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Okay, what to do now...

N

NimTheMad

n00b
Joined
Jul 2, 2004
Messages
15
Hello,

I've been out of the game for a while, and I'm building a new computer. Here's what I have so far:

Q6600
2x 2 gig PC4200 (doh, got this before researching)
Seagate 7200.10 320gig SATA hd
Mother Board = ?????
Graphics card = ?????

I'd like to budget about $300-400 for the motherboard + graphics card if possible.

I need suggestions on a motherboard + graphics card to play 'the latest' games at a good framerate. Also, is the 4 gigs of ram going to be screwy with windows XP? I know I should have gone with better ram, but it's already been delivered and I'll use it if I can. No overclock is fine (for now ;))

Thanks!
-Nim
 
NimTheMad said:
Hello,

I've been out of the game for a while, and I'm building a new computer. Here's what I have so far:

Q6600
2x 2 gig PC4200 (doh, got this before researching)
Seagate 7200.10 320gig SATA hd
Mother Board = ?????
Graphics card = ?????

I'd like to budget about $300-400 for the motherboard + graphics card if possible.

I need suggestions on a motherboard + graphics card to play 'the latest' games at a good framerate. Also, is the 4 gigs of ram going to be screwy with windows XP? I know I should have gone with better ram, but it's already been delivered and I'll use it if I can. No overclock is fine (for now ;))

Thanks!
-Nim
Click to expand...

Do you really need a quad core? If you're just gaming, it may not be the best solution price wise at this point. You'll want to pick up an 8800 series with your $400 mobo + gpu budget. If 1280x1024 and less, 8800gts 320mb ($260). If 1680 x1050 and more, 8800gts 640mb. ($360)

PC4200? yikes. That is ddr1? See if you can RMA it. If you end up going dual core and overclock the crap out of your cpu, you'll want pc2-6400. They're going for $85 these days for the cheap but decent ones for 2 gigs. If you really want 4 gigs, you should really consider 64 bit vista. It will allow you to take advantage of ALL your memory, not merely slightly more than 3 gigs of it.
 
Yeah, might have gone overboard with the quad core, but what's done is done. And the PC4200 is DDR2 533MHz... so it won't slow my system down any will it? I thought the FSB of the Q6600 is 1066MHz, so 533MHz DDR2 is the slowest ram that will still suffice... I hope that I'm right.

Thanks for the video card suggestions, I'll take a look at those.
 
NimTheMad said:
Yeah, might have gone overboard with the quad core, but what's done is done. And the PC4200 is DDR2 533MHz... so it won't slow my system down any will it? I thought the FSB of the Q6600 is 1066MHz, so 533MHz DDR2 is the slowest ram that will still suffice... I hope that I'm right.

Thanks for the video card suggestions, I'll take a look at those.
Click to expand...

You're right, 533mhz ddr2 is the slowest memory that will suffice for that cpu. Most people use the naming convention pc2-4200 to refer to ddr2 however, pc4200 made me think ddr1 :p

Many people are overclocking the q6600 from 2.4 ghz to 3.0ghz. This would require a 25% overclock in memory, meaning you would need ddr2-667mhz speed to get there. Your memory will most likely not let you get to that point.
 
DDR2-800 is dirt cheap lately -- $100 or less for a pair of 1GB sticks. My OCZ is treating me well so far, but I hear Geil or G-skill may be the way to go instead. RMA the 4GB if you can, sell it if you can't, probably.

If you go EVGA for the motherboard (seems to be a popular option lately) make sure you get one of the newer EVGA boards if you want to overclock the quad core, as the older TR series boards don't behave well above stock speeds with the quads. Read up on this at their forums, only to find I have one of these... but considering I can hit over 1333 FSB without issue, maybe I'm one of the lucky ones.
 
Dunno about 3-4 for a MB and video card. I'm pretty happy w/ my Asus P5B-del. I run my Q6600 @ 9x333 on a vcore of 1.3250 with no stability issues. I hear the new BL chipset board is even better but again, they both exceed your price point.
 
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