Need advice on 2 Budget Rigs

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Funkatron

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Sep 23, 2005
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Upgrading an old 5 year old system. Currently Running an Athlon XP1800+ on a ECS board with 512 MB Ram and I'm definate need of a good upgrade. Keeping the 2 HD's, Case, Power Supply, etc. I don't game on my PC anymore, so onboard Video is ok. Basically, All I need it it for web surfing, photoshop and some video converting/compression. I have a 400 dollar budget.

Here is what I got picked out:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+(65W) Windsor 2.0GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor - Retail
Price: 159.99

GIGABYTE GA-M55plus-S3G Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Price: 84.99

G.Skill 1GB(2 x 512MB) DDR2 800 Memory
Price: 139.99

Total: 384.97

Any recomendations to lower the price and/or up the performance

I also need to give my sisters Rig an overhaul. Its still running an Athlon 1GHz. Shee does mostly web design and photoshop. Not sure if needs a Dual core system. A Sempron or a single core Athlon 64 should fit the bill. Any recomendations on that?
 
If you can stretch you can get a nice little core2duo system for just a little bit more.

$117.99 GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3
$180.00 Intel Core 2 Duo e6300 1.86ghz

$437.98 - incl. your ram

For your sister an am2 3500+ ($88) should give her plenty of power for her needs :)
 
Over my budget. Plus I'm a closet AMD !!!!!!. If only the Core 2 Duo boards were a tad cheaper
 
Funkatron said:
Over my budget. Plus I'm a closet AMD !!!!!!. If only the Core 2 Duo boards were a tad cheaper
Click to expand...
I'm a fan of getting the most for my money. There are cheap conroe boards... here's a cheap conroe build:

$180 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz
$75 - ASUS P5L-MX Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 945G Micro ATX
$105 - A-DATA Vitesta 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2-533 ELJKD1908K
==========
$360 + tax and shipping

The E6300 will give you slightly better stock performance, but is it worth the extra mo--- oh wait, its cheaper than that X2 build you got up there. Its the ram... well, now you have a reason to go intel, lol. Its cheaper and performs slightly better than the 3800+ x2. If you'd like to overclock and get much better performance, slap another $75 down and get the GA-965G-DS3. While the 38X2 can OC to FX62 levels of performance, so can the E6300 with that DS3. Here's a better conroe build:

$150 - GIGABYTE GA-965G-DS3 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel G965 Express
$180 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz
$115 - A-DATA Vitesta 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2-667 ELJPE1908K
============
$445 + tax and shipping

Now back to the thought I was expressing earlier: Now... is that setup worth the higher price over the x2 build? Yes, because your x2 build can't OC too well, the conroe consumes less power, and runs cooler (you can reach 7*350=2.4Ghz on stock cooling). And at 2.4Ghz, it trades blows with the FX-62.
 
haithamt said:
will that A-Data even OC?
Click to expand...
Sure it will. A-Data is one of the largest memory makers in the world. Their 2GB DDR2 533 kit can OC nicely, too, but thats out of his budget.
 
Funkatron said:
Don't Oc, so I don't care either way.
Click to expand...
I showed you a conroe board that was under your budget -- in fact, cheaper than your am2 build. I also said it gives higher performance at stock speeds:
enginurd said:
I'm a fan of getting the most for my money. There are cheap conroe boards... here's a cheap conroe build:

$180 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz
$75 - ASUS P5L-MX Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 945G Micro ATX
$105 - A-DATA Vitesta 1GB (2x512MB) DDR2-533 ELJKD1908K
==========
$360 + tax and shipping

The E6300 will give you slightly better stock performance, but is it worth the extra mo--- oh wait, its cheaper than that X2 build you got up there. Its the ram... well, now you have a reason to go intel, lol. Its cheaper and performs slightly better than the 3800+ x2. ...
Click to expand...
 
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