just below the best system

N

NateS

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 5, 2001
Messages
140
I'm ready to upgrade my gaming machine from a AMD 2600+ XP mobile @ 2.4ghz. I will use the machine for gaming (specifically Supreme Commander). My budget is flexible as long as I'm not wasting money. I have done a lot of reading and I now feel educated enough to hear what you guys think.

Video card
My last two cards were ATI, but their drivers now use .NET which really pisses me off. A lot. I would not mind at all going with nVidia. I am willing to spend a good amount here, something around $450. Would it make sense to do SLI with two ~$250 cards? Going with one card, it seems like the nVidia GeForce 8800GTS ($460) is just below the best (8800GTX is $650). Not sure what the equivalent ATI card is. Would the 8800GTS be a mistake? Is the Radeon X1950 XTX ($420) good enough I should save my money? Is SLI with lesser cards better?

The game I'm targetting is Supreme Commander, so I need multiple monitors. Most (if not all) good cards have this. It may be worth noting that the resolutions of the two monitors I want to push are 1280x720 (primary) and 1280x1024 (secondary). So, pretty low resolution. I have read that SLI may not work well with two displays.

Processor
AMD has always been the cheaper and better (or atleast just as good) choice. Now it seems the prices are roughly equal. I am not against going Intel, though all my reading has been aimed at AMD so far. That said, socket AM2 is the newest and it seems like the AMD Athlon X2 5000+ ($328) is just below the best (5200+ is $412). Can I get the same or better Intel processor for the same price?

Ram
I found Mushkin 2x1gb DDR2 800 5-5-5-12 for $270. Sounds good as long as the motherboard can reach 2.1 volts or so.

Motherboard
Of course the processor determines an AMD or Intel motherboard. For now let's assume AMD. The nVidia nForce 500 northbridge seems impressive enough. The Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe is $190, but seems a little like overkill. I don't need wifi, firewire, gigabyte lan, onboard sound, or raid. I don't need SLI if I decide to go with one video card. The Asus M2N-E seems better but can only set the ram voltage to 1.95, so thats out. I just need a basic, stable motherboard to play games on!

PSU
I'll need a new PSU for this box since I'm using my old one elsewhere. I don't believe in spending big bucks on a PSU. In the past I have always bought $30 Rosewill 350W PSUs and have only had one die on me. Is 350W enough or do I need to go bigger?

HDD
I'm looking at a 74gb Raptor ($152) or a 150gb Raptor ($223). However, I may drop this idea for a good performing 7200rpm drive to cut costs.

Case
This is the only piece I have already ordered. I got an Antec P180 from Frys for $70 (after rebate).

So in all I am guessing I need to spend about $800 on the system plus about $450 on the video card. If your budget was around $1250 (lets say $1400 absolute max), what video card, processor, ram, and motherboard would you buy?
 
Ok, I'm officially sold on the E6600 Conroe. Sorry AMD! Maybe next time. :)

Now, what motherboard? The Asus P5W DH Deluxe seems popular, but is a little expensive at $228. It has more features than I need. Is there a cheaper (has less features) motherboard that will provide the same overclocking and stability? I want a 975X chipset board. I have read the nForce 500 chipsets are not so good overclockers on the Intel side.
 
I would warn against getting a 30 rosewill POS. Splurge a little more and pick up an Antec Neo HE 550, which will set you back around 70 bucks, if you find one on sale. Otherwise, just read the "recommended PSU" in the "PSU Buying Guide" thread in the PSU forum - I'm sure you'll find something that fits within your price range that'll get the job done.

Other than that, I second the previous posters - go Conroe. I would, if I had the money.
 
I just bought an Antec Neo HE 550w at Frys online for $76 after shipping and tax. Thanks for the advice!

I just found the eVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR nForce 680i board... sounds awesome for $250! Should I go this route? Really I don't care so much about SLI in the future, but the board is supposed to be extremely fast.

Found Corsair 2x1gb 4-4-4-12 for $280. Should I get the TWIN2X2048-6400C4 or TWIN2X2048-6400C4D? Do I need DHX (Dual-path Heat Xchange)?
 
8800GTS is an awesome card, don't think ATI has a DX10 card out yet.

Conroe is the way to go, unless your really attached to AMD.

Mobo is going to be your choice, you crossed off so much you don't want/need that I hate to recommend anything that has those things - check my sig for my favorite.
[not familiar enough with nVidia chipset to comment on the eVGA board your talking about]

PS is a different story - I am less than happy with Antec!! See http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1107083
 
eVGA 680i mobo
eVGA 8800GTS
Intel Core2Duo E6600
2x1gb DDR2 800 (the one you picked is good)

Yea.
 
pcfan10110 :D

Excavator, sucks the Antec PSU toasted your board. I'm going to try my luck with it since I already ordered. Hopefully the 550w will be built better!

The nForce 680i chipset is supposed to be ridiculously fast. Check out the results here. That is a great article for the eVGA i680 board. He hit 488mhz FSB! In reality it could turn out to be a lot less and still be rockin'!

Here is my current list of bought and need-to-buy items...

BOUGHT
------
$80 - Antec P180 case
$70 - Antec NEO HE 550w PSU
$105 - 74gb Raptor HDD
$41 - Scythe Ninja Plus (rev B) heatsink

NEED TO BUY
-----------
$250 - eVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR nForce 680i motherboard
$323 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (Conroe) processor
$280 - Corsair 2x1gb C4 ram
$460 - nVidia GeForce 8800GTS video card

Sounds like this list matches the general consensus. I plan on making the rest of these purchases between now and around mid-December. This system is going to be sweet!

Bbq, why the eVGA 8800GTS over another brand? I was going to just buy whatever was cheapest. Looks like the PNY is $460 and the eVGA is $470. Should I save $10?
 
Antec Neo480 is a great PSU. Too bad yours sucked, but Antec and Asus have often had troubles working together.

The OP doesn't have to worry about the HE 550, though - they are made by Seasonic and are great PSUs - they even work fine with Asus mobos - I was using one with my A8N-SLI Premium with no problems.
 
If you want to save money, wait for the other nForce 600i series boards. The eVGA is expensive because its the only one out right now. Also, how far do you plan on OC'ing? $280 on 2GB of ram just because the name is Corsair is a waste of money, imo.
 
I know these are old boards compared to the 680i, but what about the Gigabye DS3 or the Asus P5B-E? They overclock nicely (will get most e6600's to 3.3-3.6GHz easily) and aren't terribly overpriced at $140-$150. They're based on the P965 chipset, which in the past Intel has always had the most stable chipsets/drivers.

And also, since I didn't noticed anyone mention this, and unless it's changed and I'm just stupid now :), you can't use two monitors with SLI, so an SLI board would be almost useless, again unless that's changed recently.

By the way, why does it piss you off that ATI's using .Net now? the last couple (6.9, 6.10) release have been their most stable ever. But, unfortunately ATI doesn't have a DX10 offering on the table to compete with the 8800 series as of yet, so I guess it's a moot point.


And also, pcfan, Core 2's run just as cool as Athlon X2's with the same cooling. The days of Prescott are over.
 
ryan_975 said:
I know these are old boards compared to the 680i, but what about the Gigabye DS3 or the Asus P5B-E? They overclock nicely (will get most e6600's to 3.3-3.6GHz easily) and aren't terribly overpriced at $140-$150. They're based on the P965 chipset, which in the past Intel has always had the most stable chipsets/drivers.

And also, since I didn't noticed anyone mention this, and unless it's changed and I'm just stupid now :), you can't use two monitors with SLI, so an SLI board would be almost useless, again unless that's changed recently.

By the way, why does it piss you off that ATI's using .Net now? the last couple (6.9, 6.10) release have been their most stable ever. But, unfortunately ATI doesn't have a DX10 offering on the table to compete with the 8800 series as of yet, so I guess it's a moot point.


And also, pcfan, Core 2's run just as cool as Athlon X2's with the same cooling. The days of Prescott are over.
Click to expand...

Dont they have a program that underclocks the CPU when it isn't needed? I know that I have one but I never really looked into it.
 
pcfan10110 said:
Dont they have a program that underclocks the CPU when it isn't needed? I know that I have one but I never really looked into it.
Click to expand...

um, what does that have to do with what you quoted from me?
:confused:
 
NateS said:
Bbq, why the eVGA 8800GTS over another brand? I was going to just buy whatever was cheapest. Looks like the PNY is $460 and the eVGA is $470. Should I save $10?
Click to expand...

Warranty, support.

Motherboard- to get what you want, you're going to have to just deal with getting the stuff you don't want, there's no two ways about it. :)
 
ryan_975 said:
um, what does that have to do with what you quoted from me?
:confused:
Click to expand...

I quoted you b/c AMD has their cool and quiet software that underclocks the CPU and runs cooler. Which means no liquid cooling baby!
 
enginurd, yeah I have about $750 right now for this system. At current prices I need ~$850 to buy processor, motherboard, and ram. I figure there is no point in buying before I can purchase all three at the same time. I figure I'll just wait a little while (2-3 weeks) before purchasing. Do you have an ETA on when other 680i boards will be out?

As for the RAM, I see G.Skill cas4 is $200. I will overclock as high as possible as long as it is completely stable. Saving $80 on ram would be great, as long as it doesn't significantly reduce my overclock. I've read that ram isn't a huge factor like it used to be, but I don't remember if this advice was only for AMD setups?

Regarding the P965 chipset, I was reading that the 975X was faster, even if it has been available longer. Here is the article page with that info. But the nForce 680i smokes the 975X by a considerable amount. Here is the link again to the eVGA 680i article.

It is true that the Intel chipset boards are cheaper. Eg, the DS3 is $120 less than the eVGA 680i. That buys the 2xPCIe 16x + 1xPCIe 16x (electrical x8) slot. This lets you run SLI + an additional video card for multimon! This would be ideal if I ever get a second 8800GTS to do SLI, then I could get a budget third video card. The game I'm building this system to play (Supreme Commander) supports multimon intrinsically. The extra cost also buys a ton of other features (teaming LAN, linkboost, some nutty raid stuff, etc) that admittedly I'll never use. The extreme overclocking is exciting enough for me, I'm trying not to think of the extra $120 I'm spending. :D

For some reason, on the three computers I have running ATI video cards, the stupid .NET driver is unable to load at Windows startup. It gives me some crap about I don't have rights to run this application. If I wait a few minutes and then try, it works. I assume whatever .NET garbage it needs hasn't been loaded yet. I googled briefly and found a lot of people with the same problem, a solution wasn't easily found. Implementing their driver in .NET just seems unecessary and makes for a slow (and probably memory hunger) application. Also, I'm a Java developer so I must admit to having a bias against .NET. :)

nForce boards have nTune, which is a Windows app that does a bunch of stuff. It gives you access to *everything* that you can set in bios, which makes overclocking require fewer reboots. It has presets to underclock when idle, overclock for games, etc. It has real time voltage, temp, fan speed and even network workload. I used the software called 8rdavcore to do this with my Athlon XP-M 2600+, but nTune sounds like it is more extensive. I've never used the cool & quiet software that works with newer AMDs.
 
pcfan10110 said:
I quoted you b/c AMD has their cool and quiet software that underclocks the CPU and runs cooler. Which means no liquid cooling baby!
Click to expand...

And Intel has EIST and C1E to do the same exact thing. And liquid cooling isn't require on ANY processor from either company.
 
"just below the best system"

I don't do any gaming but ...

I think you are paying to much for too little.

I built a system for not much more than you want to spend - $1500. In addition to a new MB, CPU, HD, and videocard,I got 6 TV tuners and 1.5T of hard drive space.

I suspect it plays games almost as well as your system will. $700 or so will buy a very fast computer.
 
GeorgeHR said:
"just below the best system"

I don't do any gaming but ...

I think you are paying to much for too little.

I built a system for not much more than you want to spend - $1500. In addition to a new MB, CPU, HD, and videocard,I got 6 TV tuners and 1.5T of hard drive space.

I suspect it plays games almost as well as your system will. $700 or so will buy a very fast computer.
Click to expand...

so the question is what is your system?
 
GeorgeHR said:
I don't do any gaming but ...

I think you are paying to much for too little.

I built a system for not much more than you want to spend - $1500. In addition to a new MB, CPU, HD, and videocard,I got 6 TV tuners and 1.5T of hard drive space.

I suspect it plays games almost as well as your system will. $700 or so will buy a very fast computer.
Click to expand...

Lets see where the cost goes. First, from what you've said so far, you've excluded ram, case, and PSU. At current prices, my MB, CPU, HD, and video card are $1113. Without the video card its $653. With these components, I expect something like a ~450mhz FSB and ~3.7ghz CPU speed. The 10k HDD is a minor boost. So, I am paying a small premium for some great parts to overclock.

Playing games, a huge factor is the video card. I imagine what you bought is great for 2D, but couldn't handle a newer game at a medium graphics setting. If I'm over paying for anything, its for the boss video card. However, this card is cutting edge (DX10) and going to last me years. You can't have a gaming machine without a decent video card!

I could have saved maybe $100-$200 on the video card and $100 or so on cheaper ram. If I bought the remaining pieces at current prices, my whole system would cost $1584. If I shaved a few corners, I'd still be looking at ~$1200 for a decent gaming machine.
 
Sorry to resurrect this, but I am getting close to purchasing the last pieces. Do I want DDR2 800 or higher now that I am going for the nForce 680i board?
 
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