the best results overall?
Click to expand...
for all practical purposes, clawhammer and san diego are the best at a given mhz due to the extra cache. since you aren't ocing, the fact that the new 90nm cpus should oc a lot better doesn't really matter ;)
 
p_little said:
I am going through the steps of my first build, and I was just wanting to see what was suggested by more experienced people for my usage.

I am basically putting this together for school/gaming use. I feel that the AMD64 3500 in the 939 socket would be about right for me and in my price range. I would like to be able to play HL2 on this rig without much slowdown, which I know will in part depend on my memory. As far as school use goes it would mainly be MS Office and Acrobat, nothing major. I guess the most strenous thing that I have planned is gaming, but nothing too hardcore. I know the games will depend on a video card too. I want a decent chip for under $275 or so.


Thanks.
Click to expand...


Bleh. A CPU is really not the most important thing nowadays.

Just get a 3000+ venice and OC it, and spend the savings on a better video card, or speakers. And a gig of memory. Heck, things are getting so cheap that you could get 2 gigs. Those are the things that really enrich a gaming experience.
 
I have to say for the money the Chaintech series of mobo's are nice.
As for the memory I would get the cheapest you can since you wont be overclocking.
pqi and rosewell and a few others all make good memory thats 1gig for $70 give or take a few dollars and most o/c 25-35mhz fairly easy with 2.9v
If you should around you can find a good videocard for under $300 just pick one.
The 9800pro and the 6600gt are very cheap right now($150-220.00) and both perform well.

Edit: I have had good success with corsair value select memory in terms of working with any mobo and being stable but it has never o/c past 235 for me and for the money the rosewell and pqi seem a better deal, just dont know about them working well in any mobo.
 
no, the 2-5% performance under optimal conditions isn't worth the 50-75% higher cost
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
no, the 2-5% performance under optimal conditions isn't worth the 50-75% higher cost
Click to expand...

I'd have to second that. If you're not overclocking, don't bother with anything other than value ram. If you're planning on overclocking, then ballistix and tccd's are amazing stuff.
 
I was going to start with a gig of RAM anyway. I was orginally considering a 3200 processor, but thought that the 3500 would give me a little better performance. I will be doing just basic Office stuff and some web surfing about 80% of the time, but I would like to assemble a machine that can step up and run fairly close to my friend's Dell XPS when we game online.

As far as video cards go I'm looking into the ATI x800 series with PCIexpress.

Anyone have a favorite mobo that is quality for under $125?
 
epox and chaintech should both have nf4 boards that aren't too expensive. i think the more budget oriented dfi is still $135 or so.
 
What major difference would be noticable between the 3500 and a 3200 or 3000? Would the gaming performance be majorly different if everything else was the same? (1 gig of RAM and a video card with 256MB memory)
 
the difference between each would just barely be noticeable if you're reaaaally looking. 3000 to 3500 is a reasonable difference though.
 
So, would a 3200 be a good starting point? Because I'm not really going to be trying to push this machine. I'm not yet into OCing things, but I do want something with decent performance all around.
 
3200's good enough.

Post your complete system config before you buy and we'll pick it to shreds with suggestions. ^_^
 
That's what I was planning on doing. This site has been a great reference for me. I would like to thank everyone for their advice and understanding. I have learned much that would have cost me if I didn't do a little bit of research here first.
 
I think I'm going to go with the 3200 probably with the Winchester core in the retail box.
 
I'm going with this because of it being what newegg has at a decent price. When I get ready to buy I want to shop around for a few days, what others should I visit?
 
cheifvalue (kinda newegg, but not), monarchcomputers, zipzoomfly isn't bad, but i don't think their selection is as good the others
 
ChiefValue, Newegg, Monarchcomputer and ZipZoomFly are what most people use I think.

Edit: was talking on the phone and took forever to type and post this... hehe
 
I ran across another that looked decent, and forgot to bookmark it. Now I can't find any reference to it on the site that I found the link on. It was gig(something) if memory serves. But those horrible things happen when you get caught up in unimportant things like finals. hehe :D
 
p_little said:
I ran across another that looked decent, and forgot to bookmark it. Now I can't find any reference to it on the site that I found the link on. It was gig(something) if memory serves. But those horrible things happen when you get caught up in unimportant things like finals. hehe :D
Click to expand...
GigaParts ??
 
p_little said:
I was going to start with a gig of RAM anyway. I was orginally considering a 3200 processor, but thought that the 3500 would give me a little better performance. I will be doing just basic Office stuff and some web surfing about 80% of the time, but I would like to assemble a machine that can step up and run fairly close to my friend's Dell XPS when we game online.
Click to expand...

What are the specs on this XPS? It should be pretty easy to beat it out.
 
Like a higher-end P4, close to 3.5 or 3.8 or something. A gig of memory, and a pretty good HD. I'm going for a gig of memory at first, but what processor would be about par?
 
Most games aren't really CPU bound; it's the videocard that's going to make the big difference in gaming performance, not 2-300MHz of CPU power.
 
I would still get the 3200+ out of those, just for the even 10x multi. And the fact that's it's just ~$40 more than a 3000+ but ~$70 cheaper than a 3500+
 
ameoba said:
Most games aren't really CPU bound; it's the videocard that's going to make the big difference in gaming performance, not 2-300MHz of CPU power.
Click to expand...

A lot of videocards are CPU bound, everything is only as fast as the slowest component.
 
Most games aren't really CPU bound; it's the videocard that's going to make the big difference in gaming performance, not 2-300MHz of CPU power.
Click to expand...

Agreed....

I would get the 3000+ Venice core, then get the fastes Video Card that you can afford.... The OC that Venice to the MAX....
 
Project_2501 said:
You don't really need the absolute fastest card.

Stock: X800XL
OC'd: 6800GT
Click to expand...


No you don't... But you should get the one that offers the best performance for the money that you have...

If you have the money for a 6800GT, then get it.... If you have the money for a 6800 Ultra, then get it.... If you have the money for 2x 6800GT SLI then get it.... If you have the money for 2x 6800 Ultra SLI, then get it.....

Now if what you are doing is CPU bound or not.(which gaming is not really, to an extent at least) then you should get a 3000+ Venice core and OC the hell out of it.... It doesn't really matter becouse most Venice cores have pretty close to the same clock ceiling no matter what their rating is.....
:D :D :D :D
 
Except that a 3000+ venice CPU needs a 300 FSB to get to thee typical OC level for a Venice. This would indicate either getting a board known for supporting a 300mhz FSb or a chip with a higher multiplier.

Still, the point remains. The OP said that this is for school/gaming. My grandmother's celeron can be an adequate school computer, so this is really a gaming build. This means that the Vid card should have a big share of the budget.
 
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