Light multimedia / gaming system input needed

[Koslov]

Ok here's the thing. This girl I know wants a new PC to do some light gaming (mainly Starcraft 2 eheh) and Adobe stuff (photoshop, etc.) some video encoding too but nothing hardcore.She wants a good PC but she doesn't want to pay extra or a premium for a small % gain in performance. She plan to keep the PC for a long time. Her current PC is like a AMD 3500+ w/ 1GB ram, board video and an old 19" 4:3 LCD monitor.

I was thinking about a Phenom X3 720BE or X2 550 w/ 4GB DDR3 w/ 785G for the moment. She'll buy the 3D card when Starcraft 2 is released.

OR I could build her a cheap box w/ an Intel E5200 OCed to 3.2Ghz , G31 mobo, 4GB ddr2 so the price would be much lower but still have good performance no? + with the price difference she could get a nice 22-24" PC monitor

hmm any idea?

 

[lt_shiro]

x2 245 is better cpu for gaming than e5200...

if she is buying now, I would go with x2 545+785g+4gb ddr3.

 

[Dangman]

x2 245 is better cpu for gaming than e5200...

if she is buying now, I would go with x2 545+785g+4gb ddr3.

QFT. The $61 X2 245 outperforms the $63 E5200 by a wide margin. No contest.

Now if you want to go further in like PSU recommendations, mobo recommendations, please answer the questions in the sticky titled "ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS FIRST" so that we can help you better